NASA's Atlantis Ready For June 8 Launch

lifuchi writes "The guys and girls at NASA are at it again with Atlantis. The newly repaired space shuttle is set launch on June 8. The hail-damaged fuel tank has been repaired and is said to be a bit of an eyesore. Zee News is quoted as saying, 'Instead of being a uniform orange, it has a patchwork of white spots where technicians sprayed, scraped and filled fresh foam into the more than 4200 areas that were damaged during a freak hailstorm in February.'"

Comments

What the hell...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Inspires confidence."
"Why not replace it?"


WHO CARES? This is a rocket... going into space... manned by men and woman who know that they have a more than average chance of dying. Paint adds weight and takes away from the mission payload (for reference... painting a 747 adds about 1,000 lbs to the overall take off weight). On the shuttle it's there for a functional purpose... not for feng shui.

Get them off the ground... get them in space and do it safely and as cheaply as possible (so they can do it more often). Leave fashion and style for the paris hilton's of the world. mmm-kay?

Orange!

[suv4x4]

Instead of being a uniform orange, it has a patchwork of white spots where technicians sprayed, scraped and filled fresh foam into the more than 4200 areas that were damaged during a freak hailstorm in February.

Oh no! Stop the engines, damn it, and don't even think of thinking of going anywhere with that non-uniform orange fuel tank! We don't want to be embarassed in front of the perfectly uniform green aliens we know absolutely nothing about and forget what I just said.

-- NASA guy in a black suit

The phrase

[Professr3]

"overfilled twinkie" comes to mind...

Scary

[lightversusdark]

"There's not at all a problem with this," Chapman said. "We have total confidence in the integrity of the repairs but I'm telling you right now that your mind will have a hard time convincing your eyes."

That must not be very reassuring for the astronauts.
There has been a new fuel tank built for the shuttle. Last weekend NASA were still deciding whether to use the new tank on this mission or go with the patched-up one.
They have opted to instead keep the new tank for the Endeavour mission in August (STS-118).

The mission overview is here.

Re:Scary

[$RANDOMLUSER]

That must not be very reassuring for the astronauts.

"It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract."
--Alan Shepard

Nasa needs to...

[Lumpy]

Have someone paint giant band-aid images all over the tank.

Just to scare the crap out of the know nothings out there in the country that would be freaked out about the foam repairs.

Maybe add a dixie flag to the top of the shuttle and paint 01 on the sides, that would make it complete.

Re:So a can of orange paint was out of the budget

[arielCo]

From TFA:

The tank`s deep orange colour is caused by ultraviolet light from the Sun striking the foam insulation over time. The fresh foam on Atlantis` tank is however, light-coloured, some of it bright white and some off-white, indicating different repair techniques were used in separate areas.

So it's more like new foam on top of old foam. Apparently it happens very quickly, since every tank I've seen after STS-1/2 is orange.

Now for the obligatory Wikipedia quote:

The external tanks of the first two missions were painted white, which added an extra 600 pounds (273 kg) of weight to each ET. Subsequent missions have had unpainted tanks showing the natural orange-brown color of the spray-on foam insulation. The orange-brown color results from ultraviolet light from the sun striking the foam insulation over time.[1] The lighter, unpainted tanks have increased the payload capacity by almost the entire weight savings of 600 pounds.