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Images of Endeavour's Damaged Tiles

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the that-sure-doesn't-look-good dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "Neptec Design Group, a Canadian company and a NASA prime contractor for 25 space missions, was kind enough to send me exclusive images of Endeavour's damaged tiles during its last take-off. So here are some of these pictures" The pictures are pretty amazing and make the urgency of this whole thing much more amazing.

2 of 331 comments (clear)

  1. How long has this been happening? by GodfatherofSoul · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This kind of damage MUST have been occurring throughout the history of the program. And, if it has been NASA would have been aware during the regular retiling of the Shuttle. My question is why wasn't the ice impact problem wasn't addressed long ago.

    --
    I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
    1. Re:How long has this been happening? by tgd · · Score: 5, Interesting

      But his overall point is quite correct -- every single shuttle mission came back with missing and damaged tiles.

      Most of the shuttle is not under the same level of thermal load as the front edges of the wings during re-entry. Columbia got unlucky that the damage was at the worst possible spot.

      Its a bad design, but the whole shuttle is an awful design. Most of the time it works, though.

      IMO, this is a reaction to Columbia and a dramatically reduced interest in the shuttle program. For ten years launches barely got reported. Its nice (for the continuance of the shuttle program) for people to be talking about it.

      Plus, for those who haven't seen a shuttle tile up close, they're not very big. Thats not a six inch gash in there.