NASA Decides No Fix Needed for Endeavor's Tiles

bhmit1 writes "It looks like NASA is reporting that no repairs are needed for Endeavor. 'After meeting for five hours, mission managers opted Thursday night against any risky spacewalk repairs, after receiving the results of one final thermal test. The massive amount of data indicated Endeavor would suffer no serious structural damage during next week's re-entry. Their worry was not that Endeavor might be destroyed and its seven astronauts killed in a replay of the Columbia disaster — the gouge is too small to be catastrophic. They were concerned that the heat of re-entry could weaken the shuttle's aluminum frame at the damaged spot and result in lengthy post-flight repairs.'"

Comments

I was in 6 grade when Challenger blew up.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a fixed memory of this. I will never forget sitting in reading class with my classmates watching it go up, up, up, and then kablueeee! All our mouths dropped. We had never seen anything like it at the time. Decades later, I don't think anybody is surprised by disaster anymore. In fact, I think it's expected to happen( no, thanks to Bush!).

I do hope these guys make it back. But I think there is a serious problem. We all know the space fleet is beyond it's shelf life. So why hasn't it been scraped and reinvented with more pioneering technology? I feel that if there's another catastrophic disaster; then NASA will be dismantled. Perhaps it should be. I've always dreamed about space exploration but our current state of affairs is a recipe for failure. If our planet is too succeed; then full support and focus is needed by all. I'll say a prayer our current space explorers. I truly hope they make it back in one piece.

No offense, but...

[Moraelin]

No offense, but I'm inherently... weary... of people waving the banner that someone _else_ should sacrifice everything for the general progress.

If you think a life is that disposable, why don't you go risk _your_ life on some endeavour that benefits everyone? _Then_ you'll have the moral high ground to preach that kind of thing. Until then, way I see it, you're safely in a chair at a computer, preaching that someone _else_ should take unnecessary risks to further your standard of living.

And that's a... sociopathic attitude, to say the least.

You want to talk about the scientific developments that shaped the 20'th century? How about the fact that most of them were driven by the need for safety and/or comfort, and a lot of the rest were driven by consumerism?

If we just wanted to live hard and risky, then we wouldn't have needed all that science and technology anyway. What we actually wanted was stuff like:

- travelling cheaper, safer and more comfortable, hence the automobile instead of riding a buggy like the Amish. A lot of the research that went into the automobile was precisely so it wouldn't be a deathtrap that throws a wheel if you even take a too tight curve.

- some cheap and comfortable way to stay in touch: hence, telegraph and then telephone

- entertainment. Hence technologies like the movies, or TV

- some _safe_ lighting (lighting itself being a quality of life issue): most cities had already invested heavily in gas lighting when Edison proposed electric lighting

- to not die of the first disease that drops by: hence, antibiotics

- even in military applications, to _not_ lose more soldiers than strictly unavoidable: the main use of machineguns in WW1 was _defensive_, and that's why it ended up a stalemate

Etc, etc, etc.

So bemoaning safety and concern for human life as some brake on progress, doesn't strike me as just disingenuous, but also as outright mis-informed and mis-leading. That's not brakes, that's what drove most of progress.