Even if they did find the damage, they also have no way to fix it. All of the tens of thousands of tiles on the surface of the shuttle are unique. Each one has different dimensions, and fits in only one place. Obviously, it would be impossible to carry a replacement for every one.
Yup. If you recall Columbia's first launch in 1981, there was some concern then that some tiles were damaged during the launch. They determined the same thing at that time -- nothing could be done about it except hope it did not become a problem.
Granted, now we have more than one shuttle, and we may have been able to launch another shuttle to take up new tiles, but it would have been necessary to determine exactly which tiles were damaged first -- something that would have required an EVA that NASA has explained was not possible. I also doubt it would have been possible to attach the new tiles in space even if they did know which were damaged and managed to get them up there.
The one gentleman (whose name escapes me at the moment) in the press conference yesterday said it best -- the best way to fix heat shield problems is to make sure it has no problems in the first place.
It's one of the few parts of the shuttle that simply can't have a redundency.
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It's been reported that the VHS copies do NOT have the red tint. No word on the DVD copies, but it's a good sign...
Even if they did find the damage, they also have no way to fix it. All of the tens of thousands of tiles on the surface of the shuttle are unique. Each one has different dimensions, and fits in only one place. Obviously, it would be impossible to carry a replacement for every one.
Yup. If you recall Columbia's first launch in 1981, there was some concern then that some tiles were damaged during the launch. They determined the same thing at that time -- nothing could be done about it except hope it did not become a problem.
Granted, now we have more than one shuttle, and we may have been able to launch another shuttle to take up new tiles, but it would have been necessary to determine exactly which tiles were damaged first -- something that would have required an EVA that NASA has explained was not possible. I also doubt it would have been possible to attach the new tiles in space even if they did know which were damaged and managed to get them up there.
The one gentleman (whose name escapes me at the moment) in the press conference yesterday said it best -- the best way to fix heat shield problems is to make sure it has no problems in the first place.
It's one of the few parts of the shuttle that simply can't have a redundency.