Gouge Found on Endeavour's Belly

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/...7a84f3661&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

"CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- NASA discovered a worrisome gouge on Endeavour's belly soon after the shuttle docked with the international space station Friday, possibly caused by ice that broke off the fuel tank a minute after liftoff...."

Wikipedia page on this mission: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-118

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More here:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/?p=662

Uggggh. Again. When will they go up there and not find "Oh wow! There's a foot long gouge on x part of the spacecraft." Maybe one day everything will go correctly for those guy's. You kinda do have to say "Wow are they unlucky, They have ANOTHER problem" :sick2:

You had me worried there. By the title of this thread I thought the guy who made the CR2 Ion's was hurt!



I'm tired, I need to go to bed.

lightr07 said:

Uggggh. Again. When will they go up there and not find "Oh wow! There's a foot long gouge on x part of the spacecraft." Maybe one day everything will go correctly for those guy's. You kinda do have to say "Wow are they unlucky, They have ANOTHER problem" :sick2:

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Gouges have always happened during shuttle flights, they have only recently started caring or being worried about it though, since Colombia. No worries though, they carry a repair kit now, and there is a backup rescue shuttle on short launch notice these days.

Richard C Hoagland was an engineer for NASA and he always said it stood for never a straight answer, you have to wonder.

NASA and the military very often have to go with the lowest bidder and since you most often get what you pay for, it's usually BOHICA for both camps. The shuttle design is old and has been debated for years. Yes, there are other important ways to spend tax dollars, but come on now, can't we find ways to make space science a priority again?

I can remember (Geez, I sound like my dad!) when the thought of space exploration, zero gravity, and scientific study was actually exciting and had people glued to their TV sets, often for days at a time. Now most of the US watches amateur entertainers or moronic high (in more ways than one) society bimbos. Golly, Mr. Wizard, I miss Richard Feynman! BTW, if you do not know who he was, do a search -- a most intriguing character and writer -- had a litle background in physics IIRC :naughty:

Can you tell I grew up in the 50's & 60's?

Oh, well, let's keep our fingers crossed. That's what the upper levels of NASA seem to think is the most cost effective solution to their problems.

well at least they got up there without being pulled over for DUI..

I grew up watching this stuff too and I still think it's fascinating. It is remarkable though, the disinterest some people have in our world and their place in it. . I think they're the types that lack the imagination to have any interest in things other than themselves and what they can get. They don't think of the world as a whole, or themselves as a part of it, they just despoil it trying to get more for themselves.. rant..drool..

will the day ever come when we all have little plastic rocket ships in our backyards? (like The Astronaut Farmer ) they'll be common place and someday when earth finally becomes just too much to take anymore, we'll just all blast off like little viuses into space as simply as we now would launch off into the ocean in dingys when the land becomes too inhospitable..

naaah..

I wonder if Artic Alumina is in the repair kit? You think they have a Surefire light or a Fenix? Maybe Milkyspit could design a light for them?

Marduke said:

No worries though, they carry a repair kit now, and there is a backup rescue shuttle on short launch notice these days.

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And if the backup rescue shuttle develops a gouge also? oo:

PhotonWrangler said:

And if the backup rescue shuttle develops a gouge also? oo:

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The Russians will send a rocket to bring our people down from the ISS, and we'll be the laughingstock of the entire world...

But that's ok, cause Paris is out of jail...

speederino said:

You had me worried there. By the title of this thread I thought the guy who made the CR2 Ion's was hurt!

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I had the same first thought.

NASA seems to playing it as cool as possible, trying to focus people's attention on the ISS building activities. I'm sure they're working frenetically around the clock trying to come up with the best approach here.

I'm no physicist, but thinking of the temperature extremes involved, it's going to be a chore. Unlit by the sun, the tiles probably experience temperatures lower than -250 F. During re-entry, the temperature rapidly increases to about 3,000 F. Whatever type of glue or goo or patch they use, it will need to tolerate this extreme range of temperatures at least long enough to reach cooler temperatures as the speed and altitude decreases.

If the goo adheres well but fails during descent, it could rip away more tiles, exposing more area to the white-hot gases.

<crosses fingers>

Update from the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/13/science/space/13shuttle.html?hp

"CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Aug. 12 (AP) — A close-up laser inspection by astronauts on the space shuttle Endeavour revealed on Sunday that a three-and-a-half-inch gouge penetrates all the way through thermal tiles on the shuttle's belly, and left NASA officials urgently calculating whether a spacewalk for repairs is needed...."

(Emphasis is mine. PB)

chmsam said:

...snip... Golly, Mr. Wizard, I miss Richard Feynman! BTW, if you do not know who he was, do a search -- a most intriguing character and writer -- had a litle background in physics IIRC :naughty:

...snip...

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Ever get the feelling (Feelings... Nothing more than Feelings....) that the HUGE problem in both Physics and Engineering is that the average person in the field has no "practical" feel for the problem because they didn't grow up like RPF - repairing things, playing with machine tools, etc?

speederino said:

You had me worried there. By the title of this thread I thought the guy who made the CR2 Ion's was hurt!



I'm tired, I need to go to bed.

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I Thought the same too after reading the thread title!....

Hope those guys return home safely....

OT, but...

After reading the Feynman autobiographies and getting to hear Harold "Doc" Edgreton lecture -- btw, I am not a physics/math student in any way, shape, or form, but I do read & think from time to time -- it dawned on me that the gap between "educated" and smart was getting wider every day.

For example, during the lecture I got to attend, after Edgerton had explained why xenon emits photons the way it does in a flash tube he paused and asked if there were any questions about this. No one had any questions. He asked if we really got it. Everyone answered yes because the way he had explained it was clear and down to earth. He then commented on how MIT grad students questioned everything and always asked for clearer explanations. I got the distinct impression that the reason they did was only partly because of their curiosity but mostly because they were used to "spoon feeding" lectures and wanted to be able to accurrately quote the lecture more than to be really able to grasp the concept behind it.

Being able to think in 3 dimensions and to do something with your hands is too dangerous a combination today. Definitely not encouraged in most circles.

chmsam said:

OT, but...
I am not a physics/math student in any way, shape, or form, but I do read & think from time to time -- it dawned on me that the gap between "educated" and smart was getting wider every day.

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Spoken like Mao right before the "cultural revolution".

I don't mean any offense, but perhaps the MIT graduate students had a very different level of understanding of the lecture in question, and thus had the basis to ask questions... while you absorbed what was being said. Thinking that a physics graduate student and someone with no formal background in science, will understand a physics lecture on the same level, is truly naive.

Furthermore, it's rather disturbing that you've already assumed that the MIT graduate students are being "spoon-fed" when, again, you
have no basis to do so.

I have no background in physics, but I am a scientist (MD-PhD fellow), and it boggles my mind to think that this is the kind of an impression that outsiders have... given that graduate school is the most intellectually stimulating and challenging environment I've ever encountered (compared to school, college, and even medical school).

so how come they made the Hubble mirror wrong; lack of education or lack of 'smarts' ?

(btw in case you forgot the original problem; the mirror was designed to have perfect curvature on earth, it should have been curved to compensate for 0 gravity..an oversight.)

TedTheLed said:

so how come they made the Hubble mirror wrong; lack of education or lack of 'smarts' ?

(btw in case you forgot the original problem; the mirror was designed to have perfect curvature on earth, it should have been curved to compensate for 0 gravity..an oversight.)

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That's another popular myth, similar to the Fisher Space Pen one. These are really popular methods to put scientists down... and they frequently portray us as being bumbling, unethical, greedy, arrogant, etc...

If you read the final report:
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19910003124_1991003124.pdf
... you'll see that

The Allen Commission found that the null corrector used by Perkin-Elmer had been incorrectly assembled. Its field lens had then been wrongly spaced by 1.3 mm.

During the polishing of the mirror, Perkin-Elmer had analyzed its surface with two other null correctors, both of which (correctly) indicated that the mirror was suffering from spherical aberration. These tests were specifically designed to eliminate the possibility of major optical aberrations. Against written quality guidelines, the company ignored these test results as it believed that the two null correctors were less accurate than the primary device which was reporting that the mirror was perfectly figured.

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On behalf of all scientists, I'll appreciate it if next time you don't get your science news from the Inquirer or the like.

yep, just as I said; it was an oversight.. didn't mean to start a fire in your belly, but thanks for the gratuitous insult.

tell you what; I'll stop studying the Inquirer if you stop attending the Jeffrey Dahmer School of Charm.

..btw I got my information, not from the Inquirer, but from one Jeremy Schwartz, who worked for NASA at the time of the incident, and probably does still..

hey, how about the time they missed Mars with the probe because someone forgot to convert kilometers to miles? (I know, they meant to do that.)