Word: endeavour
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After a careful analysis of the risks, NASA is betting that the chances of catastrophe when the damaged space shuttle Endeavour returns to Earth on Aug. 22 are zero. If this were the NASA of old - the one that disastrously miscalculated the dangers of a leaky O-ring and a punctured heat shield to the Challenger and Columbia shuttles, respectively - you would surely have heard a round of protest from at least a few highly qualified aerospace engineers...
NASA is sweating out another chip in the heat-resistant tiles of a space shuttle, the kind of damage that doomed Columbia. This time it's Endeavour, which was hit by debris on its way to orbit. The wound is near a wheel well, a bad spot because it can provide access to the ship's innards. Shuttles have withstood worse, but no one will relax until the fiery ordeal of re-entry is done. [This article contains a diagram. Please see hardcopy of magazine.] Shuttle Endeavor...
There is no easy way to fix the gouge in the Shuttle Endeavour. In-orbit repair options are limited and, since any fix would have to be made by robotic arms and astronauts in awkward space suits, the process would be fraught with the potential to make the problem worse. Still, Mission team chairman John Shannon said that, according to his team's analysis, the damage should pose no risk to the astronaut crew on the return home. There is, however, potential for more damage to the shuttle itself on re-entry into Earth's atmosphere when temperatures...
...James Hartsfield says the new mission management team looks a lot like the old team, but with more people included in the inner circle, more freewheeling communication, and more hard data collected on each launch on which to base decisions. Indeed, a scenario similar to the current one with Endeavour was more or less envisioned in the "Return to Flight" (RTF) report that was issued following the 2003 loss of Columbia and her crew, whose fates were sealed by a gouge in the more critical leading edge of the shuttle wing. The RTF report anticipated more tile shedding and potentially...
...lost to disaster in the 26 years of the program, but 117 have made it down just fine. And the large majority of those ships came home with scarred, pitted and missing tiles. Indeed, the early shuttles often shed tiles like dead leaves and landed safely all the same. Endeavour will almost surely do so too. But the anxiety this mission is causing is one more reason that so many NASA employees and astronaut families are simply marking time until shuttles' scheduled retirement in 2010, when the snakebit ships will fly no more...