NASA Spacewalk Images

Discussion in 'Off-Topic Discussions' started by Tireman44, Aug 3, 2005.

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  1. Tireman44

    Tireman44 member

  2. DesElms

    DesElms New Member

    Thanks, Tireman44. The link failed for me just now, but I'm sure that's just because the NASA servers are overwhelmed by all the web traffic at the moment. I remember reading somewhere that NASA has so configured its routers that HTTP GET requests from servers outside of those in the scientific community get lower priority, and are flat-out locked-out when such requests from servers within the scientific community begin to tax the NASA servers. I'm sure the link will work for me later... and that it will be amazing. I saw a little of it on TV this morning and found myself unable to get up from the table and continue getting ready to leave until it was over.

    I realize that greater minds than mine are on this problem, but I can't stop thinking to myself that if the people who designed/built the shuttle had wanted that spacer material not to be in those spaces between the tiles, they wouldn't have put it there. Therefore, begs the question: Is removing it altogether (as opposed to just trimming it back to flush) really the right move?

    Also, unless they're using the spacer material for the very first time in this mission, isn't it likely that this is not the first time some of it has protruded, and that the shuttles on which it had returned safely? Therefore, isn't it likely that everything would probably be okay if they had just done nothing at all?

    I understand everyone's caution. This is, after all, the first mission since the Columbia disaster and, of course, no one wants another catastrophe, for godsake. An ounce of prevention, and all that kinda' stuff. But many shuttle missions before the Columbia catastrophe went off without a hitch without this kind of inspectional intensity and erring on the side of caution to the point of distraction. NASA should, in my opinion, focus on the real and identified problem: Big chunks of insulation breaking off of the main booster and knocking tiles loose. Launch video showed that that happend again on this mission, even though NASA thought it had specifically fixed that problem. I suspect that chunks of insulation of various sizes have always broken loose on all shuttle missions, but that the last one just happened to be the one where the chunk was finally big enough, and where it finally hit just right, that it finally did some real damage. The fact that NASA's most recent changes to the insulation didn't stop it from happening again suggests that the problem has probably always been there and only got noticed when it finally got someone killed. Sadly, NASA has a track record of not taking certain potential dangers as seriously as simple logic might suggest it should have... that is, until someone dies. Obviously, that's not as true today as it once was, but I'm just sayin'.

    I confess to being a bit of a space program geek of the sort that is Astronaut Steve Robinson, who did today's spacewalk. Robinson has been enamoured of the space program since he was a kid. He was glued to the television whenever there was a launch, and knew more about the space program than most any adult he knew. Throughout grade school he carried a metal lunchbox bearing a famous Chesley Bonestell painting of astronauts on a spacewalk; and during his training at NASA he brought his lunch to work every day in a similar lunchbox which bore the words "Space Cadet" on it. As an adult, he applied to NASA for 12 years before finally being accepted into the space program.

    While I never went that far, I was just as enthralled by it all from my childhood, as well. As a kid I remember my mother bringing home a 45 RPM record of the audio from John Glen's Mercury mission (which had happened not that long before). I can see it and its orange-red label with black letters in my mind even now... and the little, portable, tinny-sounding phonograph I had on which I played it over and over and over again. I watched every Mercury, Gemini, and the early Apollo missions on the old Motorola black & white console television in our living room, and later on the color one that replace it. I built untold numbers of models of the Saturn V rocket, the lunar lander, etc. In fourth grade I was in an informal group of kids who formed a sort of "Space Club" that read and talked nothing but NASA. Honesttogod, I had tears in my eyes when Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon; and got all choked-up when Grissom, White and Chaffee burned-up on the launchpad in that awful Apollo I fire in 1967; and again in '86 when Challenger went down; and again in 2003 when Columbia broke-up over the Western and Southern US upon re-entry. Astronaut Frank Borman is from my hometown; and I was his grandmother's paperboy... through which I finally got to meet him one day, quite unexpectedly.

    So interested was I in the program and all that surrounded it, generally -- even as an adult -- that I remember back in the early '80s delaying my resignation from my job at Paradyne Corporation (to take a better job elsewhere) because I had read in a memo that Apollo 13 captain Astronaut Jim Lovell was going to be the keynote speaker at the closing banquet at the upcoming national sales meeting which I, of course, upon learning that, could not miss (and through which I got a chance to meet him, too). I've seen the movies "The Right Stuff" and "Apollo 13" more times than I dare count (or admit); and have been known to stay-up 'til the wee hours of the morning so I could watch an episode of Tom Hanks's MTV series "From Here to the Moon," even though I could just as easily have set the VCR to record it while I slept so I could view it at a more reasonable hour. Perhaps I was trying to re-capture the "must see, live event" feeling of anticipation and excitement that space-race-related events used to provide me before we had VCRs, DVRs and/or TIVO.

    Surprisingly, I only managed to see one Saturn V launch in person before NASA finally stopped flying them when it cut short the Apollo program; and only one shuttle launch... after Challenger, but before Columbia... and both times using an employee guest pass so I could be somewhat closer to the pad than the general public. Those who have only seen the shuttle go up have really missed something by not being able to witness an old Saturn V launch. As impressive as a shuttle launch is, the Saturn V rocket, designed by of Wernher von Braun himself, was a thing to behold. Standing 364 feet tall and 33 feet in diameter, the Saturn V dwarfed the 184-foot height of the shuttle and the tallest of its boosters when sitting on the launchpad; and, at 6.3 million pounds, the Saturn V outweighed the shuttle, which weighed-in at just 4.5 million pounds, by a fair piece.

    When the Saturn V's massive F1 engines roared to a start and began inching those 6.3 million pounds of mass off the launch pad, it shook the ground with the force of an earthquake the likes of which a shuttle launch simply does not produce. The Saturn V liftoff was more of a controlled explosion, the brightness of its flame so intense that those closest to it, though still over a mile away, needed to protect their eyes much the same as if looking at the sun; and which brightness was so intense even 50 miles away that it could shed light a piece of paper in complete darkness sufficiently so that even its small print could be read. The bones of any living (or non-living, too, now that I think about it) vertibrate which happened to be within a range of up to a mile from the launchpad would be unceremoniously shattered by the soundwaves. In fact, while the roar of the shuttle's engines as it wafts past you several seconds after liftoff (because of how far you are from the pad and how long it takes the sound waves to reach you) is certainly impressive, the rumbling from the Saturn V rocket during liftoff could be heard coming at you lower, louder and more ominously until it finally reached you with its accompanying shock wave beating, literally, on your chest as if someone were pounding gently on it with their hands so that you could feel, as well as hear and see, event. It was, I tell you, almost a religious experience... and one that I will never forget as long as I live. I loved seeing a shuttle lift off; but I cannot begin to adequately articulate the totality and intensity of the sensual experience that witnessing, up close and personal, a Saturn V liftoff could bring. Except, perhaps, for those who end-up being way too close to a nuclear explosion but still somehow survive, mankind is unlikely ever again to know anything quite like the experience of a Saturn V liftoff. Or so it is my opinion.

    I don't know exactly why it has all so fascinated me for most of my life, but I've followed the space program somewhat more closely than the average American. I just love it... and would hate to see it shut down, as legislators have so often tried to do.

    So, you can imagine that I am interested, today, in NASA looking good, not silly. Personally, I've always thought that an EVA to inspect the shuttle's exterior before re-entry; and the astronauts' knowing how to repair the tiles (and having the tools and materials onboard to so do), should have been part of the program all along. That the crew had to fabricate a makeshift saw yesterday from stuff that just happened to be onboard instead of there being a big ol' yellow toolbox somewhere thereon which contains pretty much everything one could ever need to make emergency repairs, is the same kind of NASA shortsightedness that allowed pure oxygen to be pumped into the crew cabin of Apollo I in 1967; or NASA's ignoring the warnings of Morton Thiokol engineers regarding the likelihood of o-ring failure on shuttle solid rocket boosters just before the Challenger disaster in 1986.

    NASA screws up alot. Yet still a fan am I. Go figure.
     

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