After the loss of the Columbia orbiter, NASA has become a little nervous about any potential problem on the Shuttle. The astronauts now have the ability to do a visual inspection of the Orbiter via remote camera, and they do this after achieving orbit.
The crew of Atlantis, after a flawless launch on Friday, did find a small problem: there is a small gap in the insulation blanket that protects the underside of the Orbiter. It’s probably not that big a deal; there are many areas on the Shuttle that can lose protection without losing the Orbiter. On the original flights, whole tiles fell off without the loss of the spacecraft… not that you particularly want that to happen.
One thing in that article made me smile:
After the Columbia disaster, a shuttle repair kit was included in all shuttle missions.
I have a small repair I keep on my bike when I ride. I suspect the contents of both repair kits aren’t all that dissimilar, too! I wonder if they have tire irons and a spare inner tube, though.
June 10th, 2007 at 8:47 am
So what do you think is in this repair kit? (Employees of NASA and it’s affiliates that might know the real answer, please abstain.)
Let’s have a poll.
I’ll start with the obvious: duct tape. Not the hundred-mile-an-hour version, but rather the mach 17 version.
June 10th, 2007 at 8:47 am
Atlantis is about to approach the ISS with its underside facing one of the station’s cameras that will take more detailed pictures of the damage.
June 10th, 2007 at 9:21 am
The pics of the bottom of the shuttle taken from the ISS probably won’t provide any information about the loose blanket though — if I understand correctly, the piece that is loose is on one of the OMS pods (one of the pair of round bulbous things near the tail of the shuttle), this is on the top surface. They got some very close, detailed images with the arm-mounted cameras (OBSS) yesterday. The views taken from the ISS are mostly to get good views of the bottom, which are more difficult to inspect with the OBSS.
June 10th, 2007 at 9:28 am
The big difference between their repair kit and yours Phil, is that it would be a really huge problem using a hand pump to inflate a tire.
June 10th, 2007 at 9:57 am
I’m gonna second the duct tape. No repair kit is complete without it!
June 10th, 2007 at 10:26 am
The major Italian TV news program, Rai Tg1, announced in its night edition the “explosion” of Atlantis with 7 astronauts onboard, and later apologized for the error. Watch the bad reporting here: http://avventureplanetarie.blogspot.com/ Back to Space Flight 101.
June 10th, 2007 at 10:28 am
Oops, copied and pasted the wrong URL. The correct one for the Tg1 news is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AusUedcIdE – Apologies.
June 10th, 2007 at 10:45 am
Shuttle Repair kit contents:
1) silly foam in a can
2) super glue
3) 1 Italian news caster
4) Instruction manual(in 17 languages)
Primary instruction: In event of loss of insulating tiles, glue # 3 to affected area and cover liberally with silly foam.
Gary 7
June 10th, 2007 at 11:45 am
A jack, tire pump and a spare dipstick to check oil levels.
June 10th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
Well, bike tire or shuttle heat shield are not that dissimilar… you would like to keep them both airtight.
June 10th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
I would think that, in general, you could lost a moderate amount of shielding on any surface that wasn’t near a leading edge and still have the shuttle be ‘landable’. Those areas would still heat up considerably, like the article said, but not as much as the nose, leading edge of the wings, and probably the vertical stabilizer.
June 10th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
*Lose* rather, not lost…
June 10th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
I love the bicycle & repair kit metaphor. Yet, I can not picture you riding your bike at Mach 24; Mach 5, perhaps.
June 10th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
The repair kit is a big box of chewing gum.
June 10th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
Same principle as riding a bike, just a lot harder to put baseball cards in the spokes.
June 10th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
Don’t forget the patches….
J/P=?
June 11th, 2007 at 5:00 am
The latest info,
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/content/?cid=5129
June 11th, 2007 at 5:25 am
probably a windows restore cd in there somewhere.
June 11th, 2007 at 5:49 am
I am kind of surprised no one has taken that reference page to task for the comment from Shannon thus: “Two vehicles weighing 230,000 pounds going 17,500 mph, it’s tough stuff,”
I guess the american public just can’t wrap their heads around a phrase that uses “massing” instead of “weighing”. Sigh.
JC
June 11th, 2007 at 9:06 am
Chewing gum and paper clips……
June 11th, 2007 at 10:53 am
I hate to pick nits, BA, but there is no “blanket that protects the underside of the orbiter”. This report and picture indicate the port side OMS pod:
http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts117/070609omspod/
JackC: “I guess the american public just can’t wrap their heads around a phrase that uses “massing†instead of “weighingâ€. Sigh.”
We almost always use the word “weight” to refer to mass. When I see a bottle of ketchup that tells me its net weight is one pound, I don’t care how much force is pulling it to the Earth, not do I try to use the number to determine how much my toe will hurt if I drop it. I want to know *how much* ketchup there is.
From the NIST special publication 811 (1995 ed.), “Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI)”:
“In commercial and everyday use, and especially in common parlance, weight is usually used as a synonym for mass. Thus the SI unit of the quantity weight used in this sense is the kilogram (kg) and the verb ‘to weigh’ means ‘to determine the mass of’ or ‘to have a mass of’.”
This doesn’t just apply to the metric system. Orloff’s “Apollo By the Numbers” lists the *weight* — in pounds — of every stage of the Moon missions at various points during the mission. What is meant, of course, is mass.
The idea that weight is only something that can be measured in the presence of a gravitational force is, unfortunately, the product of some overzealous science teachers. Even “rocket scientists” refer to the “weight” of an object in freefall to refer to its mass.
June 11th, 2007 at 11:46 am
Re the list of items in the repair kit:
* Science Dictionary… so we know *exactly* what we are talking about.
* A Swiss Army pocket knife, c/w that little thing for getting stones out of horses’ hooves.
* Left-handed screwdriver.
* Sky hook.
And that the Tool box double as a stool to sit/stand on during those awkward repair procedures.
Ivan.
June 11th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
J/P – - – “Patches!? We don’t need no STEEENKIN’ patches!”
Ever notice that Duct Tape is like the Force, from Star Wars?
It has a Light Side, and a Dark Side, and it binds the Universe together…
June 11th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
You all forgot the fibreglass and 2 part epoxy…just like on surfboards.
Kowabunga Hodads!
June 12th, 2007 at 2:48 am
Scary part is, the NASA duct tape is $10,000 a roll…and the engineer that suggested they just pick some up from the local hardware store was let go for being “too unrealistic”
June 12th, 2007 at 5:53 am
“I have a small repair I keep on my bike when I ride. I suspect the contents of both repair kits aren’t all that dissimilar, too! I wonder if they have tire irons and a spare inner tube, though.”
Obviously Dr. Plait is not a real man. Real men ride on tubulars!
June 12th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
Hmm! All they need is a towel. They *DO* know where their towels are, don’t they?
June 13th, 2007 at 4:35 am
MattFunke, you have made my point – most particularly in the line “In commercial and everyday use, and especially in common parlance…” – I submit that objects in space qualify for neither.
Yes – down here, weight and mass are (nearly) interchangeable – but I submit that another “common use” term when referring to ISS and other objects in orbit or in space is “weightless” (another terribly inaccurate term, if you wish to get down to nuts and bolts).
So – I would ask for an explanation on how something can “weigh” 230k lbs and yet be “weightless”.
Of course, all this is semantics and goes to the core of the issue. I found two other references from outside the US that state:
From Sweeden: Mass is a measure of the amount of matter in a body. The term “weight” is sometimes used as a synonym for mass. However, this term has also several other meanings and should therefore be avoided.
From The National Standard of Canada, CAN/CSA-Z234.1-89 Canadian Metric Practice Guide, January 1989:
5.7.3 Considerable confusion exists in the use of the term “weight.” In commercial and everyday use, the term “weight” nearly always means mass. In science and technology, “weight” has primarily meant a force due to gravity. In scientific and technical work, the term “weight” should be replaced by the term “mass” or “force,” depending on the application.
5.7.4 The use of the verb “to weigh” meaning “to determine the mass of,” e.g., “I weighed this object and determined its mass to be 5 kg,” is correct.
Please note in 5.7.3 the use of the phrase “In scientific and technical work…” – unless you wish to suggest that ISS is neither?
JC