She’s highly educated, well-spoken, and a serious FOX!

*headmeetdesk*

What a silly remark.. by definition, any hole, no matter how small, means a degradation of the integrity of the shuttle. Or did you mean structural integrity?

It depends on location and depth of the hole whether it poses any danger to structural integrity. In many cases leaving damage unrepaired may be safer than risking a dangerous improvised spacewalk and having lots of heavy equipment very near the heat shield.

Sergeant Zim (damn i need to read that book again): I believe that it is indeed a blog ‘feature’ that shows up as soon as you enter your date of birth (another skeptic blogger mentioned it).

Now, I like a good space travel vehicle like anyone else, but the Shuttle is inherently flawed, outdated and has kept the American Space program in low Earth orbit for too long.

What’s old is new, and the upcoming Orion C.E.V spacecraft proves that keeping the volatile and potentially dangerous parts of the vehicle below the crew is smart thinking, ala the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions. Not a single tragedy occurred during those flights. (Apollo 1 was a ground mishap).

I have handled Shuttle tiles, and they are so light and fragile, it’s a wonder they all don’t crumble and disintegrate in re-entry. Confidence in the integrity of the STS’s is low and we have lost two crafts and astronaut crews in this design failure, a political compromise during the Nixon administration.

Let’s repair the Hubble and place the remainder Shuttles (Space trucks), in museums and get on with the next stage of true space exploration.

The return to the Moon and onward to Mars.

Chicago Astronomer Joe
Administrator
http://www.chicagoastronomer.com

But why, oh why, does she list her ass-trological sign in her blog?

Or is that a feature of blogs, that she is unable to prevent?

Personally, I find ass-trology to be pure, unadulterated BS – we Scorpios do…

http://astronautix.com/flights/sts27.htm

We were lucky to get that one back.