We’ve been hearing a lot over the last few days about the damage to the tiles on the shuttle Endeavour. Roland Piquepaille at ZDNet blogs has now posted some exclusive pictures of the affected region, provided by Neptec Design Group.
I don’t know how serious this is, but now at least I understand what they mean by a gouge in the tiles. Here’s keeping our fingers crossed for the safety of the astronauts on board.
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August 16th, 2007 at 9:15 am
Just as well the crew think or hope they can repair it.
Imagine if Endeavour wasn’t fit to withstand re-entry
and we had to send another shuttle to bring the crew back down
Alas, the very real risks of low earth orbit and ‘outer’ space travel
August 16th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
What I’m still not clear on is, are we sure this is something unusual? Or is it possible that this kind of tile damage has been happening every other flight for years, and it’s just that we never started noticing it until one instance of such damage destroyed Columbia?
August 17th, 2007 at 1:47 am
It does seem to be pretty common, so I guess it must always have been. But the risks of it weren’t appreciated before.
August 17th, 2007 at 2:46 am
scale bar?
August 17th, 2007 at 7:32 am
a cornelian – there wasn’t one with the photos, but here’s what today’s NYT story had to say
August 17th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Thanks for the photo. I hadn’t seen that yet.
Anyone have any thoughts about why this appears to be a bulge instead of a gouge to me? I’m guessing it is something to do with the lighting, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. I’ve tried rotating, flipping, and inverting the image, but still get that buldge illusion. I have seen this in many photos, especially those of unfamilar landscapes with unusual lighting (think moonscape with the light from an odd angle). Is it just me, or other people seeing the same thing?
August 17th, 2007 at 11:17 am
Carl – I saw it as a bulge too — after I saw your comment I squinted at it the way I do to “flip” a drawing of a cube, and, voila! — it’s a gouge now!
August 17th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Did NASA release a detailed explanation of why it wasn’t bad enough to repair (in their opinion) or just a basic statement to that effect?
August 18th, 2007 at 1:16 am
I think they’ll be all right. A gouge in 2 tiles is very different than a hole in a leading edge.
NASA does need a safety administration that is truly independent of the administrator, though (mainly for issues other than this). In fact, NASA could use an establishment of a level of contractually life-tenured faculty that are formally independent research (and safety, and other important things) leaders.
August 24th, 2007 at 8:31 am
Thanks Mark. It’s good to know I’m not the only one!