"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...
I went digging around for images of the felt backing under the tiles, as I
noticed on the images of the tile ding from orbit it appears to be black in
color:
http://a52.g.akamaitech.net/f/52/827...einspct_02.jpg
Images of the tiles being applied to the Shuttle though show that the
surface they are applied to appears to be white:
http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Newsroom/X-...ages/tiles.jpg
...are each of the tiles backed with black felt, and is this then secured
down to a white felt that is attached to the exterior skin of the Shuttle?

We tend to think of ships as female, and the shuttle is a spaceship, which
explains why the engineers felt her up.