"Andrew" wrote in message
...
Experts who have seen the documents say they do not suggest that the
shuttle Discovery - scheduled to lift off from Cape Canaveral, Fla.,
on May 22 - is unsafe, but a small but forceful minority say they
worry that NASA is repeating a practice that contributed to the
Columbia disaster: playing down risks to continue sending humans into
space.
IOW, they're suggesting it's unsafe. As they correctly ought to. Too bad
they can't just come out and say it.
Of course the same practices are being continued. The agenda is being
ramrodded through. Weapons of mass destruction and all that...
NASA officials say that the shuttle is safer than it has ever been
That's sure saying a lot.
because of changes made after the Columbia accident in February 2003,
Just like the changes made after Challenger, eh what? And here we still have
NASA employees having to look over their shoulders as they're making the
truth public.
Two years of testing since the loss of the Columbia and its crew of
seven have shown that the shuttle's skin, designed primarily to resist
the blistering heat of re-entry, is far more vulnerable to debris from
the external fuel tank than had been thought.
And why the hell is this? Why don't they know exactly what kind of damage
the skin can take? This is inexcusable.
After the accident, NASA officials initially expressed doubt that the
1.67-pound hunk of foam that struck the left wing could have brought
it down.
Oops, guess they was wrong.... But then it seems, a lot of guessing goes on
at NASA.
But tests have since proved that a 0.023-pound piece could
cause catastrophic damage under the worst circumstances. NASA now says
it has reduced the size of debris that will fall off of the tank to
0.01 pound or less, but admits that the only way to know is to monitor
actual launching conditions.
IOW, wait until another one blows up and figure out what else happened that
they should have known about to begin with.
It describes ways to compensate
for what it calls "overly conservative" assessments of the ability of
the shuttle to withstand debris impacts, including these:
śMoving from the traditional worst-case situation certification, or
"worst-on-worst" approach, to "our best estimate of actual
conditions."
Doesn't seem like their "estimates" work out too well.
James Wetherbee, a former shuttle commander and safety official who
recently retired from NASA, said he had attended briefings that
discussed lowering the risk standards a year ago. He expressed concern
about NASA's tendency to oversimplify complex calculations and then
for management to put the best face on the result. Mr. Muratore's
analysis, he said, is honest - if not, it would not show so many areas
of the shuttle failing traditional tests - but "the numbers came out
worse than we thought they would."
Of course, you say that in here and all the geeks come out of the woodwork
to **** and moan.
He said the shuttle should fly the limited number of missions to
complete the space station,
That is if they can put that many up without blowing them to smithereens.
|