On Fri, 30 Jun 2006 22:17:12 -0400, John Doe wrote:

Does a "60% chance of weather violating rules"
24 hours before launch in 2006 provide significantly more authoritative
data than back in 1982 ?


Not if the forecasts are anything like the ones for where I live now
(Northern Alabama). Here, a 60% to 80 % chance of rain for several
days in a row usually means it might be overcast and windy, but will
be completely dry. Yesterday, I think we had a zero chance of rain and
had a thunderstorm and heavy downpour in the evening. We definitely
needed the rain.

Sometimes, I think they have gotten over sophisticated in trying to
predict weather with complex computer models and are actually less
accurate in some physical locations. I was raised in Macon Georgia
(near Robins Air Force Base) and have lived in Tallahassee Florida
among other places. Maybe the weather was just easier to predict in
Middle Georgia and in Florida. Usually, if you just reported afternoon
thundershowers during summer, it would be hard to miss. People
(including a friend of mine) were always crashing private planes in
South Georgia because of the sudden thunderstorms.

When I lived in Northern California at around 2000 - 2400 foot
altitude, they could have gotten by with 2 predictions, rain or
snow/ice almost all winter transitioning to hot and completely dry all
the summer. It was strange to be able to go a year without hearing
thunder. The snow predictions were kind of cute. Since the town
climbed a few hundred feet from one end to another and the altitude
above which they expected snow often fell within that range, they'd
just say what major cross street the snow was supposed to start at.

Like you, I'm worried about all that tanking and de-tanking of Cryo
fuels, especially after they were afraid to do a tanking test to check
those fuel level switches in the ET, because they were concerned about
an extra tanking meaning possibly extra foam cracking.

I was a bit surprised they tried to launch this early in the month
since there had been some talk that the lighting conditions to get
good pictures during ET separation wouldn't be all that great until
the 4th or 5th.

-- David