"Unprecedented" repair in space?

Maybe I'm being a pedant, but all these AP stories about the cleaning
of the tile gap fillers sound a bit over-the-top. Lines like this irk
me:

"On Wednesday, Discovery astronaut Stephen Robinson removed two
worrisome pieces of filler material from the shuttle's belly with a
gentle tug - an *unprecedented* space repair job that drew a big sigh
of relief from NASA."


How does this repair job eclipse Pete Conrad's saving the entire Skylab
program with his TWO repair jobs during the Skylab 2 mission?
Assembling a ship-wide parasol AND freeing a solar panel was a heckuva
lot more work than pulling two pieces of vinyl out of a heatshield.

"TVDad Jim" writes:
"On Wednesday, Discovery astronaut Stephen Robinson removed two
worrisome pieces of filler material from the shuttle's belly with a
gentle tug - an *unprecedented* space repair job that drew a big sigh
of relief from NASA."

How does this repair job eclipse Pete Conrad's saving the entire Skylab
program with his TWO repair jobs during the Skylab 2 mission?

I've been annoyed by this, especially when CNN was calling it the
"first space repair". Sheesh.

--
Richard W Kaszeta

http://www.kaszeta.org/rich

On 04 Aug 2005 10:39:37 -0500, Richard Kaszeta
wrote:

I've been annoyed by this, especially when CNN was calling it the
"first space repair". Sheesh.

....It's a semantics issue. Skylab was a space station. ISS was a space
station. Hubble and the other repairs were satellites. This was a
spacecraft, which has never been repaired before while in flight.

Hey, at least they didn't spell it "Colombia"...

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

Richard Kaszeta wrote:

I've been annoyed by this, especially when CNN was calling it the
"first space repair". Sheesh.




I'm still surprised they didn't go up to the small tile ding by the nose
gear door and stick some of their tile repair glop into it while they
were doing this repair.
It would have been a perfect way to try the stuff out during a reentry.

Pat

"OM" om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org wrote
in message ...

...It's a semantics issue. Skylab was a space station. ISS was a space
station. Hubble and the other repairs were satellites. This was a
spacecraft, which has never been repaired before while in flight.

I think that Skylab and the other stations qualify as spacecraft, just as
much as the Apollo CSM does. The uniqueness in this latest effort lies in
the fact that people have worked in space on a re-entry vehicle's
heatshield.

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...
I'm still surprised they didn't go up to the small tile ding by the nose
gear door and stick some of their tile repair glop into it while they
were doing this repair.
It would have been a perfect way to try the stuff out during a reentry.

Since the tile damage there isn't bad, not only is a repair not needed, but
attempting a repair poses risks of its own. Better to leave it alone.
Also, one of the other spacewalks involved "repairs" to damaged tiles
located on a fixture in the payload bay. I'm sure these test "repairs" will
be safely tested on the ground.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

"TVDad Jim" wrote in message
oups.com...
Maybe I'm being a pedant, but all these AP stories about the cleaning
of the tile gap fillers sound a bit over-the-top.

Just as important, since NASA was considering work on that thermal blanket,
why wasn't that decision made *prior* to this latest spacewalk, so the
problem could have been taken care of at the same time, and thus avoid an
additional spacewalk? At worst, taking care of a tile gap filler should not
have been expected to take more than 30 minutes each. Even allowing time to
move, it shouldn't have taken more than a couple of hours. Considering the
pre-breathing and other prep time for a spacewalk, how could it possibly
have been more efficient to take care of the gap fillers in one spacewalk
and the blanket in another?

Yes, I am aware NASA has decided not to repair it, but that's not the point.
The point is, that decision should have been made before any EVA.

In article .com,
says...
Maybe I'm being a pedant, but all these AP stories about the cleaning
of the tile gap fillers sound a bit over-the-top. Lines like this irk
me:

"On Wednesday, Discovery astronaut Stephen Robinson removed two
worrisome pieces of filler material from the shuttle's belly with a
gentle tug - an *unprecedented* space repair job that drew a big sigh
of relief from NASA."

In a literal sense, it is unprecedented. No one else has EVAed to the
belly of the Shuttle. On the other hand, this has been overhyped. There
have been Shuttle EVAs where the astronaut has grabbed onto a tumbling
satellite with his own hands to bring it under control. The Russians
managed to do EVAs within a dead space station, bringing it back to
life. (See Jim Oberg's Star Crossed Orbits for details.)
--
Kevin Willoughby lid

The loss of the American system of checks and balances
is more of a security danger than any terrorist risk.
-- Bruce Schneier

I don't understand how removing material from the spaces between the tiles
is supposed to make the heatshield better. The first reports on this ng IIRC
didn't say they installed anything in its place.

Did they replace the removed stuff with something?

OM wrote:
On 04 Aug 2005 10:39:37 -0500, Richard Kaszeta
wrote:

I've been annoyed by this, especially when CNN was calling it the
"first space repair". Sheesh.

...It's a semantics issue. Skylab was a space station. ISS was a space
station. Hubble and the other repairs were satellites. This was a
spacecraft, which has never been repaired before while in flight.

Hey, at least they didn't spell it "Colombia"...

I thought the Russians had in the past had to do some on-orbit repairs
of Soyuz (replaced an antena or something to that effect).

-A.L.