STS-121 Launch

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...


wrote:

Which, they don't think will be an issue, as the air is too thin
at the height the bird would be at that point, to cause catastrophic
damage.

The Shuttle orbiter itself appears to have shed something large, possibly
a four to eight foot long piece of its thermal blanket insulation that
has been observed by the astronauts floating away from it in space:
http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts121/060704fossum/

Blankie gone! Want blankie!

OM wrote:
...FYI, I had to do a fill-in DJ shift in SA today, but thanks to the
miracle of NASA TV on the Web, I managed to catch the launch at
reasonable high-speed quality. Which means while it looked great, it
still wasn't clear enough to see the foam shedding, if any.

...Either way, congrats to the Shuttle team for getting Discovery off
the ground once again. Good job, guys and gals!

Hear, hear.

Still, I really wished to hell they'd laid off the self-congratulatory
star-spangled tongue-wagging from the PAO voice-over until the damn'
beast actually made orbit. I couldn't quit thinking about the insulation
foam droppage issue, the chop-busting of the guys who voted "no go",
the firing of Charlie Camarda -- and the fact that, as mentioned here,
somebody actually decided to launch a "questionable" vehicle on a
high-profile national holiday celebrated with exploding rockets.

A great day for them, for a lot of reasons, least of which is that had
something gone seriously wrong, there wouldn't be a whole lot of
oooooohhh'ing and aaahhhhhh'ing down here on the Mall last night.
--

..

"Though I could not caution all, I yet may warn a few:
Don't lend your hand to raise no flag atop no ship of fools!"

--grateful dead.
__________________________________________________ _____________
Mike Flugennock, flugennock at sinkers dot org
"Mikey'zine": dubya dubya dubya dot sinkers dot org

"mike flugennock" wrote in message
ervers.com...

Still, I really wished to hell they'd laid off the self-congratulatory
star-spangled tongue-wagging from the PAO voice-over until the damn' beast
actually made orbit.

Of course, it hasn't come back safely yet. We just can't take that for a
given any more.

On Wed, 5 Jul 2006 23:17:01 +0800, in a place far, far away, "Neil
Gerace" made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:


"mike flugennock" wrote in message
servers.com...

Still, I really wished to hell they'd laid off the self-congratulatory
star-spangled tongue-wagging from the PAO voice-over until the damn' beast
actually made orbit.

Of course, it hasn't come back safely yet. We just can't take that for a
given any more.

We never could. Or, at least, never should have. That kind of
complacency is what resulted in Columbia's loss.