On Sun, Feb 02, 2003 at 02:50:51AM -0800, Randall Clague wrote: > One thing that deserves mention, in light of the shock with which > NASA's calm comments about being unable to inspect the TPS or repair > it if they did find a problem with it have been received, is that an > SSTO will have even less margin than Columbia did. True, an SSTO will > have a lower heat load than Shuttle and probably lower peak heating as > well. But if anything goes wrong with the TPS on an SSTO, it better > just stay up there.
NASA's statements about being unable to do anything about damage to the TPS *deserve* to be met with shock. They themselves stated that they were flying a nominal reentry trajectory, implying that they could change the trajectory to perhaps lessen the danger. I'm guessing they did not have enough propellant to dock with ISS, but if they could have known the thing was gonna blow up, they certainly could have done something besides just flying a normal reentry and dying. Not to mention they would now have valuable data on exactly what sort of damage there was, so they wouldn't now have the problem of trying to extrapolate what sort of damage might have caused a burnthrough. The fleet might have been recertified much faster that way. -- Sean Lynch http://sean.lynch.tv/
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