There it was, the headline splashed across the front of Sunday's Los Angeles Times. And now the Monday papers look for the cause. They are centering on the left wing and the foam piece that dislodged during take-off and bounced off it. Doesn't sound like there was much they could do. They had about a 9 minute window to abort the take-off. That didn't leave much time to ascertain whether it was severe enough to abort. Once it's in orbit, even if they knew how much damage it had sustained, there was nothing they could do. They couldn't repair it. The robotic arm wasn't even on board to make room for all the experiments they were carrying. They can't just glue the tiles on. From what I was reading, they are different shapes and sizes and they couldn't carry all that they would need for replacement. That cargo bay is not very large. Also, a spacewalk would have been dangerous. The shuttle doesn't have grips for them to hold onto on that part of the wing. They would also have needed a special adhesive, etc. Getting to the International Space Station was out of the question. They didn't have enough fuel. And sending another shuttle up wasn't feasible. They can't just jump behind the wheel and start it up and go rescue them. The Atlantis wouldn't be ready until early March. And, the astronauts aboard the shuttle didn't have enough supplies to carry them through. Also, NASA had to look at the possible scenario that something could have happened to the "rescue" shuttle and then they would have two stranded shuttles and their crews out in space. Their only option was to try to bring the shuttle back in........
Posted by Valkyre at February 3, 2003 09:24 PM