Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Globbing Handfuls of Hope on the Insulation Blanket
The astronauts continue to perform flawlessly. The same cannot be said of the people on the ground. Thankfully, the duct-tape-and-hacksaw method of removing the gap-filler was never tried. We at Andromeda rather wonder if even anyone at NASA seriously believed in that method. Watching the video of how "easy" it would be, we could only see hacksaw scuffing against the spacesuit, hacksaw cutting the astronaut's gloved fingertips, hacksaw, helmet, spacesuit, etc., scratching and scraping the nearby tiles, and hacksaw scattering as much white powder as Bogota.
Which brings us to the newly discovered secret of the series of successes (no, we do not call them near-failures). The primary solution to the gap filler problem was to hope it pulled out easily by hand. This solution was resorted to only after hoping the gap filler would not cause a problem on re-entry proved to be untenable. But hooray! It worked!
Remember NASA's solution to the fuel sensor problem? The first launch was aborted because of it, so they went right to work to solve the problem and finally came back with: we can't find the problem, so let's just try to launch again and hope it doesn't happen again! Another success!
On the other hand, what was the solution to the PAL Ramp foam problem? They looked at it carefully, studied it in detail, thought it all over, and concluded, "Let's hope it doesn't fall off." Hmmm.
So let's hope the insulation blanket problem can be solved and let's hope the absence of the gap filler (which we must assume was put in there for a reason) will cause no problems on re-entry.
Which brings us to the newly discovered secret of the series of successes (no, we do not call them near-failures). The primary solution to the gap filler problem was to hope it pulled out easily by hand. This solution was resorted to only after hoping the gap filler would not cause a problem on re-entry proved to be untenable. But hooray! It worked!
Remember NASA's solution to the fuel sensor problem? The first launch was aborted because of it, so they went right to work to solve the problem and finally came back with: we can't find the problem, so let's just try to launch again and hope it doesn't happen again! Another success!
On the other hand, what was the solution to the PAL Ramp foam problem? They looked at it carefully, studied it in detail, thought it all over, and concluded, "Let's hope it doesn't fall off." Hmmm.
So let's hope the insulation blanket problem can be solved and let's hope the absence of the gap filler (which we must assume was put in there for a reason) will cause no problems on re-entry.
