DaveS - 21/6/2006 12:54 AMI just hope that we'll only see one tanking of ET-119 as we all know what MAF found when examining ET-120 which had two tankings.
James (Lockheed) - 20/6/2006 8:03 PMTypical MSFC. No one knows the tanks better than MAF.
braddock - 21/6/2006 12:44 PMOn Saturday, Griffin said "If we have another major incident in launching a Space Shuttle, I would not wish to continue with the program."how major was left in the air, but loss of vehicle qualified:"If we were to lose another vehicle, I will tell you right now that I would be moving to figure out a way to shut the program down. I think at that point, we are done."If STS-121 is the last flight for some reason, HOW could the Shuttle program be shut down and transitioned to VSE? I assume NASA would have to pay off the USA contractors for early termination...would that be billions?What can those 14,000 Shuttle people do in the VSE when the designs aren't even inked? Or do we just lose all the infrastructure and start over in four years?
rdale - 21/6/2006 12:57 PMGo back to Wayne Hale's last conference - there will never be a clean flight. Clean flights are not the goal. Safe flights are, and most involved think that's possible (and likely.)
braddock - 21/6/2006 9:29 PMCould we adapt the Shuttle to be an unmanned vehicle to ferry all that ISS hardware up, instead of killing the program? I'm sure it wouldn't be easy, but considering the billions upon billions which would be wasted otherwise, a $100 million into robust automation sounds pretty good...an ISS resident could even hop over into the nearby shuttle with a short spacewalk and dock it manually, which would be the hardest part to automate(?).