God Bless CBS - the suggested "tease" for tonight's package used by local stations:
"Two pieces of foam fell off Space Shuttle Atlantis today, find out if mission control is concerned."
Thanks a million Chris, and all at NSF for the EXCELLENT pre launch and launch coverage of STS-115.
My first post after registering here at NSF was entitled, "Janiene Pape" back on July 23rd of this year. I knew it was fortuitous when she responded days later -- knew this had to be a great site, and it has certainly exceeded my expectations.
Thanks again for all your hard work Mr. Bergin and crew. Look forward to riding out each launch with the great folks here through 2010 and beyond.
Austin
aka "Ghostrider" (as per Mr. Kirkman!)
shuttlefan - 9/9/2006 6:53 PM
The OMS Assist Manuever, as it is called, was created for ISS launches to help boost shuttles with heavy ISS components in the payload bay.
In Mike Mullane's book,
Riding Rockets, he says the idea of OMS assist maneuver came about during the aftermath of the Challenger disaster. He also mentions John Young being very opposed to the idea of doing an OMS assist, and wouldn't even talk to Mullane about it who was assigned to the project. Were they really thinking about putting up space station components back in 86?
Given that the whole purpose of the space shuttle IS to haul components to orbit, I'd say yes.
More seriously though, I'd say that as the space station concepts evolved, they realized that either orbit of any given station would have to be higher than what you could reach with three SSMEs, or that they didn't figure on needing to bring up such heavy components - remember, back then some people were convinced that it could make sense to build the trusses in orbit. It's most likely a combination of the two.
Mark
Nothing wrong with the extra OMS assist to orbit that I can see, as long as there's more than sufficient propellant to handle both it and the other necessary OMS/RCS burns during a mission.
