Concerning the shuttle

NASA is breaking new ground as we speak. Following the tragedy of the Columbia, NASA has taken unprecedented steps to to ensure the safety of their crews, including never-done-before inspections in space and new methods to repair the vessel while in orbit. The whole point of this shuttle mission was to take up a number of experiments in shuttle repair to test them out.

I don't think anyone predicted they would be testing them for real. In their ferver to prevent another Columbia incident, NASA stepped up all their methods of accident detection. Now it seems they are learning just how many problems they have.

First, was the chunk of foam observed during launch. It's now thought that it didn't cause any damage, but this was the cause of the Columbia disaster and it is now clear that they did not fix that problem as they thought.

Next, the found a bit of tile filling protruding from under belly of the vehicle and it was determined that this could result in uneven heating on reentry that could be unsafe. The bits of filling were removed without incident.

No sooner have they solved this problem, when they find yet another potential problem with the thermal shielding around the nose. It has yet to be determined if this is a major issue or not.

Now, all of this has put the space program in an interesting position. Well, interesting to the outside observer, maybe. What we really have here seems to be a double-edged sword. On one hand, the astronauts have proved that it is possible and feasible to repair a space craft in flight. This represents a major leap forward for the space program. This has never been done before.

But one has to figure that all these problems they are finding on this flight have happened before. The only reason they have never been a problem is because NASA didn't know there was a problem. They've never looked for them before. Now they know, and the genie is out of the bottle.

The shuttle program, if it continues and if there are no major advances, is going to continue to have these problems. NASA can no longer ignore them, especially with the amount of press they are suddenly getting. But then every shuttle flight from here on out is going to be spending all its time repairing their ship in flight. That's fine for this flight. The point of STS-108 is to test out these new techniques. But what about future flights? Can the shuttle have a future? And if not, what will take its place?

I guess it is still too early to try and answer any of these questions. But it is food for thought.

I think we are either on the cusp a bright new era for the space program, or about a witness a sad and unglorious end to something good.

Time will tell which.