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August 02, 2005

Discovering repairs

There's something wrong with the shuttle, this time insulation protruding frome the belly of the shuttle.

NASA says the protruding material could cause dangerous overheating during re-entry and lead to another Columbia-type disaster.

So, what bettter way to fix this than to strap an astronaut onto the end of the 58-foot robot arm and have him grab it? ...Once there, he'll tug out the ceramic-fabric filler with his gloved hands.... Plan B is to use forceps to pull it out. Plan C, is simply to saw it off as part of an unrehearsed manouver with a cobbled together saw made of velcro, a knife, plastic ties and the ubiquitous duct tape.

He will also have to make sure his helmet doesn't bump into the shuttle's fragile bottom.

I never really think of NASA as a 'fix the broken phone line with barbed wire and string' organization, however, improvisation is something they have shown themselves to excel at in the past. If you watched the movie Apollo 13 and were astonished at how they pulled it off, well, the crew actually had it much, much worse than that up there. Less power, less fuel, less oxygen.

Here's hoping the duct tape and bailing twine fix works this time too.

Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at August 2, 2005 12:05 PM

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