5th February 2003, 9:34 PM
They should have had the Canadarm on board the ship, but I think they decided to take more experements up insted. I saw somewhere that the mission was devoted only to the experements. It was to involve no spacewalks or stop-overs at the ISS. However, if they had felt there was a problem, 2 of the men onboard (Anderson and Brown, i think) could have done an emergancy spacewalk to examin the wing. They had all their equipment and everything, but NASA felt the foam wouldn't pose a problem. And even if they had made the spacewalk and found damage, they'd still be screwed over. There is no current way to repair the tiles once the shuttle is in orbit. They had three chances of survival on this mission. The first would have required the dessision that the foam hitting the wing was a problem to come within 80 seconds. They could have bailed and landed...somewhere(I can't remember).They would have 2 minutes after that to do pretty much the same thing. If they had decided they couldn't survive re-entry once they were in orbit, there was a chance they could send up another shutle(Atlantis, to be specific) to rescue them. But none of these things happened, and that can't be changed now.
I got some of my information from my home page http://dellnet.msn.com/ , if any of you are interested in learning more. Its all in there but it may take awhile to find.
I got some of my information from my home page http://dellnet.msn.com/ , if any of you are interested in learning more. Its all in there but it may take awhile to find.
Engineering ruined my life.