Aging Shuttle Launch Site In Trouble for Future Space Space Shuttles
“If our plan were to go launch again off of Pad B, there would be things we would be doing that we are not doing and have not been doing,” Cain said. To switch would, he said, cause “some aches and pains.”
Last Saturday’s lift off by the Discovery space shuttle has seen damage of “unprecedented” magnitude t the launch site, according to LeRoy Cain, chair of the NASA mission management team. A briefing at Johnson Space Center has stated that bricks and mortar have been spread all over the seaside Launch Pad 39A area at the NASA Kenned Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Strewn from the trench meant to catch the shuttle’s flames when it launched, the pieces flew as far as 1,500 feet away from the launch pad.
Not sure what caused the damage, an investigation is under way as there are only two launch pads available for the Space Shuttle, especially as the next STS-125 flight is needed to overhaul the Hubble Space Telescope in October. More dangerous than any previous shuttle flights as there is no protection for the astronauts to taken haven if something happens, a second mission for rescue will be necessary as a precautionary measure. And before the two shuttle flights can take effect, the launch pad not only needs to be repaired but also discovered “why” it happened before it happens again.
Presently, the primary Hubble repair shuttle flight STS-125 is to be launched from the seriously damaged Pad 39A pad, so giving it up is not an option, as Pad 39B is being prepared for the Constellation program. In progress is the conversion of 39B from the shuttle lift-off to a liftoff pad for the Ares I rocket which will be carrying a capsule-based shuttle successor Orion into space. The last time Pad 39b was used was in December 9, 2006, for the NASA space shuttle Discovery STS-116 mission—which are now being prepared for NASA’s next manned Orion rocket endeavours.
Both launch pads are aging in years and wear-n-tear, dating back to the 1960s Apollo program, so really it is not a surprise it was damaged Saturday. Yet NASA sees it not a problem for the two 2008 remaining shuttle flights—the Atlantis on October 8 and the Endeavour to follow on November 10 for the ISS-bound flight.
This entry was posted on Sunday, June 1st, 2008 at 6:24 am and is filed under Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
