24 years, and NOW foam is falling off?!?
OK, somebody explain this to me. We’ve been launching space shuttles since Columbia first went up in April 1981. For 22 years, with the exception of the tragic Challenger O-ring in 1986, there have been no problems. Now, all of a sudden, foam is falling off the external fuel tank every time we launch one. And I’d buy the “well hey, they’re 25 year old spacecraft” arguement, except for one thing: the external fuel tank is the only part of the shuttle that’s not reusable. And yet, after two consecutive launches in which foam fell off, NASA is now saying that foam is the biggest obstacle to next shuttle flight. Did somebody make an engineering change? A vendor change? Has foam always fallen off the ank, and it wasn’t until Columbia blew up that we noticed it?
Technorati tags: shuttle | space shuttle | Columbia | Challenger | NASA | space | foam
This question should be easy enough to answer.