posted 04-19-2012 09:54 AM               

Now that Discovery is safely delivered to the Smithsonian, I think I can tell the story of how we nearly lost her in July of 2005, and how well intentioned, highly motivated, hard working, smart people can miss the most obvious.

posted 04-19-2012 03:16 PM               

So, when it did happen I was in a bit of a funk for awhile. Thankfully they did return to flight on STS-121 after finally doing the wind tunnel and fluid dynamics analysis they should have done after 107 to show that the PAL ramps weren't needed and therefore they got removed from the successive tanks. But it still took another year of engineering work before everything was ready.

Of course, another thing I can remember is when NASA was partially crucified in the press after STS-107 as some people were implying that the foam loss on Columbia's tank was due to NASA switching its foam formula to one that didn't use a CFC based pressurization gas in the spray application. There were some problems with the foam formula when the change was made as there were a couple shuttle flights that showed tile damage due to foam shedding events. Well, guess what, the foam that broke off the bipod strut on 107 wasn't the new foam formula, it was the old one. NASA had some of the old foam left over for use in the larger hand formed foam structures, such as the PAL ramps and the Bipod ramps.