Escape velocity


The tank is filled before launching with 535,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen fuel, and insulating foam keeps the tank from icing over. From the beginning of the program, NASA rules said no foam or ice should hit the shuttle. The investigation board found that managers played down the risks over time as the craft survived thousands of blows from small pieces of debris.



There is so much pressure on this organization that I can't help to speculate on their decisions to give an OK for flight this May. Sure the craft is sound and every effort has been made to safeguard its passengers and cargo. But the reality is that if we could spend more on our manned safelight missions we would just abandon this old technology and develop a new fleet. This won't happen because of conflicting priorities like going to war and developing better displays for our newest video games and plasma display TV's for our next all important sports events.