Charlie in Dayton, there's your cue...

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Soyuz is kind of small, 9 cubic meters of living space and it will carry up to three cosmonauts/astronauts. You can't cram all ISS crew and Shuttle into a Soyuz, the crew transfer vehicle X38 was meant to be the lifeboat. Jules Verne ATV supply was due to launch soon, but in the meantime Russian-Progress or the unmanned Progress spacecraft can re-supply the station. Some Russian scientists like Nikolai have said if for the crew of shuttle have to remain on the station that they can live off the ISS supply of oxygen, nourishment, water and others and it will be sufficient for some days until another mission is ready and a "Progress" launch was already outlined for the 8th of September.

seriously, though... how long can the shuttle stay docked before it starts to stress the ISS? If it's years, then all is not lost. You can keep it up there, gut the inside and turn it into zero-g basketball courts. Put solar panels where the heat tiles are (can we get those to stay on, huh?) and it'll have a source of power for itself.

I'm only half kidding here, actually. NASA needs to see this as an opportunity, not a reason to commit hari-kari. It would, of course, totally suck if the shuttle were stuck attached to the ISS, unable to return. But on the other hand, we paid for that payload up there. I see no reason in dragging it back down to earth. There must be *something* we can do with it

John

According to spaceflightnow.com ...
More technically correct, if it was a buzzard it was probably either a Turkey or Black vulture, both common in Florida.

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Like it matters,the bird did NOT hit the shuttle. :x

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I still await the compelling Exhibit A.

CNN just posted that the shuttle program has been grounded pending an investigation.

John

"Grounded", with one of the shuttles still up in the sky!

There's something in that which seems crazy!

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HOUSTON: Roger, Tranquility. Be advised there's lots of smiling faces in this room, and all over the world.
TRANQUILITY: There are two of them up here.
COLUMBIA: And don't forget one in the command module.

--From the Apollo 11 transcripts

There will be inspections to see if Discovery's forward landing gear hatch is damaged, NASA has seen damaged tiles and go on to do good missions before but there are some tiles that Shuttle really can't afford to lose though. On the mission of the STS-107, there was David M Brown, Kalpana Chawla, William C McCool, Rick D Husband, Laurel Clark, Michael P Anderson, and a foreigner Ilan Ramon from Israel and at re-entry the damaged wing overheated leading to total disintegration of the vehicle.
There are two foreigners on this current Shuttle flight Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi and Andy Thomas an Adelaide, Australian. Perhaps this piece of foam that broke off is causing NASA to look at how similar things are to the last events, NASA may get lucky and it not be a problem if the damage is minor and this time we know about the incident, so there is the posibility of doing a repair or as Aldrin has always said using the ISS as a safe zone.

On 9/11/2001, the US commercial air fleet was grounded with some thousands of flights in the air. Of course, it applied to those aircraft only after they landed.

The crew will spend hours today examining every inch of the shuttle
Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev and US astronaut John Phillips took digital pictures through 400mm and 800mm lenses from the station's Zvezda service module.
http://www.ljplus.ru/img2/p/l/pleset...50728_1418.jpg

Shuttle photo near ISS

http://www.ljplus.ru/img2/p/l/pleset...50728_1421.jpg
It was a suitcase-sized piece of foam that fell off Columbia during its launch and punched a hole in the wing. During its final approach the orbiter performed a backflip so the station crew could check its heatshield for damage and Discovery's belly tiles were imaged by cameras on the Space Station (ISS) as it moved into dock.

:x here too. Listening to a local rock radio station on the way into work, the news reader said exactly that. "A bird hit the shuttle after liftoff, which caused the foam to fall off." Great. Now the listeners who aren't going to bother to do more research to learn the true facts, are going to think it's the fault of a bird that the shuttle is grounded. I wonder if it's too late to call and correct them. You know, I don't think they'd care anyway, or even bother to correct/retract what they stated.

I realise that of course, but it just sounded strange...

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HOUSTON: Roger, Tranquility. Be advised there's lots of smiling faces in this room, and all over the world.
TRANQUILITY: There are two of them up here.
COLUMBIA: And don't forget one in the command module.

--From the Apollo 11 transcripts

No. I just got of the horn with one of my contacts at Marshall--and he says theymight not even bother to fix that after its return. The RCC was not struck--and dings are par for the course as is the more usual "popcorning."

All this was--was the equivalent of a 16 year old driver who survived a head-on getting back behind the wheel and being super jumpy at every little noise or squeak--and then having someone pull right in front of her and miss.

No harm done--but you wet your pants anyway.

It just takes time.

Though if they nixed the orbiter and ISS and used all that funding on the immediate construction of an SDV/HLLV--more power to them.

Then we can have monolithic Skylab type stations like we should have had all along.

NASA says the protruding material could cause dangerous overheating during re-entry and lead to another Columbia-type disaster. The arm will be operated by astronauts inside the station, who will bend and wrap Robinson around so he can reach the shuttle's belly. Once there, he'll tug out the ceramic-fabric filler with his gloved hands. If that doesn't work, he'll cut away the material, which is sticking out about an inch from two spots near Discovery's nose. NASA experts are worried that the shuttle could overheat because of instability that the gap fillers, dangling from between thermal tiles on the underside of the shuttle, could cause.



http://www.napacomfort.com/mars/nasa_feed.html
http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/st...ts114plan.html
shuttlle pic
http://www40.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/co...chan2large.jpg

NASA will be sending a spacewalker beneath the craft to repair filler sticking out from ship's thermal tile belly and carry out some EVA work. Soichi just said "I have considered coming home on the Russian Spacecraft (Soyuz)" when asked about the severity of the TPS damage. Collins butts in and says "She expects everything to be fine." NASA engineers have spent the past three days "working very hard" to assess the risk from the gap fillers, which are only about an inch (2.5 centimetres) long. He said the teams had "put together a very simple plan with good safety precautions and mitigations of any hazards that will allow a crewmember to go out and remove those two gap fillers."

Part of the problem is that this is the most closely scrutinized shuttle ever. Things they didn't even know about on previous missions are becoming causes of concern on this one, like the gap fillers. For all we know there might have been extended gap fillers on every mission prior to this one, but this one was the only one inspected closely enough to find them.

I think that trying the space walk to fix them is a good idea, in any case. Someday they might really need to do this, so this will be a good rehearsal.

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So what is this "extended gap filler"? Was it something they did, or already there when they launched?

What was the filler used for?

If it is removed, will its absence be just as much as a threat?

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The filler is a ceramic material that fills gaps between tiles. Removing it is not expected to pose any problems at all.

The only problem with it protruding is that it can disrupt the air flow over the surface during reentry, leading to local hot spots. It has occurred before; the temperature rose from 2300 to an estimated 2800 degrees in a small area. (Sorry, I don't know which orbiter/mission this occurred on.)

NASA delivers findings on shuttle foam flaws

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9698599/

Inadequate methods of applying and repairing foam on the space shuttle’s fuel tank probably contributed to the dangerous loss of a chunk of the insulation during Discovery’s launch two and a half months ago, a NASA investigation team concluded Friday.

Ahhh... The old chicken, wolf, and sack of grain trick! You need to cross a river in a canoe, toting a chicken, a wolf, and a sack of grain. While you can ride herd on this mob going to and from the river, you can't while paddling the canoe, and can take onl