----- Original Message ----- From: "Joe Latrell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Europa IcePIC mailing list" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, February 03, 2003 10:36 PM Subject: Re: From tonight's NY Times editorial
> > If the news is also to be believed, this foam hit the shuttle at over > 1200 MPH. If that is the case, there really isn't a material that would > have protected the tiles. Titanium would have been compromised at that > speed. ________________________ Not necessarily true. Not just NASA management, but Norman Thagard swears that the stuff is really very soft -- according to him, bits of it regularly hit the Shuttle windows and just leave "streaking". (That 30 x 20 x 7 inch chunk of it that hit the Shuttle, according to NASA, weighed only 2.6 pounds.) But if it had a thick coating of ice on it... that would both explain the apparent damage it did, and maybe make it as hard as you say to provide any adequate foam shield (or any adequate tank-mounted shield). Incidentally, Shuttle program manager Roy Dittemore freely admitted at this afternoon's press conference that he didn't have the slightest idea whether that fragment had ice on it, or how much damage it could have done in that case. == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
