NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="jester47" data-source="post: 666149" data-attributes="member: 2238">The ceramic tiles on the shuttle are replaced every mission.  Things are checked and double checked.  And then they do it again.  And again.  You would not believe the system redundancy on those vehicles.  Imagine having three ignitions in your car, six headlights, three different switches for the blinkers and the air conditioners (all three of them).  Imagine if your car had three engines, two just in case the first did not start.  Now you understand the concept of triple redundancy.  It is the mantra of space vehicle construction and design.  The truth of the matter is that the shuttle looses tiles all the time.  I remember seeing a graphic of a hole that was boared into the front windshild of Discovery.  That viewport is designed to take the strike of most micrometeorites, easy.  This hole had 2 cm left before that meteorite would have entered the cockpit of the Shuttle.  It was a fleck of paint.   Aluminium stops this stuff dead in its tracks, as does gold (why do you tink space suits are so expensive?  Layers of gold are used to protect astronauts.)  That is the type of stuff they are dealing with up there.  When they launch they loose tiles, as they drift they loose tiles, when they reenter they loose tiles.   The tiles are the best protection you can get on reentry.  And those are not always reliable.  Maybe Columbia was too old, maybe there was a reason.  However, we may have to accept the fact that it was just dumb luck.  They may have simply lost too many tiles... I am sure we are going to find out about it.AaronPS>> I always wanted to be an astronaut, but I am settling for firefighter.</blockquote>

Verification