spab up on huge nasa news:
Huge NASA news on SPAB: NASA: WE'VE FIXED FATAL SHUTTLE FLAWS
December 29, 2004 -- WASHINGTON â In a major step toward resuming launches of the space shuttle, NASA officials said yesterday they have completed improvements that will prevent the falling-debris problem that destroyed the space shuttle Columbia and killed seven astronauts.
The first improved and redesigned fuel tank is scheduled to be shipped from the Michoud Assembly Facility near New Orleans on Friday and will arrive at the Kennedy Space Center five or six days later. It will then be further tested, mounted on space shuttle Discovery and readied for a launch in May or June, officials said.
Sandy Coleman, NASA's external project manager, said that testing of improvements on the tank "gives us confidence that problems like what happened on Columbia will not happen again."
"This is the safest, most reliable tank NASA has ever produced," Coleman said yesterday by telephone from the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
The changes in the external tank add less than 150 pounds in weight. The added costs are still being tallied, said Coleman. The old-style fuel tanks cost about $40 million, and Coleman said the new tank will cost more.
The external tank contains liquid hydrogen and oxygen that are the propellants used by the shuttle's main rocket engines during launch. The supercooled propellants cause the formation of ice on the outside of the tank as the shuttle is prepared for launch.
Insulation, applied as a foam, reduces the amount of ice. But probers believe chunks of the foam insulation peeled off the external tank during launch and led to the destruction of Columbia. AP