Doing a late inspection is one of the ways that you increase the likelihood that you have a clean vehicle. It's the length of time in space that drives up the risk of impacts. |
Even with the devastation to their lives, it's been kind of remarkable that they have stepped up and are back at work and are trying to balance that with their own personal issues, |
Even with the devastation to their lives, it's been kind of remarkable that they have stepped up and are back at work and are trying to balance that with their own personal issues. |
He made it clear that those are working dates. |
I think that May would be the earliest, based on two hurricanes that not only caused damage at some of the facilities but also displaced the work force, |
I think that May would be the earliest, based on two hurricanes that not only caused damage at some of the facilities but also displaced the work force. |
It certainly made sense to do that. The biggest benefit is launch probability, and that's what we want. |
It was a fairly long and tedious process. |
It's a problem that has been around for years. |
It's a problem that has been around for years. It's probably of greater interest now because we're getting ready to fly. |
It's like your car. If you open up your engine to try to find a small problem, you might create some others. |
That's due to the amount of fuel the 747 can take on due to the heavy orbiter on its back. |
The consensus was we have a pristine box, so let?s buy down the risk even further by changing out the box. |
The ET [external tank] project will assess it further and bring it to the program level later. |
The program hasn't heard the full story. It's very premature to indicate that we're going to do anything with this right now. |