NASA Decides: Less Drama on Future Shuttle Missions
Email Gina Sunseri of our staff has sent this note from Houston: NASA has decided to add a fifth spacewalk to the next shuttle mission so they can practice repairing a hole in the shuttle’s heat shield should they ever encounter a problem like the one on last month’s mission. Spacewalking astronauts will take a caulk gun (called a T-RAD) out on a spacewalk and see if they can repair damage on orbit. Discovery will carry up damaged tiles in its payload bay for the astronauts to practice repairing with the thermal caulk. A T-RAD (short for TPS Repair Ablator Dispenser; TPS is short for Thermal Protection System) was on board Endeavour last month, but it had never been tested. The crew that is flying on the next mission will be commanded by the ebullient and highly decorated Desert Storm veteran Commander Pam Melroy, the second woman to command a space shuttle flight. Discovery is scheduled for launch Tuesday, October 23rd at 11:38am EDT.
(NASA image: STS-118 landing at the Kennedy Space Center on Aug. 21.)
Space Station Flies Over Eastern U.S. at Night 
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I believe that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but leave it to the government to rename a caulking gun a “TPS Repair Ablator Dispenser.”
Posted by: chuck | September 10, 2007, 2:30 pm 2:30 pm
In typical fashion, the headline is misleading. The only “drama” was CREATED by the media during the last mission. The scientists and engineers at NASA studied the problem with the STS-118 tile impact and determined that it would not be a problem. It wasn’t.
The media is more interested in selling soap than telling the entire truth. But that wouldn’t have been as exciting now would it?
Posted by: wergo | September 10, 2007, 6:57 pm 6:57 pm
Well Chuck, the government has to make the caulk gun sound cool. If they don’t, they don’t look cool. It’s part of their master plan. I agree with your above statement as well. It’d be far easier to train fixing, than just winging it.
Posted by: Lawrence | September 11, 2007, 8:46 am 8:46 am
It isn’t that the government wants to look cool. A government agency can’t function without the Department of Redundancy Department (DRD). Besides, a TPR Repair Abalator Dispenser probably costs six times what a caulk gun does. I also agree that the media was making a mountain out of a mole hill. NASA has been extremely gun shy of anything going wrong with the shuttles since Columbia.
Posted by: Bria | September 12, 2007, 7:07 pm 7:07 pm