csua.org/u/b1q -> story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2026&ncid=2026&e=5&u=/latimests/20050211/ts_latimes/shuttlesreturntospaceisonthehorizon
Top Stories - Los Ang eles Times By John-Thor Dahlburg Times Staff Writer KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. With the resumption of space shuttle flight possibly three months away, launch fever has begun to rise at America's spaceport, and Thursday the commander of the first mission scheduled sin ce the Columbia tragedy said she was ready to go.
Slideshow: Space Shuttle "Clearly I'm not going to fly on something that's unsafe," said Eileen M Collins, a former colonel in the Air Force and a veteran of three space flights. "I'm a person who won't even get on a roller coaster at an amus ement park because they scare me.
web sites) on Florida's A tlantic Coast to inspect the orbiter Discovery, including the numerous m odifications designed to make shuttle flight safer. The program has been grounded for more than two years since Columbia disi ntegrated on reentry Feb. Inv estigators blamed the accident on a briefcase-sized chunk of foam insula tion that broke off the shuttle's external fuel tank and slammed into th e orbiter's left wing, gouging a hole. Since then, the foam has been removed from part of the external tank, tem perature and motion sensors were installed in the wings to detect potent ially dangerous impacts, and a 50-foot-long boom was placed in the orbit er's cargo bay that Collins and her crew will be able to use to inspect the shuttle's thermal tiles during flight.
web si tes) is rushing back to manned flight operations, the feeling that perme ates the space center is that the right time will be very soon. The earl iest launch window envisioned for what has been dubbed RTL, or "return t o flight," is May 12 to June 3 In an interview, launch director Michael D Leinbach said, "It's all conv erging on what looks like May 15 to start flying the shuttle again." On that day, blastoff and the separation of the external tank from the or biter could take place during daylight, which is desirable from a safety standpoint, Leinbach said. He said he would be recommending that date, but that a National Aeronautics and Space Administration committee would have the final say. As America's space establishment prepares for the potential spring missio n, "people are pumped," said Leinbach, whose office overlooks a "firing room" where launches are directed and Pad 39B, from where Discovery will be sent into orbit. Because of lessons learned from the Columbia disast er and the 1986 explosion of Challenger, which killed all seven aboard, the 20-year veteran of NASA said the coming shuttle missions should be t he safest ever. The only way to tak e the risk out is to never fly again." As of Thursday, 300 engineers, technicians and inspectors were toiling at the space center to ready Discovery for flight, while an equal number w ere working on another orbiter, Atlantis. As part of the safety changes mandated since the Columbia tragedy, the second shuttle must be prepared for a rescue mission in the event Collins and her crew cannot return to Earth. On a day when warm sunshine burned off morning fog, Mark Taylor, 39, an a erospace technician, buried his head inside the nose wheel well of Disco very and checked if insulating patches needed to be inserted between the ceramic thermal tiles to guarantee a perfect seal to protect against he at. The orbiter, housed in a special building designed for preflight preparat ions, was almost invisible inside a labyrinth of steel platforms, pipes and tubing. Lately, the inspectors who check his work have become harder to please, s aid Taylor, who has worked at Kennedy Space Center for 16 years. The mor e exacting standards, he said, have made his job "more demanding but mor e satisfying." His goal, the technician said, was to get a "national res ource" flying again.
we've been looking forward to this for a long time," said NASA engineer Scott Higginbotham, who is in charge of the payload. While shuttle flights have been suspended, Russian rockets have been ferr ying supplies to the space station. Meanwhile, the three Italian-built c argo modules designed for the shuttle, named Raffaello, Leonardo and Don atello, have sat idle inside the Space Station Processing Building here. NASA officials acknowledge they have not fully completed all of the chang es that the independent board investigating the Columbia disaster recomm ended as prerequisites for resuming shuttle operations. Florida Space Au thority Executive Director Winston Scott, a former astronaut, said he wa s "cautiously optimistic" that the space agency had done everything it n eeded to for a return to space. I still consider myself a part of them," said Scott, who flew two shuttle missions and made three spacewalks. I'm not sure whether NASA has made the organizational changes necessary to prevent another Columbia. The orbiter that Collins will command flew for the first time Aug. Leinbach, the launch director, said if he had a feeling on launch day tha t any technical problem had been only "95% solved," or that enthusiasm t o get back into space had clouded NASA personnel's judgment, he would or der the launch scrubbed. Several important matters remain unresolved, including what to use for in -flight repair of the thermal tiles, which protect the shuttle's nose an d belly from temperatures of more than 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit upon ree ntry. Five methods are being studied, including a giant caulking gun that dispe nses pinkish-orange goo. In addition to Collins, who in 1999 was the first woman to command a shut tle mission, the crew includes pilot James Kelly and mission specialists Charles Camarda, Wendy Lawrence, Stephen Robinson and Andrew Thomas, al l Americans;
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