I take it everyone has heard about the engineers emails flying about before landing. I cannot belive this! this either shows gross incompetence, lack of money, or lack of structure/safety within NASA.
They say oh well the damage seemed to be probably minor and not a threat to the safety of the crew! All i can say is NASA must employ the worst engineers on the planet.
During re-entry the shuttle is subjected to huge forces and temperatures. Even the slightest damage to the heat shield will cause a great danger. The heat shield must be in perfect condition before re-entry...engineers must have known this!! Ask any engineer what happens to small defects in materials that are subjected to large forces/tempertures etc, yep u guessed it the small defects get big very quickly.
Just like the failures in the metal of the rail tracks...they start off as small cracks in the metal, but eventually cause complete failures. Before privatisation the tracks were ground down to get rid of these tiny cracks...profit based private companies deemed this to be an unnessesary expense....oh and btw the board of directors of railtrack had no engineers amoung them at the time of the last big disaster....muppets. oops I digress.
that crew lost their lives needlessly and it fucking pisses me off! sorry to swear but wanted great emphasis of my feeling there.
fucking idiots!
