NASA Delays Shuttle Launch Until Monday 43
rfunches writes "The Associated Press and the New York Times are now reporting that Atlantis will not launch Sunday. The delay will 'give engineers more time to determine whether one of the most powerful lightning strikes ever at a Kennedy Space Center launch pad caused any problems. The lightning Friday didn't hit the shuttle — it struck a wire attached to a tower used to protect the spacecraft from such strikes at the launch pad — but it created a lightning field around the vehicle, NASA managers said. The launch, planned for Sunday, now won't happen until at least Monday.'"
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http://space.com/missionlaunches/060826_sts115_sc
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Because there is no such thing as limited free posting; and no such thing as limited liability for taking responsibility for the content of posts.
KFG
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Personally I could care less either way. I see the letters GNAA and skip the post, therefore defeating the purpose o
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Well, for whatever it's worth, it's the sort of thing that a -1 rating was invented for.
KFG
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I guess the
Lighting field? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Lighting field? (Score:5, Funny)
I like how they harvest lightning (Score:3, Funny)
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Haven't you seen Flash Gordon?
I am deeply, deeply ashamed to admit that I know exactly what you are talking about.
Flaaaa-aaash...
Re:Lighting field? (Score:4, Informative)
"It was certainly not a hit to the vehicle, I want to make that perfectly clear," said NASA launch director Michael Leinbach of the strike. "But you can get an induced voltage field around the lightning strike, and that's what we're looking at now."
After reviewing data from the lighting strike, engineers detected a small spike in the voltage readings from one of the three electrical buses that supply power to certain systems aboard Atlantis, Cain said. The spike - in a unit known as Essential Bus 1 BC - spanned just 80 milliseconds, but was enough to begin checks to ensure none of the shuttle's systems were compromised during the lightning strike.
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"...it struck a wire attached to a tower used to protect the spacecraft from such strikes at the launch pad -- but it created a lightning field around the vehicle..."
SO, then: it's a lightning protection system for the shuttle that didn't protect the shuttle systems from lightning (and a power surge)... Yup - that's nasa.
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I understand the other complaints, but what's wrong with "square footage"? The term appears in the dictionary in that usage. That's a perfectly cromulent term.
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Seriously, the real estate trade has a definition of "square footage" -- that's finished, livable space. Unfinished basements don't count. Garages don't count. Crawl spaces don't count.
That said, they do tend to estimate based on overall dimensions or county assessment office records, it's not like they subtract out closets and stairways.
cleared for launch [time skips] delayed for Monday (Score:4, Funny)
LINDA:...Turning to entertainment news, teen singer Wendy might just be the latest
[Time skips.]
LINDA:...won three Grammys last night
[Time skips. The picture of Wendy behind her has a "2984 - 3002" caption below it.]
LINDA:...found dead in her bathtub.
Re:cleared for launch [time skips] delayed for Mon (Score:2)
Stills and video of strike. (Score:5, Informative)
Video Real (buffering) [edgesuite.net]
Video Windows codec [edgesuite.net]
Ouch! (Score:3, Interesting)
Political Economy (Score:2)
Johnny 5 (Score:5, Funny)
That depends. Do they consider sentient robot life to be a "problem"?
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Isn't this not a bad thing? (Score:1, Funny)
What?.. What?.. WHAT?
OH! a lightning field... Nevermind.
what really happened? (Score:1, Flamebait)
Lightning field (Score:2)
Apollo 12 (Score:2)
And they're worried about an 80 msec blip on one bus?
(Okay, it doesn't hurt to check it out. If they do find any showstoppers it says something about the relative robustness of the Apollo-Saturn stack vs Shuttle.)
A strike **before** lauch is far worse (Score:2)
Being struck on the ground is far worse, but you'd hope they have adequate lightning protection built into the tower etc.
We're talking rockets, not airplanes. (Score:3, Informative)
A Saturn V launch leaves a very nice path to ground through the ionized gas (flame) and carbon smoke (rich-burning kerosene fuel) trail it's pouring out the back end. That's why the thing got hit in the first place. To quote from a web page on the strike [aerospaceweb.org]: "As the rocket accelerated through the low-altitude rain clouds, it behaved much like a lightning rod. A bolt of electricity struck the vehicle and traveled to the ground along the colu