Beam Me Out Of This Death Trap, Scotty
Fascinating article from 1980 on Columbia.
The main cause of delay is currently the shuttle's refractory tiles, which disperse the heat of reentry from the ship's nose and fuselage. Columbia must be fitted out with 33,000 of these tiles, each to be applied individually, each unique in shape. The inch-thick tiles, made of pyrolized carbon, are amazing in two respects. They can be several hundred degrees hot on one side while remaining cool to the touch on the other. They do not boil away like the ablative heat shieldings of capsules and modules; they can be used indefinitely. But they're also a bit of a letdown in another respect-they're so fragile you can hardly touch them without shattering them.
These are the wild, uncharted rivers of space. Unknown; unknowable; beyond programming. To find out if your ship can cope with them, you have to take it up there.
Also see Go at Throttle-Up, a 1996 examination of the state of NASA and the shuttle. Both articles
via scripting news
I remember the first shuttle launches. Everytime it came down tiles had come off. It has been the chief danger for twenty years.
Orginally they experimented with launching the shuttle off the back of an airplane.
j p e g 02 Feb 2003