Cheap, very effective. But its got this property that, as you go through supersonic flight in the atmosphere, bits of it come. The question is how bad of shape is the orbiter in . And bob said, i really wish there was some way to get more information. I knew this mission passed over places where there were some highaltitude telescopes. These are looking at stars. So if you want to look at the orbiter, you could probably get the entire Orbiter Fit in the Field Of View and have extremely good resolution. And i said, well, i dont really know much about that, bob. Well have to check. And so i got the assurance from wayne that, um, he would make some calls and he would see what what could be done, and, um, things were put into motion
So the orbiter was flying with the parachute without its door. Nasa made a request to get some imagery. However, the photos didnt help much. So, even if you can get photographs, it doesnt mean theyll necessarily show anything. I think they were a little bit embarrassed in the end about asking. And nasa never wants to look stupid. Nasa wants to be the agency with the answers. If youd have said, linda, two different people need this information. Their departments are both asking. Are you aware . That may have changed the course of events. Could i have argued with her . Maybe. But did i get the impression that her mind was made up and, you know, that was the end of that . Thats kind of where i was. And you can say, well, you should have argued more. Well, that would thats nice of you to say that, but i didnt. I was going to be a good soldier
I was desperately waiting for my mom to come back. The thing i was most excited about was just holding her again and talking to her. They put bleachers close to the runway, and youre driven down there and youre in a set of bleachers with your friends and family that you have invited for the landing. They had speakers, and you could hear rick talking. And, rick, were ready for the manoeuvre. I did not usually come in for a landing. To me, those were so routine. Usually, the orbiter has been working well, they have a good weather call
Those protect the vehicle from the highest level of heat, those 3,000 degree temperatures, so that you dont get metal melting. But we had never had any experience in breaking a panel. What was starting to join up was youve got Video Analysis that says the strike on the orbiter created a hole in the wing. And you can see that there had been some sort of penetration against the rcc panel. Hot gas had entered in, the shuttle had lost aerodynamic control and crashed. But i think the challenge for a lot of folks at nasa was believing that foam had done that. They would say Foam Cant Break reinforced carboncarbon
And if you follow the logic, you begin to see pieces that are telling you a story. As we were progressing through the leftwing reconstruction, you can see these burned tiles, this reinforced carboncarbon, looks like its been burned in a way thats very different than everything else. All of that data pointed to a problem at Rcc Panel 8. Something very different happened in this location on the orbiter. And so, lets go see if we can understand what that was. Ok, so, as the vehicle is entering the atmosphere, these black tiles are protecting the structure, the aluminium of the vehicle, in highheat areas. And the grey is the wing leading edge reinforced carboncarbon, Rcc Panels