-my wife, laurel, was on the shuttle. she was a scientist primarily involved with life sciences. one day during the mission, i was reviewing the notes, and then here s this foam issue. during launch, a large piece of foam had come off the external tank and impacted the left wing. me and my colleague had this discussion of, hey, you can use a family conference to talk to laurel and find out what she knew. -oh! -you got to remember the hat you re wearing is your flight-surgeon hat, not your family hat. it would have broken protocol for me to bring up an issue to a crew member, even though it s my wife. -i remember a certain sense of relief like, it s almost over. she s almost back. -i didn t talk to laurel about the foam issue. that conference was for iain and laurel, and i was a bystander. -i knew she was going to come back. you know, i never had a question in my mind. -given the fact that you may have lost a little bit of tile during lift-off, i m wondering
-given the fact that you may have lost a little bit of tile during lift-off, i m wondering if there s going to be anything different about the entry profile, taking that into regard. -no, there isn t. we the engineers and analysts took a very thorough look at the situation with the tile on the left wing, and we have no concerns whatsoever. all of the analysis says that we have plenty of margin and that the impact could not have been significant enough. and, therefore, we haven t changed anything with respect to our trajectory design. so nothing different. it will be nominal, standard trajectory. -the night before landing, we went out to dinner, and i was still concerned. we really don t know the damage yet. it could be bad. -that s all we talked about the landing the next morning and how things had gone so badly the last two weeks.
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Given the fact that you may have lost a little bit of tile during liftoff, im wondering if theres going to be anything different about the entry profile, taking that into regard. No, there isnt. We the engineers and analysts took a very thorough look at the situation with the tile on the left wing, and we have no concerns whatsoever. All of the analysis says that we have plenty of margin and that the impact could not have been significant enough. And, therefore, we havent changed anything with respect to our trajectory design. So nothing different. It will be nominal, standard trajectory