More than a handful or a mouthful is too much.

something something subliminal something something

Mmm, Eve Muirhead.

Where is that barrel going??

America’s finest.

If you like fly-pasts, give this a read.

All he could do was rage impotently at the official for not throwing his flag.

Those legs go all the way up.

What could they have done to guarantee a safe return? An EVA would have been difficult at best, especially without the robotic arm. The crew had neither the materials nor the tools to effect a repair. Atlantis might have been readied in time, but that was a completely untried mission and would have potentially put a…

Perhaps. But realistically, I'm not sure there was anything that could have been done about it, even if they had known the full extent of the damage. And even the DOD pictures may not have been conclusive.

I know about Kamarov. I won’t post the picture from his funeral.

Yes, I read he was flying the fireball all the way. Hell of a guy.

NASA wanted Shuttle launches to be like airplane rides. But airplanes are orders of magnitude less complex than an orbiter, and we’ve been making airplanes for a much longer time. And we’ve made a hell of a lot more of them.

But this is the same league where striking a pylon that is entirely out of bouds is considered a touchdown, and simply “breaking the plane” of the goaline ends a play, and nothing subsequent to that matters. If just putting the nose of the ball over the goal line ends a play, then by the same token, this catch and two…

Thanks for the link. I’ll check it out. “Audacious” is a good word for what they would have had to do.

I’m not an engineer, and I’ve never sent people into space. But I think that such an endeavor will never be without risk and, unfortunately, sometimes tragedies are what bring about changes. It must be a terrible balancing act for NASA engineers between being as safe as possible while still maintaining a schedule of…

We’ll be back.

NASA never told the crew about the damage to the wing. They had no idea there was a danger of burning up on re-entry. They weren’t really equipped to fix the wing anyway. It might have been possible to extend their flight and reach them in Atlantis. There could have been a five-day overlap between Columbia’s supplies…