Discovery leak under investigation

[dobbins]

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/content/?id=4115<br />

 

[CalliArcale]

Holy cow, that's a big leak. I can see why they wrote it off as anomalous data early on, though; you'd think a leak like that would cause other problems, but everything was working fine. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[dobbins]

I'm hoping Chris will have more on this later today or tomorrow. It's hard to see how a leak that big couldn't have caused problems in the launch. Hopefully it will turn out like John Glenn's loose heatshield did.<br /><br />

 

[vogon13]

Wild speculation alert:<br /><br />Any possibility of frozen air (freezing on a hydrogen line) vaporizing during ascent?<br /><br />LH is circulated in the engines before launch, how well is everything insulated from the chilling effect?<br /><br />{Would anomalous N levels even be detectable?}<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>