Grounded Shuttles. Now what?

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Today NASA grounded future shuttle flights because of tile damage during takeoff. These tiles become loose when struck by debris during launch.

Since I mentioned I had worked on Apollo and the Heat Shield development, I have not been surprised by this discovery. These tiles are the shape of small squares and not very thick by comparison to what was used during Apollo. If you have ever visited the Smithsonian Institute's Space and Missile exhibit, you could see that during Apollo the Heat Shield was more than 12 inches thick, made of special materials, resins, etc. and infused into honeycomb lattice with injection molding techniques. We never worried if the Heat Shield was going to fall off in pieces, and it is obvious that they came back in excellent shape as can be seen today at the exhibit.

Engineers may have to go back to the drawing board on this one. They may also need to go forward with their plans for a future space craft more actively and bring in a new craft in the 2010-2012 timeframe.

They should be able to repair any damaged tiles in Space if they need to. But considering the cost of this program and investment, there is a limited time for experiments to be conducted and any time spent on repairs takes time away from the mission.

This is a setback.