NASA: Astronauts to get putty for small holes

[PfcHammer]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/06/18/space.shuttle.ap/index.html

NASA: Astronauts to get putty for small holes
Saturday, June 19, 2004 Posted: 2:20 AM EDT (0620 GMT)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) -- When space shuttle flights resume, the astronauts will have putty and other filler to repair cracks and small gashes in the wings, but they will not be able to patch a hole as big as the one that doomed Columbia, NASA said Friday.

Michael Kostelnik, deputy associate administrator, said it is taking longer than expected to come up with a technique for wrapping a crater as big as the one gouged in Columbia's wing by a chunk of foam last year.

Engineers also are behind in designing a boom for inspecting the belly of orbiting shuttles and the undersides of the wings, Kostelnik said. NASA hopes to have the boom ready for the first post-Columbia flight, still on track for next March. Kostelnik said NASA has yet to decide what it will do if the boom is not ready by then.

Discovery is scheduled to fly to the international space station and drop off badly needed supplies and replacement parts. The latest crew -- an American and a Russian -- has been aboard the space station since April.

[Sabriel]

1. Why can't they use gum like everyone else?

And what happened to their duct tape budget?

[Beaker]

2. the answer to the heat-shield problem-

over-microwaved nacho cheese. Nothing is going to penetrate that...

[Hotler]

3. Silly putty or JB Weld???

n/t

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

4. There's only one solution: duct tape!

You can fix anything with duct tape. Just ask the astronauts on Apollo 13, who used it to create usable CO2 scrubbers.