| NASA may delay shuttle launch due to Hurricane Katrina Still, someone clearly jinxed the American shuttles. Because it is difficult to explain such a series of misfortunes that befell the US space program by tragic accidents alone. NASA, through the heroic efforts of engineers and astronauts, had just managed to resume the flights of its shuttles, interrupted after the Columbia shuttle disaster in February 2003, when Hurricane Katrina crippled the US space program.
Most recently, at the end of August, NASA decided to cancel the September launch of the Atlantis reusable spacecraft. Then agency director Michael Griffin announced that the next shuttle flight was scheduled for March 2006. The agency expected to spend the entire fall and winter rechecking and improving the system for attaching heat-shielding tiles and insulating foam to the external fuel tanks and shuttle bodies. After all, it was the impacts of fragments of the breaking off insulation that led to the death of Columbia and seriously spoiled the nerves of the Americans during the Discovery flight. And in August, the agency decided that the fuel tanks would be thoroughly examined where they were assembled - at the Michoud plant, located in the suburbs of... New Orleans.
It is clear that now that New Orleans has become a big dirty lake, and local authorities have announced a total forced evacuation of the local population, no one will check any tanks on the Michud. Even now there is no one to do this: it is reported that the Michoud personnel partially fled, saving their lives. The plant's employees have no time for their work duties; many of them lost their homes and all their property after the flood. In addition, the assembly complex building was significantly damaged by wind gusts during the hurricane, and the railway line leading to the plant was destroyed.
NASA was unlucky not only with Michud: the test site where engines mounted on fuel tanks were tested, unfortunately, also fell into the affected area. It is located on the coast of Mississippi, exactly where the Katrina front hit. And although reports about the sad fate of Michuda appeared already on August 30 - just a day after the hurricane arrived, NASA, it seems, was still hoping for a miraculous outcome. However, already on September 1, acting shuttle launch program manager Wayne Hale wrote a memo admitting that the deadlines would be missed, and it would be better to postpone the Atlantis launch from March to May 2006.
This information has not yet been officially confirmed, and this data was made public only in the middle of this week, when Hale’s note ended up in the editorial office of USA Today. However, there, in particular, it is stated that the engineers did not meet the deadline even before Katrina. The hurricane finally convinced NASA that the launch of the next shuttle would have to be delayed. So far, the agency is commenting on Hale’s findings in an extremely evasive manner: press secretary Dean Acosta, complaining about the “information leak,” said that a final decision on postponing the launch date of Atlantis has not yet been made.
If, after all, Hale turns out to be right, and the check of fuel tanks really drags on until May, this long pause will again postpone the plans of our Roscosmos to expand the Soyuz and Progress flight program. Now almost all domestic launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome are used only to change the crews of permanent expeditions to the ISS and send food and other “consumables” into orbit. In fact, while the Americans are dealing with the problems of their ill-fated shuttles, Russia is single-handedly maintaining the functioning of the International Space Station. The successful launch of Discovery gave hope that NASA will finally resume regular shuttle flights and take some of the load off domestic spacecraft. However, first the appointment of a months-long inspection of fuel tanks, and then Katrina, which hit the Michud plant, ruined all of Roscosmos’ dreams. Mikhail MANSKOY |
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