/sci/ - Science & Math

>>12270157
why was its light weight mandatory? Was increasing thrust really out of the question? Making it as fragile as it was was a mistake in retrospect.

>>12270185
true. The only reason Atlantis survived was because the tile fell of right over a bit of steel. Extremely lucky.

>>12256173
my god the shuttle was a deathtrap. I recently learned that In addition to columbia and challenger it should have blown up 2 more times.

An earlier 1999 mission that columbia went on had a breach in the regeneratively cooled engine bell among other issues. Got extremely lucky that wasn't a loss. And the Atlantis really should have disintegrated like Columbia, but it got extremely lucky that the tile that was knocked off was over a steel mounting plate instead of over aluminum like 99% of them were. Aluminum would have melted.