Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Hydrogen leak test
Message-ID: <1990Aug11.033634.11935@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <27929@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: Sat, 11 Aug 90 03:36:34 GMT

In article <27929@netnews.upenn.edu> vinson@linc.cis.upenn.edu.UUCP (Jack Vinson) writes:
>	I saw a very small blurb in the paper this past Sunday which
>said NASA was so confident it had cleared up the hydrogen leak in the
>shuttles that it wouldn't be testing for the leak again.  Is this true?

Not quite.  They will be looking very carefully for the leak when they
start pouring fuel into the tank before launch.  (That's when they found
it last time.)  They've decided not to try to look for it before then,
because preliminary tests would delay the launch and wouldn't gain them
anything.  If the leak is gone, knowing that fact well before launch 
wouldn't speed things up.  And if it's still there, there is little
practical difference between finding out in a test and finding out during
fueling, because either way the launch would slip until after the
Ulysses launch.  So it's not worth putting in extra effort and delaying
the launch several days to run an early test.
-- 
It is not possible to both understand  | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
and appreciate Intel CPUs. -D.Wolfskill|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry