Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Columbia showing her age?
Message-ID: <1990Dec12.190956.22436@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <20792.2765fbdf@merrimack.edu>
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 90 19:09:56 GMT

In article <20792.2765fbdf@merrimack.edu> yetmank@merrimack.edu writes:
>Am I the only one who feels that Columbia is starting to show her age?  This
>last mission was an absolute disaster for the orbiter...

I haven't heard the story on the water-dump business, but NASA quite
explicitly stated that the hydrogen-leak problems were *not* due to aging
equipment.  (Half the engine-related stuff gets replaced regularly anyway.)

Columbia's problem was not that it's old, but that it happened to be the
first orbiter to use the third launch platform (for the LDEF mission).
There were concerns about contamination in the fuel plumbing on that
platform, which led to a massive teardown of Columbia's plumbing for
cleaning and inspection.  The reassembly process was botched and seals
were damaged.
-- 
"The average pointer, statistically,    |Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
points somewhere in X." -Hugh Redelmeier| henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry