Friday, July 22, 2005

NASA Sets Shuttle Launch

NASA has set the next try to launch Discovery on Tuesday of next week.

NASA will try to launch Discovery on the first shuttle mission in more than two years next Tuesday, after tracing last week's fuel gauge failure to, most likely, an electrical grounding problem lurking inside the spacecraft.

Shuttle program manager Bill Parsons (search) said the only way to thoroughly check the system is to fuel Discovery and have all its equipment running.

"We believe the best way to go through this is to do a countdown," he said. "If the sensors (gauges) work exactly like we think they will, then we'll launch on that day. If anything goes not per the plan that we've laid out in front of us, then we'll have a scrub and we'll have to talk about it." (emphasis mine)

Well, this sounds an awful lot like faith/magic rather than science.... Perhaps they better call in a consultant?

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