Gouge Away

So it's late, and a micro-nap earlier this evening seems to have put me into a state of sleeplessness. So I'm up, and tossing and turning, and wondering about that gouge in the space shuttle tiles.

They say it goes all the way through the outer heat shield tile. I'm thinking that's a bad thing. (...but I'm no rocket scientist. [ba-dum])

Gets me wondering about the odds these days. There were 5 shuttles at one time. Two of them became spectacular fireballs that the crews didn't survive. Now about those other 3... I'm wondering at what point NASA starts working on a new design. It's clear that the shuttle is necessary/important (i.e. servicing ISS, bringing astronauts home) or else it wouldn't be flying. But at what point do you say that the vehicle is past its prime? And if, heavens forbid, this shuttle doesn't make it home in one piece, that means there'd only be 2 left. Which makes the notion of a orbital rescue somewhat dodgy indeed.

Missions are planned until 2010 in order to finish assembling the ISS - and it also seems that it's almost all shuttle flights that are sending the goods up there. A couple Russian trips, but mostly shuttle.

Did you know that the Russians had a space shuttle too? Golly, it sure looks a lot like the NASA version. Rumor has it that there was a bit of engineering sharing between countries on this one. I guess it makes sense in the realm of "both nations are participants in the space station and there should be redundant vehicles."

But definitely something of a different approach to getting it pointed at the sky by assembling it horizontal and then lifting it into position. We'll never really know which is a better launch procedure - Buran's shuttle only flew once. It apparently was capable of totally unmanned flight, including landing, and it seems they were even almost finished building the second one, but the program was discontinued, and what's left belongs to Kazakhstan.

And in the free-association that goes on in the wee hours of the night/morning, the two things that come to mind when I hear Kazakhstan? Borat and Vino. The former made me feel sorry for the people mocked in the movie. The latter, not as much - I can't decide whether it's the continuing variety of doping cases or the stupidity of his particular one that's making me feel numb to it.