This isn't really typical of me but...

Does it strike anyone else that it just might be a bad idea for the shuttle Endeavour to come back to Earth without using that special filler material that NASA came up with after Columbia burned up on reentry to cover that hole that the latest piece of falling ice/foam made?

I really don't like second guessing NASA. I think the media does everything they can to present the space agency in a bad light without ever reporting on all the great things are accomplished by the same bunch of guys. The mass media seems to look at NASA the same way as they do the military. You know; "We love the troops but we hate what they do." Same thing with NASA: "We love astronauts but they're all a bunch of alcoholic, psychotic, gun-toting, diaper-wearing weirdos, aren't they?"

Oh well, I guess that's a topic for a different post. Back to what I was talking about...

A few flights back they sent a guy out on a robotic arm to pull out two pieces of felt gap filler material that stuck out about 1/8th or 1/4 of an inch. For all intents and purposes it was done because they felt that even though the best brains in the business all concluded that there was very little chance of a serious problem ocurring due to the filler strips sticking out slightly that it was "better safe than sorry". I thought then (and still do now) that management made the right decision to pull the strips. If for no other reason it was the right decision because after Columbia the public needed to see that safety was foremost in NASA's mind.

Well now they've got a hole gouged all the way through a tile that has bared a piece of the actual skin of the shuttle to superhot gasses created by reentry. The astronauts have photographed it, used a laser to determine it's depth, and eggheads round the world (no doubt) have pondered the level of danger that this may or may not present to the crew and the vehicle itself. Everyone seems to have come to the conclusion that it's really not that bad. Hmmmm.

Don't get me wrong; I'm no egghead. I've been called a lot of things ending in "head" but never egghead. I don't have an advanced degree. I don't even have all the facts that the real eggheads do. But I wonder if this isn't something that maybe they should be applying that "better safe than sorry" ethos to. I mean come on... even if the danger isn't really all that high isn't this the ideal time to try that filler goop out in a real space environment and see how it handles the heat and stress of an actual reentry rather than rely on lab tests and computer models? Isn't this the perfect opportunity to see how well it can really be applied in a microgravity, airless environment? Hmmmm?

I see the latest news on Space.com is that Endeavour is undocking from the ISS a day early in order to come home before hurricane Dean (I think that's the name) can cause problems. That's wise. I guess we'll all see if they're as right and wise about the tile damage as they are about the weather when Endeavour comes back.

I'll be crossing my fingers!