The Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans is under serious threat, as Hurricane Katrina \u2013 a large Cat 4 \u2013 steams into Gulf Coast of the United States. <\/p>\n
MAF has \u2013 along with one million people \u2013 been evacuated, with only a small rideout crew bunkered down in the sprawling facility. All the External Tanks that are set to be provided for the remaining flights of the Space Shuttle are at various stages of production at the factory.<\/font><\/p>\n ET-119 was set to arrive back at MAF for modification, after setting off from the Kennedy Space Center last Tuesday, but never left Port Canaveral due to storm weather from Katrina \u2013 as it headed over south Florida on the way to its current destination. ET-120 and ET-117 are both still at KSC.<\/font><\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re up to 90mph winds. It\u2019s expected to go up to 155mph. The eye will pass over in-between Mississippi and New Orleans \u2013 with both areas hit with devastating rain, wind and flooding,\u201d said Andrew Wilson of Sky News at midday UK time. \u201cThis could still go up to a Cat 5, although right now it\u2019s staying as a strong Cat 4.\u201d<\/font><\/p>\n At least two ETs are required for the Shuttle program to re-start in the spring of 2006 \u2013 with the PAL Ramp removal and re-spraying required. <\/font><\/p>\n A source at KSC noted that serious damage to MAF would not immediately stop this from going ahead. <\/font><\/p>\n \u201cIt is possible to temporarily do work on the horizontal at KSC \u2013 with workers and spare equipment from MAF being used,\u201d he said. \u201cAlthough, that would be a last resort scenario depending on how long MAF will be out of service. Evaluations will be on-going after Katrina has hit.\u201d<\/font><\/p>\n (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/p>\n Update thread: The Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans is under serious threat, as Hurricane Katrina \u2013 a large Cat 4 \u2013 steams into Gulf Coast of the United States. MAF has \u2013 along with one million people \u2013 been evacuated, with only a small rideout crew bunkered down in the sprawling facility. The importance to NASA\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42300"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42300\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe importance to NASA\u2019s Space Shuttle program goes without saying, with the facility being the place of construction for the External Tanks that fuel the Orbiter during launch.<\/font> <\/p>\n
<\/em>http:\/\/forum.nasaspaceflight.com\/forums\/thread-view.asp?tid=389&start=1<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"