A USA source has elaborated on the incident involving the External Tank that will fly with STS-114 \u2013 ET-121 \u2013 noting a crane cable accidentally slapped into the side of the brand new tank.\n<\/p>\n
Last Thursday, USA workers moved the ET into place on the Mobile Launch Platform for mating with its two Solid Rocket Boosters \u2013 Discovery will be de-mated from her current stack in a few weeks time for mating with ET-121.<\/font> <\/font> The incident occurred prior to the lifting of the ET on one of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) cranes.<\/font> <\/font> \u201cBefore the ET sling was hooked up to lift it out of the checkout cell in the VAB, one of the connecting drop links (on the crane) \u2018bumped\u2019 into tank foam, in the intertank area, due to a crane move that no one was ready for \u2013 i.e. the lanyards that individuals hold to secure movement of \u2018loose\u2019 equipment (including sling cables, links etc.) was not manned, crane made move and cable\/link moved from it\u2019s hanging position and gently swung\/bumped the foam,\u201d said the source. <\/font> <\/font> \u201cDetermined not to be an issue but, we\u2019ll see if it elevates. Just a shame to have molested a pristine tank.\u201d<\/font> <\/font> Meanwhile, Shuttle manager Bill Parsons claimed \u2013 not for the first time \u2013 that Shuttle Discovery had a perfect Tanking Test on Friday, the 12 hour loading of propellant failing to show why two ECO sensors failed on the initial test while liquid hydrogen vent valve over-cycled for the second time.<\/font> <\/font> \u201cWe had just a perfect test as far as I\u2019m concerned,\u201d said Parsons \u2013 repeating comments he \u2013 and fellow manager Wayne Hale \u2013 noted on the first test. <\/font> <\/font> That proved to be slightly economical with the information when it was revealed that sensor and value issues would ultimately lead to the Shuttle being rolled-back to the Vehicle Assembly Building.<\/font> <\/font> In around a week, managers will hear back on the report from Final Inspection Team on how the ET performed in respect to ice and frost build-up \u2013 a cause of concern for the Debris Verification Review in giving their green light to proceed with a Return to Flight launch in the second half of July.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A USA source has elaborated on the incident involving the External Tank that will fly with STS-114 \u2013 ET-121 \u2013 noting a crane cable accidentally slapped into the side of the brand new tank. Last Thursday, USA workers moved the ET into place on the Mobile Launch Platform for mating with its two Solid Rocket […]<\/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-42386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42386"}],"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=42386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42386\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}