Jimbo07
Illuminator
- Joined
- Jan 20, 2006
- Messages
- 4,518
I mean as said before they can only go out this far rather than to the Moon, but why 216,000 feet,
The only time the space shuttle will be at 66 km is during launch and re-entry (the subject of the article). For normal operations at the ISS, the mean orbit is approximately 350 km, or according to the article:
Orbiting 357 kilometers above Massachusetts in the United States, Robinson rode the station’s Canadarm 2 robot arm to two places where pieces of ceramic-coated gap filler fabric protruded from between Discovery’s heat-shield tiles. With gloved fingers, he gently tugged the protrusions until they came out.
“This particular subject is not well understood because nobody else flies in these machines,” ... “Nobody else flies mach 22 [22 times the speed of sound] at 216,000 feet [65.8 kilometers],” he added, “ ... the only data we’ve got comes from the shuttle and that’s all there is in the world.”
This is during re-entry when the proof of the gap filler would really have to be in the pudding. The reason for this particular statement is that Columbia started to break up around 40 miles... or 211,200 ft.
There's either a profound lack of reading comprehension going on here, or I'm going to join with the chorus calling Troll...
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