Originally posted by Yeager
I wonder what happened to the nasa tech that left the gap fillers in. Provided of course they were intended to stay in, provided of course they came part ways out as opposed to all the way or no way....Ok, Im confused.
Lets talk about gap fillers and thermal tiles.
Why gap fillers? Have there always been gap fillers and this is just the first time they have ever protruded or is it just the first time anyone has cared?
They talked about that in the MMT briefing. Apparently, one of the protruding gap fillers is there just for the launch. It prevents too much vibration on the tiles during liftoff and ascent, and it has absolutely no role in the reentry.
As for the other one, it's placed there because the gap between two of the tiles is slightly over nominal, and so a gap filler is needed. They said that while it should be there, the gap is so small that the absence of the filler will have no impact on the integrity of the thermal shield.
The real question is if this happened lots of times before. This is the first time the shuttle gets an in-orbit belly check, so my guess is this has been a recurrent issue in almost every flight, but this time they are taking absolutely zero chances.
Daniel
