Word: liftings
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...commander Eileen Collins and her crew when they docked the space shuttle Discovery with the International Space Station last Thursday. Station commander Sergei Krikalev had prepared the little ceremony, a Russian tradition intended to bring good luck to a visitor to your home. After the shuttle's stunning lift-off two days earlier--the first since the loss of the Columbia orbiter in 2003--it didn't seem the crew would need such happy charms. But now it appears the shuttle program as a whole--if not the astronauts themselves--may need a lot of luck indeed...
Only hours before the docking, NASA announced that the entire shuttle fleet was being grounded again, after evidence that four pieces of insulating foam--the largest the size of a skateboard--had spun off the ship's external fuel tank during lift-off, just the kind of debris that damaged Columbia's wing and doomed the ship. Only one small piece may have struck the shuttle this time, glancing off a wing with so little force it didn't register on impact sensors. But a camera mounted on the shuttle's 50-ft. arm as well as photos taken from...
Most of the debris came from a nettlesome area of the tank known as the protuberance air load (PAL) ramp, a ridge designed to minimize turbulence around cables and fuel lines. Tests and earlier flights convinced NASA that the PAL could withstand lift-off. "Obviously," says flight operations manager John Shannon, "we were wrong...
...endless practice. "Cheerleading is one of the hardest things you can do," says Breanna Oviedo of Euless Junior High near Dallas. She should know, since she also plays basketball, soccer and softball and runs track. Her squad mate Monica Brigham, also a soccer player, shows off wrist injuries from lifting the lighter girls for stunts. "They sell a T shirt that says ATHLETES LIFT WEIGHTS, BUT CHEERLEADERS LIFT ATHLETES," she says proudly. The Euless squad practices four times a week, an hour and a half a night, with only Wednesday off for church. Every practice involves at least 100 crunches...
...didn't stop people from wondering whether a space walk still might have been wise, since if the crew could somehow have determined that the tiles were compromised, they might at least have hightailed it to the International Space Station--which the shuttles routinely visit anyway--and awaited a lift home aboard another shuttle or a Russian vehicle. But that possibility was foreclosed, since crews must rigorously train for a space-station docking and must carry aboard an adapter collar to make the linkup possible. Neither of those conditions was met on Columbia...