Message posted by George on December 01, 2006 at 0:26:28 PST:

Stuff falls off the space shuttle all the time. It's really remarkable how fragile the system is--the shuttle itself's got silica-based tiles serving as over half it's surface area, and the upper portion's got quite a bit of stitched and quilted thermal blankets as coverings (also made of silica), and big panels of a mix of rayon, carbon, and silicon baked into a composite material to cover the "hard" surfaces.

Add liquid hydrogen and oxygen, a power system whose main byproduct is water, and pop it off a gigantic liquid hydrogen tank covered in multilayered foam at the end of an 8-minute ride into an environment where temperatures have a 500-degree range from about -250F to 250F, and put the first two minutes of that ride on solid rocket boosters that provide a ride that's been compared to trying to ride a cheese grater because it's so violently bumpy...

Stuff's gonna fall off. All kinds of goodies have floated away from the shuttle, and from what I've heard, a decent amount of 'em are described as UFOs.

In Reply to: Interesting Image From NASA STS-61C Mission posted by Chris H. on November 26, 2006 at 9:50:40 PST:

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