Wednesday, March 21, 2007

In the VAB...

Here are pictures from inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). Red dye is applied to external tank to help expose cracks or compression dents. The red dye is sanded away and a vacuum hose is used to remove excess particles. Several service platforms were arranged around the Shuttle to provide access for the technicians to repair the damages on the ET and the Orbiter caused by the hail storm.





5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well I am glad to see that progress is being made. How much longer due you expect it will take until the shuttle is rolled back out of the VAB to the launch pad?

Anonymous said...

Followed a link from the Bad Astronomy blog to here; very pleased with what I see.

Your blog is fascinating to this layman. Please keep it up.

Good fortune on your journey!

Lunar Mark said...

I also came here via the Bad Astronomer. What a wonderful blog. I forwarded a link to my 13-year-old daughter and told her what I had learned about you.

When I got home from work tonight she showed me two books she borrowed from the library today. She has to do a book report and both books were on the Apollo missions! It is so exciting to see her interest in science and space grow.

You are the kind of role model that can teach her to not limit herself when thinking about her future.

Best of luck! I look forward to watching you launch into space.

Mark

Anonymous said...

Great blog. Good luck, and hopefully we'll meet. I'll be applying next year.

I'm curious about the sources for your pictures, obviously, the ones with you in them are by your camera, but are the others NASA PAO shots that you gather and add comments to?

Damaris Sarria Toepel said...

Tom to answer your question:

Some pictures I take myself, I may be in them or I may not be.

One comment that I frequently get from people is that NASA website is a little difficult when trying to find what you're looking for.

The pictures I don't take, I get from the NASA website: http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/index.cfm

Shuttle Status Reports can be found here: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/news/index.html