Wayne Hale
Wayne Hale
N. Wayne Hale Jr.is a former NASA engineer. Previously a flight director and space shuttle program manager, Hale served as NASA's Deputy Associate Administrator for Strategic Partnerships prior to his retirement on July 31, 2010...
confident flights launch sure three until
We will not launch until we are sure we can do it safely. But if we launch by July, we are confident we can still get three flights up this year.
affects depend flights happens next
It does depend on what happens with those flights because when we get back from a mission, we have to see if there's anything that affects the next flight.
agreed anybody asking calling complete condition display flight giving job museum near people putting quite ready station sure talking term until
So we're going to try to keep it in as near flight ready condition as we can without putting it through an OMDP so we can use those parts. Quite frankly, people are already calling us and asking us can they display one of our orbiters in their museum after we're done with it. I'm not giving anybody anything until we're all agreed the station is complete and the shuttle's job is done. In the sense that we're talking about mothballing, I'm not sure that's the term I'd use.
accomplish assemble clearly flights number space station
Clearly you can't have many more big, long stand-downs and accomplish the number of flights that it's going to take to assemble the International Space Station by that date.
bad craft flight pieces time
Any time you have pieces come off your craft in flight it's a really bad day.
flights fly optimistic remain three time
I remain optimistic that if we fly by this summer, we will be able to get three flights off. But time will tell. This is not like the railroad.
accelerate believe case decided eliminate fairly flight folks hazard large might piece ramp ready remove strong third
In the long run, we have decided we would like to remove this fairly large piece of foam, just eliminate the hazard that it might cause. We think we have a very strong case to be ready to take that ramp off by the third flight tank. Some folks believe we can accelerate that and potentially even remove it for the STS-121 tank.
fact flight gap happened job known product time
The gap fillers, that's a product of the fact that we can see more and do a better job of evaluating. That's probably something that's happened in flight before, but this is the first time we've known about it and could take remedial action.
hardware paying playing talking
We were playing the odds. The hardware was talking to us, and we were not paying attention.
change fly foremost prudent wish worked
We wish it had worked out differently, but it's first and foremost that we fly safely. It was prudent to change these sensors out.
We are under no thought of delaying launch.
believe pieces tank
Foam will still come off the tank after we have done all of these mitigation efforts. We believe the pieces that come off will be small.
call fact perhaps pieces small solid strike
Perhaps some of the small pieces did in fact strike the orbiter but we don't have what I'll call solid evidence.
call fact perhaps pieces small solid strike
Perhaps some of the small pieces did in fact strike the orbiter, but we don't have what I'll call solid evidence.