Is NASA likely to adopt spacewalks as a standard repair procedure?
I would think so. Keep in mind, though, that the “repair” that was done on this flight was pretty minor, compared to what might have to be done in the future. Steve Robinson had to be extremely careful when he pulled out the two gap fillers, to avoid causing damage to the bottom of the orbiter. But when you talk about actually repairing tiles in space, that’s getting pretty “sporty,” as one of the Apollo astronauts used to say. Shuttle managers are still trying to work out the techniques for doing that — in fact, they tested those methods during Discovery’s flight. It’s unclear whether those techniques would actually work well enough to protect the orbiter during re-entry. But spacewalks are part of the arsenal, so to speak, that is available to solve problems on shuttle flights. And if that were the only way to handle a problem, I’m sure NASA would try to use it. What does this mission suggest about the challenges still facing the shuttle program? Mostly, it confirms the fact that, at
