A busted fuel gauge causes problems when you’re riding down the road, especially when you thought you had a half-a-tank. When you run out, you grab your gas can and start walking. That’s a little trickier when you’re just outside the atmosphere, at least that’s what NASA thinks when it comes to the Discovery.
Well, a busted fuel gauge is exactly what the problem is. Discovery has four of the little buggers and one of them, for some odd reason, elected not to switch on. That means there’s a slim chance they could get a half-a-tank reading and be running on empty. Don’t run the shuttle tanks on empty. They don’t like it when they run on empty.
What happens is when the fuel supplies get to a particular low point, the fuel cut-off sensors tell the engines to power down to conserve the fuel and while there are four sensors designed into the thing, one going down during the pre-launch phase means things go on hold for the time being.
“We are going forward on a day by day basis,” Space Shuttle Program Deputy Manager Wayne Hale explained during a press conference late Friday. “As soon as we fix the problem, we will be four days from launch. What is that date going to be? We don’t know.”
NASA plans on working through the weekend with an absolute best-case scenario with a possible launch on Monday. According to John Murgatore, a Shuttle Systems and Engineering and Integration manager, they’ve got twelve teems of engineers across the country banging their heads together to troubleshoot this problem. Unfortunately, the “giggle the wires” or the BFH (if you don’t know the reference, email me and I’ll tell you) technique of mechanics and engineering aren’t working.
At this point, the shuttle folks still think they’ve got a legitimate shot to get this thing in the sky before the July window closes on July 31st for an optimum daylight launch. This also means though that the problem will need to be fixable from the launch pad. If they have to wheel back to the garage, then it’ll be September before she head up. The shuttle crew will hang out at Kennedy Space Center through the weekend.
This is just one more annoying delay for NASA in attempting to get the Space Shuttle Discovery back in the sky. After the horrifying incineration of the Space Shuttle Columbia over Texas back in the winter of 2003, NASA strove to improve shuttle safety and to change the culture at NASA to prevent problems from happening again.
John Stith is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.
