Ah Houston?...we have a BIG PROBLEM!

Is it just me or is travel on the space shuttle loosing it's appeal. I really believe it is time to retire those cigar tubes on steroids. With all the O rings, and broken tiles, bad foam jobs etc. I wouldn't be caught dead riding around in that old thing.

Even as the shuttle Endeavour lifted off into orbit Wednesday evening, several pieces of debris fell off the external fuel tank, and at least one hit the orbiter. Astronauts in space and engineers on the ground will spend the next few days examining and analyzing the damage to see if it might pose a danger to the shuttle on re-entry.

The launching had been delayed five times by hydrogen leaks, schedule conflicts, lightning strikes and rain. That was one short of NASA's record for the number of delays. Two previous missions, in 1986 and 1995, were delayed six times before launching on the seventh try. “Persistence pays off,” Peter Nickolenko, the launching director, said to crew members a few minutes before launching. “Good luck and Godspeed.” Or...good luck everyone, you're gonna need it!

A camera on the external tank captured about a dozen pieces of debris falling off the external tank. At least one, coming off about 1 minute 46 seconds after liftoff, hit the orbiter, leaving three marks on the heat-resistant tiles on the underside.

“We don’t consider those an issue for us,” William H. Gerstenmaier, the associate administrator for space operations, said. Maybe not for him....he's not in the tin can!! “The issues will be in the back of the vehicle.” O.k. make sure you ride upfront another words....yikes!


Now every woman's nightmare - The bathroom lines at the already crowded space shuttle and space station complex got a lot longer Sunday because of a flooded toilet. I don't even want to imagine what that looks like in a weightless atmosphere.


One of two commodes aboard the international space station malfunctioned, right in the middle of complicated robotic work being conducted by the two crews. The pump separator apparently flooded. Mission Control advised the astronauts to hang an "out of service" sign on the toilet until it could be fixed. In the meantime, the six space station residents had to get in line to use their one good toilet. And Endeavour's seven astronauts were restricted to the shuttle bathroom. There have never been so many people -- 13 -- together in space. The toilet repair work fell to Belgian Frank De Winne, who had to don goggles, gloves and a mask. O.K.....YUK.


Flight director Brian Smith declined to speculate whether overuse caused the toilet trouble. "We don't yet know the extent of the problem," Smith told reporters. "It may turn out to be of no consequence at all. It could turn out to be significant. It's too early to tell right now."

Easy for him to say, he's down on earth with approximately 5 trillion john's to choose from.

How can you tell that these things were designed by men. If women had any say in the matter, there would be one men's toilet - consisting of one stall and some sort of "sucky kind of urinal thingy" -or maybe a hose of some type, and 6 stalls for the women with dim lighting, potpourri, candles and lots of soft tissue.

NASA said there is no urgency to the bathroom situation, at least for now. But he said if the toilet remains out of action for several days, "then we'll readdress the situation and see what we have to do." Typical male attitude. What man ever wants to work on the bathroom and we women really want it done! Two bathrooms ultimately are needed for a full station crew of six. Smith said he did not know how long six occupants could rely on a single toilet. Both the shuttle and station are equipped with other ways for the astronauts to relieve themselves, Smith said, including Apollo-era urine collection bags. O.K.....enough! Getting bad mental images here.

Time to go back to the drawing board and re-group thinks me....never EVER - saw these problems afflicting Captain Kathryn Janeway. She's got her own on-suite. Call me when I can look that good in space.




Til later