
Discovery's Teardrop - runlevel1
http://www.jacook.name/discovery/discoverysteardrop.html
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TimFogarty
This was a beautiful read. I too feel an emotional connection to these great
machines and the fantastic people who design, build, and pilot them. To me,
our missions into space perfectly captures everything to be admired in
Humankind. It represents our inexorable daring in the face of great adversity,
it showcases our insatiable curiosity, and, since the the end of the Cold War,
it has united people across the globe in the greatest adventure upon which we
have ever embarked as a species.

From the ground the moon and the planets seem so far away, so ethereal. Yet
just knowing that we have sent people and probes to touch them underlines how
obtainable the impossible can be with grit and science, _per ardua ad astra_.
It gives me hope.

I wish that the spirit of international cooperation that has grown around this
endeavour will endure over the coming decades and beyond.

~~~
arel
Beautiful read of a comment too. I agree entirely and perhaps the mission to
Mars will give humanity that hope and connection again.

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dewey
I'm always surprised on how uneven and hacked together the surface of these
shuttles look. I'm pretty sure there's a solid reason for keeping it that way,
one would just think it's easier to spot issues on the surface if it's more
consistent like the surface of a plane.

~~~
sz4kerto
We are all used to the smooth and refined surfaces, assembly, PCBs, etc. of
consumer products. Things like the Discovery are unique, there is no real
manufacturing process built around them. A passenger plane looks much less
'hacked together', but it's still a bit hacked compared to a Macbook Pro. This
is because of the difference in the numbers: 1 vs 1000 vs 1000000 pieces.

Also, this is constantly repaired, updated, etc., not just thrown away and
replaced by another one.

~~~
VLM
The number on the surface of a new tile is more or less the filename of a CNC
gcode program that can create a new tile to a precision quite a bit higher
than you can see visually... You can read a tangentially related discussion of
this here.

[http://www.collectspace.com/ubb/Forum14/HTML/000534.html](http://www.collectspace.com/ubb/Forum14/HTML/000534.html)

There's at least 20K HSRI "model numbers" and over the years probably many
more as revisions were made, they made lots of Q+A test pieces and there were
many revisions and lots of repairs and there's a lot more than just black HRSI
tiles, I'd estimate somewhere in the realm of "way more than 10M tiles" were
made over the years. The hotter they get the smaller and thicker they have to
be, something about differential thermal expansion stresses or something.

The TPS as a whole was quite a technological accomplishment.

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joezydeco
Nice. Now I want a font geek to look into why Discovery's name is done is a
nice Helvetica-like typeface but the final "y" has that odd kink at the end of
it.

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arrrg
That’s just perspective and topology playing tricks on you.

It’s just extremely boring Helvetica. Here’s the shuttle from another
perspective (with “Discovery” in Helvetica Bold added for reference):
[http://i.imgur.com/kRxj2vj.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/kRxj2vj.jpg)

~~~
vinceguidry
Here's another even closer pic.

[http://darkroom.baltimoresun.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/04/...](http://darkroom.baltimoresun.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/04/KRT-US-NEWS-SCI-SHUTTLE-10-ABA.jpg)

That is definitely not Helvetica. The dead giveaway is the 'e', the crossbar
is too high. If my eyes aren't fooling me, the terminators on the 'c' aren't
parallel either. If that's not enough, the 'r's terminal is too long.

~~~
arrrg
Yeah, your right, it imitates Helvetica but doesn’t seem to be quite it. I
wonder why. Maybe there is some mundane explanation, though, since there must
be hundreds of Helvetica clones out there.

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ender7
As an aside, I would highly recommend making a trip out to see Discovery if
you are ever in the DC area (the Udvar Hazy Center is just a few minutes'
drive from Dulles airport). They let you get remarkably close to the shuttle
(close enough to touch, although you shouldn't do so). Also, they chose not to
clean her up very much when they installed her (as is somewhat evident in the
linked photos). As a result she retains all of her scars from usage and re-
entry, which I think makes her feel both much more real and fantastical.

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notfoss
Fascinating read. Too bad that the conclusion is still a hypothesis.

Also, this is the first time that I have taken a close look at the surface of
the shuttle, and as @dewey noted, I too found it to be very uneven and blocky.
From a distance, they look reasonably smooth.

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redbearded
My grandfather helped design the tiles used on the space shuttle. Every time I
see a picture of one of the shuttles it brings back good memories of him.

