STS-27 Post-Landing Undertemp Video

[@phoenixshade3]

Just the second flight after the loss of Challenger, we nearly had a Columbia-style loss of Atlantis. Even this soon after the scathing criticism NASA management faced for minimizing safety-of-flight problems as "turnaround" issues, it was still "business as usual." Instead of taking this as an ominous warning of things to come, they looked at this close call as a vindication of the "well, it hasn't failed _yet"_ approach and quickly put it in the rear-view mirror. Hoot Gibson was so convinced that they were going to die on reentry that he had prepared a few select words that he intended to share with mission control if the roll trims started to exceed 1/2 degree. Amazing that so much attention is put on a potential cracked heat exchanger, when such a loss-of-vehicle danger was so glaringly evident...

[@Zoomer30]

Just so everyone know, the bottom of the Shuttle is supposed to be black. Not black with white gouges. This is the flight that got hit by ablative cork from the right hand SRB nose cone. They were lucky to make it back. Look at still shots of Atlantis landing on this flight. The damage is shocking. And so is how Mission Control blew off the crews concern about the damage they could see from the arm cams.

[@RMRobin7373msn]

That was covered by STS27 Commander. He was seeing the real, unaltered pictures. Ground was seeing from a classified channel that only saw blurry, B&W images. Those interviews with Commander "Hoot" Gibson are available for anyone to watch. kzbin.info/www/bejne/eKTanKmXdsakia8

[@ryanhell921]

Um. I'm still waiting for the interviews of the heat shield experts, designers and applicators of the heat shield adhesives that caused the biggest problems of the program

[@penguin44ca]

Oh man 6 years later and that music is even worse! Why God why

[@myaberger7563]

George Diller did not do STS 128 launch

[@Zoomer30]

25:15 NASA HQ types finding out how close they came to losing Atlantis (it took a hit from SRB insulation.)

[@penguin44ca]

Great to see the behind the scenes. The music wasn't needed

[@penguin44ca]

This flight had it bad. Hit with debris and have 700 tiles broken plus a full tile gone and burning. If the lband wasn't mounted there it would have burned