Wayne Hale Flight Quotations

So we're going to try to keep it in as near flight ready condition as we can without putting it through an OMDP so we can use those parts. Quite frankly, people are already calling us and asking us can they display one of our orbiters in their museum after we're done with it. I'm not giving anybody anything until we're all agreed the station is complete and the shuttle's job is done. In the sense that we're talking about mothballing, I'm not sure that's the term I'd use.

Any time you have pieces come off your craft in flight it's a really bad day.

In the long run, we have decided we would like to remove this fairly large piece of foam, just eliminate the hazard that it might cause. We think we have a very strong case to be ready to take that ramp off by the third flight tank. Some folks believe we can accelerate that and potentially even remove it for the STS-121 tank.

The gap fillers, that's a product of the fact that we can see more and do a better job of evaluating. That's probably something that's happened in flight before, but this is the first time we've known about it and could take remedial action.