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To: GREENLAW4-7 who wrote (65117)	2/2/2003 7:58:25 AM
From: AllansAlias	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 209892

There was no way for the crew to take pictures. There was no mechanical arm on this flight and NASA has stated that there was no way for an EVA to go to the underside of the craft. What they could have done was scrap parts of the mission and make a close fly-by of the space station for such an inspection. I am sure this was discussed. One of the questions I would have is the lack of crew experience: the commander (the real pilot) was only on his 2nd flight and the pilot (the real co-pilot) was on his first. Were they trained for such a fly-by contingency? Anyway, let's say they could do the fly-by in the proper orientation for the inspection. Let us further assume that they discovered that there had some serious damage. What then? It is not clear to me that they had the necessary kit on this flight to dock with the space station. And once again, we have to wonder if the crew was trained in the procedure. If they could not dock, the choices would have been extremely limited: 1) Orbit for weeks until another shuttle could be launched. 2) EVA one at a time to the space station. No doubt, the space station has EVA capability, so they could ferry them over one at a time. This one is tricky and you are also left with a shuttle orbiting very close to the space station, which is not acceptable. Ground controllers would have to evacuate the shuttle to a different orbit. Delivering payloads to space is very dangerous. Expecting some of that payload to return safely is almost as dangerous. Accidents are going to happen and lives will be lost. To me, it is a wonder, and a credit to those involved, that we have seen so few accidents.