Published: June 17, 2009 11:54 pm         

Wolf’s space shot on hold until July

TERRE HAUTE — For the second time in less than a week, a potentially dangerous hydrogen gas leak early Wednesday forced NASA to delay shuttle Endeavour’s launch to the international space station, this time until July at the earliest.

And despite the disappointment, retired Lt. Col. John Egan of Riley said he and others had a good time visiting with astronaut Dave Wolf, a former flight surgeon at the Indiana Air National Guard in Terre Haute.

“There were quite a few of us from Terre Haute and several from Indianapolis, and a bunch from all over the country, just to see Dave,” Egan said Wednesday evening.

He and others’ trip to Florida began last Tuesday and ended Monday evening when they returned home following an earlier delay, he said. More than 350 people attended a party in his honor near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

“Dave’s our boy,” Egan said. “He’s a local and that’s great.

Delaying until July is expected to push back the next few shuttle flights.

According to Associated Press reports, NASA is up against a 2010 deadline for carrying out its final eight shuttle flights, all of them trips to the space station. The White House wants the three remaining shuttles retired and the space station completed by the end of next year.

Egan said after the last eight flights, the shuttle program will be terminated.

But in the meantime, those in attendance got to tour the NASA facilities and visit the launch pad, something few get the chance to do.

“That was quite an interesting operation,” Egan said.

Once up in space, Wolf will conduct spacewalks, moving equipment weighing nearly half a ton around in zero gravity.

“Weight doesn’t mean anything but mass does,” he said, explaining that items such as 880-plus-pound batteries have to be fitted against extremely fragile equipment, and the pushing and pulling without gravity to slow the object down makes for “a very delicate mission.”

The slightest crack in equipment could require billions to repair, he noted. “A lot of this has never been tried before. It’s all new.”

Wolf earned an engineering degree from Purdue University in 1978 and a medical degree from Indiana University in 1982. At one point, he lived on the Russian Mir space station for 128 days.

Launch officials waited almost an hour Wednesday after the leak appeared during fueling, trying to fix it through remote commands, before calling off the predawn launch.

The leak occurred in the same place as one that cropped up Saturday, in the hydrogen gas vent line that hooks up to the external fuel tank. A similar problem stalled a shuttle flight three months ago.

“We’re going to step back and figure out what the problem is and go fix it,” said deputy space shuttle program manager LeRoy Cain. “And then we’ll fly as soon as we’re ready to safely go do that.”

When Endeavour finally flies, it will be one of the longer international space station visits — nearly two weeks docked at the orbiting outpost — and include five spacewalks.

Once the shuttle pulls up at the space station, there will be 13 people together in space for the first time ever.

The two launch scrubs cost NASA at least $1 million, primarily in fuel costs.

According to AP reports, the delays could not have come at a worse time. An independent committee that will review the space agency’s plans to build a successor to the shuttle and return astronauts to the moon by 2020 holds its first public meeting Wednesday in Washington.

In the meantime, Wolf and others will repeat process and wait.

“Everybody was ready,” Egan said.



Brian Boyce can be reached at 812-231-4253 or brian.boyce@tribstar.com.

Tribune-Star reporter Lisa Trigg contributed to this report, as did the Associated Press.

     

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