Environmental Damage Vs. Shuttle Damage

From a Reuters story yesterday.

Commander Eileen Collins said astronauts on shuttle Discovery had seen widespread environmental destruction on Earth and warned on Thursday that greater care was needed to protect natural resources.

Her comments came as NASA pondered whether to send astronauts out on an extra spacewalk to repair additional heat-protection damage on the first shuttle mission since the 2003 Columbia disaster.

[...]

"Sometimes you can see how there is erosion, and you can see how there is deforestation. It's very widespread in some parts of the world," Collins said in a conversation from space with Japanese officials in Tokyo, including Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

"We would like to see, from the astronauts' point of view, people take good care of the Earth and replace the resources that have been used," said Collins, who was standing with Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi in front of a Japanese flag and holding a colorful fan.

Collins, flying her fourth shuttle mission, said the view from space made clear that Earth's atmosphere must be protected, too.

"The atmosphere almost looks like an eggshell on an egg, it's so very thin," she said. "We know that we don't have much air, we need to protect what we have."

I wonder if she's aware of the controversy that environmental concerns about using foam made with chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) caused NASA to change the foam, which may have led to the disaster with Columbia.  I initially saw a report of this possibility over at The Jawa Report.

From Richard Bennett's Mossback Culture (February 2, 2003):

So concerns about the effects of freon on the ozone layer lead directly to the crash of the Shuttle, apparently. You'd think NASA would be able to get some kind of a waiver on this stuff.

Bennett quotes from a Mercury News article:

As recently as last September, a retired engineering manager for Lockheed Martin, the contractor that assembles the tanks, told a conference in New Orleans that developing a new foam to meet environmental standards had "been much more difficult than anticipated."

The retired Lockheed engineer, who helped design the thermal protection system, said the switch from a foam based on Freon — also known as CFC-11 — has "resulted in unanticipated program impacts, such as foam loss during flight."

There's lots of good reading in the comments over at Rusty's place.  Let's hope that the astronauts all get back safely.  Perhaps Commander Collins needs to realize that decisions, like the one to eliminate freon in producing the foam, can have devastating and fatal consequences.

And Rusty, welcome back from vacation.

8/6/05 1220: COTT XXIII at Wizbang