WEBVTT

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WAYNE HALE: Well, I just spent about an hour with the imagery team, going through what we've seen so far, and I,

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I came back with what I think is a really good report for you, which is, I think the tank performed very, very well, indeed.

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Very pleased, as opposed to where we were last year. We saw nothing that gives us any kind of

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concern about the health of the crew or the vehicle, or any pause to think that we wouldn't be safe to fly the next tank.

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You know, we put the tank under a microscope this time. We have lots and lots of data coming in and imagery coming in.

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As you know, we've been very concerned about foam coming off the tank. We've worked very hard to

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eliminate insofar as possible the major losses of foam off the tank. The tank performed very well this time.

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Watching the tank as it tumbles over that beautiful blue ocean and clouds below --

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I mean, that's a work of art to many of us. So I think that was great.

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You just saw some of the crew handheld video that's coming down. They showed a, a large piece of ice. You know, it's incredible to me,

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but I've seen it so I know it's true, that the space shuttle main engines that burn hydrogen and oxygen at 6,000 degrees

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on the inside can form frost on the outside because we circulate liquid hydrogen to cool the outside of the nozzle.

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And we have seen this ice come off several times in previous flights. The first time I saw it,

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and, and we saw it again most recently on the last flight, last July, you look at those photographs,

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you would think that's got to be fabric. That's what the crew clearly thought. It is clearly ice.

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If you watch that video a little while, you can see it breaking up as it sublimated into water vapor. So that is not an issue.

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