Foam Penetrated Heat Shield All the Way to Endeavour's Belly: Worst Case Scenario Playing Out Before Our Eyes

The news from orbit isn't looking good. The space shuttle Endeavour's heat shield has been cracked all the way through to the shuttle's felt underbelly from where a piece of foam hit it during last week's take-off from Cape Canaveral.

The astronauts may have to use untested repair techniques to try and repair the damage before they attempt to re-enter Earth's atmosphere.

A 2005 New York Times story also reported that shuttles have been hit 15,000 times by debris and posted a schematic of where the hits were on the shuttles over the years. Here's what it looks like:

Hopefully NASA's plans to deal with something as major as this will work. The last thing NASA needs is is to launch another shuttle on a rescue mission, knowing that the rescue shuttle may be damaged during take-off as well.

It would be fascinating to see the tests that NASA is conducting to determine if the heat shield will work now that it's been compromised. Hopefully the news is good and they'll be able to bring the crew and shuttle home safely, with minimal risk to everyone up there. No one wants to mourn the loss of another shuttle crew.

Once they're back on Earth safely, NASA needs to look at whether it's worth keeping the shuttle program going for another three years, or if they should pull the plug and divert their resources into producing the next generation space vehicle. I'd rather see them do the latter.