Comment by WalterBright
1 day ago
Was a hole actually punched in the wing, or was it just the tiles that were knocked off (and then the heat melted the leading edge of the wing)?
1 day ago
Was a hole actually punched in the wing, or was it just the tiles that were knocked off (and then the heat melted the leading edge of the wing)?
It was a hole punched in the reinforced carbon-carbon panel that made up the leading edge of the wing.
They didn’t use tiles on highly curved parts of the Shuttle, like the nose and the wing leading edges. Those areas were structural heat shields, so not tiles at all.
Thanks for the information!