[oasis-members] A question: How could this have been prevented?

[DRh9811850 at aol.com]

Once again, a shuttle launch has been delayed due to storm damage.
Space Shuttle Damaged by Hail, Launch Delayed

My question is this:  Since wild weather and the Florida coast are closely 
connected, isn't there some way that they can do better to protect launch 
vehicles? 

It takes a heap of time (at least 8 hours) to roll the shuttle stack out to 
the pad, and it occurs to me that *all* the vehicles launched from the Cape and 
elsewhere need to consider this possibility. So why don't they? 

Does anyone have any ideas how future launch vehicles could be more hardy 
against this kind of damage? Portable kevlar slipcovers sound a tad expensive, 
but so are launch vehicles... ;-)

Diane Rhodes


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