VAB suffers some damage -- threat to contents

From: Jim Oberg (jameseoberg_at_houston.rr.com)
Date: 09/06/04 

Date: Mon, 06 Sep 2004 18:19:46 GMT

NASA:

"The VAB has the most visible damage. It can be seen on the South and East
walls. There are 1,000 panels that have lifted off of the building. There
are also areas of insulation and subpanels missing. Each panel is 4x10 feet
in size. This means that there is as much as 40,000 ft2 more or less open to
the elements on the VAB. The good news is that not much critical hardware
was in the VAB. There are two ETs - and two aft SRB skirts in there but they
are protected from the elements. The VAB was being used for storage of cars
and trucks. We now need to see what we can do to protect VAB from further
damage. We have not inspected the VAB roof yet.

"I am conerned about Ivan and 40,000 ft2 of exposed space. People are not
sure what they can do with only 5 day's notice what they can do."

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