Can someone please explain to me about the wing roughness of the Columbia?
I have seen a roughness of 0.1-0.2 inches is being talked about.
Is this a waviness in the wing surface, or what?
The metal wing itself is presumably accurate and made according to drawings to within a few thousandths of an inch, so was not rough (in the sense of deviating from the intended contour) at all.
The tiles are computer designed and cut (is this right?) so that they are also presumably accurate in shape and thickness, and also made according to drawings to within a few thousandths of an inch.
I take it that the tiles themselves are not rough, and that the problem is not in the tiles themselves, since all Shuttles have tiles but only Columbia has been said to suffer from excessive wing roughness.
So how does roughness arise, what does it consist of, and what causes it?
Is it something which could have been worked on during one of Columbia’s three 12 mth long re-fits at Palmdale?
Did these re-fits include complete re-tiling?
