Official News - page 7

REAL LIFE NEWS: BIRD DROPPINGS HOLD SHUTTLE TOGETHER

The space shuttle Discovery finally took off on Tuesday, in between the Florida storms, and although it shed a few bits of that dratted foam during the launch, it apparently wasn't anything to worry about. But something else has been spotted on the edge of the right wing that is quite unexpected. There are some white splodges, that NASA officials said appeared to be bird droppings. What's more those same splodges were visible on the identical part of the shuttle about three weeks ago when Discovery was still sitting on the launch pad.

That means the bird droppings have withstood the Florida thunderstorms, a Fourth of July launch during which 300,000 tons of water is sprayed at the shuttle's main engines, and a burst upwards through the Earth's atmosphere, where Discovery went from zero to 17,500 mpg in just under 9 minutes. And after all that, the bird droppings are still there - at least, most of them are. Maybe the droppings held the shuttle together and stopped more foam from dropping off?

Officials think that the remaining droppings will burn up during landing, when the shuttles edges get as hot as 3,000 degrees Farhenheit - we will have to wait and see just how indestructible the bird poop is!

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