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You seem a little mixed up on what's been going on. First, no flights are canceled. There will be likely delays until a few things are looked at and fixed, but nothing has been canceled. The media just likes to sensationalized things with words like "shuttle fleet grounded". There is no regular schedule for shuttles so the words "grounded" are meaningless here. No launch happens without a Flight Readiness Review (FRR) which says all identified problems have been fixed, or accepted as not a safety issue, and everything appears to be ready to go. Even then, they find problems on the launch pad and delay more, and sometimes even bring it back to the VAB. The FRR for the next flight (STS-121) cannot allow it to fly until the tank problem is fixed or identified as a non-safety issue. (Pretty hard to do since it brought down Columbia.)

Second, it is the external tank foam shedding problem that is causing the delay, not the fabric.

Third, shuttle flights have always been delayed until problems have been fixed. This is an experimental vehicle with just over 100 flights. This delay in launch schedule for the next flight(s) is normal but just has higher visibility because it is the same problem that caused the Columbia disaster (foam coming off of tank) and was a main focus of things to be fixed for return-to-flight and it wasn't.

Fourth, it is the Columbia Accident Investigation Report that identifies and recommends that they fix this problem and quit being cavalier about these problems. NASA has signed up to implement the CAIB recommendations.

Fifth, it is exactly that NASA has been cavalier about these problems that the CAIB identified as a cultural problem at NASA. It is good that they are paying close attention to these things. You can't use their past lack of concern as an argument for continued lack of concern.

I hope that clears it up a bit.

How many strictly local projects in their home districts do the Congress Critters add to the budget each year?

EARMARKS
Pressure on NASAs budget has come not only from the White House, but also from the Congress. In recent years there has been an increasing tendency for the Congress to add "earmarks" - congressional additions to the NASA budget request that reflect targeted Members interests. These earmarks come out of already-appropriated funds, reducing the amounts available for the original tasks. For example, as Congress considered NASAs Fiscal Year 2002 appropriation, the NASA Administrator told the House Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the NASA budget that the agency was "extremely concerned regarding the magnitude and number of congressional earmarks" in the House and Senate versions of the NASA appropriations bill. He noted "the total number of House and Senate earmarks ... is approximately 140 separate items, an increase of nearly 50 percent over FY 2001." These earmarks reflected "an increasing fraction of items that circumvent the peer review process, or involve construction or other objectives that have no relation to NASA mission objectives." The potential Fiscal Year 2002 earmarks represented "a net total of $540 million in reductions to ongoing NASA programs to fund this extremely large number of earmarks."

Do you think you are a fucking rocket scientist!?! Most of them are... you are not smarter than the lowest 5% of people at NASA... why don't you people quit thinking you know everything and leave the worrying up to the people who REALLY know what they are talking about.

NASA engineers are smart, but that doesn't mean they, or NASA as a whole, aren't capable of huge errors.

Go read the Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report, especially the bit where it discusses how exactly the institutional arrogance you seem to be endorsing insulated NASA from listening to critics and contributed to the collapse of the safety culture within the manned space program. You'll find it on pages 102-106 of the free pdf of volume 1. Here's one quote, emphasis mine:

In the aftermath of the Challenger accident, these contradictory forces prompted a resistance to externally imposed changes and an attempt to maintain the internal belief that NASA was still a "perfect place," alone in its ability to execute a program of human space flight. Within NASA centers, as Human Space Flight Program managers strove to maintain their view of the organization, they lost their ability to accept criticism, leading them to reject the recommendations of many boards and blue-ribbon panels, the Rogers Commission among them.

External criticism and doubt, rather than spurring NASA to change for the better, instead reinforced the will to "impose the party line vision on the environment, not to reconsider it," according to one authority on organizational behavior. This in turn led to "flawed decision making, self deception, introversion and a diminished curiosity about the world outside the perfect place." The NASA human space flight culture the Board found during its investigation manifested many of these characteristics, in particular a self-confidence about NASA possessing unique knowledge about how to safely launch people into space. As will be discussed later in this chapter, as well as in Chapters 6, 7, and 8, the Board views this cultural resistance as a fundamental impediment to NASA's effective organizational performance.

NASA cannot send a manned shuttle to Hubble and meet the requirements of the CAIB report. In order to meet these requirements they need an automated inspection and repair system. They are just now getting the final process in place for meeting the requirements for return-to-flight of the shuttles to the ISS which has taken more than 2 years. The ISS version is easy compared to the requirements for Hubble. They don't even have solid ideas on how they might meet those requirements yet. We are talking many years and huge development costs in such a system while at the same time getting back to the ISS schedule and planning for the future changes to the program (retiring shuttles, building the Crew Exploration Vehicle, Moon and Mars plan, etc.)

If NASA is going to send the shuttle to Hubble, and it's still a possibility, it will have to violate its commitment to meeting the CAIB report recommendations. It is that simple. I work with NASA and astronauts and this is their exact position on Hubble. The manned mission is still on the table, and two robotic missions are in the planning. Nothing is set in stone. There is a new administrator coming on board too, so things may change.

"For missions to the International Space Station, develop a practicable capability to inspect and effect emergency repairs to the widest possible range of damage to the Thermal Protection System, including both tile and Reinforced Carbon-Carbon, taking advantage of the additional capabilities available when near to or docked at the International Space Station.

For non-Station missions, develop a comprehensive autonomous (independent of Station) inspection and repair capability to cover the widest possible range of damage scenarios."

Now they've just spent 2 years and hundreds of millions just developing the capabilities for inspecting and repairing based on the ISS option. The autonomous option is many years and probably billions of dollars away, and they only have a few years to repair Hubble before it goes down. Add to this that they're not supposed to be schedule-driven anymore by Recommendation R6.2-1:

"Adopt and maintain a Shuttle flight schedule that is consistent with available resources. Although schedule deadlines are an important management tool, those deadlines must be regularly evaluated to ensure that any additional risk incurred to meet the schedule is recognized, understood, and acceptable."

So NASA's in a tight spot here. Don't be schedule driven yet develop all of these capabilities that take years and huge budgets to develop but do it in time to save Hubble. And then they're retiring the shuttle fleet a few years later anyway so all of this effort and cost for the "non-ISS" flights is really just for Hubble. I'm not saying O'Keefe made the right decision, but I hardly think he deserves the trashing he's been getting on this decision, which isn't even final yet. It seems like a very sound decision given the circumstances, but we'll see how the political will finally responds.

"It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs."

Ohh like powerpoint slides?

Ohh like the Nasa department for Space Shuttles

Recommendation One:

Prior to return to flight, NASA should develop and implement a comprehensive inspection plan to determine the structural integrity of all Reinforce Carbon-Carbon (RCC) system components. This inspection plan should take advantage of advanced non-destructive inspection technology.

This recommendation was issued because of the board's finding that current inspection techniques are not adequate to assess structural integrity of RCC, supporting structure, and attaching hardware.

Recommendation Two:

Prior to return to flight, NASA should modify its Memorandum of Agreement with National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) to make on-orbit imaging for each Shuttle flight a standard requirement.

This recommendation was issued because of the board's finding that the full capabilities of the United States Government to image the Shuttle on orbit were not utilized.

Recommendation Three:

Before return to flight, for missions to the International Space Station (ISS,) develop a practicable capability to inspect and effect emergency repairs to the widest possible range of damage to the Thermal Protection System (TPS,) including both tile and Reinforced Carbon Carbon (RCC,) taking advantage of the additional capabilities available while in proximity to and docked at the ISS.

Before return to flight, for non-station missions, develop a comprehensive autonomous (independent of station) inspection and repair capability to cover the widest practicable range of damage scenarios.

An on-orbit TPS inspection should be accomplished early on all missions, using appropriate assets and capabilities.

The ultimate objective should be a fully autonomous capability for all missions, to address the possibility that an ISS mission does not achieve the necessary orbit, fails to dock successfully, or suffers damage during or after undocking.

Recommendation Four:

Upgrade the imaging system to be capable of providing a minimum of three useful views of the Space Shuttle from liftoff to at least Solid Rocket Booster separation, along any expected ascent azimuth. The readiness of these assets should be included in the Launch Commit Criteria for future launches.

Consideration should be given to using mobile assets (ships or aircraft) to provide additional views of the vehicle during ascent.

If they implement everything as recommended there is no need for a rescue plan and I doubt such a plan would actually work, it seems more like a publicity stunt to reassure the masses.

Keynote and Powerpoint make people dumber. I'm too lazy to look up the coresponding Slashdot article.

As information gets passed up an organization hierarchy, from people who do analysis to mid-level managers to high-level leadership, key explanations and supporting information is filtered out. In this context, it is easy to understand how a senior manager might read this PowerPoint slide and not realize that it addresses a life-threatening situation.

At many points during its investigation, the Board was surprised to receive similar presentation slides from NASA officials in place of technical reports. The Board views the endemic use of PowerPoint briefing slides instead of technical papers as an illustration of the problematic methods of technical communication at NASA.

O'Keefe is following the recommendations of the CAIB. Would you have him ignore those recommendations only to lose another shuttle and crew trying to sustain an instrument that should be replaced, not repaired?

Not at all - I wish O'Keefe would actually base his decisions on reviews by qualified personel, such as the CAIB. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board did not recommend against using the shuttle to service Hubble ( large PDF report here). It made return to flight recommendations on what needed/needs to be done to the shuttle before it can be used again. It specifically discusses missions that are not to the ISS, and does not nix them, as you suggest. O'Keefe is quote in some (badly written) articles as basing his cancellation on the CIAB report, but that is not factually true.

Furthermore, O'Keefe is quite happy to have lots of shuttle missions to the ISS, even though the total chances of more astronaut deaths are higher than for a single Hubble servicing mission, and the practical rewards of continuing with the ISS much less than servicing Hubble. My point was to point out that the common assumption (expressed even with the ./ article description) that O'Keefe's decision is really based on astronaut safety is clearly bogus.

In general I agree with you, but just to clarify things a bit...

Science is probably the one thing NASA has done well, largely by letting scientists choose the priorities and directions to take rationally. Hubble is only one part of that science, but its still important, and can still provide valuable results. No one has ever expected Hubble to last for ever. But without servicing it there will be a significant gap before JWST get launched (bearing in mind JWST can not really replace all of the things Hubble can do, although it does other stuff better). If a pre-JWST replacement for Hubble can provide better science bang-for-buck than servicing Hubble then you'll find most scientists will be for it. I like the idea of replacing rather than servicing, but comparing the procs and cons of the various options has yet to be made.

The robotic servicing is the least likely option to succeed (according to multiple studies by experts), and bears the risk of sucking up all-too-scarse science money. Yet its likely O'Keefe will press on with a robotic mission regardless.

And I agree that the ISS (in its present incarnation) has been a great failure - but much of that blame can be laid on congress (who scrapped Bush I's stupid Mars plan but redirected some of the funds into an unwanted, and unrequested, expansion of the ISS plans). The shuttle hasn't been as good as hoped either, but the one thing it did well was servicing Hubble.

I too want a sustainable, cost-effective space program, and the Shuttle and the ISS are neither. But the current presidential Moon-Mars manned space plan is even less workable, and it directly harms the historically effective and efficient space sciences programs. The results and further developments of X-prize commercial programs aren't going achieve the launch capabilities to help science for decades.

Continuing on the political rant... We all want decisions to be made that are realistic, and cost-effective. You need to rely on experts to make those decisions, i.e. not pork-barrel-stuffing politicians. The problem is the recent habit in all the sciences, not just NASA, of ignoring well-defined well-reasoned recommendations, and instead basing decisions purely on political grounds (politics has always played a part to be sure, but this adminstration is taking this to unprecendented levels).

What would really be a great thing would be for NASA to get out of engineering, and just let contracts for delivery of pounds or people to orbit. Let the vendors figure out the details.

Doing so would require Presidential intervention: In the beginning, NASA was a mainly scientific (barring political hoo-ha) endeavor which only became commercialized later in answer to ever present budget concerns. In the '80s, after the Challenger disaster, President Reagan again made NASA a mainly scientific operation when he officially prohibited NASA from taking any commercial contracts.

Interestingly enough, I don't know that the shuttle has ever been considered "operational;" that is, officially out of the R&D phase. See the CAIB report for details.

The way the foam was produced and applied, particularly in the bipod region, also contributed to its variability. Foam consists of two chemical components that must be mixed in an exact ratio and is then sprayed according to strict specifications. Foam is applied to the bipod fitting by hand to make the foam ramp, and this process may be the primary source of foam variability. Board-directed dissection of foam ramps has revealed that defects (voids, pockets, and debris) are likely due to a lack of control of various combinations of parameters in spray-by-hand applications, which is exacerbated by the complexity of the underlying hardware configuration. These defects often occur along ?knit lines,? the boundaries between each layer that are formed by the repeated application of thin layers ? a detail of the spray-by-hand process that contributes to foam variability, suggesting that while foam is sprayed according to approved procedures, these procedures may be questionable if the people who devised them did not have a sufficient understanding of the properties of the foam.

On page 53 it also concludes

The precise reasons why the left bipod foam ramp was lost from the External Tank during STS-107 may never be known. The specific initiating event may likewise remain a mystery. However, it is evident that a combination of variable and pre-existing factors, such as insufficient testing and analysis in the early design stages, resulted in a highly variable and complex foam material, defects induced by an imperfect and variable application, and the results of that imperfect process, as well as severe load, thermal, pressure, vibration, acoustic, and structural launch and ascent conditions.

The news report is wrong when it says the CAIB "left the matter open". All this new work seems to be related to test and certify a new process.

Nor are there any tiles, as more than two fool implies.

The foam is sprayed on, and it adheres directly to the External Tank's aluminum substrate (and itself, of course). Some metallic sections of the tank are coated with epoxy before being sprayed. But the process is slightly different on the bipod structure:

The insulated region where the bipod struts attach to the External Tank is structurally, geometrically, and materially complex. Because of concerns that foam applied over the fittings would not provide enough protection from the high heating of exposed surfaces during ascent, the bipod fittings are coated with ablators. BX-250 foam is sprayed by hand over the fittings (and ablator materials), allowed to dry, and manually shaved into a ramp shape. The foam is visually inspected at the Michoud Assembly Facility and also at the Kennedy Space Center, but no other non-destructive evaluation is performed.
-- excerpt from CAIB report vol. 1, p. 51

You can get all the CAIB reports here.

then all NASA needs to do is sit back and let private companies do the engineering which means that they can send the rest of the ash over to propulsion research.

Pressure on NASAs budget has come not only from the
White House, but also from the Congress. In recent years
there has been an increasing tendency for the Congress
to add "earmarks" congressional additions to the NASA
budget request that reflect targeted Members interests. These
earmarks come out of already-appropriated funds, reducing
the amounts available for the original tasks. For example, as
Congress considered NASAs Fiscal Year 2002 appropriation,
the NASA Administrator told the House Appropriations
subcommittee with jurisdiction over the NASA budget
that the agency was "extremely concerned regarding the
magnitude and number of congressional earmarks" in the
House and Senate versions of the NASA appropriations bill.
He noted "the total number of House and Senate earmarks ...
is approximately 140 separate items, an increase of nearly
50 percent over FY 2001." These earmarks reflected "an
increasing fraction of items that circumvent the peer review
process, or involve construction or other objectives that have
no relation to NASA mission objectives." The potential
Fiscal Year 2002 earmarks represented "a net total of $540
million in reductions to ongoing NASA programs to fund this
extremely large number of earmarks."

Maybe now NASA will stop dilly-dallying around and get some new technology other than the outdated space shuttle. We've really been slacking ever since we stopped going to the moon, and maybe international involvement will help us get back on track.

Maybe now NASA will stop dilly-dallying around and get some new technology other than the outdated space shuttle. We've really been slacking ever since we stopped going to the moon, and maybe international involvement will help us get back on track.

2. Columbia and Challenger happend primarily because of flawed designs. These flaws and problems were well known in both cases. Sloppy analysis and organization were another problem, as well as a series of misunderstandings. That poor managerial decisions were made is only the final step in a series of causes for these accidents. Blaming them purely on "bureaucrats" is ignorant of the facts.

Yes, NASA's got organizational problems. But that's not the whole story.

No, actually they weren't all problems 10 years ago. The eastern landing sites were not closed. There was no flight requirement for the inspection of the thermal protection system. And the safety requirements were not the same.

You seem to be suggesting that if things were done unsafely in the past, they should be done just as unsafely now. Have you even read the CAIB report? It clearly points out that NASA has been operating as if the shuttle is an operational vehicle, not the prototype that it really is. Now that NASA is finally taking safety as seriously as it should, it's getting criticized for it. I'd find it highly amusing if some people weren't so serious about it.

Online at Space.Com

The Online Columbia Loss Faq, compiled through March 2003 much of which might be outdated, but good for lots of small details, and a sense of the history as it happened.

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board Website, due to become inactive on February 1st, 2004 (!)

People might want to download the final report while they can, dated October 2003, although It is also available on the Nasa Website here

But this is a classic lack of communication problem, people voiced there concerns but they where shooshed away because of the "nah that won't happen" syndrom.. lets hope we all learn from this lesson.

The lack of communication is discussed in full detail in the offical report. The main report is in chapter I (hundreds of pages) with supporting details in Chapters II thru IV (at least 1000 pages) The supporting details include the report after the fact on how they determined how much foam struck the wing and where it hit. Surprising how good the initial estimates were.

When I read that document and the supporting ones, I just wanted to wring the NASA managers' necks. They may not have been able to save the astronauts, but they ruined any chances. Definitely PHB's and should have been let go (fired), not transferred.

I spent a few hours pouring over the CAIB report which contains a lot of very clear and sound details about how they found out what went wrong.

It's worth taking a look at, as it gave a lot of insight into how they used the recovered parts to determine exactly what happened. The graphs that show where each tile fell on the ground makes it very clear where the problem started. The sensor timelines also give clues about how the fire spread inside the wing. Internal emails are included to show how the problem was acknowledged but played down, and how many missed opportunities there were to have discovered the problem while still in space.

It's definitely worth downloading and at browsing through if you have any interest at all in the space program.

Do check out the Columbia Accident Investigation Board report at http://www.caib.us/. Or, after February 1st, go to the main NASA site and look for the links to the CAIB report.

Management and political leadership did kill.

What good is going 200 miles up? It's pointless? Been there done that. We need to grow a a pair and get going.

I'm glad that NASA is getting a good kick in the pants. We can't waste another 30 years with crap like a 300 miles in space POS shuttle.

What good is going 200 miles up? It's pointless? Been there done that. We need to grow a a pair and get going.

I'm glad that NASA is getting a good kick in the pants. We can't waste another 30 years with crap like a 300 miles in space POS shuttle.

Each shuttle flight costs about $450 million. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board has also set special requirements for flights that don't allow an ISS "lifeboat" option-- so a special one-time-use tile repair kit would have to be built and certified to comply with the CAIB. And of course, there's the other $40 million in instrumentation development/certification for the servicing mission.

With the focus on retiring the shuttle to permit construction of the Crew Exploration Vehicle, this really doesn't make sense. The James Webb telescope will be up soon enough, and it is ilkely that the life of Hubble can be extended with special 2-gyro + reference star stabilization software (albeit, with slightly degraded image quality / pointing ability).

These are some interesting figures. And, for the most part, they seem to be fairly accurate. However, they don't tell the entire story.

For another view of NASA's funding, one should read the recent CAIB (Columbia Accident Investigation Board) Report. Of specific interest is portions of Chapter 5: From Challenger to Columbia. Read Section 5.3 An Agency Trying To Do Too Much with Too Little. In one of the charts is some very simular figures. But the report goes deeper in analyzing the buying power of that budget as well as some of the politics and ear-marking that limits what can be done with those funds.

These are some interesting figures. And, for the most part, they seem to be fairly accurate. However, they don't tell the entire story.

For another view of NASA's funding, one should read the recent CAIB (Columbia Accident Investigation Board) Report. Of specific interest is portions of Chapter 5: From Challenger to Columbia. Read Section 5.3 An Agency Trying To Do Too Much with Too Little. In one of the charts is some very simular figures. But the report goes deeper in analyzing the buying power of that budget as well as some of the politics and ear-marking that limits what can be done with those funds.

For a concise summary see also here ;-)

The test report is located here. Check out the hole in the panel on page 82.

This leads me to worry that if NASA is deciding what we do next, it will be the same sort of lip service-- just going to the moon for the sake of going to the moon, and not exploring what revolutionary or groundbreaking things that we could do in the process.

On the other hand, this looks like it would involve an increase in NASA's budget. I've heard it charged the problem with NASA's lack of ambition of late is not the leadership, but just that they don't have enough money to do anything more than the bare minimum.

This leads me to worry that if NASA is deciding what we do next, it will be the same sort of lip service-- just going to the moon for the sake of going to the moon, and not exploring what revolutionary or groundbreaking things that we could do in the process.

On the other hand, this looks like it would involve an increase in NASA's budget. I've heard it charged the problem with NASA's lack of ambition of late is not the leadership, but just that they don't have enough money to do anything more than the bare minimum.

Most laser scanners for close scanning (cm to several meters) use triangulation. Wide FOV versions can have ~1 mm precision and cover medium volumes. Narrow FOV versions can be precise to ~0.025-0.1 mm but often can only see at very close range (~10 cm to 1 m) over small volumes. One exception is the autosyncronous scanner from NRC of Canada that can measure on the order of 25 microns (~0.025 mm) over large volumes and a wide FOV, by using a narrow FOV camera that automatically follows the laser spot across a wide FOV. This also makes it "random access" which means it doesn't have to do raster scans (but can) but can trace out any shape you want.

Neptec Design Group has developed one of these for use in space. Right now, Neptec's laser scanner is being included as a required 3D scanner for analyzing the shuttle thermal protective system on orbit (tiles, RCC panels) for return-to-flight, as a result of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board report.

A good review of TOF and triangulation scanners (and structured light / fringe), including commercially available ones, is given in this paper, and here is a good list of some scanners and their type.

It also calls on Congress to actually support the development of a replacement for the shuttle. So, while NASA is trying to implement all the recommendations of the report, it seems Congress hasn't learned a thing.

the choice of dates in not arbitrary

I didn't say they were arbitrary, just inappropriate to answering the question of "How much does Apollo Mode cost?"

Also, I agree it is clear that NASA today is not getting the biggest bang per buck possible -- but this is largely because of the dramatically lower year on year funding, something masked by the 1961-1973 window. This reduced funding meant (the shuttle is an excellent case in point) that high development cost but low operating cost designs had to be abandoned in favor of lower development cost but higher operating cost designs in order to get anything built at all.

The collapse in funding guaranteed inefficiency and failure, in both the hardware and culture of NASA, so it's a little disengenious to ask why NASA can't do Apollo Mode stuff even though its funding today is comparable to the average over the entire 1961-1973 period.

It's like filling a car's tank up at the start of a long journey and then only dribbling in a small amount of fuel every 50 miles or so. Even though the overall average fillup for the first and second halves of the journey is very similar (the big fillup at the start gets spread out over all the small fillups in the first half of the journey), you shouldn't be surprised that at the end of your, say 1,000 mile, journey you're out of gas, whereas at the 500 mile mark you still had a healthy reservoir. You could conclude that (a) your fuel efficiency had dropped or (b) including large fueling peaks in your averaging window can be misleading.

If you're still uncertain, look at the funding graph on page 102 of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board's Report. I think anyone would agree that after looking at that graph that using averages is an inappropriate tool to compare Apollo-Mode funding to Shuttle-Mode funding.

But yes, having at least two types of vehicles would be ideal: one for heavy cargo lifting and the other for crew transportation. In fact, I think that was the original idea. The shuttle was a kludge by NASA to meet political/economic/technical constraints from the Nixon administration and the military. For more detail check out Chapter 1 of the CAIB report, or one of its references on the subject.

Ok, I know I'm not the only person, but still.... Anyway, the report talks about what if... in section 6.4. It's the most interesting (aside from the board's version of the stuff in this article) section of the report. In this section, the options Columbia would have had had the managers (Ms. Ham, specifically) agreed to image the orbiter while on-orbit are discussed. There were two options for saving the crew, not zero.

1. Patch the hole. They considered an emergency spacewalk to "McGuyver" the wing's leading edge. The patch, as such, would require the astronaut to throw all of the titanium wrenches, wristwatches, science experiments, etc, into the hole. Interestingly, the engineers at NASA didn't think this was absurd, just that we lack data to determine if it is viable. So, it was kind of considered a "last-resort" option.
2. Send Atlantis on a rescue mission. I know a lot of people on this website are of the opinion that "There wasn't anything we could have sent Atlantis on a rescue mission, unless we wanted to throw away two orbiters." However, the board found that the consumables (oxygen, CO2 scrubbers, etc) on Columbia would have been sufficient to sustain the crew until Feb. 15. Atlantis was being processed for launch Mar. 1 (41 days later), and the board found that, working 24 hours a day, Atlantis could be readied for launch Feb. 10, with no testing skipped. Once Atlantis had rendezvoused with Columbia, the crew could be transfered with ropes. Assuming the crew were safely across, the shuttle could be ditched in the ocean, or boosted to a higher orbit for later salvage.

Really, check out the CAIB report. It's an interesting read, and while it's long and occasionally dry and technical, you can skip around, and only read the parts that interest you. If you're an American citizen, our government paid $300,000,000 to recover debris and study the accident, so you owe it to yourself (you tax-payer, you) to read the report.

Especially read about the "safty-culture" in NASA. This article does a good job of getting the general idea across, but the CAIB report goes into much more detail. The astronauts could have, should have, and were almost saved.

PS: It wasn't in the article but it's in the CAIB report that an employee at NASA actually called the DOD and got them working on a request for imagery, only to have Ms. Ham call and rescind the order 90 minutes later.

Did you read the Investigation report?

Hindsight is 20/20, but that doesn't mean that we should wear blinders when looking towards the future!

The Management team _actively_ canceled requests for information pertaining to the impact. See page 153 of the PDF.

The management team also didn't follow their own procedures, they didn't meet every day (they were supposed to).

I was impressed by the engineers at Boeing (I think that was the company) who elected to research the impact and footage of it over the weekend even when management told them not to.

Read the report. Section 6.3 (DECISION-MAKING DURING THE FLIGHT OF STS-107) is extremely interesting and points out Eight seperate missed opportunities to find out more information about the problem.

There were also some engineering related issues - the engineers using test software that wasn't designed to analize an impact nearly that large, and other issues - but it really comes down to a lack of the management team accepting that there could be a real, out-of-family problem on the mission.

That is NOT one of the panels recommendations!
Read them yourselves

CAIB Board Recommendation

they aren't fixing any of the actual problems

Thank you Dr. Nasa. At least you made your ignorance known first thing. The CAIB report should be out next month - that's what will address the constraints to flight.

Steps are currently being taken to correct the ET foam issue, the weld on the SRB bolts have too low of a factor of safety so a fix will be incorporated there, and procedures are being generated and analyzed for on-orbit TPS inspections. I'm sure there will be other recommendations - more technical stuff and maybe Nasa cultural type stuff (civil servants vs. contractors w/r/t program duties).

Please, don't pass off your ASSumptions as fact. Sorry for the rant, but it rubbed me the wrong way.

If you're looking for some of the images, they're inside a presentation right here.

The videos are here (where the panel visibly ripples after the impact) and here.

The accompanying slide presentation has the details: the 1.7 pound foam block was fired at 531 mph and, where it struck a T-seal between two panels, displaced them and caused a 4/10 inch gap. This fake wing was made of fiberglass, but given the results, a test with actual shuttle wing material from the Space Shuttle Discovery is planned for today.

Here are some of the headlines from news.google.com:
Shuttle Wing Under Gun
Investigator Amazed by Shuttle Foam Force
Foam theory faces pivotal test
Tests Show Foam Causing Wing of Shuttle to Deform
Foam chunk was shuttle's undoing, tests indicate

It has to be said: mine is Steven Wallace.

Or, if they had known about the situation earlier (inspection via telescope) they could have come up with something.

How much do you not know about optics? That argument is a fairly bad joke, in my view.

Not to dredge up an old post, but apparently someone on the CAIB thinks we can and should do it.

"Recommendation Two: Prior to return to flight, NASA should modify its Memorandum of Agreement with National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) to make on-orbit imaging for each Shuttle flight a standard requirement.

This recommendation was issued because of the board's finding that the full capabilities of the United States Government to image the Shuttle on orbit were not utilized."