Slashdot Mirror
Updated Information On Columbia Shuttle Tragedy
Thanks to all the readers who have sent links related to today's shuttle disaster. An Associated Press story carried on Salon says that an independent board (with members from the Air Force, Navy, Transportation Department and other federal agencies) has been appointed to investigate the disaster. CNN is carrying official statement from President Bush. Rediff.com has an article on the life of Indian astronaut Kalpana Chawla. borisonanovitch points to "more info on the science aboard Columbia and links to other NASA research." fabel reminds us "Most of the media is focusing on the slight damage that ocurred at takeoff (that NASA discounted at the time) but STS-107 was *delayed* for 6 months (original launch date 19 Jul 2003) Update: 02/01 23:51 GMT by T : [Note, should read "2002."] because of
cracks in the propellant feed lines to the 3 main engines. A defect that could have caused catastrophic failure. Did the fix work or not?"
I'm glad Slashdot did a follow up on this issue as it is the MAIN news topic worldwide today.
My condolences go out to the victim's families.
May the rest in peace.
NASA probably has a good idea whaat happened, but it's pretty safe to assume that they won't speculate until they know for sure.
Wouldn't they have been vaporized in the atmosphere at that speed ?
Independent board to probe space shuttle
... There has never been enough money to do all the things we want to do in space. But that was true before this disaster and will be true after this disaster."
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By MATT KELLEY
Feb. 1, 2003 | WASHINGTON (AP) --
The government appointed an independent board Saturday to investigate the space shuttle Columbia disaster.
Experts from the Air Force and Navy -- which had five of the seven crew members -- will join officials from the Transportation Department and other federal agencies on the review panel, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said.
The space agency also will conduct its own investigation into the disaster, O'Keefe said at a news conference from Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Both investigations will review all the information NASA collected as the Columbia began its
descent for landing, then started breaking up more than 200,000 feet over Texas.
That information would include transmissions from the crew, as well as records from the shuttle's sensors, analysis of the debris and data from military, government and commercial satellites.
Military satellites with infrared detectors saw several flashes as Columbia broke apart, according to a defense official who spoke only on condition of anonymity. It was unclear whether those "spikes"of heat indicated an explosion, the burning of pieces of debris re- entering the atmosphere or something else.
O'Keefe and other senior administration officials said there was no indication that any kind of attack from the ground caused the disaster.
FBI spokeswoman Angela Bell also said there was no indication of terrorism and that the FBI would have a minor role in the investigation, mainly helping collect evidence.
The independent investigation - similar to one after the 1986 explosion of the shuttle Challenger - is meant to assure the public and Congress that the cause of the disaster will be found and fixed.
"You can expect the shuttle (program) will be on hold and we will be waiting for the investigation to be completed,"said Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, who is on the Senate Appropriations Committee.
"NASA, the administration and Congress have faced tough choices in regard to funding
The Federal Emergency Management Agency took the lead in responding to the disaster. The military's Northern Command, which handles operations inside the United States, was coordinating the Defense Department's response.
Two F-16 fighters from an Air Force Reserve unit in Fort Worth, Texas, joined in the effort to search for pieces of the shuttle, said Maj. Clay Church, the unit's spokesman.
The Army's 1st Cavalry Division also sent a search and rescue task force from Fort Hood, Texas, to help search for debris.
The task force included helicopters and military police to search for and to guard pieces of wreckage for collection by NASA, Fort Hood spokesman Cecil Green said.
The teams were relying on UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters during the day and OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopters at night, Green said.
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge called officials in Arizona and New Mexico to warn them about possible debris, although those states were out of the likely debris field. Oklahoma, Texas and Louisiana were more likely to see shuttle debris.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yes it is a great loss for India and all Indians in general; to lose an astronaut, and a woman at that...
You can bet your ass that NASA is not going to say anything until they know for sure what the hell happend. The last thing they want to do at this point is put out something and have it bite them in the ass at this point.
Anything they release from this point forward is going to be beyond reproach because they can afford for something to errode any credibility.
They are going to be very very careful and very clear. It is really the only way to move foreward.
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
...to pay much attention to the rest of the news on Slashdot today. I'm sorry I have nothing really insightful to say.
The best I can do is provide a link to learn more about what happened:
http://www.1190kex.com/listen_live/index.php
You can listen to 1190 KEX off the web. I've been listening to it today and have been getting far more interesting and updated info than on CNN or MSNBC.
original launch date 19 Jul 2003
Or the shuttle travels at light speed or this is a type error.
if you're going mach 18, entering the atmosphere, with nitrogen filled tires (notsaying that did it) but any friction with air at mach 18 will look like an explosion. it doesn't have to be the fuel lines, especially since there wasn't any fuel on landing.
If I'm not mistaken, the 3 main engines are used on launch only. They're useless in space, since they run off of the main fuel tank, which is jettisoned after the boost phase. The only engines of relevance in orbit/reentry are the OMS and RCS engines.
Considering the Shuttle was effectively out of fuel and not using it's main engines when it re-entered the atmosphere, yes, the repairs worked. Else, it would have blown up on the pad or at some point before reaching orbit.
Considering that there are so few shuttle launches each year and the launches tend to happen at regular intervals, the probability of any launch falling on the week of Challenger disaster is fairly high.
No, it's highly unlikely that it was the fuel lines. The Shuttles engines are not even running on re-entry; it's just a glider at that point.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
The Challenger blew up on Jan 28th, 1986.
Doen't the shuttle come in without rocket power? Why would the feed lines really be an issue durring this point in the mission?
Shouldn't the story say July 2002? Just noticed that now... Very tragic day in our nation's history, I never thought that I'd live to see another Challenger event.
Want Slashdot headlines on your site? Try SlashHead
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So I can't see that this could have been the reason..
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
In an interesting spin on the story [arabnews.com], it turns out the US is trying to create a "death star" in space. I suppose it is another "real-life follows hollywood" thing.
Text of above link is as follows:
---
Israeli, US astronauts die in shuttle blast over Palestine
By Barbara Ferguson, Arab News Staff
WASHINGTON, 2 February 2003
All seven crew of the American space shuttle Columbia, including the first ever Israeli astronaut, were killed yesterday when the craft disintegrated in flames just minutes before it was scheduled to land.
In a tragic irony, the Columbia exploded with its Israeli astronaut on board over a city named Palestine in the state of Texas.
The cause of the disaster was not immediately clear, but residents in north Texas heard a loud boom as Columbia passed overhead.
"I could see two bright objects flying off each side of it," said Gary Hunziker. "I just assumed they were chase jets."
Another, John Ferolito, heard a noise "like a sonic boom" as Columbia went over Dallas.
Television footage showed a bright light followed by smoke plumes streaking through the sky. Debris appeared to break off into balls of light as it continued downward. Residents of Nacogdoches, Texas, found bits of metal strewn across the city.
Officials in Washington said there was no indication of terrorism. The disaster, said the National Aeronautical and Space Administration, occurred when the craft was flying at 12,500mph, at a height of 203,000ft, far too high for any ground-to-air missile.
Investigations of technical malfunction may first center on the fact that a piece of insulating foam on the craft's external fuel tank came off shortly after lift-off on Jan. 16.
Whatever the cause, the accident dealt a powerful shock to American confidence and throws into doubt the entire manned space program.
But President George W. Bush vowed the space program would continue. "The cause in which they died will continue," he said. "Our journey into space will go on."
Bush raced back to the White House from the Camp David presidential retreat in response to the tragedy. Earlier, he spoke to the families of the astronauts.
On board Columbia were six Americans and Israel's first astronaut, Ilan Ramon, a former air force colonel. The commander of the shuttle was Rick Husband, 45, an Air Force colonel from Amarillo, Texas, who was selected as an astronaut in 1994 on his fourth try. Among his crew were William McCool, 41, a navy commander from Lubbock, Texas, and father of three sons; Kalpana Chawla, 41, one of the two women on the flight, who emigrated to the US from India in the 1980s and became an astronaut in 1994; and Laurel Clark, 41, the flight surgeon, who became an astronaut in 1996 and who has an eight-year-old son.
The mission was the 113th flight in the shuttle program?s 22 years and the 28th flight for Columbia, NASA's oldest shuttle. The disaster came 17 years, almost exactly to the day, after the shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after lift-off, killing all seven of its crew. In 42 years of human space flight, NASA has never lost a space crew during landing or the ride back to orbit.
As the Columbia's crew prepared for re-entry, astronaut David Brown joked with mission control: "Do we really have to come back?" As the rising sun burned off the early morning fog the controllers in Houston gave the seven astronauts clearance to begin the run for home. "I guess you've been wondering," they radioed Columbia, "but you are now to go for the de-orbit burn." Those words marked the beginning of the descent to doom.
"Once again we see that space technology can fail," Bruce Gagnon, international coordinator for the Global Network against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, told Arab News last night. "I'm troubled because the Bush Administration has recently announced a program called the 'Nuclear Systems Initiative', a $1 billion research and development program to expand the launching of nuclear power into space. The problem is that as you increase the numbers of launches carrying nuclear payloads into space, but you are also going to dramatically increase the chances of a catastrophic Chernobyl in the sky."
Asked why NASA was advising extreme precaution at the crash sites, Gagnon said: "We haven't heard that there was a nuclear payload on this shuttle, but one of the great hallmarks of the Bush administration is increased secrecy. I must admit that when NASA said no one should go near a site because of the toxic potential of the fuels and 'other reasons,' I couldn't help but wonder what those reasons are."
Due to cuts in NASA's budget in recent years, NASA has been forced to turn to the Pentagon for increased funding, said Gagnon. The result is that the space shuttles are now also NASA missions and carry both military and civilian technologies. "What you have now is the military takeover of the space program. NASA is not just about gazing at the stars, it now also has a political and military agenda." What is of concern, he said, is that the Pentagon in now working on a program called the "Space Based Laser." "Its nickname is the 'Death Star,' and its job is to destroy other country's satellites, and also hit targets on the Earth below. NASA hopes to have the first operational tests by 2016 or 2017," Gagnon explained.
"This would give the US full control and domination of space and the earth below, because whoever controls space will control the Earth." (Additional reporting by David Randall of The Independent in New York)
"...but STS-107 was *delayed* for 6 months (original launch date 19 Jul 2003) because of cracks in the propellant feed lines to the 3 main engines. A defect that could have caused catastrophic failure. Did the fix work or not?"'
h ut ref/events/deorbit/s huttle/reference/shut ref/events/
Yes the fix worked. Columbia made it to orbit and it went around and around from Thursday, Jan. 16 until deorbit this morning.
When Shuttle is deorbiting-entering it uses OMS until Mach 10, then it transitions to using it's aerodynamic surfaces for control, all the while it is not using it's main engines.
Had there been a fuel feed failure it would have been during main engine use during the first two stages.
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/s
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/
Yes, Dr. Chawla was of Indian descent and grew up there, but she is a US citizen. She is an American astronaut, and no doubt proud of her Indian heritage.
There are reports of people in Nacogdoches (where most of the debris appears to have fallen) buying large bags at Walmart in order to scavenge for pieces of the wreckage in violation of federal law and ignoring personal safety concerns.
:(
Pieces of the shuttle are expected to appear on Ebay before too long, I wish I were making this up
Julia Ecklar - The Phoenix.mp3: a song about an Apollo 1 astronaut resurrected as a spaceship. Once upon a lifetime I died a pioneer; Now I sing within a spaceship's heart. Does anybody hear?
The shareholder is always right.
Here is a mirror of some pictures from pdrap.org.
I bet you think people don't actually fly across the country because sometimes planes crash.
I'm sorry, I would have to say that the Scottish are the best engineers out there. No one can beat Scotty.
What affect would it have on the ISS if NASA backed out? Would it be negligable or monetarily catastrophic? Are there any groups (like the Chinese) who are eyeing a stake in that crazy place? My space politics are lacking.
NASA is definitely great. Today was an unfortunate and sad incident that will definitely linger for a while.
They left some things behind you know.. I think the only way to assure yourself is to go and see for yourself. Have a nice trip!
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Considering that on landing the main engines inside the shuttle are nothing but dead weight, I think we can easily rule out that propellent feed lines to the main engines were not the cause of the accident. The OMS engines, however, are a totally different story. a loss of 3 or 4 tiles on the front of the OMS engines would pierce the aluminum frame, melt and cause sudden decompression and explosion.
My bets on this are that some tiles fell off and caused a weak spot and implosion occured at 200,000 ft.
-electrawn
What is an "S Roll" that I keep hearing about on the news? It seems as if they roll left & right (computer controlled of course)to eat up energy in order to slow down. Perhaps it was one of these that exposed them to some unknown danger.
Shouldn't this post be under a bridge somewhere trying to eat young German children?
I wish I were mature enough not to even justify your comments with a rebuttal, but when's the last time you saw a German (or even for that matter, European) manned spacecraft?
Thought not.
Cheers (what little there is left),
-E2
The evil monkey commands you to dance.
That is 40% out of 20 years.
And less than 2% out of the total number of launches. And?
There are so many things to say, so many feelings. Firstly, I do believe that this is not just an American tragedy, it is one that affects mankind. NASA has been basically leading the way towards space exploration and if one is to believe the "Space, the final frontier" bit, I do feel that this is something that affects us all. Not to mention, there was an Indian American, an Isreali and an African American on board.
In fact, this is one of the many reasons why I feel that it was extra stupid of Saddam Hussein to call this catastrophe "God's punishment on America". If anything, he should have taken this opportunity to show some sympathy towards this event.
I also wonder if they will send a teacher up in space in the near future. They were just about to start interviewing over 4000 teachers but I really don't know if that is going to happen now.
Lastly, here are some links that I have found useful all day today that I haven't seen posted up yet - http://www.spacer.com, http://www.spaceref.com, http://www.spaceflightnow.com and of course http://www.space.com.
We only landed on the moon 6 times.... Try to do it hundreds of times and some accidents will happen.
In my experience, the way safety works is that people think about it most when there's a problem. From what I've read, it sounds like NASA was overly careful about those cracks. Even though the origanl cracks were spotted on one shuttle by one employee, they had every orbiter carefully checked with even fancier electronics. Therefore, I bet they were not the cause.
Through Struggles to the Stars... At least they were doing what they have strived for all their lives. Now we must ensure that we contine to ensure their lives were not lost in vein.
No, I'd say the Japanese are the best at marketing, and maybe even manufacturing.
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Oh please. Those fuel line problems might "cause catastrophic failure" on takeoff (when the engines are burning), but on re-entry, the only engines used are the maneuvering thrusters, and at the stage where Columbia failed, even those aren't used.
Really, some people are clutching at straws here... let's let the investigators do their jobs, and see what really happened.
Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make them all yourself.
The Apollo 1 fire occurred on January 27, 1967, killing three astronauts on the launchpad. The next flight was Apollo 7, which lifted off on October 11, 1968, a delay of one and a half years. Bear in mind that the US space program was under intense pressure to meet a December 31, 1969, deadline to land a man on the moon.
The Challenger disaster (STS-51L) occurred on January 28, 1986, killing seven astronauts shortly after launch. The next mission (Discovery, STS-26) took off on September 29, 1988, a delay of two and a half years.
At the present time there is pressure to continue construction of the International Space Station. Unless the ISS is to be mothballed, this will probably mean that at least one launch will have to happen within a year or so.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
The problem with speculating about propulsion and/or fuel line problems is that they are basically inoperable during re-entry. When a shuttle re-enters the atmosphere, it is basically a glider. During the main part of re-entry, it will minimize it's profile against the atmosphere and let atmospheric drag slow it down from 3 miles/sec to around 200 miles/hr when it lands. The only time it uses its main engines is during liftoff. In orbit, it uses its Orbital Maneuvering Thrusters to guide it around and prepare it for re-entry. I really doubt there was a major problem with these systems in relation to the crash.
What did happen then? I speculate that something simply broke off, exposing a part of the shuttle's skin to the atmosphere. If a hole eventually opened up to the interior, the pressure would have caused an explosion. It's terrible but these have always been the dangers of spaceflight.
Can what is formed say to that who formed it, "Why have you made me thus?"
Not sure of its been posted by anyone on the two threads, but here's a Radar Image of the debris rain being picked up by weather stations.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Does anyone know where I can find a transcript of today's press conference? Thanks in advance.
Since the main engines are only used during take off, that is very unlikely. Even while manuvering in space they use a reaction control system which is still a seperate system. Since they lost sensors in the left wing assembly which progressivly got worse to the point of catastrophic, my uneducated guess would be heat shielding failure in that wing. Regardless of the reason, may those seven astronauts rest in peace and hearts are with their families.
I'd like to draw your attention to this Google news thread (link via Robot Wisdom)
In particular, this posting, which is eerily prescient.
In other news, Iraqis welcomed the news as God's vengeance". (Link via Drudge Report). I think Reuters should know better than to report this kind of thing as news.
STF
It is the behaivour of the politicians that is outragous here.
However, it will be the scientests that will be flogged and purstrings tighted.
bamph
I wouldnt be surprised if they were back and on the ball by the end of 2003. Challenger was a shock; columbia is returning to familiar ground for many of the people who were around when the first catastrophe happened, and I expect it to move along much faster because of their experience in the latter.
To launch soon.
If these same seven individuals were coal miners that lost their lives in a coal mine collapse, and the space shuttle was unmanned, and blew up on the same day, which would get more news coverage and why?
"It was obviously those fundamentalist islamic raghead terrorists again"
Obviously? No.
It was obviously an accident.
If the propellant feed lines to the main engines were still damaged, this would not have caused what just happened. The failure would have occured during launch, when the shuttle's main engines are in use. The main engines do not operate during re-entry (We're not trying to gain speed at that point, but loose it as to fall out of orbit). So a leaky fuel line would have been revealed at a completely different part of the mission. So the repair worked, but obviously a cracked fuel line was not the only problem.
The Statue of Liberty is America's lawn jockey.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That is 40% out of 20 years.
This is somewhat skewed because they re-use the shuttles so many times (this was Columbia's 28th flight). I think the total actual flight count is something like 113 for all five shuttles. So, that's 2/113, which is less than 2% failure. Not bad, considering the extreme risks involved in space missions. It would be interesting to see the failure rate of other countries.
That said, this is a terrible tragedy. May the Lord bless the families of the astronauts.
Karma: 0 (But I wield a mean +10 Vorpal Apathy)
And yes, I agree it IS a tragedy any time human life is lost, and as Americans and people of the world, we should have same sympathy ANY time human life is lost, not just for well publicized events such as this.
The Apollo era spacecraft were single-use. They each only had to survive one reentry. The shuttles are reusable with a more sophisticated heat shield. At this point nobody knows whether the failure was caused by the heat shield, or a structural failure in the airframe, or something else.
International Space Station
While USA, Isreal and India mourn our great loss, imagine what's going on in the minds of people in International Space Station (ISS). Now who is gonna take their next load of supplies ?
They won't die. They have an emergency module using which they can come back home but this would mean abandonment of ISS first time in it's history.
Maybe we will lease something from Russia and N'sync boy will again lose his chance...
While you pray for families of shuttle accident victims, don't forget to pray to safety of people in ISS..
This is really bad timing for another national disaster to happen. I'm just curious to know what sort of budget cuts NASA has had within the last 2 years and if it could have had a direct effect on why this has happened.
It's an old saying, but we're going to be seeing a lot of passing of the "buck" around this issue.
What nationality was Werner von Braun originally? Hint: The surname should give you a clue.
CNN just showed a clip of remains being recovered
Got Code?
Is that you, Maddox?
You people are just stupid. How about reading writing about something you know about? The shuttle Orbital Manuevering Systems Engines (OMS) Engines, not the main engines, are fired to de-orbit. No engines are on during re-entry. Only the RCS (Reaction Control Systems) fire during the initial part of the re-entry, until the dynamic pressure is large enough to switch to aero-surfaces (~10psf I think). Go fricking install your latest linux distro or something, quit wasting everyone's time posting about something you obviously know absolutely nothing about.
I express my grief and resepect for the astronaughts with this post. I just want to say that I respect these men highly for their cooperation in the effort to take mankind beyond the threshhold of this tiny biosphere, and express my regret to their families.
Space shuttles have landed before, and will land again, you sick troll.
Funny I thought America's early space technology came from NAZI engineers who were 'offered' the chance to work for the US...
and who were strangely enough German.
The Space Shuttle OMS engines provide the thrust to enter and exit low-earth orbit, and allow adjustment of the altitude and minor inclination changes while on orbit. The two major orbital operations, orbit entry and deorbit, are made with the two OMS engines. On-orbit propulsion thrust is also available for rendezvous maneuvers and altitude changes using the OMS engines with attitude control from the RCS thrusters. While attitude control and close-proximity maneuvers are provided principally by the RCS, the OMS can augment these operations with both fuel and thrust since both the OMS and RCS use the same fuel and oxidizer.
The primary OMS/RCS structures are the forward RCS section and the two OBS/RCS pods in the aft section which contain the two OMS engines and RCS thrusters. The two OMS/RCS pods on the aft fuselage contain the OMS engines, RCS thrusters, fuel, pressurization system and associated distribution and control systems.
I'm looking around for some links to the concept space shuttles I've seen on the Discovery Channel right now... I think it's pretty unlikely that any of our current shuttles will fly again minly, becuase this really is an opportunity to rally support for NASA and space exploration in general. Truly, this is a tragedy. But progress ususally takes a kick in the ass to get started.
Well the short answer is that there is no way to know.
If its a design flaw like with Challenger then it could easily be a simlar kind of time scale which will likely have a ripple effect on ISS. Though if Soyuz and progress launches could be stepped up there is no reason to abbandon ISS. However construction efforts would cease as they have been the purview of shuttle and soyuz can't launch the mass. Perhaps some Heavy Delta or Arian launches could be substitued but I would imagine that would take a couple years at the least to set in motion.
On the other hand if its a unique failure related to say the foam break off at launch or to some uncharted space debris on re-entry then they might not even miss the next scheduled launch.
In either event shuttles plate was pretty full with only 4 orbiters. Losing columbia does not effect any of the scheuled ISS missions as it was incapable of making the ISS orbit with enough payload so long as the remaining 3 remained cleared for operations.
So ultimately the quetion is if this is a fundamental problem in shuttles design or if it was a unpredicatable and unavoidable risk which comes with spaceflight operations.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
Why risk precious lives if we could do it simply using better technology. IMO manned space exploration is a relic from the Cold War. I hope the NASA really learnt from Feynman's words.
i don't like style guides
...when there was a bunch of guys who got trapped in a coal mine and almost died? It was the biggest news story for a while.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Shawn Shephard discusses the potential "tire pressure problem". From the video:
At the present time there is pressure to continue construction of the International Space Station. Unless the ISS is to be mothballed, this will probably mean that at least one launch will have to happen within a year or so.
I doubt it will be that long. Otherwise, the three astronauts currently on the ISS will have a LONG wait.....
I certainly would not want to be up there right now...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Has anybody explained why they couldn't have done a spacewalk to inspect the damage from the insulation strike? All I've heard is that it wouldn't have made any difference if they had done one, since they weren't equipped to repair it. I just don't buy the assertion that they wouldn't have had any options if they had discovered the damage. Once they knew of the problem, they could have worked out some sort of rescue plan, perhaps getting them out to the ISS, where they could have stayed until Endeavor could have been launched to go pick them up. Columbia could have been left at the ISS until a later mission could go out to repair it. In the words of our fearless leader, I still think they "misunderestimated" the situation.
Germans are good engineers ? At Gas chambers and overhyped, overpriced cars may be.
Why am I not surprised? Althought it is against my better judgement to provide publicity for this crap, here is auction for space shuttle debris on Ebay: Item 3205242574. (note: it seems this item is still "pending", and no description is available...) Affordable at 10 grand?
Sigh. You too can search ebay for "space shuttle". heh.
Mr. Low Resolution
So much for the speculated US manned mission to Mars, in my lifetime... I'm sure NASA will have a ton of budget cuts similar to what happened after the Challenger accident...
CNN, on TV has just reported they found some remains. Nothing on the website yet, but I'm sure it won't be long.
I think they said they found a leg. Thats about the time I turned off.
Scottish invented telephone, TV, radar, and the steam engine.
...is that citizens of the USA are bred from explorers. We pushed onto the Eastern shore of this continent, explored the land and pushed all the way West. We began to fly, then we reached orbit. We walked on the moon.
I do not mean this to be some patriotic gesture. I merely mean to observe that we cannot deny who we are. Our grandparents and their grandparents have always looked for whatever was just beyond the horizon. If they feared the danger and uncertainty of things they had not yet explored, well, it never stopped them. Everything they discovered has led us to now. Their blood is within us.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
NO you are not american you are a anonymous coward. Only cowards make statements like you just made. I am no GWB lover but he ought to launch a tomahawk strike on IRAQ tonight just for that shit ass public comment they made today.
Got Code?
I've never thought of it like that before.
The Apollo 1 fire occurred on January 27, 1967, killing three astronauts on the launchpad. The next flight was Apollo 7, which lifted off on October 11, 1968, a delay of one and a half years
As I understand it, Apollo 1 was a preflight test. Does anyone know when the flight was planned to take place?
There is the Russion Soyuz capsule docked at the ISS at all times, the astronauts there always have a way to get back.
This has been a test. Had this been a real emergency, we would have fled in terror and you would not have been informed.
If I'm not mistaken, the 3 main engines are used on launch only. They're useless in space, since they run off of the main fuel tank, which is jettisoned after the boost phase. The only engines of relevance in orbit/reentry are the OMS and RCS engines.
;-)
Wow-- someone who knows the STS architecture
I think that there is a likely chance that what occured was that the foam which struck the left wing during launch probably caused enough damage to the ceramic tiles on the left wing to cause substantial structural heating, tire failure, and hydrolic failure. As this continued, the structure would have failed-- remember that aluminum does not survive well when being heated to 3000F.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Here is a link to the last audio received from Columbia: http://www.canada.com/toronto/globaltv/info/video/ 020103audio.ram
Where is this coming from and why did this get moderated so informative? I have seen nothing on the news or anywhere else to suggest that NASA has a good idea what happened. Links anyone?
Well the heat shield portions aren't re-usable, which is one of the main reasons behind the huge turnaround times on Shuttle launches. As for the airframe, it was originally designed to survive 100 launches (per orbiter, that is), so metal fatigue isn't too probable (but still possible).
My bet is on heat shield failure due to FOD damage on launch. The failure occured at max load on the tiles (pressure/temp), and wasn't and instant failure.
Anyone out there know what the margin for error (ie. max tolerance) for the ablative tiles is?
-E2
The evil monkey commands you to dance.
A senior law enforcement official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said there had been some intelligence that raised concerns about a previously scheduled flight of Columbia, which was to have carried the same crew. The intelligence, related to Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, was termed not credible, but the flight was postponed for other reasons.
-- By Ron Fournier
Associated Press White House Correspondent
A previous flight with the same crew was recently delayed by a "not credible" terror threat. This is the first israeli astronaut. It would be a credible target for just that reason, but to blow up a supposedly top security target and over texas and with hazardous material, that would be a very meaningful terrorist target. Especially as it would again use all of our own resources for the attack.
I just had a friend come back from India, and it pisses me off that the airwaves are getting choked up with manufactured news when there are PREVENTABLE tragedies that are happening all over the world. But, we don't talk them because fixing them would require eating into corporate profits, and we can't have that...(yes, that's sarcasm)
Found in the google cache: 20 Years Later Space Shuttle Columbia is Better and Safer So with all these reports of a possibly ageing shuttle fleet (problems before the launch of the Columbia; possible damage during its launch), what's the use of endangering humans in "manned space exploration"? We could do it with smarter robotics...
i don't like style guides
Many care, obviously you don't. Why "enlighten" the rest of us who read /. for insight and information to be burdened with your obviously jaded outlook. I am surprised that you are so critical of a nation that tolerates your bullshit attitude instead of imprsoning or otherwise silencing you. We may have many many problems but unless you are part of a better solution, your head up your ass attitude adds very little to the world situation that you are so quick to lay blame for on the US. Love it or leave it baby. I will gladly be the first to send you $1 US to assist with your one-way ticket outta here!
"skate the web"
First, this is a tragedy for the astronauts and their families. I extend condolances to all who have been affected.
N ews.Rele ases/Previous.News.Releases/97.News.Releases/97-03 .News.Releases/97-03-28.Shuttles.New.ET.Completes. Testss tsstat/ 1998/sep/9-10-98s.htma ce/updates/sto32.htmle dc/newsreleases/1999/99 -041.htm/ releases/2 002/02-234.html
However, this problem is nothing new. The insulation material on the external fuel tanks was changed in 1997 and immediately caused problems. Lockheed-Martin was recently contracted to provide an external camera to monitor insulation loss. I have not found any documentation of the insulation problems from late 1997 until the cameras were installed.
See:
http://spacelink.nasa.gov/NASA.News/NASA.
http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/status/
http://ltp.arc.nasa.gov/sp
http://www.arnold.af.mil/a
http://www1.msfc.nasa.gov/NEWSROOM/news
for details about NASA's work on the problem.
This is going to be me, rambling. I'll be accused of being a liberal, tree-hugging, deficit-loving bitch, but it needs to be said.
Bush has, from day one, been all about, or so he says, cutting budgets. Everything but Defense, he says, is spending far too much. Education. Health and Human Services. AIDS research (his "broad" plan announced in the State of the Union address was a joke). NASA.
Time and time again, he has harped on cutting NASA's budget. He has forced the agency to abandon most all other programs, except extending the life of the shuttles.
Democrats and others have pleaded for Bush to reconsider. He hasn't.
One year ago, CNN discussed Bush's plans to dramatically reduce NASA's budget, INCLUDING safety spending, in favour of learning more about nuclear technology in space.
This PDF from the House Democrats makes Bush's cuts clear, in terms of NASA and science in general.
Worse yet, a year and a half ago, people were warning that these cuts were leading to an inevitable disaster in the shuttle program. A freaking year and a half ago.
And through all of this, the best Bush can say is "May God continue to bless America."
Oh, and Saddam is an evil, evil man.
Growl.
jrbd
With public support of NASA and space exploration in general on the deline for decades now I hope this isn't the end of the line for NASA as a useful organization.
Maybe the USAF will get back it's leading role in space as a platform for new weapons. I mean has anyone read Steven Baxter? The Air force has wanted back it's jurisdiction of space back since Eisenhower created NASA and took space away from the USAF. This is the chance they have been waiting for to discredit their viability in the future. Which %&&*@#&s are responsible for a study of nuking the moon, that's a great idea opposed to let's say COLONIZING MARS, which would actually be of any use to humanity. Whose responisble for making sure NASA doesn't suceed imposing so many safety regulations on the new shuttle programs that made them to expensive to fund. And I am talking redundant stuff which they were only doing in petty self interest. I guess the Europeans and the Japanese are now our hope for space expoloration, but I doubt they have the means without the US supporting their programs.
Hope I am wrong in both respects
what statement? you mean the one about a "government official" commenting? funny Reuters didn't mention what kind of government official he was: trash collector, sewage maintenance, truck driver.
i think you need to take the anonymous coward's advice and your head out of your ameri-centric ass.
When we hear the word "Challenger" it brings up images of disaster, just as much as the Russian word "Chernobyl" does. Now we have a new word to add to the canon - "Columbia".
What now for Discovery and Atlantis?
ESA's Rosetta mission has been seriously delayed by the recent Ariane 5 failure... The ISS programme was already under budgetary stress, and given the undoubted grounding of the remaining shuttles...
SF was right. The future of manned space flight belongs to the Chinese...
S.
I happen to be a space enthusiast and I like many was hit hard by todays news. I've noticed a disturbing trend on slashdot here though to try and defend NASA by other space enthusiasts. I see a lot of people hoping the space shuttle program doesn't get canceled.
I have to ask is this really wise? Certainly NASA is not negligent or somehow at fault most likely but the technology is 20 years old! It shouldn't be going up into orbit anymore and thats just the facts. I feel it is an awful tragedy that this happened. These people are heros for taking the risk to go up into space and were deffinetly courageous. Obviously though no matter how courageous they were they didn't want to die anymore than you do. This wasn't some sort of terrorist attack that some whacko perpetrated senslessly. A piece of equipment FALTERED and people died not once but twice. It probably faltered despite the best effort of 1000's of dedicated people too. I doubt any negligence at all was present. Yet the programs that were to replace the orbiter had mostly been cancelled up to this point largely because NASA botched them.
I feel certain that the last thing these astronaughts would of wanted is for their deaths to stop spaceflight. But NASA =! spaceflight. Maybe we should learn from our mistakes and stop putting the eggs in one basket and try to avoid this from happening again. A new push should be made for a different venue in honor of these people's lives.
...Which Bush opposed and delayed for over a year following the WTC disaster. Why such eagerness for full investigation of the Columbia, when such a veil of secrecy still surrounds details of the 9/11 disaster?
I was only in 5th grade when the Challenger exploded. I remember thinking that someone would find out what happened and fix it so that it doesn't happen again. But of course, that's a pretty naive thing to think.
Later, when I was older, I read an account of the Challenger investigation in some compilations of interviews with Richard Feynman, the Nobel Laureate physicist. He was made a member of the investigative panel, even though he was strictly a civilian scientist. And in his words, when he was doing his investigation by going through documents and talking to people, it sounded that he felt like he was fighting a gigantic institutional bureaucracy that was being very slow, passive and reluctant to divulge information. On the committee were members of the military, former astronauts, etc, who likely had ties to NASA in some personal way, at least more so than some physicist from Caltech.
I don't know what sort of hard conclusions came out of the investigative committee in the end. Feynman was flamboyant and made a great show of the O-ring problem in front of TV cameras, an unrehearsed and disruptive performance, according to his accounts. But I think this flamboyance and disruptiveness was a good thing, because here was some guy who didn't give a crap about whether or not NASA was going to get its butt kicked for being negligent whatnot, and that's the sort of investigators that will be needed to bring the facts to light.
We will need people who are independently minded, and who are going to dig at the truth even if it might hurt a lot of people at NASA, assuming that the destruction of Columbia had a man-made origin. And even if NASA does become hurt and demolished in the process, that's for the better in the long run, because we will, hopefully, build anew and better, and send our tendrils even more deeply into space with or without the current incarnation of the thing we call NASA.
I grieve along with all the others affected by this disaster. It wasn't only the death of seven people, it was a little bit of death in all of us, of all of our wonder and awe and our eagerness to propel ourselves beyond our planet.
No, not at gas chambers.
Several countries are known to raise particularly good engineers, perhaps because of the quality of education and strong professional culture. The United Kingdom, Germany, and even Canada are known to have particularly good engineers.I predict that the problem was in the updated avionics software.
You heard it hear first.
The problem is that if NASA looses credibility the USAF will take over the space program for america. Wow, that would be an improvment. So now instead of peaceful projects in space we are back to what the nazis wanted to use space for in the first place, making new weapons of war. Not that it wasn't done under NASAs supervision, but at least it wasn't it's primary objective.
/. article of the study to nuke the moon done by the USAF befor NASA was created?
It sure as hell is the is the USAF objective, remember the
Didn't the Apollo 1 fire happen this week too, 19 or so years before the Challenger?
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." -- Dark Helmet
1.) The tire pressure began to clime enormously high.
2.) 10 minutes before lost contact the thermometers that monitor the hydrolics on the left wing went offline.
3.) The fact that the crew just turned on the final phase of the autopilot. This controls the rudders and flies the shuttle like a plane. ( before this the computer just moves the shuttle in a zigzag pattern to slow it down upon re-entry which Columbia just finished doing)
4.) The computer did not report anything unusual besides what I mentioned in steps 1 and 2 above. Even if an explosion were to happen, the computer would send a few packets of temperature abnormalities before going offline according to an engineer.
THe problem could be any one of these 4 things.
My theory is that perhaps the left wing overheated near the thermometers and the extreme heat burned the circuitry so the temperature as well as the pressure sensors went offline. One nasa official said this may be possible. The reason why I theorize this is because the tires started to expand probably because of heat. Maybe a fire broke out or the wing could of just overheated and the heat moved to the landing assembly. Remember that the insulating heat tiles also hold heat in. If the tires exploded then perhaps the assembly would open pre-maturely and blow open a critical amount of heat tiles causing the shuttle to turn into an inferno.
Also an engineer at boeing said a problem with the hydrolics at one of the wings would violently move the shuttle angle and blow open the cabin and short the computer before it could send data. The pressure and enormous and friction would move the shuttle sideways and would brake open due to stress.
This all happened right when the left wing was used so this is what probably happened.
This is the only explanation that would answer the 4 questions.
http://saveie6.com/
These are really small pieces. I remember seeing pictures of some of the recovered Challenger debris, and pieces were much bigger. That would lead me to thing that breakup during re-entry is considerably more violent than the whole stack exploding.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I have heard by word of mouth that the probability of a fatal accident is around %1 for each shuttle launch.
Does anyone have any info on this?
M@
Krispy Cream is people
I heard on TV that the predicted loss (disaster) rate was 1 for ever 75 missions.
Strange co-incidence that all the above disasters, including this one, hover around the end of January - 27, 28, 30.
I just went to watch the Star Wars movie I recorded on my TiVo today. Looks like WGN Superstation think Star Wars: A New Hope had to be canceled because of the shuttle disaster. Seems like showing space movies is insensitive.
Don't flame this guy; he is way smarter than we will ever be (I'm serious): check his site out at http://maddox.xmission.com/
Read some of the content on his site and see if you agree that the parent is in fact maddox.
The parent has some good points. Has NASA really done anything all that great recently? Maybe this disaster will help clean up NASA, but probably not.
why YES i am going to burn in hell.
Phil Wheeler wrote:
>
> Robert Kolker wrote:
> >
> > Why? I do not speak ill of the dead. They are casualties of the
> > stupidity of people who are now alive and making excuses. NASA is an
> > abomination and has been so for a long time.
> >
>
> It is regrettable when tragedy brings the roaches out of the woodwork.
> Opinions like this are best left for better times.
There are no tragedies. That is Liberal puke; feminist apologia for
nursing morons and cripples. "Tragedies" happen because engineering
fails or people are stupid. Some tragedies (Galloping Gertie; the
British Millennium Bridge) happen because somebody was a crappy
engineer. Some tragedies happen (World Trade Center) from sabotage.
NASA is corrupt and incompetent, a political cynosure dumping ground
for patronage and payoffs. The Space Shuttle is an egregious
violation of good engineering practice patched a foot thick like a
Windows installation after 100 service packs. Disintegration upon
re-entry was not a "tragedy." It was an engineering incompetence come
to light - just like Challenger going high order because an idiot used
an o-ring as a dynamic seal because sweetheart contractor
Morton-Thiokol was in California not Florida to build a proper SSB.
1) The Space Shuttle is crap. It must be replaced by a heavy
lifter dedicated to moving hardware, not giving rides to political
conveniences.
2) International Sapce Station Freedom FUBAR Space Hole One Alpha
has no mission but to spend $billions/year paying off contractors.
Skylab, Mir, and ISS FUBAR are utterly worthless - nothing of value
has ever come from any of them. NOTHING. It's stupid human tricks in
space, revolting micro-gee dog and pony shows. It's Project Head
Start in space, its utter failure being the only rationalization for
increasing its budget.
3) Save the drama for your momma. Get down and push.
--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" The Net!
Newsgroup thread last week about possible Shuttle disaster (spooky)
Quit Slashdot Today!
Lit up with anticipation
We arrive at the launching site
The sky is still dark, nearing dawn
On the Florida coastline
Circling choppers slash the night
With roving searchlight beams
This magic day when super-science
Mingles with the bright stuff of dreams
Floodlit in the hazy distance
The star of this unearthly show
Venting vapours, like the breath
Of a sleeping white dragon
Crackling speakers, voices tense
Resume the final count
All systems check, T minus nine
As the sun and the drama start to mount
The air is charged - a humid, motionless mass
The crowds and the cameras,
The cars full of spectators pass
Excitement so thick - you could cut it with a knife
Technology - high, on the leading edge of life
The earth beneath us starts to tremble
With the spreading of a low black cloud
A thunderous roar shakes the air
Like the whole world exploding
Scorching blast of golden fire
As it slowly leaves the ground
Tears away with a mighty force
The air is shattered by the awesome sound
Like a pillar of cloud, the smoke lingers
High in the air
In fascination - with the eyes of the world
We stare...
Special section from Amarillo newspaper website .
here : Shuttle Disaster Special Section
Quoting: "fabel reminds us "Most of the media is focusing on the slight damage that ocurred at takeoff (that NASA discounted at the time) but STS-107 was *delayed* for 6 months (original launch date 19 Jul 2003) Update: 02/01 23:51 GMT by T: [Note, should read "2002."] because of cracks in the propellant feed lines to the 3 main engines. A defect that could have caused catastrophic failure. Did the fix work or not?"
Probably. The previous flight had the same fix with no problems. Besides, that problem was internal to the engines, which do not operate while the shuttle is landing. Breakup during landing is almost certainly due to aerodynamic stresses.
It's going to be quicker this time I think.
Computer modeling is *much* more advanced as is our understanding of hypersonic dynamics and materials science.
In 86-87 there was a Democratic House and Congress and the Democrats have a history of dragging thier feet on space*.
As soon as we know what happened it will be a little easier to figure out a work around, model it, then scale test and finally implement it.
Unlike '86 when Shuttle was powered up and there were more variables, this time may be easier.
Image One | Image Two
My most sincere condolences to the families of the astronauts, and to NASA.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
This article suggests a wat that the Columbia incident might be terrorism and the website backs it up with hard to dissect science. Big science doesn't even claim to have all the answers, yet seems to constantly get stuck in a rut of not accepting or examining differing ideas. Does anyone have any good sites that prove this guy wrong? This website seems more interested in the social stigma involved with association with this guy than proving him wrong. What was that quote again about new ideas not becoming mainstream because of winning people over, but because their opponents died off?
I really really hope you are right. Something else that might help is that while Challenger was a 'photogenic' accident (lots of fire and smoke), Columbia's best pictures are blury and faint.
Thus it may not be as jarring to the general public since they won't see it replayed over and over. Contrast with September 11 footage.
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The heat tiles on the shuttle have to be virtually 100% perfect for safe re-entry and as 110 or so safer re-entries have proven, NASA has done a good job of keeping the tile sets fixed. But... .50 cal rifles that can take down an airliner at two miles. Probably wouldn't need something this lethal to target the shuttle from a few miles away and simply break or crack a few tiles in a way that visual inspection wouldn't pick up. Normally I'd consider the sabotage scenario paranoid, but there was an Israeli astronaut aboard...
I fear that something happened to them this time, either through:
1) Sloppy re-tiling - loose adhesive, incorrect placement, etc. Some QA check procedure breaks down (al la the Hubble lens)
2) Launch debris (eg big chunks of ice) falling off the fuel tank (this happens all the time) and hitting a vunerable spot (like the leading edge of a wing where the tiles curve and are probably most vunerable. I wonder if there any way for the crew in orbit to do a visual inspection of the high (bottom) face of the shuttle to check for damage (-not sure they would be able to DO anything about it, perhaps that's why there's no procedure to look...if it were bad you wouldn't want to know)
3) (Hate to say this) Sabotage... This could occur several possible ways, either intentially poor install at the re-tiling works (good question: Is this the first time Columbia has flown since it's last retiling?) Or perhaps it was damaged remotely (rifle bullet) while on the pad or being transported? New Republic has an execellent article recently about the fad of inexplicably legal huge
I am from India, but I have a different perspective to this tragedy. Agreed, this is loss for India, but it is a far greater loss for humanity and research in space. I realize that this will delay NASA's future plans, and that is the real tragedy.
I wish the victim's relatives all strength to deal with this, and I hope NASA will "investigate, correct, and proceed forward". Best of luck to all NASA workers, wish you all success in future.
The fuel lines which were repaired have nothing whatsoever with the failure today.
The three main engines are fueled by liquid hydrogen, the propellant, and liquid oxygen (LOX), the oxidizer. The propellent and LOX is provided only during the takeoff of the Shuttle. The fuel and LOX is pumped from the large brown-colored external tank attached to the Shuttle. During the ascent to orbit, the external tank is totally exhausted of LOX and fuel, and is jettisoned by firing explosive bolts which hold the external fuel tank to the Shuttle.
The fuel lines which formerly were cracked are not used in any way after the external tank is jettisoned. Those three main engines you mention are not used at all after the external tank is gone. They can't be. The fuel is gone. And the fuel lines which feed those engines are fuelless as well. They cannot explode by leaking, as there is nothing to leak, and nothing to ignite.
You may want to know that there are two much smaller engines (the two shrouded "bumps" on the rear top of the Shuttle on each side of the horizontal stabilier fin) which are not fuelled by liquid hydrogen. These are the orbital maneuvering engines, used for orbital changes, as well as the all-important de-orbiting burn which slows the Shuttle down enought to start falling back to Earth. The engines, it must be stressed, are not fuelled by the fuel lines which feed the three main "ascent" engines I mentioned earlier.
I would assume, but do not state authoritatively, that the two smaller orbital maneuvering engines are purged of fuel and oxidant after the Shuttle begins its descent to Earth. It would be incomprensible if there was any explosive whatsoever in any of the propulsion systems, because after the Shuttle begins the drop out of orbit, the engines are never used again. The fuel would be dead weight, not to mention a hazard which would serve no purpose.
Remember, the Shuttle is a dead stick glider after it enters the atmosphere. No engine power is possible. The engines are shut down, and never used after the de-orbital burn.
Whatever took the Shuttle apart was not explosive. There was no explosive mix on the Shuttle.
Opinion: Something fell off, unbalanced the craft, and pinwheeled it at 12,500 MPH, at which point it simply tore apart.
Speculations:
- A damaged wing tore off?
- The tail tore off?
- Somehow, one or more of the cargo bay doors opened?
- Somehow, a wheel bay door opened, even partially, and at that speed, flipped the craft?
- catastophic skin failure somewhere on the nose or belly of the craft?
- one of the engines came loose? Reaching here.
- one of the tiny attitude control rockets fired, swing the ship out of true, and slamming into a Mach-speed wind? This seems unlikely - I'd think those hypergolic fuel tanks would be purged before reentry.
- control surface(s) on the wing somehow moved, rolling or pitching the Shuttle?
- the rudder somehow moved?
- the parachute system released the chute, causing enough turbulence to flip the shuttle around?
- window failure?
- airlock door failure?
- (sadly) action of a crew member?
We must keep in mind that the Shuttle is the ultimate experimental aircraft. In a sane world, we would have evolved safer and cheaper craft in the last thirty years. But we were cheap, and cut the program to the bone -- down to the marrow.
The Delta Clipper would have been a smaller, cheaper, reusable single-stage-to-orbit wingless space taxi. We could have developed it on the cheap for a few billion over a period of ten years. But we went for the ultrasophisticated and ultimately unbuildable superspaceplane.
Now we have three X-craft that are proven to fail about every decade.
Developing simpler and safer craft is of maximum importance. The shuttle as it flies is too dangerous -- a compromise for the Air Force and the spooks during the early seventies, built to fly giant spy sats instead of the tiny taxi it was supposed to be. The tiles are impractical. The flight surfaces are unstable and parasitical weight.
We need to spend real money, and NOT just to fund Boeing/Lockheed-Martin. We need to build a real fleet of ships that do what we need them to do. Small passenger craft.
We can't keep trying to reach the stars with a budget that can't even pay for a repainting of NASA HQ. You can't cheap out R&D -- it doesn't work. People die. We must spend what the ENGINEERS say they need to build the next gen of craft, and the gen after that, and after that.
We built the equivalent of a biplane, and froze time. We must build the DC-3. The 707. The tech has to evolve naturally, as engineers learn from past flaws. We do not do this. We have insisted that NASA first build a flying boxcar it didn't deem necessary. Then we wanted this experimental craft to last for forty years or more.
The real miracle is that the NASA engineers have kept this sad can flying since the late seventies.
Beyond the obvious tragedy of the loss of bright and shining lives, 13 lab rats were also lost in the breakup of the Shuttle Columbia. There were apart of a heart and brain study. They were to be guillotined once back on earth. There was an article on the Washington Post about it but beacuse of the omniously poorly worded title, "Columbia Streaks Toward Florida Landing", they pulled it. Google News still has it listed.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I would HIGHLY doubt that this could be the cause. First and foremost is that the main engines are not really used in the decent once the shuttle enters the atmosphere. The main engines are used only during the decent manuver for a braking manuever BEFORE entering into the atmosphere. The shuttle is then swung around to enter the atmosphere on its heat shield. The main engines would then not be used in the decent as they would be thrusting the "wrong" way. Only the manuvering thrusters would be used to maintain stability during the actual passage through the atmosphere.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
I've been trying to remember where I read/heard this all day, but it hasn't come to me. In any case, years ago, perhaps discussing the Challenger disaster, I heard that statistical estimates say every one in 100 shuttle launches is likely to end in cataclysmic failure. I think today's flight was #113? So we're talking about nearly double the rate of expected failure, but in any case these missions have never been thought to be anything but extremely dangerous. ShaunDon
So what if her father survived the partition? So did my father and he was stabbed multiple times in the back, then spent years in a refugee camp because he and his entire extended family were driven from their ancestral lands by Indian nationalists.
So were millions of others.
There are many other stories like my father's but you won't hear us trumpeting, whining or complaining.
To call it India's holocaust is ridiculous and hyperbolic. There were 3 nations created: India, Pakistan and Bangladesh (East Pakistan).
If it was a holocaust for India, then it was a double holocaust for the other nations that were even more impoverished after the partition.
Learn some history and speak with some knowledge or keep your ignorance to yourself.
Today is Feb 1, not Jan 30. Technically Feb 1 is "around" the end of January
Well, at least one was directly caused by the cold weather, so it's not that much of a coincidence...
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Psst: Columia's next mission (STS-118) was scheduled to dock to ISS to deliver supplies and a truss.
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
Without his intrepid investigations, we probably still wouldn't know what happened (though some NASA engineers might). His investigation was thorough enough to find myriad safe (software) and unsafe (mission cancellation policies) aspects of the shuttle program.
Who will be our Feynman now?
Because of cracks in the propellant feed lines to the 3 main engines. A defect that could have caused catastrophic failure. Did the fix work or not?"
I doubt cracks in the main fuel lines would be the cause. I'd be very suprised. For one, the shuttle has little to no fuel in its tanks upon reentry. Secondly, the 3 main engines are not even used during reentry. Remember, the shuttle is a glider.
I was watching fox news this morning as all the news channels were desperately trying to talk to anyone who can spell 'space'. I believe it was Buzz Aldren that they had talking. The host asked him if the shuttle had any mechanism for the crew to eject. Rather than answer the question, he started talking about how he had a company that was in the process of designing an ejection system that could be fitted into the existing shuttles... yadayadayada... Really bad taste if you ask me.
It has been interesting to hear the commentators deal with the technical aspects of this story, like speeds and distances. I've heard that the shuttle was 207,000 miles up when it broke up (wow!) I've heard them say that the shuttle was going 12,500 miles per hour, or mach 7 (???).
My thoughts are with the family and friends of the astronaughts.
Individuals are prohibited from selling government property.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I doubt we'll be out of the space game for very long. All practical needs of supporting a space station aside, W can't afford to sit on a grounded space fleet, specifically for re-election purposes. A nation at 'war' with a stalled economy can't afford to slip into malaise with a mothballed space program.
Keeping the program going, and making the delay as short as possible, are both politically imperative for W, heading into 2004, and I am sure Karl Rove has made a note of that.
With that in mind, you could just as easily see a ramped-up exporation program, and possibly a manned mission to Mars (like the Project Prometheus we have heard of), in order to keep the rabble's eyes on the skies, er, I mean, in order to keep the nation's spirits up.
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
I'll give you a few reasons:
Now, I won't even begin to go into the fallacies in your bigoted statements about muslims. Suffice it to say they are even more incorrect. I hope that your message was just an insensative troll and that you don't actually feel that way.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
NASA is the primaray funder of the ISS, something like 90$ of all funds come from the US.
;-)
I think you mean '%', no?
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
Oops. First paragraph was supposed to be:
How much funding will a pro-labor, anti-business newspaper get? Sure, there is PBS, but even they get alot of funding from corporations, and have to censor their news if they think that one of their sponsors might pull funding.
They rescued those miners. Remember?
Mothballed or not, there will have to be another ISS related spaceflight since there are three individuals presently aboard the station.
To be brutally pragmatic, 3,000 people getting killed in the WTC and the Pentagon getting attacked probably has greater relevance for the average American than even 3,000,000 people dieing to famine and intra-tribal warfare off in Africa. My neighbor had 3 former coworkers die on 9/11.
It's not numbness to injustice, although that may be true. It's sheer pragmatism- the enemy of idealism perhaps but not necessarily the enemy of wisdom.
(Plus there is the news-vs-business-as-usual aspect you mention. If you want publications focusing on justice issues, not just "new"s, try donating to various charities dealing with the injustice. I have. Believe me, you'll get more information on such topics than you have time to read._
--LP
P.S. While it is worth remembering that media will most-likely show you what will help their advertisers, it's pretty well documented that various media outlets lost serious money with their 9/11 coverage due to a lack of advertising in the immediate aftermath. I'm sure though that the moneymen viewed it as a necessary investment in 'credibility', ironically viewing it as a 'justice' issue akin to the ones you feel get inadequate coverage.
I for one am glad that you can look past such a great tragedy for the sake of being the first to preduct something.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
I guess that statement might make sense if you meant to say it in a humorous fashion. The fact is, most third world countries are capable of sustaining human life. It's disorganization, and the fact that labor is heavily under-valued, that leads to massive impoverishment in most areas. Even in the US, people that are impoverished are not poor because we don't have abundant resources, it's because labor is increasingly under-valued.
Also, need I point out that it's pretty difficult to choose where you live. It's also difficult to get out if you don't have transportation and the proper paperwork. So, as I'm sure you know, there is very little "choice" involved.
...is that citizens of the USA are bred from explorers.
You're right. Good thing Europeans are the high point of evolution, and that they wanted to explore the rest of the planet, and conquer the savages who inhabited it. Yes, without Europeans and their desire to explore, nothing would have ever happened. Humans would not have evolved from lesser primates, and reptiles would rule the earth.
</sarcasm>
I'm sorry, but your post is completely rediculous. If you have a point that can be made without glossing over the known history, it'd be nice to hear it.
Are you really trying to argue that everyone in the USA is an explorer at heart? If so I have to disagree. Early European inhabitants of the US were persecuted in their native homes, and they headed for the US as a place of refuge. Oh, and what about the native populations? They actually arrived from modern day Russia/China thousands of years before the Europeans... but they started on the west coast not the east. They were not exploring for the sake of discovery, but rather survival.
Each culture has it's explorers. The USA has it's own as well. But they're not "descendants" of prior explorers, they're just people who are curious and find the means to push into new frontiers.
I'm sorry, you post was so incoherent I fear I am unable to properly express my dissatisfaction with it...
The national weather service and local weather stations are reporting that they are *still* seeing a cloud of debris from the reentry 10 hours later. They do not know what it is, but something is hanging around up there, though it is starting to dissapate now.
Very strange.
Didn't mean to come off as flaming, I am just disagreeing.
I am arguing that lot's of is not NASAs fault and that the bush admin. is very much against NASA and so is the Air force. It's not profitable and doesn't make new eapons it's main objective. The dollar sign rules, don't forget that if NASA is disbanded everything done by the US in space will be of a military nature. It would be a greater evil. Bush is a neo-facsist I yearn for Clinton eventhough his admin commited warcrimes just as much as the next guy. But hey he was less a bad guy.
Read Chomsky?
How does that make the grouping any less of a coincidence?
redundant?! This has got to be the got-damn funniest thing I have seen! redundant... not likely...
Mach 18 is pretty damned fast to be traveling through atmosphere, but remember that they were at about 200,000 feet or so when that speed was actually reached (the peak entry speed of the shuttle). Resistance and atmospheric damage wouldhave been lessat that altitude, and they would have slowed considerably before they entered the lower atmosphere.
Also, remember that the cockpit area is reinforced to prevent disintegration or total loss. This wouldn't have kept them alive, but it very well might have sheltered their bodies from vaporization.
Of course, why the cockpit doesn't have teh ability to eject from the shuttle is a good question. I don't see any reason you couldn't have the nose fully detach via explosive charges and then deploy teh same type of chutes used by the Apollo capsules.
-rt
Watching CNN, you'd think that Ramon' death was a greater loss than that of the other 6. Too much airtime is being dedicated to Ramon and the Israeli reaction to his loss. I don't care about Palestinian reaction either.
To me, Dr. Chawla's story is more interesting. An Indian born female who migrated to the US, obtained a PHD in engineering, and finally became an astronaut is an inspirational story. Especially when you consider that an Indian born male (to my knowledge) has never been in space.
And what about the other non-ethnic Americans who were lost? Nobody willing to come on TV and state how remarkable they were?
I can't help but wonder about a different perspective: A Chinese teraformer 150 years from now looking back at today as the day the U.S. gave Mars to China.
Yes, as an American it would make me sad to see my country cede its place in manned space travel (and I sincerely hope we don't). But to that colonist, today has no more signicance than the day the conquistadors arrived in the Americas. Shattering to those who suffered, but probably no more than a question on his high school history final, if even that.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
>Thus it may not be as jarring to the general public
I think the talking heads and grandstanding politicians are more "jarred" by it than the general public. Real people who aren't trying to get on TV or get re-elected understand that launching your ass into orbit is a dangerous thing to do.
Why, yes, it did, you moron. Three years the space shuttle was on hold.
When will we reject the space shuttle for the next true manned, reusable space vehicle? I'll pay any deficit George Frickin' Bush chooses to shove down my throat for the next-gen vehicle. :-(
You shouldn't think that NASA is any good (perhaps that
is your point?). Its a huge buearacy that hasn't put any
real money into doing engineering development. Where is the replacement for the Shuttle? It'll take a good 5 - 10 years to do the design work on a new one, at which point the remaining 3 (if they survive) Shuttles will be -40- years
old. How long to actually build it?
If another Shuttle is destroyed, you'll never see the other 2 go up again. The ISS is -currently- one disaster away from not being accessable by current US rockets (if not already)
I personally think that a tire exploded on the left side of the Shuttle causing a massive failure in the left wing. Since the re-entry generates so much heat and the moment the tragedy occurred was its high point, some sort of heat resistant material most have failed and allowed the 300 psi, nitrogen-filled tire to expand to explosive levels. Michelin makes all of the tires used on the Shuttle fleet.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
"I also read that out of the five shuttles, 2 have gone in the last twnety years. That is 40% out of 20 years. I don't really know what to think about this, but i must say, that this really hurst me, as well as a large number the the /. community."
That's a crappy way to use statistics.
I doubt that this will kill space exploration. If anything, it may boost interest in making sure that these things are made safe. Maybe I'm just an optimist, but there are a number of plans to making new generation reusable oribters drawn up that Nasa could, if funded well enough, build and use. I can see Nasa getting extra funding down the road.
Again, I may just be an optimist. I just don't think the US Gov't would want to let those people die for nothing.
Let me put it another way, I still trust Nasa far more than I trust the airline industry.
..and when you launch that tomahawk strike, you can ask yourself "why?" again next time you have some planes plunging into NYC..
ignorant americans..
When I heard the news this morning it reminded me of something I saw on Yahoo a few days ago.
I found it a little weird after going back and reading it again.
And less than 2% out of the total number of launches. And?
And if there were to be an accidental exchange of nuclear weapons between Russia and the United States I suppose you would claim in response that we've enjoyed nearly 20,000 incident-free days, is that right?
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Maddox is a very entertaining character. I've bookmarked his site and will surely read more.
Well, they would have been partially protected if the cabin didn't break up... but it's hard to say what happened.
In any case, air resistance isn't what causes the really high temperatures. It's air compression. It's the same thing that allows refridgerators to work. When a gas is compressed it will get hotter, if it is expanded it will get cooler. That's also why spray cans get cold when you use them.
I wasn't saying that you were flaming, just a disclaimer that he shouldn't be flamed because his style can be ... derogatory and blatant at times.
There is the Russion Soyuz capsule docked at the ISS at all times, the astronauts there always have a way to get back.
My guess is that they will use this only in case of emergency. There are good reasons to keep the ISS manned as long as possible.
The Russians are sending up enough food, fuel, etc. for the astronauts to remain through at least June. But given the health effects of microgravity, I would still not like to be there for a few extra months.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Baka! This is not spam. You have to come to this site and read it. Spam comes to your email box, whether you want it or not.
So, what IS your email address?
What I love about the "tomahawk" statement is the person didn't even consider how he'd feel if he were in an Iraqi's shoes. Let's see, the US is going to 'liberate' you from "oppressive' forces by bombing the shit out of you, subsequently destroying your surroundings, and killing a large amount of people you knew. Wow, I can't wait for my new American controlled 'regime change!' Man, having my oil exported to Britain and US at not even a third of its real cost is SOO much cooler than Saddam. Wow!
Now, if France were going to "liberate" redneck Texas, and a French space shuttle happened to plunge to death three weeks before I'd assume Texans wouldn't be mourning their sad death.. But dumb motherfuckers like you don't think that far ahead, do you?
Anyone notice their last words were 'Buh'?
Crapdot.org, BeDoper, Etc.
Let's just say that a problem like the above was detected, but there was still time before things went to hell.
Without any sort of main engine could they have pulled themselves out of the entry and try and keep from burning up in the atmosphere?
-- taking over the world, we are.
Columbia: We get signal. Main screen turn on.
Columbia: It's you !
Sadam: How are you gentlemen. You have no chance to survive make your time. ha ha ha.
1) Laying the groundwork for American colonization and exploitation of space
Yeah, so what?
Western society has fucked up Africa and Asia through colonization
That was mostly Britain and Spain, but we'll let that one go, since we did reap some of the benefit.
Furthermore, who gives anyone the right to plant an American flag on the moon, as if the US has conquered something.
We can because we did. Then we signed a treaty saying we wouldn't claim any part of the moon as territory. But, we can certainly claim to have landed there, and we left the proof, and our identity, by leaving our flag there. We conquered a barrier by landing on the moon, and we have every right to claim it and lay the proof.
I didn't realize you could put dibs on parts of the universe. Do we really need nationalism in space too?
Nobody put "dibs" anywhere. And, remember that nationalism got us to space. Kennedy and Johnson were drumming up nationalism to support the space program back during the Apollo missions.
Not all national pride is bad, you know.
Military Exploits - Reagan didn't get Star Wars in the 80's, now his bastard sons (the Bush family) are going to take another stab at it. Space, the final frontier: now being used as missile bases to kill innocent civilians in countries that happen to be anti-US. Can't wait!
Prove that we're putting missile bases in space. Come on, prove it. We're all still waiting, you know.
Scientific Knowledge - Oh, and it's of no coincidence that this was listed last. Think about it, the US government is throwing millions of dollars at a program for common good of the world? Think again.
Science is *always* beneficial to mankind.
If you want space to be as shitty and capitalistic as the US-dominated world is now, then I guess you'll love NASA. Essentially 7 colonizers died today, one of which was an Israeli colonel -- I'm so distressed -- not.
You are so out of touch with reality that I'm not sure why I am bothering to respond. You're a sick piece of shit for even saying that last sentence.
Funny that when 7 people die on US land the whole world sends their condolences, but when US weapons kill thousands every day no one winks an eye.
Maybe you can point out exactly what you are talking about? Or, are you just dreaming up numbers by swallowing the made-up cumshot statistics of left-wing radicals?
7 people dead in a space shuttle don't really mean much when your president is planning to kill 300,000 people in only one fucking DAY in Iraq.
Again, how are you getting your numbers, and how are you know exactly what the president is planning? Can I assume he told you personally?
Get your heads out of your ass and realize the world does not revolve around you, stupid Americans.
My head is out of my ass, you lying bigot. Let's remind ourselves of some of the more "stupid" things Americans have done:
We'll start with bailing Europe out of two World Wars. Then, we can point out that we give over six million metric tons of food to foreign countries every year, under multiple programs.
Let's also think about how we have conducted recent war effors. When it has been tactically sound, we have dropped leaflets in places with assets to be bombed, so that civilians can leave. I was in the military, and I understand *exactly* how hard it is to avoid collateral damage. Even at the best accuracy, I could only expect the artillery I was calling fire from to be within 100 meters of the center of the target, and no more accurate.
We go out of our way for precision targeting... don't whine about collateral civilian damage to non-military targets until you've tried to perform the job of having to hit military targets that people like Saddam Hussein put right in the middle of neighborhoods and right next to schools. The simple fact is, we are far better than some other countries are.
Why aren't you bitching about what the Russians do in Chechnya?
BTW, I'm American.
Liar. Go fuck yourself. And, if you are an American, you're a fucking apologist for the 9/11 terrorists, and a pile of shit on the landscape of humanity. May you rot in hell with Hitler, Hussein, Lenin, and the 9/11 terrorists.
You deserve it.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
There is a Soyuz capsule connected up to the ISS to allow the crew to escape in an emergency.
The big question though that everyone seems to of missed is that the ISS needs the Space Shuttle to periodically boost its orbit. No Space Shuttle means the orbit decays.
I don't know how long it can last for, but without boosting the Space Station will burn up in the Earth's atmosphere. $50 billion fireworks better look good!
If it's not Scottish.. it's crap!
OK, time to burn karma. I don't care.
Take a look at these assholes in iraq celebrating this tragedy at Reuters
What f'ing assholes. Of course, next week if there is footage of celebrations from iraqis there no doubt will be a mass-email campaign trying to deny these celebrations as racist CNN coverage of "Celebration of some soccer victory from 1987" even though they will be wearing brittney spears t-shirts, having contemporary movie/music posters in the background, dancing atop vehicles from 2000+, etc.
I am referring of course to the footage from Sept. 11th, 2001 that showed Palestinians celbrating our tragedy. They later tried to deny this as a "fake" - that CNN used old footage of "a 1987 soccer victory celebration" until it was seen that a) no one in 1987 would be referring to Osama Bin Laden by name b) one boy was wearing a Brazilian soccer star's jersey (Ronaldo, who was maybe 6 in 1987) and c) there were modern cars appearing not available in 1987.
Oh, well that clears that up... NOT. Is that the best you can do? I mean come on here.
OK. So I'm a conspiracy theory nut. I can't help it. But there are a few things worth mentioning. I find it odd that the first Israeli astronaut dies over Palestine, TX. Also, it seems odd that less that 4 weeks ago (2 weeks before launch) that german guy hijacked a plane in Frankfurt, demanding to speak to the brother of one of the astronauts in the Challenger disaster.
On an unrelated note, nasa.COM (a porn site) has (temporarily, I'm assuming) taken down the porn and now redirects to nasa.gov.
Why? To accept all the reassurances is just as naive as thinking that just because Ilan Ramon was on the spaceship it must be terrorists out to get him.
Don't listen to these fools going on about how the shuttle was too high to be shot down, or other such nonsense.
The shuttle could have easily been sabotaged. And last I checked, sabotage on this scale readily qualifies as an act of terrorism (then again, what doesn't these days?)
Israel is a very controversial topic in America these days, the propaganda we get in the media notwithstanding. Is it possible that one individual out of the hundreds if not thousands of people who had access to Columbia or her many systems and components had an opportunity to inflict a fatal blow to the craft? Of course it is.
Everybody is pointing at the piece of insulation that fell off during ascent as the cause, and I agree it looks likely, but that doesn't rule out terrorism. The booster could easily have been tampered with in some way designed to cause exactly the sort of failure we've witnessed.
I don't believe it was terrorism, and I will chafe at any such suggestion from the Bush Administration that it was in fact terrorism if and when they offer it, but it can hardly be ruled out, let alone dismissed or even mocked as we've seen so many here do.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
News exists to get attention, and stories that can be played up for more ratings are more likely to be shown, whether it's the poor or the rich that suffer. It's not some vast right-wing conspiracy to not show preventable accidents that require money to be spent fixing on them (are you describing the "working poor" or the "space shuttle"?), it's just the way the news works to try and get ratings.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Why did this have to happen on my birthday?
Karma is like sex. I can't remember the last time I had either of them.
Bad analogy. Besides, I've enjoyed those "incident" free days. Days free of nuclear exchanges, alien invasions, attacking killer fish, etc etc etc.
The Russian Progress launch is still sceduled to occur. Even without the launch, however, ISS has enough supplies to last them through June.
Jouster
They didn't re-grout the tiles.
-- Hank
Following today's Columbia Space shuttle tragedy, I questioned how this tragedy might affect President Bush's recently reported Prometheus Project, which was suspected of reinvigorating the 'NERVA' concept, first proposed in the 1950's, but canceled in the late 1960's due to "excessive development costs." The NERVA engine "would not use nuclear fission as a propulsive mechanism per-se, but rather would expel super-heated hydrogen, flowing through a nuclear fission reactor, as an ultra-high-speed exhaust."
In a January 17 story, the Los Angeles Times quoted Sean O'Keefe, the current head of NASA,suggesting that the President plans to tacitly announce an aggressive plan ultimately designed to send humans to Mars" in the then upcoming State of the Union Address.
How does the Slashdot crowd think this second shuttle disaster might influence President Bush's plans to use these alternative sources of energy to send human's to Mars?
A poor analogy, but not because it isn't correct.
Let's put it another way.
Let's say we resume launching shuttles and we lose the next three.
That will be 100% of the shuttle fleet relegated to history.
And then you (or the original poster) will reply, "But that's less than 5% of the missions!"
No.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
I dont think the Russians will let us mothball the ISS since they seriously plan on turning space into a business, plus the Chinese have expressed interest in eventually making their own missions to the ISS. Lets also not forget the large amounts of money the Europeans, Japanese and even Israelis have plugged into space. In fact the Russians are lauching a PROGRESS mission to the ISS tomorrow. So, nobody is mothballing the ISS. The Russian space agency is slowly recovering from its difficulties. The Russian econony has shown 4-6% growth for the past 4 years and will most likely do the same this year and next, as has the Russian space agencies budget for the last few year. Both India and China are also keen on entering space so I feel it would be a mistake on our part to stop or kill our space program just when all these nations are entering space. We could potentially in the long run lose our strategic advantage in space. Even tiny little Isreal has been launching its own satellites for the past decade and keenly developing new satelite/launcher systems. So space is clearly the future and we should not shun it and hide from the danger it presents.
7 people die in a train/car/plane crash - that's "page 2" news. The fact that it was multi-billion dollar vehicle, one of only a dozen or so on the planet that can get humans into orbit, that's the news.
It is about the stuff. I really feel for the families of those that were lost, but they were not "heroes" - they knew the risks one takes to play with the big toys. I'd go on a shuttle tomorrow, if I had a chance. Lots of people would.
These rev 1 shuttles have been in service for a long time. Where's rev 2? There ought to be lots of them for cheaper by now, and an "oh well" if one is lost now and again.
It's not the people (20 some odd were lost in that commuter plane recently. forgotten already) It is the fact that it was lots of expensive stuff that was lost that makes it big news.
Perhaps some Heavy Delta or Ariane launches could be substituted but I would imagine that would take a couple years at the least to set in motion.
:-(
The only problem is that many of the components of ISS are probably too big even for the heavier Delta IV variants with the two large strap-on booster rockets to lift into the LEO altitude of ISS. For example, both ESA and the Japanese are planning large scientific modules for ISS, and they're not going to fit on top of the Delta IV rocket, that's to be sure.
I think it's time that NASA seriously looks at the replacement for the Space Shuttle that will be operational early in the next decade--a vehicle that will be far safer to fly and will cost much less in terms of per pound costs to lift to LEO.
It would have belong to the russians if their Buran hadn't run out of money.
My heart and prayers go out to the families of the astronauts. But to get back to why I am replying. "because of cracks in the propellant feed lines to the 3 main engines. A defect that could have caused catastrophic failure. Did the fix work or not?" Ok, if they didn't fix the cracks in the main engines feed lines, it would have blown up on launch, not during reentry. But, again, it is too early for speculation. If it was some sort of pilot error, the telemitry from the shutle would have show so, since Mission Control was still getting info from the orbitor just moments before it broke up. I am sure that someone at NASA would have leaked that by now. I guess we will all find out some how or another in the next few days. I urge all /.ers that work in the space program to not stay slient and come forward if the powers that be try to cover up anything.
eh, this sucks, I am going back to bed....
More than one hundred shuttle flights have landed successfully, so what's with your assertion that "we could not make the shuttle land successfully"?
By the way, your thoughts -- and those of everyone esle -- have no bearing on the reality of the moon landings.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Apollo 1 (originally called Apollo 204) was scheduled to liftoff on February 21, 1967 for a flight of up to two weeks' duration. The flight plan was open-ended and had things gone well, they would have tried for the max duration.
A programmer who worked on the guidance computer software for the Block 1 Apollos has recently said in an interview that had Apollo 1 gotten off the ground, the guidance software might have killed them instead...
If NASA decides to repeat what they did back in 1986 and stop all Shuttle flights for a year or so, that is obviously a horrible thing for the ISS program. But what about the other nations space programs? Obvioulsy Russia is not in the best of shape financially to be able to continue things. And aside from the US and Russia, no other Nation has put people into space.
But what if Russia and the US shared more of their space tech with the European, Japanese, and Chinese space programs? China is nearly ready to put its 'taikonauts' into orbit, and surely some of the existing technology could be shared with other space programs to pick up the slack.
After all, its the International space station, not the US space station (despite the niggling fact that the US has funded the majority of the program).
I also wonder if this event will give a boost to the alternative space vehicles that have been shelved or scrapped over the last few decades.
END COMMUNICATION
That's interesting news (and I don't doubt you, I just checked out your link). However, the original poster is technically right.
Columbia was built before we had the whole shuttle building technique down. It was actually the heaviest orbiter in the fleet and because of this, it could not carry a meaningful load to the ISS.
Perhaps there was another another planned refurbishment or that payload is just lighter than most ISS payloads?
Shuttle Columbia's Future Uncertain
Nice comments. Everything you say seems true but I'm still left with one question.
When I heard a NASA non-PR-official speaking earlier today, they said that even if the foam had damaged the tiles on liftoff, there was nothing they could have done about it anyway. I found the resignation troubling, albeit perhaps a bit logical. You said if they discovered the problem during reentry maneuvers, it was still too late, but he implied that even if they discovered such a problem during lift-off, it would still be too late.
My question is this: if, say, they knew they had a tile problem (not that they did in this case), couldn't they in special circumstances change their reentry trajectory so it would be more gradual in some way so that the tiles would take less heat?
--LP
The shuttle does one final burn to de-orbit. After that they enter the atmosphere and land unpowered. The engines are not ever used during the landing procedure (they worry more about slowing down). The shuttle becomes basically the worlds largest/heaviest/fastest glider. Interesting fact #2: The 2 offical landing strips (Texas and Florida) are the flattest strip of land on the planet. (they were built to be flatter then the curvature of the Earth.)
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
It is tragic. But who really cares about which little pipe bursted ?
Millions of dollars are spent now to talk about 6 tragic deaths and some mechanics. What about the millions of other deaths are every day ?
It is tragic, yes. But we shouldn't forget the scale !
After watching the news for most of the day, I have a few questions directed at those who know more than me.
1) If using telescopes on the shuttle in the past had little value, why are EVA's not mandated for shuttle missions that show problems during launch. Even I noticed the chunk of debris that came off during the replay of the launch. Granted, there is not much that can be done if damage is present, but I would think the information gathered could be useful to the mission controllers.
1a) If damage was found by an EVA, why couldn't the shuttle divert to the ISS?
2) How much fuel is involved by slowing down the shuttle in orbit? Are we talking 1k lbs, 10k lbs, of fuel? Can the shuttle re-enter the atmosphere at a slower speed? Is there something better than a semi-controlled freefall?
Apologies if these are stupid questions. Just curious. I don't have a degree in rocket science.
It's just the normal noises in here.
You mean those flying saucers in Area 51?
--I've noticed most posts here are predicting if they mention it a long slow review process for the remaining shuttles. I disagree and am of the opinion they will keep using them as fast as possible. The bulk of the shuttle's missions are military, and with the state of the world and imminent widespread warfare that *might* be in more places than just iraq, they will just use them right now. They will probably scrub any civvie missions/experiments/astronauts though.
1. Before 7:53am, everything was nominal.
2. ~7:53am, portside hydraulic sensors went offline.
3. ~7:56am, portside elevator and aileron temperature sensors went offline.
4. ~7:58am, portside landing gear pressure and temperature sensors went offline.
5. ~8:00am, crew confirms portside landing gear sensor problems.
6. ~8:00am, all communication went offline.
Both these factors should shorten it's reintroduction time.
It would have belonged to the russians if Buran had not run out of money.
Reposted because "/." ate my last post.
What's this about NASA knowing there was an impact at launch? Don't tell me there is not ONE EVA suit on the IIS. Don't tell me they could not maneuver for close examination by the IIS crew. Let's say it looked like there was a chance of damage -- the call could have been made to keep the shuttle crew up. NASA said there was enough supplies up there to last to June for crissake. Even with an extra crew we're talking a few months. Long enough to get another ship up with an inspection team and make repairs. That's one of the few points of having a space station in the first place. But no, it looks like mission bureaucrats have taken over with their precious schedules. No time for a single deviation. We've dumped too many resources into the shuttle and it's attending bureaucracy instead of a real replacement option. I almost cringed when some NASA bozo said the shuttle show goes on. That's a bureaucrat thinking about his job instead of astronauts. I want some explainations and some heads to roll.
I would conclude that at some point in time NASA at least had plans to include an on orbit tile repair kit. Sure there are a ton of things that couldn't be fixed on orbit, but including a few tiles and something to stick them on with doesn't sound too far off to me. After all they do include duck tape.
As for the other comment about not having any cameras to view the underside or rear of the shuttle, they should use one of those free floating balls that they've tested before.
I haven't been stating any conclusions.
Don't you watch X-Files ?
theefer
1) Budget Cuts
2) Lowest Bidder due to (1)
Sure, there are probably technicians all over NASA beating themselves up over the littlest details that they "ought to have noticed", but in the final analysis, Columbia went down because NASA's funding wasn't sufficient to do the job properly.
The best memorial for these seven astronauts would be to go on, to keep flying shuttles, not to start a witch-hunt to find some poor SOB who might or might not have been at fault.
>> I'm glad Slashdot did a follow up on this issue as it is the MAIN news topic worldwide today.
Scary thing about that is the idea that Bush is probably going to take advantage of that to do all sorts of things related to his forthcoming war on Iraq that will probably go completely unnoticed, with the public's attention preoccupied with this.
Da I actually found that not long after I posted my last. Columbias refurb allowed them to reduce a fair amount of weight. Though its not surprising it was a truss mission. The trusses are bulky but not heavy.. I think they mass around 30k if I remeber the last two right and that segment is probably even lighter since it dosn't have radiators like the last two that went up. I know even before the re-fit columbia could have made ISS orbit, however its paylaod mass to accomplish that was very restricted due to the high inclination orbit ISS is in in order to allow Soyuz launches to meet up with it.
I still don't think it affects them over much. They will have to scramble to shift the truss payload ( and thus others ) back on other ISS scheduled missions accordingly but this far out if the other 3 remain operational it would be very possible to completely skip that mission purely from a supply standpoint for the crew.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
~Chris
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=52528&cid=5207 075
One of you guys is talking out of their ass, and I am betting it is YOU.
Sorry, but no.
First off, they didn't have any arm in the shuttle to do a teathered space walk. And if they did, you still cant go behind (the bottom) of the shuttle where the possible damage was.
As for bringing the shuttle to ISS, can't do that either. The shuttle was extremely heavy, heavier than usual. In fact, they said this would be the heaviest a shuttles ever been on reentry. It wasn't in high enough orbit to reach the ISS, and it doesnt have the fuel to reach that orbit from low orbit.
There was nothing that could have been done other than keep them up their until life support ran out, but that would of course happen AFTER it would reenter the earths atmosphere by itself and burn up.
If I were an astronaut I would much rather die instantly without knowing it, rather than wait weeks knowing I was going to die.
The Russian Progress ships routinely perform reboosts. Shuttles aren't required for this.
However you're right, without the shuttle, ISS is in grave danger. You're down to a point where a single failure could doom the station.
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
No one was saying that this was supposed to be conclusive proof, just that it supports a terrorism theory enough that it might be feasable.
The Osirak reactor was bombed in the early eighties, not during the gulf war. The reactor was a research reactor, not a power reactor. Also, the fuel rods had not been delivered to the Iraqi reactor when it was bombed, so there was no significant radioactive contamination. By bombing the reactor, the Israelis prevented the fuel rods from being delivered.
Could there have been some unusually dense [something] in the shuttle's path that hit it that near-instantly shattered the entire shuttle? Is it conceivable that the shuttle's path intercepted the path of a falling meteor for an extremely unlikely and fatal collision?
Just speculating about the unlikely. I'm sure we'll have answers soon enough.
don't they have a MMU that can be used for untethered spacewalks?
They do not.
Is it fascism yet?
On the news, he specifically said that the tire sensors went offline didn't he?
because of cracks in the propellant feed lines to the 3 main engines. A defect that could have caused catastrophic failure.
No, it probably didn't, because the shuttle does not use its engines when it lands.
It's just a big fricken glider.
slashdot posted this: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/3 1/1739207&mode=flat&tid=134 just yesterday... :-/ coincidence? i think not
Just watch this. "Space Shuttle Columbia $5 Commemoritive Coin", sold for US $13,101.00. Honestly, I don't undestand. If you have that amount of money to spend, why not do something useful with it? Maybe donate it to the families of the astronauts, or use it for lobbying to get more funds for NASA. But a $5 coin? Sheesh.
For all of it's fault's NASA is probably the most safety conscious organization in the US. Space travel is a very, very, dangerous endeavour, and likely will be for quite some time. It is a testament to the bravery of all these people that they know the risks involved with a shuttle flight (and I assure you they do), yet, they volunteer to go for all of us.
Why can't NASA develop a small tethered inspection robot? It is technically quite viable.
To bring safety equipment to cover all "reasonable" on-orbit contingencies would take the weight of the orbiter to a realm where there was no energy left to loft a payload, or, in more extreme examples, the orbiter itself.
Is it fascism yet?
>>In 86-87 there was a Democratic House and Congress and the Democrats have a history of dragging thier feet on space*.
You got that back fucking asswords! The republicans are the ones that kill all funding to NASA. NASA is what it is becauses of Dems. in the 60's. Republicans don't like NASA, they want the money spent on B2 bombers so they can blow up brown people in new and advanced ways!
What's wrong with the speed quote? It is at least in the right ballpark. Of course the altitude is completely wrong ... but it looks like they aren't the only ones that are confused :)
jim@angband.s1.gov
Date: Mon, 26 Dec 88 15:45:52 PST
Subject: Shuttle Disaster Premises
Here are the premises of the Shuttle disaster scenarios (my apologies
to those who find all this painfully obvious, but the noise level
around here has made it necessary that I belabor these points):
1 The SSME turbine pump blades have been found to be a weakness
in the SSME design that has yet to be dealt with adequately.
2 The failure of these blades would result in a failure mode that
has not been adequately tested, thus the turbine blade containment
ring may not succeed in fully containing the debris.
3 The 3 APU's have been found to be a weakness in the Shuttle
system design as 2 of the 3 have failed in a single mission
with the 3rd found to be near failure after landing.
4 According to James Fletcher, the NASA Administrator appointed
by President Reagan to reform NASA's Shuttle program after the
Challenger disaster, the Space Transportation System is on
the verge of becoming "economical". (While I may not agree with
this opinion, it is certainly reasonable to assume the statements
of such a person to be "plausible" in these scenarios.)
5 An "economical" launch system is what the military needs to
launch its crushing backlog of spy satellites and Vandenburg
is the only launch site which can make polar orbit without
going over populated areas.
6 The trajectory of a Shuttle launched to the south into a polar
orbit (which is the typical orbit of spy satellites) from Vandeburg
reenters over the major western Soviet cities in the event that
an abort to once around option is attempted and falls short due
to inadequate thrust (such as OMS engine failure secondary to
SSME failure).
7 RTG's are a far less vulnerable power source for spy satellites than
solar cells and the military is increasingly concerned about
solar panel vulnerability.
8 Unavoidable clear air turbulence is common over the Shuttle
landing site at Edwards AFB.
9 The OMS fuel and pressurization lines are in reasonable proximity
to the SSME turbine blades.
10 The Pu239 oxide cannisters have not been adequately tested since
when they were subjected to an explosive test, they did fail and
NASA proceeded to proclaim them flight ready because the explosive
test was "invalid".
11 We have no way of rescuing Shuttle astronauts stranded in orbit.
Some other facts, pointed out to me privately, that could be used for
future Shuttle disaster scenarios:
12 Orbital debris is a significant threat to the Shuttle as we have
already experienced damage during one flight.
13 The SSME bell is not being adequately inspected for hairline cracks
which could fail catastrophically during launch.
There are many classes of plausible disaster scenarios based on these
premises. I've chosen to write on just a few exemplary cases which
are particularly horrific. They are worth contemplating because they
are so horrific.
NASA is intransigent when it comes to pursuing important technical
activities that have little immediate political import. Therefore,
it invested in SRB redesign only AFTER catastrophic SRB failure.
Now that it is "safe", NASA continues to invest more and more money
in SRB research to the exclusion of other areas of far greater
weakness in the Shuttle system. Obviously, it will not invest adequate
money in those areas until they, too, fail catastrophically.
Tom Neff, Bob Pendleton, Jim Merrit, et al, start educating the
net for a change. Maybe you should start by reading some nonfictional
accounts of space technology and history rather than continuing to
worship mythology authored by such great story-tellers as Hans Mark, Gen.
Abramson, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Barney Roberts, Jessco Von
Puttkammer, James Fletcher, et al.
PS: If NASA ignores reality in its largest, currently most important
and most immediate program -- the Shuttle program -- how do you think
it is doing on future systems like Shuttle C, NASP, Space Station,
lunar bases, space resource utilization and mars missions?
Date: Fri, 11 Nov 88 18:17:25 PST
From: jim@angband.s1.gov (Jim Bowery)
Subject: Stranded in LEO due to APU failure
In order to prepare for the next Shuttle disaster, we need to examine
the various scenarios that may occur, their likelihood, consequences
and what work should be done, in advance to prepare ourselves, our
space program and our citizenry.
For example, consider what would happen if an orbiter were stranded
in LEO due to total APU failure. The logic of the situation would
unfold in this scenario:
Hundreds of millions of people on Earth would watch every detail
of the dramatic situation unfold over several days (assuming they
have that much life support). During the first few days, there
will be many attempts to repair the problem with ground crews working
round the clock on a simulated orbiter in a similar failure
mode. They will come up with any of a number of futile attempts
to fix the problem which the astronauts will, at first, dutifully
carry out. This work will proceed even though there is little or no
possibility of an actual fix. The public, the astronauts and NASA
personnel will feel hope and dispair in cycles at each attempt,
until, eventually, the charade will wear thin. At that point, the
astronauts, the ones who are facing certain death, will be under
enormous psychological pressure to end the charade.
Such a break-point will carry with it the likelihood of one or more
astronauts venting frustration and hostility -- possibly built up
over many years of disillusionment as part of the crippled US space
effort.
NASA will attempt to blank-out all communications with
the astronauts at or before this point. Some or all astronauts will
not want to cooperate with this black-out and will refuse to allow
the their communications to be encrypted. Ham radio operators and
others around the world will band together to pick up the transmissions
of the doomed astronauts and make them available to the public.
After breaking from the bureaucracy's authority, the astronauts
may become extremely critical of specific individuals in NASA and
its contractors. They will have nothing to lose and will finally
have a chance to right what they perceive as the wrongs in the
space program.
A few weeks after the dying words of the astronauts are heard,
the shuttle will reenter the atmosphere at 5 or 6 miles per second.
It will break up. A few large fragments will scatter widely and
unpredictaby, hitting the ground before total disintigration due
to the ablative coating. The public, ignorant of probability theory,
will be in terror at the thought of the shuttle crashing into their
communities causing mass destruction. The fireball could easily be
visible from large population centers and will most likely be viewed
on television broadcasts around the world.
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 88 21:52:48 PST
From: jim@angband.s1.gov (Jim Bowery)
Subject: Possible consequence of terminal approach APU failure
Another possible Shuttle disaster:
During reentry 2 of the APUs fail and the third has some problems (as
has occured before). But unlike the previous instances, the Shuttle
comes into the terminal area energy management manuver a little bit high
and a little bit fast. It encounters a little clear air turbulence
while in a tight turn to bleed off this excess energy. As the pilot is
lining up on the runway, the third and last APU gives out due to the
buffetting. Unfortunately, the APU failed before he completed the final
turn. The control surfaces go dead. The Space Shuttle, now out of
control, impacts at supersonic speed into the waiting crowd which never
hears it coming. Thousands perish.
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 88 21:17:18 PST
From: jim@angband.s1.gov (Jim Bowery)
Subject: Secret Shuttle Launch Disaster Scenario
Here's another possible Shuttle disaster:
The DoD reopens the Vandenburg Shuttle launch facility. A payload
with a plutonium radioactive thermal generator needs to be placed in
an LEO polar orbit. About 2 minutes after SRB separation, a main
engine pump turbine blade fails causing the turbine to fly apart
at supersonic speed. The containment works pretty well but a few
blades get out. One of them nicks the pressurization system for
the fuel oxydizer tanks in one of the OMS pods. The astronauts sense a
loud THUD and the loss of one of the main engines. They opt to abort
once around using the remaining two main engines. Everything goes
according to the contingency plan. All fuel is consumed from the
main tank. The tank separates. The OMS engines start up. Only
one of them lights. Since this produces an off center thrust, the
RCS consumes excessive amounts of fuel to keep stability. The OMS
system, only capable of using half its fuel, fails to put the Shuttle
into a once around trajectory. It reenters short, somewhere near
the Persian Gulf. In the early phase of reentry, when the aerodynamic
control surfaces are insufficient to orient the spacecraft, the already
overtaxed RCS runs out of fuel. The Shuttle begins tumbling somewhere
over the Caucasus Mountains. By the time the control surfaces could
be used, the Shuttle is in a fatal spin. It breaks up. When it
breaks up, the RTG canister, designed to withstand reentry, is struck
by one of the structural members of the Shuttle. Not being designed
to withstand this, it shatters. 22 kilograms of Pu238-dioxide are
distributed in the atmosphere over Moscow, Kalinin and Lenningrad.
The Soviet ballistic missile warning radars, primarily facing north,
are briefly treated to the spectacle of hundreds of reentering
objects coming down around Moscow and Lenningrad. The two largest,
most economically important and strategically significant cities in
the Soviet Union.
Pu238 is 284 times more radioactive than the fissionable isotope Pu239
due to its relatively short half-life of 86 years. It decays by alpha
emmission of 5.5Mev. While this is somewhat higher than the decay
energy of Pu239, it is far higher than the decay energy of U235 and
not similar to the decay energy of any other common nuclide. Thus
to the relatively unsophisticated instruments initially used to
evaluate the sudden release of radioactive material, it will appear
as though 5.5 metric tons of weapons-grade Pu239 has suddenly reentered
over Moscow.
5.5 metric tons of Pu239 is enough to support on the order of 500
warheads. Areasonable surmize would be that a US secret launch out
of Vandenburg was to illegally emplace a facility containing 500 or
so nuclear warheads into an orbit where it would pass over the
Soviet Union 4 times per day from the south whre their early warning
radars could not detect it until it was far too late.
Vandenburg is a highly secured facility. Due to the local geography,
neither the launch pad nor the assembly building can be viewed from
sites not on the base. The Soviets will have very limited intelligence
about launch preparations and the launch itself. Our belated
protestations that it was merely a routine Shuttle launch will be met
with a great deal of skepticism.
The Soviets, sensitized by the Chernobyl disaster to nuclear
catastrophe, will be react unpredictably.
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 88 08:24:13 PST
From: jim@angband.s1.gov (Jim Bowery)
Subject: Brilliant Soviet Rescue of Astronauts Stranded in LEO
As in the "Stranded in LEO Due to APU Failure" scenario, all 3 APU's fail,
leaving the astronauts helplessly adrift.
The Soviets, hearing Tom Neff's idea of a rescue effort, come up with
a brilliant plan. They launch an unmanned Soyuz from Space City
with the stated intent of making a rendevous with the drifting Shuttle
and rescuing some of the astronauts (the Soyuz wouldn't have capacity
for all of them). Space City, being at a much higher latitude than
KSC, gives the Soyuz craft a much higher inclination orbit than the
Shuttle. The Soyuz, being incapable of correcting its inclination
by the required amount, intersects with the Shuttle's orbit at a few
miles second or so.
Thus the Soyuz saves our brave astronauts from the senseless torture
of a slow death.
Why would the Soviets would go along with such an imbicilic
rescue attempt when it requires the sacrifice of a launched Soyuz
(worth $15 to $20 million)? The Soviets draw attention and blame
for the disaster away from NASA. This allows NASA to contain the
political damage and maintain its appearance of conducting a space
program, leaving the Soviets free to develop space without competition.
---------------
And now for a little space policy...
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 88 21:43:32 PST
From: jim@angband.s1.gov (Jim Bowery)
Subject: Diversity vs Monolithism
Humanity can promote the richness and diversity of life by providing a
greater variety of habitats in space rather than encroaching on existing
terrestrial habitats. We can enhance richness and diversity in systems
at all levels -- technological, economic, governmental, cultural, and
biological. We can bring this gift to our world and, indeed, our
universe, if we adhere to the principle that it is better to
err on the side of diversity than on the side of monolithism.
In a series of seminars with environmental groups over a period of
years, space activists in the San Diego area have succeeded in laying
a foundation of trust with these groups based on the above vision.
This trust is a fragile one, more prone to misunderstandings than
the internal factions of the National Space Society.
As guardians of the biosphere, environmental groups are particularly
sensitive to the issue of diversity and quality of life. The vision
of space habitats usually comes wrapped in conventional aerospace
concepts such as "the space program" and the National Commission on
Space's "50 year plan". Unfortunately, for too many of us, this
wrapping is an accurate reflection of our values. Environmental groups
reject our vision, and rightfully so.
Until we clean up our own act, and recognize that large government
projects are not the way to a diversity of space activities, we will
fail to make inroads with grass-roots America, and our gift will be
rejected by those in the environmental movement who can lend it
deeper ethical and moral credibility.
We are desparate for things to happen in space. We are easy prey for
the agents of monolithic space programs who would use us to
prop up funding for such dubious big projects as Space Shuttle
and now Space Station. These projects do more than waste money, they
sap the will of our people to take responsibility for space activities
into their own hands. Like monocropping, they displace the richness
and diversity of natural selection with the errors of monolithism.
We were willing to wait a decade for NASA to build Shuttle. It failed
miserably to live up to our expecations. Now, 15 years later, NASA is
asking us to, again, wait a decade for Space Station. It will have
been 25 years of waiting from Skylab to a pig-in-the-poke Space Station.
25 years.
Think about it.
The monolithism of our government's "X year plans" is as abhorrent
as the "5 year plans" of totalitarian bureaucracies of communist nations.
Do we really need the government's "help" in the form of "the space program"
in order to realize the potential of space?
No!
"The space program" is merely the decaying carcas of Apollo which
monolithists keep around like a psycho with his long dead mother.
The stench is becoming unbearable.
If we are going to wait 5, 10, 25 or 50 years for something, let it be for
something of real and abiding value. Just as it takes several years
for a dispoiled environment to regain its biodiversity, so it will take our
economy several years to fill the markets dispoiled by government encroachment.
Let us abandon the idea of "the space program" for the atavism it is. Let us
not wait for yet another miracle from Uncle Sam. Instead, let us wait for the
life force, as embodied on our free enterprise economy, to grow and flourish,
filling all the territories that "the space program" has dispoiled by its
decaying presence. Let us no longer accept morsels of opiated carrion from
NASA to satiate our craving for space activity. Let us, instead, get back
in touch with our true needs which are the mother of invention.
Beyond business regulatory functions, let government restrict itself
to the support of basic research through a wide variety of independent
agencies that have their own reasons for being interested in space.
Leave technology development and services exclusively in the hands of
the citizens, buying technology and services on the open market when needed.
When our people see groups of other citizens getting together to do things
in space on their own initiative, without government help or interference,
the life force will speak to them. Then, the National Space Society's
mission will be accomplished and only then will we the people understand
that space is a place to live work, play and grow.
Jim Bowery
PO Box 1981
La Jolla, CA 92038
INET: jim@pnet01.cts.com
Seastead this.
These men and women knew the great risks, but their curiosity, adventurous minds and sense of wonder were probably what made them go on this journey. We need more men and women of this great calibre, men and women that dare take a step forward in a world where so many seem so keen on taking a step back. People like these seven astronauts are our ambassadors in Cosmos. Let us honour these brave souls and every other man or woman who lost their lives in exploring the unknown, let us honur them by continuing their work.
That's the only time the Martian heat-ray is in alignment.
Especially if it helps the author to express his or her grief about this. Your response to that "useless junk" cost you more time and energy than reading the original. Let it pass.
Moreso, would they consider stopping the mining all across the US, because of this? Would the media be saying things like 'this is the last dig for anything in the states for a while'. Would they also point out that one of the guys was from Isreal? And would some morons talk about terrorisim possibly being related???
Think how many people were killed in the research for Airplanes in general, Cars, building large projects (think Great Wall of China or The Pyramids). Did they ever consider abandoning or setting back the project by years, or wasting millions because of 7 deaths? Of course not! I mean, I feel for their families, and am upset about the whole thing- but let's not get ahead of ourselves. The whole space program shouldn't go to hell for this.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Are you on crack? It was barely inside the atmosphere, so how can it be called an aviation disaster?!?!
I know some Kiwis enjoy trying to trivialize America from time to time, but this is ridiculous!
Really?
/ re ad/30103
e s/ 2000a/012400e.htm
Take a moment and look at the position of Senator Mondale in the 1960s.
http://www.ad-astra.net/cgi-bin/BBS/SpacePolicy
"The worse thing about Mondale is his unrelenting, unbending opposition to the exploration of space. This opposition was dramatized in the wonderful HBO series on the Apollo Program when Mondale pops up as a charector making political hay after the Apollo Fire. While he did not openly oppose the Apollo Program, it being a done deal by the time he entered the Senate, Mondale's views on human space flight were no secret, even then. After Apollo 11 he helped to lead fights against any and all efforts to expand human presence in space. The crippling of the human space program can in part be laid at his door."
" 'A Webb aid remembers him (Webb) asking Mondale, "In all due humility, Senator, what have we done wrong? Why are you so down on us?" Webb wanted to know why Mondale was upset and what he could do to rectify the situation. He and other visitors from NASA were standing in front of Mondale's desk. The Senator leaned back in his chair and instructed Webb, "I intend to ride this for every nickle's worth of political power I can get out of it. I don't give a hoot in hell about the space program or your future," a NASA official with Webb recalls Mondale saying.'"
http://www.floridatoday.com/space/explore/stori
"For example, Faries cites the reduction in NASA's budget over the five years since Weldon came to office. But he fails to point out that in each of those years, President Clinton sent a budget to Congress that cut NASA from his prior request. And Faries ignores the fact that in response to Clinton's cuts, Congress found money to increase NASA's budget above the president's request for the last three years."
Then look at what the OMB and Congress did to NASA and DoD space prgram funding from 1965 on, cut, cut, cut, cut.
You are right, NASA is what it is today because of the Democrats, instead of getting Dyna-Soar, Skylab, heavy-Lift and a re-usable by 1982 we got Shuttle. When DoD and NASA said we needed 5 Shuttles, three at KSC and 2 at Vandenberg, they got 3, and had to fight and scrouge for funding the 4th one in 1977.
it looks like the seller was just trying to sell it and then this happened.
They didn't have much time. The shuttle carries a few extra days worth of air, water, & power, but not enough (probably) to survive a few weeks. (I have no idea what its endurance would be if forced into an Apollo 13-like situation.)
But, a Progress vehicle is going to launch to ISS tomorrow. If Columbia had stayed up, and the progress had flown to it with emergency supplies, maybe that would have been a way out. (Or, a way to survive an extra few weeks.) Who knows. We don't know the failure mode yet, whatever the speculation currently is.
The Shuttle program and ISS are money pits that just orbit endlessly. I hope there is at least a debate about junking the Shuttle and ISS, which would free up tons of money for more groundbreaking unmanned missions.
Ummm...you know that statistics are, like, really not useful for small numbers of events, right?
113 is a small number of events.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I think bulk would be more of a problem than mass. you can double check me but I believe the heaviest Delta configuration has a greater payload capability than shuttle... shuttle only puts ~50k payload in orbit, I think Endeavor can toss 75k since its the lightest.. you have to remember that the original Shuttles are about 175k or so, Endeavor is around 150. may be discovery... which ever one the built most recently, I get them mixed up occasionally.
The heaviest delta config lauches around 100K or more if memory serves, A shuttle stack launches around 225k including the orbiter/engine/payload weight but the mass a Delta ( and arian ) put in orbit is almost enitrely payload. However their paloads tend to be relatively dense objects that pack their weight into a small area.. things like the truss segments are not very heavy but are bulky, the nodes are heavy and bulky. This means you would have to design and implement new payload shells to put on top of the Delta stacks that would have to be cleared from an aerodynamic standpoint. but now that I am thinking about it even that isn't the real problem
They real problem would be the lack of a sophisticated enough orbital manouevering to get the paylaod to ISS and then you have the problem of performing station construction with only the 3 memebers on board and no access to the shuttle RMS system to aide the stations RMS system which has been somewhat buggy.
If you could solve the problem of orbital manouvering ( very doable, you just have to make the system and fit it in the available launch mass ) you could probably solve the man power problem by doing it at crew exchanges with soyuz modules. However the station RMS would have to be sufficient by itself for manipulating the payload once the new piece it was close enough for capture. Hmmmmm double the two years and add another for good measure to do it that way. Station construction was mostly concieved and planned with the idea that you would have access to two RMS systems... I belive there are some operations where both are required.
I kind of hope they don't decide to build another orbiter. Right now the space plane idea has been recently revived but is still a little budget starved.... builiding a new orbiter will suck up alot of budget money. Even if we step up the schedule of the remaining 3 its likely shuttle fleet operating excpenses are going to be lighter than expected now. I refuse to claim that is a silver lining.... but we have to go on from here. shuttle is an aging system and sinking money into building another one is going to tie us to shuttle for that much longer.
Incidentally if we find this is a design flaw which applies only to re-entry and prooves to be one we can't solve I seriously hope they use it as an opportunity to revive the shuttle C concept rather than simply abandoning the current orbiters and no longer using them. Shuttle C is a one way trip design where they remove the abilily for a shuttle to ruturn in order to gain a much higher payload capability. We could design a shuttle to keep at Station that was a space tug and re add the ability to do satalite retrival and repair to ISS. In addition we would get a launch with roughly 3 times the payload capacity of a current launch for each orbiter we decided to use this way.
To make one a space tug The shuttles OMS would have to be re-designed to survive long term on orbit and be re-fuelable and replaceable on orbit. The ECLSS system would also have to be re-vamped.
Some might argue in that event we should put them in a museum... but personally the only one in the fleet I ever would have argued for that fate just met a far different fate. I think that once we decide to break away from the shuttle system ( be it in the after math of this tragedy or farther down the road ) converting the remaining to ships designed to stay in space for the rest of their service life would be far more useful and a far more fitting end to the shuttle program.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
The space shuttle is a national investment.
Loosing a $20,000 item is like loosing a man year... of life.
Billion dollar items represent the culmination of many peoples lifes.
1 billion dollars like like spending 50,000 people years. (if $20,000 is good estimate)
or about 1,000 people (if a person has 50 years productivity)
People can make people... but space shuttles help people make people better...
and as for hero's, anybody trusted with that many resourses could be called a hero on some level.
The bigger picture is God... so it's moot, everything is always about God (according to my philosophy, if you want to flame go to my journal page)
Please use [ informative / summarizing ] SUBJECT LINES
Flame me here
Yeah, so what?
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C 13 0_Gunship.wmv
There's been enough McDonalds and Walmarts polluting the highways of America (not to mention other countries), I don't need to see them in space. Space isn't yours to take, neither is any land for that matter -- but I guess that concept is foreign to you, and why military goons such as yourself don't seem to have any issue invading Iraq for its oil reserves either. Oh I'm sorry, I meant to say, liberating it (cough).
That was mostly Britain and Spain, but we'll let that one go, since we did reap some of the benefit.
Last time I checked Britain and Spain were part of so-called "Western civilization."
We conquered a barrier by landing on the moon, and we have every right to claim it and lay the proof.
Oh, wow. It would almost be credible if you "conquered" the moon for some good scientific or exploratory reason. Fact of the matter is you felt intimidated by another country and used reaching the moon as a way of telling the Russians "my balls are bigger than yours." Some would doubt whether or not the US actually landed there, but that's another story altogether. If it were really about knowledge the US would've let the Russians land first, then received the same knowledge second-hand -- saving thousands of tax-payer dollars in the process. Better yet, if the US wasn't constructing a big red scare, maybe they could've dropped their egos low enough that they could've collaborated as a team, and got even more knowledge. I know these are new terms for you: collaboration, sharing, team work. Try hard, you'll get it.
Kennedy and Johnson were drumming up nationalism to support the space program back during the Apollo missions.
Of course they were. Because even they could see that years down the road it would be another military tool. Lesson #1 on European/American policy: nothing is ever done for reasons of good will, but only future exploitation (see creation of the so-called Israeli state).
Prove that we're putting missile bases in space. Come on, prove it. We're all still waiting, you know.
How about this:
http://www.aerotechnews.com/starc/2003/013103/b
Or this:
http://www.spacedaily.com/2003/030127142956.xab
Science is *always* beneficial to mankind.
So Hitler's scientific experiments on Jews are okay with you? How about US government giving black men Syphilis to "see what would happen?" No, 'science' is not always beneficial to mankind, not when the intention is backward (i.e. to dominate other nations for no other reason than showing political might).
You are so out of touch with reality that I'm not sure why I am bothering to respond. You're a sick piece of shit for even saying that last sentence.
Really? The Israeli guy who died was responsible for leading air raids against Iraq, ones I'm sure hurt a little more than seven people. But I guess the question for you is which lives are valuable and which are not -- apparently you have no universal respect for human life, but only respect for precious American ones. Those seven people dying is bad -- but I'm failing to see how I should feel any WORSE about that than the thousands of other people who die indirectly from American policy every day.
Maybe you can point out exactly what you are talking about? Or, are you just dreaming up numbers by swallowing the made-up cumshot statistics of left-wing radicals?
CBS news reported last weekend that the invasion will begin with war planes and ships launching between 300 and 400 cruise missiles on day one. This is more than the number of missiles launched during the whole of "Desert Storm" in 1991. Another 300 to 400 missiles will follow on the second day.
My head is out of my ass, you lying bigot. Let's remind ourselves of some of the more "stupid" things Americans have done:
We'll start with bailing Europe out of two World Wars. Then, we can point out that we give over six million metric tons of food to foreign countries every year, under multiple programs.
Hmm. Yeah, that's nice. Why don't you take a hint from the sentiment that I've heard from one of the numerous 'foreigners' who receive your splendid aid: "We don't want your fucking food. We just want you to stay out of our countries." Got it? Good.
Let's also think about how we have conducted recent war effors. When it has been tactically sound, we have dropped leaflets in places with assets to be bombed, so that civilians can leave.
Yeah, that was REAL bright. Not only were some of the early pamphlets in Arabic (which Afghanis by and large don't even speak), the genius who thought of this idea failed to realize that most of the people are illiterate.
Oh, and here's another thought: maybe those people didn't want a 'regime change' (nice euphemism for OVERTHROW).
We go out of our way for precision targeting... don't whine about collateral civilian damage to non-military targets until you've tried to perform the job of having to hit military targets that people like Saddam Hussein put right in the middle of neighborhoods and right next to schools. The simple fact is, we are far better than some other countries are.
Oh, like in this video?
http://www.newsfrombabylon.com/media/military/A
If you really were about war, you'd take your pussy ass on the ground and fight face to face, then maybe you wouldn't have "collateral damage" (more bullshit euphemisms).
Hey, wasn't this the same logic as the 9/11 hijackers? I mean, I'm sure they figured that most of those the people in WTC were business oriented; there were probably some government employees in their as well. I suppose to them the civilians were collateral damage too. So, tell me, how are you any different than the "cowards" on 9/11? At least they had enough guts to die for what they believed in, which is more than I can say for little boys playing with joysticks in a gunship.
Why aren't you bitching about what the Russians do in Chechnya?
Putin and Bush are the same to me. Maybe next message I'll bitch about him too, just for you honey.
Liar. Go fuck yourself. And, if you are an American, you're a fucking apologist for the 9/11 terrorists, and a pile of shit on the landscape of humanity. May you rot in hell with Hitler, Hussein, Lenin, and the 9/11 terrorists.
Haha, I love it. I'll be sure to slap my 'Power of Pride" bumper-sticker on my gas guzzling (but of course American made) SUV, buy a cheap plastic flag for my antenna, and totally show those terrorists, through my enormous power of consumption and material items how STRONG my nation is.
Dumb ass.
Here (Realmedia)
14 minutes with pre-launch shots of crew, launch, space views and landing.
Very bad sound unfortunately.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
they were not "heroes" - they knew the risks
Soooo....Understanding the risks of your actions excludes your actions from being considered heroic? Wow, that's truly 'insightful.' And I thought most people would *define* heroism that way.
Yeah, lots of people say they would go, but these people have dedicated their lives to advancing the engineering and life sciences, and they did indeed know the risks that went with this.
*That's* the difference between the family of four that's killed on the way to church by a drunk and this disaster; these people knowlingly took the risk of dying for humanity. And don't give me crap about glory and money -- the Astronaut program pays a salary of approximately $40-$75k, the range of a decent sysadmin. And not everyone makes as much as Glenn on the tour circuit.
And yes, you could then argue that military deaths are equally as notable and noble, and at that point I would agree that the sensationalism of the vehicle and its history come into play. But for Christ's sake, these people were amongst the brightest and highest performing individuals on Earth--many would have articles and books written about them if they'd grown old and died of *natural* causes, let alone a horrific death at 200,000 feet. To say nothing of the loss humanity takes as we take one giant leap backward before crawling back to where we were yesterday.
As for cheap replacements, my dear god you must not be a design engineer. Why don't you go read about some fundamentals of aerospace and CMM level 5 coding practices, and THEN come back and talk with the big boys. This ain't no P2P software or Tivo hardware we're talking about.
Sorry to everyone else for the rant -- but jesus I'm so tired of ignorant people opining on topics of which they are clearly ignorant. 'Insightful' my ass.
The will of god is greater than the will of man.
The evil of America had paid the price for occupying our holy land.
You have paid with lives.
Iraq will prevail.
Allah, peace be upon him.
However, the flight is very smooth and gentle through the first couple of S turns, so that the tile surfaces aren't subjected to thermal shock, I believe.
REgardless of whether or not it fell in the same actual week(whether or not two given dates are in the same week fluctuates from year to year), Appolo 1, Challenger, and Columbia disasters all happened in the middle of winter. Perhaps the shuttle doesn't like winter weather? Maybe the Russians could help us with specifics of cold weather space launches/recoveries?
why are you replying to me? i agree with you, i would also volunteer to be an astronaut, knowing the risks.
i was just saying, there was nothing they could have done, so blaming nasa is stupid.
No, we never got back to where we were before Challenger. The DOT terminated their involvement in the shuttle program, only completing the missions which were already in planning, and this sucked out a lot of the cash which should have sustained the shuttle program.
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0
Credo quia impossibilis -- Tertullian
In this novel the Columbia breaks up or crashes on re-entry (can't remember which) which is a prelude to NASA being mothballed. Although I can't see this happening in real life, it was either a shrewd guess (Columbia being the oldest Space Shuttle) or just a coincidence, but sure is freaky. A review of the novel here, for example.
Wow, it seems to me the left wing was damaged on liftoff and was later ripped on reentry. It probably ripped a hole in the hull and the tire blew from the heat. etc. They better try to make it safer for these people to fly this thing.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =3205287911&category=13904
Need I say more?
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
I just heard a report on NPR that the most likely cause of the loss of the shuttle was a auxilary power unit exploding and causing a quick loss of control.
The APU's are turbines that use hydrazine fuel. It's highly explosive and there's been talk of finding a safer power source, but the problem is that batteries would be much heavier, and coming up with a lightweight replacement would be a multi billion dollar research project.
Anyway the turbines were due to come on line about the time the shuttle broke apart.
Scientist Michio Kaku said that the explosion was "par for the course" in that "about 1 in 75 space launches explodes" and this was columbia's 102 mission. Which is only to say that rockets are a dangerous form of transportation.
His next point was that this is a reason to think that the nuclear powered rockets that some (who?) are considering are a bad idea.
Rocky J Squirrel
There always are. This from people who would defend their Ford Taurus to the death, despite the fact that their Ford Taurus is about the most likely thing to kill them. Unless, perhaps, it's their own bathtub.
In the meantime there are people all over the world dying at the hands of other people, quite maliciously, by the score of scores.
The later is a tragedy. The Space Shuttle failure is an *accident.* In essence no different than a fatal car accident due to some trivial mechanical failure or other. It happens. No one threatened the cancelation of the Navy after the Thresher disaster which took the lives of 129 men, some civilians, despite the fact that these men had no more business being in the deep ocean than man has in space.
Why do we do such things as fly into space in the first place? Well, in the words of one of the great martyrs of going someplace no one has been before, "Because it's there."
When left to his own devices, rather than simply being asked idiotic questions by a mindless press agent, he could be quite a bit more eloquent though, and I'll depart with these words of Mr. Mallory:
"The first question which you will ask and which I must try to answer is this, 'What is the use of climbing Mount Everest ?' and my answer must at once be, 'It is no use'. There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behavior of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron. We shall not find a single foot of earth that can be planted with crops to raise food. It's no use. So, if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for."
-George Leigh Mallory, 1922
May the crew of the Columbia rest in peace, and joy, and may others live to experience the same joy of stars reached for.
KFG
The problem is that there's too much lift, and you want the thing to come down. So the S turns convert the lift vector into somewhat sideways vectors, which, because the rolls are reversed, cancel each other out over time. The track goes left and right, but you still are generally headed into KSC.
Yes, the man's so obviously against space exploration and NASA that he devoted time to proclaiming a manned mission to Mars in his State of the Union speech, while Clinton devoted his to proclaim his intent to make America more liberal. And his predecessor was so pro-NASA that his proposed budgets cut NASA's budget in real dollars roughly, oh, ever year or so.
Not that anybody who considers Bush a "neo-fascist" would bother with a connection to reality, I guess.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
I would be honestly sad if the U.S. kills its manned space program over this. I admit that there's a little bit of national pride in there, and also some very personal selfishness (heck, isn't that one of the reasons why people support the space program? To support the dream, however unlikely, that it's possible for them to somehow go into space one day?). On the whole, I'd like to think my main reason for supporting spaceflight (and mourning its possible loss) is that it is, in the words of Ms. Stewart, "a good thing." I honestly believe that mankind as a whole benefits from it, not only in the technology it produces but also in the more intangible ways you cite.
In my post, I guess I was also trying to console myself: Even if the U.S. abandons space, others (China) will not. It's comforting that way. I had intended the comment about "handing Mars to China," as a lament about our own (U.S.) foolishness, not a commentary on other nations. I do see, however, that my phrasing can be interpreted as McCarthy era "If we don't the Reds will!" jingoism.
Again, apologies for the miscommunication.
[On a side note, I have to wonder something else. I'm trying to comfort myself with the notion that the Chinese government would proceed if the U.S. bails. This, of course, presupposes that they aren't motivated by politics. Or rather, that they have enough non-political motives to stick it out on a manned space program even after all rivals abandon the stage. Given my cynicism about mankind in general, I wonder if it's impossible to have a manned program unless there's a rival out there doing the exact same thing. If that is the case, then having the U.S. or China quit would bring an end to manned spaceflight in both countries]
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
They would have had a tough time getting into the space station:
from CNN.com
"The 90-ton shuttle, heavier than other spacecraft in the fleet, was the only one not outfitted to dock with the international space station."
"A Flame Ball Named Kelly"
Flame balls onboard the space shuttle Columbia (STS-107) have been doing some strange and wonderful things.
link
This is a cruel irony for sure. They should probably pull that page in the time being.
Actually, at ~200,000 ft, the space shuttle is still using the reaction control thrusters (which use Hypergolic fuels) so they don't purge them before de-orbit. The space shuttle doesn't start to use the aero controls until much lower in the atmosphere, 120,000 is about the limit if I remember correctly. The X-15 only went up to around 100k ft and it used RCS, so I would imagine that was about the upper limit for aerodynamic control surfaces to function correctly.
Bill
It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
It seems that throughout human history, humanity has felt the uncontrolable need to challenge their limitations... to push the envelope. Those who lose their lives in this endevour deserve a special place in our thoughts and in our hearts.
To the Astonauts of STS-107: May flights of Angels wing Thee to Thy rest.
You expect me to believe you because? Where's your body of evidence? Ever heard of plausible deniability. Not all terrorists want to be realized. You should read Sun Tzu On The Art of War.
Link that got messed up in my original post.
they dont ignite exactly on contact, its a highly exothermic reaction, but the needed component is powdered aluminum. This is probably what the long white trail following the orbiter was, as its altitude was much too high for contrails.
-
The moderators are insane. A troll claiming that Bush cut, when he actually increased, spending on NASA is given a +5? Do the people with moderator points pay attention to the news? How about stop moderating on topics you know nothing about?
The stories I find on-line mention that the decision to cut the shuttle program were caused by previous problems in shuttle safety upgrades. Can anyone explain WTH that's all about? Also mentioned are plans to privatize major parts of the shuttle program, letting Boeing and Lockheed run it like a business, whatever that means.
While the initial investment of $7-10 billion may seem a bit steep, a space tether can lift payloads to orbit at about 1/100th the cost of current heavy lift rockets and shuttles.
I mourn the loss of our astronauts, and pray for their families hoping they find comfort in that their sacrifice was most noble and unselfish.
aahhh fucking statistics...and now you know why dumbasses are duped.
Editor, remove this story. Unless it's Ninnle related, I don't want to read it. Remove this gossipy shit right now.
I would much rather see autonomic robots in space. It's way too expensive and dangerous to send up humans at this point of our technological progress. Not to mention the additional likelyhood of fuckups since these are government projects.
The service module has the abiltity to perform reboosts as well... part of the payload of progress launches is normally fuel for the service module boosters.. any excess prop from the progress vehicles are used as well.. same for shuttle. Actually shuttle rebopsts are very inefficient since it is not attached in a very good location for reboost.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
It always seems to me that using one system to deliver both cargo and people leads to a less optimal solution. The requirements for each are sufficiently different. Putting people in orbit requires speed and safety. For cargo, efficiency becomes much more important. Why not have a simpler "people" only multi-stage space plane. Then a larger cargo only rocket, one that does not need to be as safe and one that can take higher g loads. Such a rocket could also handle larger loads for planetary missions, rendevouzing with space plane if needed...
I think they should also investigate other exotic mechanism for lifting cargo. A pound of water can take the ride in all sorts of ways without any impact. What are the other cheaper options for moving that pound of water?
Any day we have to put up with NT is a sad day.
"But we have enough fond memories to last us for a lifetime."
Keep in mind, there are still astronauts up in the station... somebody'll have to go pick them up sometime, considering they usually don't spend more than 6 months at a time up there.
It is sad that the first words from the Bush administration in the last few months other than "bomb Iraq" now have to be part of a tragedy like this. These men and women should be honored, hopefully by giving their names to new shuttles that can be built soon as to replace our aging fleet. Bush supposedly is prepared to discuss new space initiatives soon, hopefully he'll include one that honors the victims of today's tragedy by making sure their deaths were not in vain.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
According to cnn, the ISS still has two astronauts and a cosmonaut aboard. It also has supplies to last until July.
Da I agree for the most part. However when shuttle was designed we had to give up Saturn V stacks and to support sky lab we needed something capable of both. All in all though shuttle is a collection of comprimises it is ideal for station support. In many ways shuttle has not been used for what it was initially designed for until the past couple of years.
I think the cooperation with the Russians is the only thing that kept us from developing a domestic cargo delivery system using expendable boosters like deltas for ISS operations.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
I just hope that NASA is allowed to honour them this time, the recation to chanllenger (cutting back exploration), was an insult to the sacrifice of the astronaughts, Lets hope that Columbus's dead are honoured instead.
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
I think this is a good argument to continue building and expand the ISS into a station where the shuttle can be inspected in orbit and repaired if possible. We desperately need to expand our presence into LEO if we want to continue manned missions. A repair depot, however simple, could also retrieve and repair damaged satellites and provide a base for us to expand further.
We need that station. We need it to be permanently manned and capable of a lot more than simple experiments. If we are to continue the space program, instead of cutting back until there's little left but semi-smart probes, we need to move on, to never forget, and to make sure it never happens again. We need to explore and use the enormous resources of the solar system to ensure the survival of the human race; to bring our eggs beyond this one basket.
The alternative doesn't bear thinking about. Are we going to ignore the sacrifices that astronauts from world around have made in pursuit of these dreams? Are we going to turn our back on the solar system and throw away what so many people have sweated, worked, and died for? Are we going to throw away the potential given us, by God, Allah, Buddah, or whomever you wish to credit it to?
Are we going to turn our backs on the future of the human race?
We, as Geeks, need to dedicate ourselves to passing this message on - not just to other Geeks, but to everyone we can reach, especially the ordinary people whose opinions matter only en masse; we need to convince them with logic and reason and the passion that drives us; we need to ensure that there are enough people to pass this dream on, like a proliferate virus, until the governments of the world and the people who control the purse strings have no choice but to listen.
An avalanche starts with one small movement, and grows into something unstoppable.
Shadowbearer
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
We can all retract, get touchy fealy or think of the good side, if they don't sometimes have a problem how do they know the major design problems? NASA's got a excelent track record so far. How many other programs have this few problems? 3 Major problems for the Shuttle, 1 Telescope problem, some airplane problems, and that's it.
"If its a design flaw like with Challenger then it could easily be a simlar kind of time scale which will likely have a ripple effect on ISS."
I'd say it'd take longer than post-Challenger. The design flaw there was with the boosters. They're outright disassembled to refuel to begin with, so making structural changes to them is relatively easy. The only post-Challenger changes to the orbiter fleet I can think of were a few little safety features.
If the Columbia's loss is attributable to a design flaw, that means it's a problem with the orbiter itself. I know I probably shouldn't be feeling this way about the situation, but if we're lucky, retrofitting changes into the orbiter fleet will be more expensive than, say, finishing up a shuttle replacement.
On the other hand, it could be a flaw in something that was unique only to the Columbia. Challenger and future orbiters are essentially of a different generation (which is why Columbia wasn't able to reach the ISS).
Years back (the '80s) the US took an F-16 and outfitted a rocket to it. The F-16 flew straight up and at the peak of its trajectory, it launched the rocket which went straight up about 30 more miles then exploded in a cloud of shrapnel.
Moments later, a satellite ploughed through the debris field that was in the process of falling back to earth. If your target is going 17,000 miles per hour, you can kill it with a stationary bullet. (Remember this next time you see a James Bond villain shoot down anti-satellite missiles.)
The moral of the story is that you don't need all that much delta-vee to kill something in low earth orbit. This is a Bad Thing. Is such a capability within the grasp of the kind of folks who fly airplanes into buildings? I hope not.
fuck you. you'll get yours in the end.
Well, for what it's worth, i talked to a couple people today at work who thought that Al Quaeda blew it up 'cuz there was an Israeli on it.
I disabused them of that silly notion. Not like you can hit Shuttle with a Stinger SAM.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I am a strong advocate of increased NASA budgets.
But, Congress should also appropriate significant funds to develop robust space nuclear propulsion.
An announcement was scheduled for Monday on space nuclear power. Who knows what will happen to that now.
Nuclear propulsion will significantly increase the capabilities of unmanned spacecraft. It was expected that NASA was going to announce a "Jupiter Tour" mission on Monday. The mission would involve a spacecraft which could orbit a moon of Jupiter, then break orbit and move on to another. It would migrate between the moons, studying them in turn, for ten years. With current chemical propulsion, we would be able to only survey roughly one moon in detail with one spacecraft.
Also, space-rated fission reactors would be enormously useful for human Mars exploration.
I think Bush is an idiot. But, the decision to support nuclear space propulsion is extremely beneficial to the exploration of space. It will drastically increase our capabilities.
To me, NASA stands for everything that is good about America, and today, a little piece of that was taken away.
It may be too early to say whether NASA became less worthy of respect today; the real test will be in how they handle the investigation and what that investigation reveals.
After the Challenger disaster, NASA (and the industry behind it) suffered from two revelations: there was an infection of "get-there-itus" that prevented people from acknowleding obvious problems, and a reluctance to admit to that phenomenon as the facts emerged.
NASA could screw itself badly by trying to bury inconvenient facts, or it could set new standards for bureaucratic excellence (hopefully not a contradiction in terms) by striking a good balance between candor and caution in its investigations.
I am genuinely hopeful that they will get it right.
[And, for the record, I don't assume that NASA has anything to hide, although there are likely to be many allegations to that effect in the coming weeks...]
Hey, I missed the beginning of the second press conference but one of the other Aerospace Students gave me some important information that was released. At the External Tank seperation, the crew takes pictures and observes the event so that engineers can examine it for irregularities. The Crew reported that a chunk of foam broke off and hit the wing of the orbitor. It was NASA's intention to examine these afterwards; obviously this will not happen. At some point prior to landing (I don't know if it was day1, 2, or 15) Tracking and Data as well as the crew lost sensors in the affected wing. They could no longer monitor temperature, tire pressure, and many other systems in that side of the orbitor. Engineers on the ground did not see this as a significant problem and gave a thumbs up for the return home. One thing I overheard on one of the news channels was a possibilty of an APU problem. As I learned during one my last two trips to ASA, the APU functions normally at 8000 RPM; at that speed if something breaks, everything nearby is gonna hit the fan. ON A POSITIVE NOTE: Nasa has still maintained a perfect track record of not losing a life in space. The tally is 3 on the ground, and 14 in flight. If you want to look at historical aspects, this has been a grim week for the space agency. On monday was the Apollo 1 Anniversary, Tuesday was the Challenger Accident's Anniversary, and then there is Columbia today. I always thought Columbia would be the orbitor I'd one day see in the Smithsonian. Colin asked me a few questions this morning: 1) Do I think this was an act of terrorist? No F-ing Way!. My reason is the only thing that could reach that high is an Intercontinental Ballistic Missle (ICBM). And even if it is likely that someone could get ahold of an ICBM, it would be damn difficult to be able to hit a target moving faster than 12,000mph. If a terrorist could get an ICBM, he wouldn't get something nice like the US has with GPS computers to get accuracy of within 100 feet of the target. 2) What was my article for Popular Science (PS) about. A few magazines, in particular PS, have been strongly criticizing the ISS. They claim it has been a waste of money that is generating almost no scientific value. I call BS. The ISS has constantly been performing experiments, and like an assembly line, requires time to gain it's momentum. Two things are keeping the ISS from running at full capacity. 1 is the Crew Return Vehicle (CRV); a project Nasa Administrator Sean O'Keefe canceled for "budget reasons". 2 is the station being completed with all modules, experiment racks, and Personal Satellite Assistants. Lets not forget that more than 2 of the experiment modules have yet to be put in orbit. And as for the cost; Nasa Engineers had to redesign the ISS 6 times (I don't know if this includes Freedom or not), and each time they had to start over at the beginning---because the mission statement changed. W! hy did the mission statement change so many times?--congress. As a friend of my professor put it; "There are three types of space stations. There's a volkswagon, a pickup truck, and a cadilac. What we have is the volkswagon, for the price of the cadilac because we've had to spend so much money redesigning it so many times." Colin if there was another question in there that I missed, let me know and I'll get back to you on that. But today has been a great day to have Nasa TV. The debris hit the left wing. Several problems arrose but the two inparticular listed by nasa was tire pressure started to read off the mark (low) and was over temping. Structure was also over temp. These and several other problems arrose at 9:00 eastern. The tragedy occurred at 9:30, 10 minutes prior to landing at KSC. For the life of me I can't remember how long it takes for re-entry to landing; so I don't know if problems arrose after re-entry of not. If anyone knows, please let me know. Thanks, Mike Hail Columbia!
Hubble? Match orbits with the International Space Station?
What the hell are you smoking?!?!? Neither of those is even remotely feasible!!!!!!! Do you understand how Hubble functions, what orbit it is in, and how it is pointed? (It would have an extremely hard time remaining pointed at an object moving in low-Earth orbit, since target would be moving at a very high angular speed across the sky.) There are some ground-based telescopes which can be used to inspect the Shuttle, but the images aren't very high resolution.
There is no way whatsoever that Columbia could have docked with ISS. The orbits were vastly different.
I really hope that was a troll. You've got no idea what you are talking about.
The rubbery O ring provided the critical seal in the rocket booster, and was designed to block the escape of hot gas from the joint connecting the individual rocket segments. Its ability to perform when cold was coming under sharp scrutiny.
i am /feynmanRichard/theThinker.html]
As Dr. Feynman expected, when he cooled the rubbery material and squeezed it with a clamp, it failed to spring back into shape. Mr. Rogers saw what was coming, and a few minutes later, at the lunch break, he turned to the astronaut Neil Armstrong and said, ''Feynman is becoming a real pain.''
Material Found Vulnerable
After the break, Dr. Feynman brought the crowded hearing room to dead silence by addressing Lawrence B. Mulloy, the former chief of the solid rocket booster program: ''I took this stuff that I got out of your seal and I put it in ice water, and I discovered that when you put some pressure on it for a while and then undo it, it doesn't stretch back. It stays the same dimension. In other words, for a few seconds at least and more seconds than that, there is no resilience in this particular material when it is at a temperature of 32 degrees.''
Dr. Feynman and others concluded that if the space agency had conducted the same experiment and acted on the results, the disaster could have been avoided. When the commission finished its work, Mr. Rogers was barely able to prevail upon Dr. Feynman not to dissent from the report.
But he held a separate news conference to deliver a harsh and independent verdict: that NASA had ''exaggerated the reliability of the space shuttle to the point of fantasy.''
[http://www.geektimes.com/michael/culture/memor
And the comment that was in response to mine answered my question. It should get modded up informative, but so far, nothing. If someone would care to explain why they think my post is a troll that would be great too.
The media seems to be focusing on the issue that it may have been the foam peice that struck the left wing that is the "smoking gun" and caused the tragedy, though NASA keeps downplaying that.
One point that was really drilled on in the second NASA press conference on this was that there is no way that they could repair a tile if they found it to be damaged after the flight is already in space.
So what if they had found conclusively that the foam piece HAD damaged some tiles? What could they do? Really there is nothing they can do, except downplay it, cross thier fingers, and hope it doesn't affect landing....
And then when they do have problems with landing, then what? They continue to downplay the foam piece because they dont want to be criticized for trying to find something to do even when they had nothing they could do.
Fourteen hours after the disaster, Google News returns only one result for "missile defense" + columbia + shuttle -- ominously, Ha'aretz eulogizing Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon as the "first victim on this century's battlefield."
I am awfully sorry about the disaster, and I'd have prevented it if I could have. But I cannot help feeling consoled by the prospect that GW Bush now has one less space shuttle to aid in developing the "Star Wars" missile defense shield. That, plus a grounding delay for the rest of the fleet, could buy precious time for Americans to elect political leadership who will curtail this project.
However, I don't have any idea how dependent these efforts are on NASA's shuttles. How significant is the loss of the Columbia and a grounding period for the remaining shuttles for slowing development of the American military's space warfare programs?
Look at that Spaceship - January 27:
looking up
The space shuttle Columbia (STS-107) will make a lovely series of morning passes over the United States this week.
quote from the site, I guess its a bit old, but still very very twisted
Some would doubt whether or not the US actually landed there, but that's another story altogether.
There was a great disturbance in the Force, as if your credibility suddenly cried out in terror and was gone.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
I recall from early on in the shuttle program that there was supposed to be a tile repair kit. This kit would contain a number of tiles of different sizes along with a compound that would act to fill in the gaps around the replacement tiles.
I have done a lot of searching and have yet to find any mention of this on Google other than some loony entry about the first shuttle mission being a hush hush military job.
I thought I might have been imagining this and talked to my wife and she also remembers this tile repair kit being touted by NASA.
I listened to a radio show and a "Official" of some sort said there is no way to repair tiles in space.
I am confused as to this apparent spinning of information.
The questions are.
Is there or was there ever a real tile repair kit?
Was it abandoned for some reason if it did exsist?
Was it only a myth put out by NASA to give people hope that a missing tile would not spell death and destruction for the crew and craft?
I am 46 and so remember the start of the shuttle program quite clearly. Are there any others in my age range who recall this tile repair kit?
dzimmerm
Jumping to correct solutions slowly is better than jumping to incorrect solutions quickly.
talking with a friend of mine this morning, she immediately presumed that it had to do with the insulation hitting the left wing during takeoff (and it very well might). She said they should have aborted the mission right then...
Of course, I had to remind her that by the time they reviewed that film, the shuttle was already in orbit. So, if that caused tiles to be lost or whatever, and that caused the disaster, then it basically boiled down to disaster 16 days ago, or today. Either way, there was nothing to be done.
The only way, if they had known this would happen, they could have done anything was to launch another shuttle to get the astronauts off, and just leave the Columbia up there in orbit.
Was he american too? Have given other nations military personaell rides on the shuttle too?
War is necrophilia.
And, of course, some jackass has "three rubbery pieces that bounced off the road in front of me in Nagadoces this morning" on Ebay.
t em =3205318125&category=208
Schmuck. I seriously hope he is kidding. If not, I seriously hope he gets a knock on the door from the feds.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&i
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
They definitely are not planning on restarting Project Orion. Nuclear pulse propulsion is not what is going to be proposed.
They will propose reactors designed to power highly efficient propulsion systems.
The press has been doing a terrible job of reporting on this issue. Many sources are reporting many conflicting things. But, the word from "inside" is that the plan is to develop reactors for propulsion.
It'll probably stop most empirical space research for years...
i don't usually care about people i don't know dying, but since i'm a techno-romantic....
this makes me think of a song btw, really apropriate,
the phoenix by julia ecklar:
in a tower of flame in capsule twelve
i was there
i know not where they layed my bones, it could be anywhere
but when fire and smoke had faded
the darkness left my sight, and i found my soul in a spaceships hull, riding
home on a trail of light
and my wings are made of tungsten, my flesh of glass and steel
i am the joy of terra for the power that i wield
once upon a lifetime i died a pioneer
now i sing within a spaceship's hull, does anybody hear?
before each mornings launch, they know that i am there
to the soul that warms this vessels hull they say a silent prayer
i am father, ship and spirit of the dream for wich they strive
for i am man at the hands of man, see us rocket for the sky
and my wings are made of tungsten, my flesh of glass and steel
i am the joy of terra for the power that i wield
once upon a lifetime i died a pioneer
now i sing within a spaceship's hull, does anybody hear?
my thunder rends the morning skies, yes i am here,
though lost to flame when i was man , now i ride her without fear
for i am more than man now, and man built me with pride
i led her the way, and i lead the way, of mans future in the sky
and my wings are made of tungsten, my flesh of glass and steel
i am the joy of terra for the power that i wield
once upon a lifetime i died a pioneer
now i sing within a spaceship's hull, does anybody hear?
(something like that)
youre a lunatic... can I have some of that LSD shit? dipshit.
The Challenger disaster O ring problem only came to light several months after the disaster. And it took Dick Feynman's demonstration with the ice water for the theory to be accepted as fact.
The O-ring problem was more insidious and reflected terribly on NASA. The engineers knew about the design defect from actual twisted and scorched O-rings recovered from previous flights. The failure of the O-rings to seat properly on booster ignition was exacerbated not created by cold temperature. The Challenger launch was about 20 below design spec limit of 53F.
NASA repeatedly disregarded the advice of the engineers who designed the system and issued itself waivers to fly well below the design temperature cutoff. The booster design could have been better, and now is, but it is false that the Challenger accident was what brought it to NASA's attention.
Here is a brief account of the history as I have come to believe it occurred. There are many more thorough accounts.
This is not to dismiss Feynmann's role -- his insistence brought O-rings to the fore -- but whistleblower MT engineer Robert Boisjoly was complaining loudly long before the accident.
Why bring this up now? Because we're still hearing the sound bite that Challenger "was due to faulty design" which is true but kind of like saying the drunk died because of his faulty seat belt that didn't save him on hitting his seventh tree.
Challenger was a matter of time. The complex failures of management often set the stage for disaster, and I'm sure Columbia will be far more complex that "act of God."
Not Another Seven Astronauts
Space Travel is Dangerous.
That may sound like a "duh", but if you've spent the time studying the Apollo/Skylab programs for example, you'd know that NEARLY EVERY mission had either abort-inducing/life threatening aspects.
It's simply extremely difficult to engineer products to this level of reliability and backup. So accidents Will Occur. Expecting otherwise is foolish - technology/engineering isn't evolved to the point of these flights being routine.
Obviously human error is often involved in these issues. And these are generally corrected later.
Fact is with such complex systems, with little tolerance for errors, it's nearly impossible to be perfect. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try - people's lives are at risk, after all.
Off the cuff here's a list. And I'm listing this not because I ithink most NASA people are incompetent/lazy (mostly the opposite), but just to show how easy it is for Bad Things To Happen.
Apollo 1 - Everyone died on the ground during routine tests, because pressurized pure oxygen + some risky setups led to a fire quickly killing everyone.
Apollo 7 - actually this one went pretty darn well, but the astronauts had head colds and refused against NASA orders) to wear helmets during reentry - which could have killed them.
Apollo 8,9 - pretty good according to my memory. I do recall Apollo 9's main mission nearly being scrapped because Rusty Schweiket was sick, and thus it was considered dangeous to send him out in a space suit.
Apollo 10 - Lander nearly crashed on moon due to pilot error. (one pilot flipped one switch, the other flipped the same one back later)
Apollo 11 - Lunar Lander nearly exploded a few minutes after landing due to high pressure blockage build up. Also, ran very low on fuel because original landing spot was rockier than expected.
Apollo 12 - Lightning striking twice (literally ) put nav platform out of whack and nearly leads to abort shortly after takeoff
Apollo 13 - Don't think more needs to be said on this one!
Apollo 14- Problems getting service module and lunar lander to docks originally nearly lead to abort. Failure of radar nearly causes abort.
Apollo 15 - computer software issues nearly lead to abort (this may be an earlier flight - I may be spacing hear).
Apollo 16 - pretty good
Apollo 17 - some problem occurred, but again I'm spacing
Skylab 1 (unmanned) - serious problems force Skylab 2 to become a repair and recover mission, rather than science oriented.
As for the shuttle, I'm sure if I were a shuttle buff, I could rattle off 50 missions like that besides the obvious two.
Looks like you're the one arguing against yourself.
Atheism is no more a religion that baldness is a hair colour.
You're exactly right. Atheists had been persecuted throughout history when, almost universally, they were identical to those that persecuted them save for one aspect.
But today, we cannot allow this previous persecution to give special benefits to atheists. They should be treated, in the law and in business, just as anyone else.
No one should ever say "We're all bald, and that's the truth, and your hair is nothing more than dead cells that isn't even part of you!" (which, btw, is almost but not entirely true--my hair is very much a part of who I am.)
Many comments were well informed, but the opinion i mande of the space shuttle is that it's a whole design that didnt put security and escape options as a priority in the design from day 1. Maybe it's just an old design, and all that, but i think that NASA now should seriously think about coming out with something radically new, should it take 10 years to develop. Space research is important but i guess that given the situation on earth nobody is in a real hurry, at this point.
Testifying to the violence of the breakup, there's a picture of the flight helmet on CNN's site right now. Find the "Shuttle Debris" list on the main page - the helmet is battered, broken, and burned.
Could have simply been to create a situation in which an item would have hit and damaged the Columbia during launch, leading to a launch explosion. (Note, the Columbia did get hit by an object at launch.) The shuttle did launch successfully, although, sadly, it did not return successfully.
Thus that is one possibility. Two, if tiles were deliberately damaged / loosened so as to expose an area to the super-heat of re-entry the shuttle would be destroyed on re-entry.
Although it is true, that there is no anti-air missle currently available to track and target a a vehicle at an altitude of 200,000+ miles travelling at Mach 18+, it does NOT preclude the possibility of a terrorist attack. And to me, the fact they dismissed outright the possibility of terrorism and so quickly is troublesome.
Trust me, the U.S. government's standard policy toward terrorism is to try to explain it away with mechanical failure.
NASA chiefs ignored safety warnings
NASA had "repeatedly ignored" the warnings of a former engineer who had pleaded for a presidential order to halt all space shuttle flights, until safety issues were addressed, the Sunday Observer reported.
Don Nelson, who worked with NASA for 36 years, had written to President George W Bush warning that he should intervene to "prevent another catastrophic space shuttle accident".
Nelson was on the initial design team for the space shuttle. He participated in every shuttle upgrade until his retirement in 1998.
Listing a series of mishaps with shuttle missions since 1999, Nelson warned in his letter that NASA management and the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel have failed to respond to the growing warning signs of another shuttle accident.
White House officials rejected Nelson's plea for a moratorium. He tried to talk again to Nasa's administration about his worries in October but was again rebuffed.
Nelson told The Observer that he feared the Columbia disaster was the culmination of 'disastrous mismanagement' by NASA's most senior officials.
"I became concerned about safety issues in NASA after Challenger. I think what happened is that very slowly over the years Nasa's culture of safety became eroded."
"But when I tried to raise my concerns with NASA's new administrator, I received two reprimands for not going through the proper channels, which discouraged other people from coming forward with their concerns. When it came to an argument between a middle-ranking engineer and the astronauts and administration, guess who won."
"One of my biggest complaints has been that we should have been looking for ways to develop crew escape modules, which Nasa has constantly rejected."
Since 1999, space vehicles had experienced a number of potentially disastrous problems. In 1999, Columbia's launch was delayed by a hydrogen leak and Discovery was grounded with damaged wiring, contaminated engine and dented fuel line.
In January 2000, Endeavor was delayed because of wiring and computer failures and in August of the same year, an inspection of Columbia revealed 3,500 defects in wiring.
In October 2000, the 100th flight of the shuttle was delayed because of a misplaced safety pin and concerns with the external tank.
Nelson was the not the only person who had warned NASA. The former chairman of the Aerospace Safety Advisory panel, Richard Bloomberg, had said last April: "In all of the years of my involvement, I have never been as concerned for space shuttle safety as now."
Bloomberg blamed the deferral or elimination of planned safety upgrades, a diminished workforce as a result of hiring freezes, and an ageing infrastructure for the advisory panel's findings.
In September 2001 at a Senate hearing into shuttle safety, senators and independent experts warned that budget and management problems were putting astronauts lives at risk.
Among those who spoke out were Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, who warned: "I fear that if we don't provide the space shuttle programme with the resources it needs for safety upgrades, our country is going to pay a price we can't bear."
"We're starving Nasa's shuttle budget and thus greatly increasing the chance of a catastrophic loss," the Observer quoted him as saying.
At the 3:00 NASA Briefing, an offical mentioned they were originally waiting to look at the film from the handheld movie camera the crew uses to record what goes on during launch, to see what happend with the piece of foam from the wing. Why does one of most advanced aircraft in the world still rely on motion picture film when infact they could use a digital video system to record the lanuch from the view of the crew and transmit it back to mission control much faster than waiting for film to be developed?
The original concept shuttle was designed by a very bright and forward looking team. Congress and bean counters threw that out and created what we have today. Today's half-shuttle could not perform any of it's primary missions for less than 2 times the cost of un-manned vehicals or the 'short' Saturn-5 vehical. The drawings for the Saturn-5 were not destroyed by the way.
The original Hubble Space Telescope design was brilliant but to justify the Shuttle NASA and Congress wanted the shuttle to have a reason to exist and the Hubble was re-designed into the half-hubble that is orbiting today.
The space station is just barely an outhouse in space and serves as the current excuse not to ground the space shuttle freight program.
The Fact Is that instead of doing circles around the planet we should be leaving the Earth on Expeditions.
The cost to build Columbia was $1,000,000,000. One estimate of real cost is $2,000,000,000 per trip 27.5 times for a total cost of $1,072,727,272. One Trillion dollars.
NASA's "90 day Report" in 1991 put the price at $450 billion to go to Mars.
What went wrong was the decision and continuing policy to to stop exploring space.
"A 1990 Office of Technology Assessment report found a 50 percent chance of another Shuttle explosion per 34 flights." The station probably will require some 25 flights to put it up and many more for regular maintenance. Another Shuttle disaster could ground both the station and the Shuttles permanently.
February 1 1958 Launch of the first American satellite - "Explorer-1".
After loss of stability, the shuttle is said to have been tumbling slowly. The crew could have easily survived until the cabin was ripped open and winds ripped off body parts and/or broke bones. As a worst case, they might have survived for minutes -- burning and asphyxiating as their cabin ripped and burned apart about them.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
The telephone is a Canadian invention actually.
The local news reported on skywatchers in Southern Utah who video taped the Shuttle as it crossed the southern part of the state.
What is interesting (no link yet, I'm surprised that the national news doesn't have a copy yet) is that in a certain place in the video you can see a very slight trail very close to the shuttle. In another video you see a very small blue dot pull off from the shuttle and follow it (after enhancement).
Also very interesting is this report that an eyewitness decribes the shuttle changing color from "orange-yellow" to a "white with a purplish color".
This is speculation, but I think what is being described here is the flight surface being peeled away.
The sensors in the tire compartment that showed heating was probably because it was exposed to the air at mach 18.
By time it reached Texas it was already a fireball.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
The MMU was retired, it was too big and there really wasn't a mission for a free-flying astronaut that required it.
However, there is a manuevering system for use on suits. The SAFER jetpack was tested on STS-101 for use during EVA. It is only capable of generating a 3m/sec delta-v and 13 minutes of propulsion. It's intended to get an astronaut who somehow comes off a tether back to the shuttle or the ISS.
In a huge emergency, I would think it would be capable of getting an astronaut to the bottom of the shuttle, but what would they do when they got there? There is no repair kit for damaged tiles. Without a means to fix it, and no other way to get home, the only other option would be to die in space.
I remember way back at the beginning of the program NASA was working on a space caulk gun that could fill a tile hole with ablative material to prevent a burnthrough, but since they perfected the attachment process and no longer lost bottom tiles, the whole thing was dropped.
Also, aren't some other nations, for example, the Chinese, ramping up their space programs? I doubt the U.S. is just going to sit back and let them take over the role of the top nation in space.
Interesting way to win the lottery. If I were the seller, I think I'd have to donate the excess proceeds to some worthy charity.
It's a troll, dumbass. Probably written by a corn-fed Iowa boy even dumber than you are. Get a clue.
While debris is being found across 3 states...
apparently lots is falling in Bush country...
around Palestine...
I'm reminded of the simiilarities between the
JFK & Lincoln assasinations... (urban myths?)
Were we religious, we might take such disasters
as mesages from God (like biblical plagues, etc)
Of course, were we spiritual, we might invest
more in solving problems such as poverty,
hunger, illiteracy, et al. -before- investing
so -much- in "big bang" projects such as the
Shuttle, in the first place...
Don't misread here... if we had more -minds-
available to work on such technologies later,
we might be better positioned to make pro-
gress, at that time...
Just a thought...
... if you read the first paragraph, it does say that Columbia "streaked toward" a landing, not that it had actually landed safely, and all of the quotes were very likely taken before the (presumed) safe landing.
I would say though that the person in charge of the story database should be beaten severely -- I printed a copy of this story out at 11:30 p.m. PST, about 14 hours after the Columbia broke up....
Jay (=
I agree fully.
Probably this link is also mentioned in some other post(s): The Space-Glider
It describes fairly detailed the landing procedure of a SpaceShuttle. Personally I trust this description more than the theories of the TIME article.
The left wing is still pretty fucking damaged.
First of all the temperature sensors didn't indicate high temperatures, they just went offscale low. This probably means a wire cutting.
Secondly the computer wasn't confused by these sensors errors since they were not essential to the flight dynamics (it were temp sensors).
According to the news conference, first sensor problems were reported at 8.53, some 7 minutes before the accident. The vehicle thus didn't get out of control at first. It looks more like a slow burn-through with lead to structural failure later on.
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
Then they need to get off their fucking ass and overthrow their dictatorship government and take their own fucking aid money. And kick fucking Sally Struthers off the face of the earth.
One difference between then and now, however, is the culture at NASA. NASA today is much more open to self-examination.
I have nothing but the deepest respect for anyone who serves a cause that is bigger than themselves, at the cost of their lives.
We see this sort of stuff in movies so much we forget the courage that it really takes. Often I wish I could be half the man that our nations astronauts and service men are. Astraunots who perish in space deserve our undying respect and remembrance. May they rest in peace.
-Typhon
Since when has the health of the space program ever been a big campaign issue? You can't be serious...
I hope there is at least a debate about junking the Shuttle and ISS, which would free up tons of money for more groundbreaking unmanned missions.
That's the *last* thing we want in the existing political climate. If they junk the shuttle and ISS to free up tons of money for more unmanned missions, they'll end up appropriating it to go fight some stupid political war in the east. Dubya is looking for a fight, and he's out trying to pick one with every country that doesn't have a white leader. Probly his dad's advice to him was "Sonny boy, start a war and the people will love ya."
Like what I said? You might like my music
Why is it that so many who feel the need to post on this topic cannot spell "astronaut" or "hydraulic"?
Considering the last manned spacecraft I saw from your country was spread across half of a doppler radar map, let's not get too cocky. Nationalism never helps anything.
With the Challenger disaster engineers were trying to stop the launch before it happened. They had read weather reports and were actively protesting the launch.
Columbia on the other hand. The damage was not forseen. It happened during liftoff. I don't have the slightest idea what the time frame between when the foam fell off the tank and when someone took notice to it, but I seriously doubt it was in time for the shuttle to abort the launch.
Once the shuttle passed that point of no return and achieved orbit those astronauts were already dead.
NASA has no way to inspect or to repair tiles once the Shuttle is in orbit.
Challenger was preventable.
At the exact moment (and in all fairness this could change, you never know with this stuff) Columbia was the definition of an accident, unpreventable.
>Billion dollar items represent the culmination
>of many peoples lifes.
Only, the "billion" dollars didn't actually burn up in re-entry. Relatively little was in real assets in the shuttle itself. The money is still here on Earth, having done nothing but change hands. It was not literally sent into orbit. We as a civilization still have everything else except the lives of the crew and the small amount of materials which comprised the vehicle. The cost of human life cannot be calculated. The cost of the vehicle can be, but it was not as if the money was packed in a safe and launched into space. That money is merely being recycled within our economy!
This is not a flamebait. I'm trying to word a nagging feeling.
:
I deeply care for what happened, and yesterday's shock reminded me somewhat of 09/11, with the same impression of something completely incredible suddenly happening, right before my eyes, live.
Yet reading all those unamimous voices gradually made me somewhat unseasy
Seven astronauts died yesterday. They were doing a highly technical job in the interest of science. They knew the risk and accepted it.
Well, everybody accepts risk, everyday, simply by driving a car after looking at the road casualties figures. The risks involved in riding a shuttle (say, in averaged casualty per person carried over 100 miles, over 10 years, or even by averaged casualty per hour of use) appear much lower than the risk involved in driving a car in a large city at rush hour, which millions do.
Thousands of people are doing a highly technical in the interest of science. Keep in mind the payload is designed an enineered on earth by hundreds of anonymous scientists and engineers. Astronauts merely operate that payload.
The same can be said of the pilots : they are not Cpt Kirks exploring the unknown universe on their own fighting hordes of dangers. Rather a lot like airline pilots, riding a mostly automated, partially understood, yet highly technical device devised by others, using heavy assistance from computers and ground crews. Which changes not the fact that i'd give a lot to be in their stead.
As for people dying, it's always sad. While I was typing this message, probably ten to one hundred african children died of starvation, bad health care, or war. They had not accepted to take a risk, or execute a highly rewarding job, they just wanted to live. Millions of prayers went to the astronauts, but how many people even think about them ?
Flame away if you wish, but I hope at least I'll have voiced some people's unease, drowned in oceans of rightful unanimity.
Unanimity leads to uniformity, and to the loss of free will and free judgement. Ants and soviets are unanimous, and kill deviationists. Is that where we are now ?
I have read all those comments about the tiles falling off and over heating. But it could be the computer also couldn't it? The whole re-entry phase is controlled by a computer to a very precise angle, what if the sensors failed and the computer didn't actually know what was happening outside? Or what is the computer itself that failed?
Word. I just poured out a 40 of Tang on the curb in their memory.
They had just (or were just about to) switch over to autopilot. In any case, there is telemetry from the craft which shows that the inclination was normal right up to the end of the signal...
So I don't see how that one is "probable" at all..
The heating tile thing (or actually, any other wing damage) seems much more likely. I'm not sure why people bother speculating so early.
The Space Shuttle was approx. 35 miles (203,700 ft.) above the Earth's surface when it 'exploded'. The Air Force claims it detonated the fuel
stages separately when they were 30 seconds from hitting the Florida Coast to prevent public disaster although they exploded over the
Ocean. So the explosion did not involve fuel stages combustion. [1] Yet residents in TX and LA claimed to hear a huge explosion that rattled
their walls and windows similar to an Earthquake or Bomb or some other natural disaster. [2]
Why were the sound and shock waves able to travel so far and still remain so powerful and audible? Is this related to the speed of the Shuttle (18.6 Mach) upon breakup and the mass of the Shuttle (90 tons)?
Pieces of the Shuttle reportedly fell to Earth, some of them whole (a right angle bracket, a cannister, etc.)so the Shuttle itself did not disintegrate like a small meteorite upon atmospheric re-entry. It seems to have re-entered the atmosphere already.
35 miles is fair distance. I believe on flat, undisturbed ground 35 miles would be well beyong the horizon line. I believe Mt. Everest is 6 miles high from Sea Level. I am trying to imagine something nearly 6 times higher than that distance exploding and creating shock and sound waves which
similarly do not dissipate for 35 miles and an exploding Space Shuttle would not seem to have that much energy. I guess the computation would involve the 90 tons of the Space Shuttle * Mach 18.6 varied by the atmospheric clarity?
[1]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic
The two towering solid-fueled rocket engines that help lift the shuttle into orbit were deliberately blown up by the Air Force range safety officer just after the accident. The order to destroy the still-burning rockets was given when one of them headed out of control directly toward the Florida beaches. The rocket was apparently destroyed by radio command when it was less than 30 seconds from the Florida coastline.
"There was an indication that the rocket was headed for a populated area of the beach and the Air Force made the decision to destroy it," Richard G. Smith, director of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, said. "It was the right decision."
[2]
http://www.msnbc.com/news/867368.asp#BODY
Feb. 1 -- Early this morning, just 15 minutes before the space shuttle Columbia was scheduled to land at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, residents in Texas described hearing a loud explosion, one so strong that it shook windows and had some residents wondering if a gas pipeline had exploded.
I read the transcripts and also listened to the NASA briefing. The sensors all stopped responding (actually the signal was reporting the lowest possible values). This means that either the sensors were one-by-one instantly destroyed or that wiring or relays were being destroyed before the sensors. I guess it could be a computer problem too.
So yes, it's quite possible the wing got too hot, or that the tire exploded, or that the hydrolic pressure went to zero. But the sensor readouts at the time weren't reporting that.
And I also agree that the foam may have caused the problem. But Occam's razor isn't a reason to jump to conclusions. There's lots more data which will give us more definitive answers. And hopefully we will see less confusion and guesswork in the days ahead.
...laughed when our Ariane 5+ exploded a couple of months ago. So, do you see me laughing now?
Not quiet, but don't expect me to shed tears. The fact that this was a science mission is an exception from the rule. Most of the time, shuttles drop off new military satellites into space. Of the 7 crew members, 6 were members of armed forces. One even of special fame: the israeli on board dropped his bombs in every major war Israel has fought in the last decades. Even when Israel bombed down that iraqi nuclear reactor in 1982 that allegedly could be used for the production of plutonium for weapons. It couldn't. And while we're at it: everyone's crying out loud over 7 people, when in just 6 weeks, tens of thousands will die in Iraq, and nobody will give a damn. Don't you think there's something wrong here?
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
Only if the audio and video are properly time-synchronized. I wonder if they are...
The RCS shuts down when the shuttle gets a reasonable air-pressure around it (somewhere around 250,000 feet) and the control surfaces becomes usable. At this point the rudder and airlons can be used through hydraulics. The APUs giving electrical and hydraulic pressure are powered by the catalytic decomposition of hydrazine. The APUs are small turbines and have all the problems with turbine failure when close to other equipment.
See my journal, I write things there
IANAAE (I am not an aerospace engineer), but I am a licensed Airframe and powerplant mechanic. One possible cause not mentioned is the rupture of tires.
Caveat, I don't know if they had any plugs in the wheels to blow out at a certain temperature like they do on airliners.
But the main tires on the shuttles are pressurized to 300PSI and the last data they received was the temp and pressure in the left mains was rising. That much air explosively ripping out into an unpresurized wheel bay could have blown the doors off. The tires blowing would have thrown heavy chunks of rubber out that could have caused structural damage that would cause the wing to fail quickly under those flight loads. Just remember what happened to the Concorde when it's tired blew.
Tires are dangerous. There's a reason they're filled in cages.
From Boeing's Web Site:
Using inflation cages.
Most airline or repair-station tire shops are equipped with inflation cages. An inflation cage consists of a strong steel structure that surrounds the wheel/tire assembly during tire inflation. Accordingly, when wheel/tire assemblies are initially inflated with bottled nitrogen in the tire shop, the wheel/tire assembly is enclosed in a cage to protect against injury and damage in case of an explosion. However, it is not always practical to use inflation cages if the wheel/tire assembly is installed on the airplane.
Never understimate the power of human stupidity -Lazarus Long
Remember in the early days they would lose dozens of tiles. The news made fun of the multi-billion dollar program which couldn't even figure out a way to glue the tiles on at every opportunity (of course it was a much more difficult problem than the news let on). And as far as the falling ice problem, that was always a problem until they started using the foam insulation. It used to completely pop tiles off of the wing surfaces when it fell.
So if lost tiles are what caused the accident, why didn't it happen before? Did they just happen to lose a really bad combination of tiles this time?
I'm not saying I know the answer, but none of the explanations I've seen completely match the data.
110 missions ... many of those had tile loss. Some of them lost dozens of tiles. They aren't required to be 100% intact. There is an existance proof to support that statement.
In any case, NASA has done a lot lately to improve this. They added inter-tile seals, improved the adhesive, improved the tests for loose tiles, etc. They even talked about putting in cameras to monitor tile conditions.
So I don't think that sloppy tile work is involved.
Debris... maybe, but it was soft foam. In the past the tiles have been hit by chunks of ice. Tiles were damaged and even completely knocked off. There was no visible damage from the foam (but I admit there may have been some invisible damage).
I found this comic quite insightful: http://elftor.com/elftorstrip.php?number=135
My mistake.
I wasn't too sure, because I live in another time
zone, and was unaware of the exact time of the disaster.
When the hell are we going to retire the damned shuttle? Please stop these expensive publicity stunts NASA, we know sending Isrealis to space has nothing to do with science and so do you.
In fact, please retire NASA. Seriously.
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life
And a few chimps whose names I do not remember.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
One of my earliest memories is seeing the last of the Apollo launches from the beach in Florida. I watched the first launch of the Columbia with my class in school. I got to see it in person, once, when it was being kept briefly at Ft. Campbell, KY, to avoid some hurricane or other.
My ten-year-old doesn't understand why this is a big deal. Space travel, to her, is like CDs and PCs and microwave ovens -- a routine part of the world as it is. She was born after the cold war, after the glory days of the space program. Maybe when she's older, she'll understand that the space program transcended all the petty factional divisions and murderous religious and political ideologies of this sad world and was for a lot of us a shining example of the very best of the human race and a beacon of hope for a better future.
Growing up in the 70's, astronauts were the only people I ever really thought of as heroes. NASA was the only government agency I could admire, whatever its faults, without a trace of cynicism. That hasn't changed.
I wish I could somehow take my daughter back in time to that day on the beach when I looked southward towards the Cape and saw a Saturn V rise from the horizon on a pillar of flame. Maybe then she could understand why her parents were crying in front of the TV today. Instead, the best I could manage to say was, "They were astronauts. Our dreams went with them."
Godspeed, folks. You were the best of the best. You will not be forgotten.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
China killed of their exploration in 1420's... and this web site might be in Chinese if they had the will to continue. see an interesting book "1421:THE YEAR CHINA DISCOVERED THE NEW WORLD" By Gavin Menzies (William Morrow)
in the early 1400's china was in front of the rest of the world in exploring the seas... then they made a political decision to stop exploring... and some people argue they have not recovered from that decision yet. It was the short sighted Chinese rulers that burned all their ships and forbid further exploration.
I find your comments very interesting... I love to take the long view of history... its interesting to speculate on what will people remember about todays news. For example, a few hundred years from now they wont study WWI and WWII as separate events. They will just study the great war of the 20th century that began in 1914 and ended in 1945 with a breather in the middle.
And when did our little war with Iraq/Terrorism/Islam start? 9-11? or 1993 when they first bombed the World Trade Center? the first gulf war? The taking of hostages in Iran in 1979? or do you go back to the founding of Israel in 1947? Before that? (balfor declarations?) Go far enough into the future and it all looks like the same conflict.
For that matter, when is it going to end? I think people that are crowing about a short, tidy war will be very rudely surprised. This thing is going to take a long time... (Nostradamus says this war doesn't end until the mid 2020's and that the main Islamic guy was born in 1999.)
How will today be remembered? Great Question. Here is my attempt to answer it:
If our current wise, well read and imaginative leaders have the will to seize the future with both hands, then an international team of astronauts lead by the USA will plant a flag on mars in our life time.
If our bickering, deceitful and self serving beaurocracy decides that space is not important, Martians may not speak English.
Today is definitely a possible turning point for either of those paths. Its kind of up to us... if we the people and the US government kind of have to decide which path to take.
I wish I had more faith in our current leader. I was pissed off that George the First did not Carpe Diem his inauguration speech in 1988 and state clearly then that we should push to be on Mars by 2000. I know Clinton would not have gotten my vote in 1992 if George Bush 1 had been the kind of guy to do that kind of thing. But I dont really have much faith that a Democrat candidate will grasp this idea in 2004 either...
Of corse History is funny.... and in 100 years they may treat today like the Challenger and Applo 1 disasters. Interesting and important but not pivotal events in world history.
I remember celebrating Oct 31 of 2000 as a banner day... its the first day that man began a permanent habitation of space... From that day forward, there will always be at least one human being that is not on Planet earth. I really hope that it doesn't turn out to be just a footnote about mankind's first abortive attempt to permanently leave this planet...
No. Why should the people of Iraq suffer just because of what one person said? Hell, you can hardly blame them for what they said anyway, considering what the US is about to do to their country.
Next time someone says something you find offensive, just ignore it, else, you're like one of those high-school jocks with an insecurity problem.
has there been any suggestion of a collision with a foreign object (eg. small piece of space junk or a small meteor)?
-this comment would be modded up if I posted it earlier =)
The crew of 107 wasn't, and they didn't.
Mix the failings of Usenet with the shortcomings of the World Wide Web and the result is slashdot.
there we must succeed ... ...
too bad it took these poor lifes with it
the astronauts are dead, long live the astronauts !
[p.s. it would be about the time to build a new shuttle]
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
NASA = Need Another Seven Astronauts
Iraq never publicly praised the 911 attackers. Here is a transcript of Saddam's 9/15/01 "letter to Americans" about 9/11; perhaps he doesn't express as much regret as we'd like to say and perhaps he blames America for the attacks, but he calls the attacks "evil" and clearly does not praise the attackers.
Enough of all the bullshit you people are flaming back and forth about this and that. People died. Thats really all this is about. RIP. Stop bickering and get a clue.
the "billion" dollars didn't actually burn up in re-entry ... it was a lot of money though... and a lot of people will be loosing their jobs... and will have effectivly wasted a huge portion of thier time.
:
I measure the cost of the vehicle in terms of human life.
Imagine how many people in third world countries sewed something for the person who made system X for the shuttle... Stuff wears out, and it is possible to waste all existance just trying to fix the stuff that wore out instead of growing as a human race.
- Here's the actuall link to where to reply
My Joural entry on machine valued in terms of human life
Please use [ informative / summarizing ] SUBJECT LINES
Flame me here
The crackpot you responded to escaped from this community.
UD, you need to be posting on DU. Run along back there with your rewriting of history.
Here's a direct quote from the article... "The cracks are not in the propellant lines themselves, Hartsfield said." Once again, the poster is either not reading the article or adding some sensationalism.
This propaganda gets modded interesting? It is more like something from this site instead of /.
FYI, the link is without the space
Screen Shot
Check out this USAF museum link for the "unofficial" service ceiling of the X-15.
5 7. htm
http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/modern_flight/mf
Pretty incredible for the era in which it was flying.
Xibalba: My hell. Your hell. Our hell!
Little boy, you are lost. You need to be with your playmates over here. They oppose Democoracy for non-whites, just like you.
After your visit there, try Workers World for another dose of Stalinism.
I really doubt an APU explosion is the cause of the breakup.
The reason is simple: the APU units are one of the most closely-monitored systems on the space shuttle. From what I've read about the port side wing sensor failures I think it's more likely the port wing had one of the tiles on the leading edge of the wing fail and there was a burn-through situation that caused the wing to literally melt away and cause the shuttle to tumble out of control.
Here's what I think probably happened:
1. A tile on the leading edge of the port wing--probably damaged during launch--was ripped away around 0753 hours CST.
2. The result was overheating of the port wing, as noted by the various sensor failures on that wing.
3. During the final communication with the astronauts, the port wing overheating caused the left wheel well to overheat, as noted by the temperature anomality NASA reported to the astronauts.
4. Right around 0800 hours CST, the overheated wing fails and starts to break off, as noted by the first trail of debris separating from the shuttle.
5. The shuttle loses aerodynamic control, and starts to tumble wildly. The tumbling at 12,500 mph results in too much physical stress on the rest of the shuttle, and the shuttle physically breaks up (that sudden bigger contrail was caused by the shuttle literally exploding from the initial breakup).
The Space Shuttle has something like a 2% chance of killing the men and women who fly it. While you or I would likely jump at a chance to get into space, most people would stop at the 1/50 risk.
The people that ride that thing were committed. They were insanely focused on their lives, to do things that might get them killed. Thrill seekers with Phds? Perhaps, but, that's what heros are made of.
This is my sig.
Sorry to add to all the speculation here, but could plain simple metal fatigue have had something to do with the accident? I know the shuttles are checked and serviced with an extremely high degree of detail but, as has often happened in airplanes travelling at much lower speeds, airframes have often failed in the past in aircraft as old as the Columbia. The origional airframe of Columbia is around 20 years old, and while having been rebuilt a number of times, the stresses on the craft are far higher than those in normal aircraft.
every single revolution
In the short term... next 10 years or so we have very little to gain directly from manned space flight. Sure in the long term hundreds of years we have EVERYTHING to gain but that isn't how decisions are made today.
A lot of questions have been asked about ISS and what it's good for. Directly it's not good for much at all. As a scientific lab it's micro gravity environment is well understood and not likely to produce any breakthroughs.
Unmanned space experiments are producing far more scientific gain than manned flight today. Hubble, Mars probes (which made it - given their record are you going to send a manned flight to Mars any time soon!), satellites looking down for climate and global warming studies, satellites looks up at the microwave background radiation etc...
After Challenger in 1986 the decision was made never to use the shuttle for commercial satellite launches - it was recognised to be extremely dangerous and not worth the risk for satellite TV. That decision could be taken a step further now and shuttles used even less if at all.
This isn't the end of manned space flight but it will dramatically reduce it for the next 10 years or so. It recognised that the shuttle was nearing the end of it's life (another 10 years max) and was going to need to be decommissioned before a replacement craft was completed. Current events have brought this decommissioning nearer.
This may actually result in the replacement craft being delivered sooner than it would otherwise so strange as it may seem the loss of Columbia may accelerate the space program long term.
One thought though, China has been accelerating their space program and hope to launch their 1st manned mission this year and land men on the moon soon afterwards. Maybe in 5 years times China will have the most capable manned space programme.
It's on-topic, a reasonable question, and not something I just made up, also it had several replies to it before it got moderated a troll, so why?
Say Hi to the conspiracy tripe fellow for me. It's easy to dismiss something as a crank or conspiracy tripe, much harder to give reasons why something is wrong. Try doing it sometime.
The other posters have said that when nasa gets slammed it has nothing to do with whether nasa engineers are smart or dim, and I totally agree with them.
I'll respect their answers to this question: where is the ISS?
I'm thinking that in the event of the crew cabin of the space shuttle having a creeping failure which didn't immediatly kill the crew, it might be nice to have a contingency plan to go someplace else for shelter.
Would it be possible to build an "Abort to ISS" option into the flight plan so that the shuttle can use its remaining fuel to go to the ISS and dock, instead of deorbiting?
There are already alternate landing sites on this side of the upper atmosphere, why not in space too?
as far as food and oxygen goes, most shuttle missions are actually shorter than the maximum supplies of food would last. Why not pack a few emergency oxygen supplies and dock with the ISS and stay there while rescue is arranged. Space would be cramped but it would be better than staying aboard a craft with a leaky cabin.
Of course if the crew is fine, but cannot re enter the atmosphere wasn't the plan to stay in space?
And what happened to those rescue balls?
or even the orange suits?
If some missions can have punishing spacewalks to repair hubble etc, why not each mission end with a wingtip to wingtip, nose to tail cone inspection space walk, before being pronounced safe to reenter the atmosphere?
I know that the people working on this most complex of all endevours are smarter than me. I know that they have considered the possibilities above and even designed equipment for them. What surprises me is that the flight plans did not let the astronauts use their orange space suits this time, or any of the other equipment, to save themselves.
In post-Soviet Russia, ISS escape capsule saves YOU!
Cover your eyes and click this link!
MY god. not again
From reports I heard on the news, which, I admit, may not contain all information, it sounded like that after the piece of foam insulation hit the left wing of the orbiter, engineers decided, from looking at imagery taken from the ground of the orbiter, that it "posed no threat."
My question is, why not schedule a spacewalk to actually have astronauts go outside and look at the wing? I realize that scheduling a spacewalk is not a trivial matter, but when its the safety of the crew at stake, I think some allowances can be made.
IMHO had they done this, they would have discovered that some tiles were damaged, and then perhaps a fix could have been made and 7 lives saved.
I wasn't talking about the seller. IIRC, it was offered at $10 as the initial price. I was talking about that some person has that amount of money to spend on a coin.
I think the reports that telemetry indicated that tire(s) on Columbia's main landing gear began lossing tire pressure is a clue to this disaster. Aircraft wheels have fuse plugs located in the wheel halves to prevent a catastrophic explosion in the event that the tire is exposed to high temperatures. Heating of the tire will cause the gas used for inflation to expand. I think the shuttle uses liquid nitrogen to fill the tires sometime during re-entry. These fuse plugs are set to melt if the temperature of the wheel assembly reaches an unsafe limit. When the fuse plugs open, obviously the tire will deflate. If there was a burn thru on re-entry, one can assume that temperatures in the wheel bay began to increase rapidly. I worked for many years for a leading aircraft wheel and brake manufacturer and have seen these fuse plugs melt during qualification testing in the dynomometer lab many many times. I have also witnessed aircraft tires exploding (DC-10, A340) during controlled tests with solid fuse plugs. Extremely violent energy release to say the least. You normally only have fuse plug release during a rejected take off stop (RTO) or if there is a mechanical drag on the brake which generates to much heat. I'm going to bet my dollar that there was a loss of tiles on Columbia that resulted in a burn through somewhere close to to the main wheel bays. BF Goodrich was the original contractor for the wheel and brake assemblies on the shuttle fleet (not that this matters).
Perhaps the metal fatigue on the materials in the space shuttle make them wear out after 20 or so years of operation. The shuttles are getting old, It's time to replace them either with a new lift off mechinism, or just build a brand new replacment shuttle. Put the old ones in some museums and try to make some money on them, or something.
If the data rules out anything except structural failure then it's time to think about overhauling the shuttles we have left, or building new ones.
The main engines (and therefore the feedlines to them) only operate during ascent, and shut off prior to making orbit. (They have to; the shuttle contains no main engine fuel internally, and relies on that big orange external tank to run the mains.) A problem with the feed lines might well cause trouble going up the hill, but not during re-entry.
Looks like this inciedent was resulting from damage to the left side gear door. The damage was presumably sustained during launch.
The real question is why they didn't repeat the trick from STS-1 and use observatory photographs to ascertain the extent of the damage before bringing her home?
He HAS extraordinary evidence.
"Since when has the health of the space program ever been a big campaign issue? You can't be serious..."
Ever since Sputnik, you anonymous coward.
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
I am someone who looks at holes in my knowledge and looks at what fits the edges. I don't know enough about what he says to say whether it is wrong or right, but then again I don't know enough about what the government is saying to say whether or not they are wrong or right. Their proofs are only ones of assertion too, you know. So they are no more convincing than he is. I am not saying that he is too terribly convincing but he is about as convincing as the theory accepted by the establisment. Unless you'd care to explain why the establisment theory is too terribly convincing.
Big words for an anonymous bastard.
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
I am an informationalist. Those with the best information should rule those without. That is the best way for them to catch up.
I was listening to a local radio station, 700 WLW (for those Slashdoters in the Cincinnati, OH area), shortly after the disaster. A caller called in and had said something like this, "...all the landing systems are completely computer controlled, is there a chance that a hacker could've caused this?" He then went on to do what most morons do when talking about hackers, he made a reference to some movie he saw where some '18 year old kid' broke into the IRS database and caused the world to end or whatever. Needless to say, I was quite steamed when I heard this. However, it did get me thinking about how that system works. Is it, in fact, controlled by remote or is it a pre-programmed sequence relying totally on some sort of embedded system on board? To me, the latter makes more sense. Does anybody know how that system actually works?
--
Adobe's anti-counterfeiting softw
It wasnt the fuel lines that they were concerned about having cracks - it was the 'fuel line liners'.
'From the article linked from the 'update':
The liners don't hold pressure so a cracked liner doesn't mean any liquid hydrogen or liquid oxygen is leaking, said NASA spokesman James Hartsfield.
But there is concern that any debris from a crack could work its way into a firing engine, which could lead to disaster.
---> The cracks are not in the propellant lines themselves, Hartsfield said. --
We dont need to get the 'anti-NASA' public all worked up thinking that they [ NASA ] let a faulty shuttle go up..
-- NeTMoNGeR
This is a pretty interesting article on 'What now for International Space Station?'.
In summary: ISS currently has a crew of three, two americans and one russian. They where due to be rotated in March by Atlantis, but have supplies until June. Soyuz could be used to relieve the crew, and Progress can be used for supplies, so the plan is for them to sit tight for now.
http://www.business.uab.edu/cache/ssb.htm
"The heat-shield tiles also added a lot of weight to the orbiter. The new military grade shuttle concept became too heavy to fly, so designers had to start eliminating some of the original features. The crew escape system that could have saved the Challenger crew by pulling the crew cabin away from the disintegrating shuttle stack was eliminated. The jet engines that would have allowed the shuttle to make a powered landing and "go around" in the event of an errant approach was eliminated. Without jet engines, the shuttle had to make a perfect high angle of attack, high speed dead stick landing every time it returned to earth. No second chance landings were allowed. The net effect was that safety itself was largely eliminated from the original shuttle design. The dangerous take off and landing maneuvers had to be executed with split second precision and near perfect systems performance or the entire vehicle and crew would be lost."
>Loosing a $20,000 item is like loosing a man year... of life.
>...
>PLEASE START USING INFORMATIVE/SUMMARIZING SUBJECT LINES
You're complaining about people not summarizing, and you can't even spell? Lame.
Look up loose / lose in a freakin' dictionary and try to remember.
It just makes you seem like an idiot when you get it wrong.
-milo
>The conquest I prefer to think of it as exloration.
All your oil r belong to us.
Questions are being asked over whether cost-cutting at the US space agency Nasa might have contributed to the loss of the space shuttle Columbia.
Well needed to put some of the bad writers for slashdot on it.
That's being a bit loose with the facts...
NASA continues to have a major say in ISS and Shuttle development. The contract is like that between a remodeler or a builder and the homeowner. You get the picture...
The station orbit choice, all by itself, was responsible for a huge cost increase. A high inclination orbit was chosen to bring the Ruskies on board. If the everyday folks in Russia couldn't look up and see the thing, they wouldn't think of it as their own, and they wouldn't give up MIR. Politics, plain and simple. Not good or bad, just politics.
BUT: High inclination orbits take more fuel to get to ==>> leads to ==>> less payload ==>> leads to ==>> more flights & redesign of heavy payloads ==>> leads to ==>> higher costs ($$$$).
I estimate (personal guess) that the high inclination orbit cost us something like 20% more $ per pound in orbit for ever pound for the lifetime of the ISS!!!!
Anyway, you get the picture, neither Boeing, nor NASA, are really "cheats or idiots". There is a cost associated with the "International" part of the ISS, and I'm glad we're paying it.
(snip)
The long-planned launch came as Russian space officials offered condolences to their American colleagues and said the disaster may put Moscow's cash-strapped space programme under more pressure to deliver crews and supplies to the station.
"Cosmonauts and astronauts are one big family, and I personally - and I believe all my colleagues - are suffering this like a personal loss," cosmonaut Yuri Usachev, who commanded the space station's second crew in 2001, said.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Then I look for flaws in each of the models. I know that the Yakuza seem to exist. There are reports outside of him that they do. I know it is likely that they want to attack America for nationalist reasons. I know that I haven't heard of any other involvement of Yakuza in attacks on America. I know that people work hard to make sure that the shuttle and airplanes doesn't crash. I know that airplane pilots make reports of unidentifiable air sightings. Now applying Occam's razor, which is the simpler explanation, that these things went wrong because things go wrong, plus finding explanations for the other things or because someone, the Yakuza are making them crash, which resolves neatly all of these problems. If you don't want to believe zebras exist, you go right ahead, but it's pretty likely that they do. It's pretty funny to hear someone say they got run over by a horse when they got run over by a zebra.
Here is someone who also does the pulling electricity out of the vacuum theory, though many of his claims are more dubious than those of Tom Beardon's.
OK, after watching all this media on the brave seven astronauts who lost their lives on the Columbia, I have to ask... does anyone else think Kalpana Chawla was the sexiest female astronaut that ever lived (and died) in the space program?
I swear, this is a big loss to male geeks, even worse than when Ellen Fiess told us to get a life.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
First off, my condolences to the family and friends of the Columbia crew.
Born in 1960, I've grown up watching the space program, and have always been fascinated by it. Invariably over the next few weeks, I will come across people that will say "what good is it? how is it of any benefit?"
So that's what I ask here. I think we should keep exploring. No doubt about it. I have my own ideas about how it has been beneficial, but I'd like to hear more... if someone asks me "why?", I want to be able to say "this is why!"
List the benefits you think have come from the Space Program...
I was amazed to find that NASA does no visual tracking of the shuttle while it makes it's approach through the atmosphere on apraoch to landing. I can't believe that the only images we have come from amateur videographers. Some of the best clues will come from these woefully low res videos but how much more would we know immediately if we could have seen the disaster unfolding visually?
I just don't understand the logic of credibility. Though it seems logical to me that a less credible source is better than no source at all. I haven't heard a very good theory as to why airplanes crash.
When faced with several equally plausible theories, I don't understand what the credibility of the sources has to do with anything, or how it makes one theory more plausible than another.
Steve walks warily down the street With his brim pulled way down low Ain't no sound but the sound of his feet Machine guns ready to go Are you ready hey are you ready for this? Are you hanging on the edge of your seat? Out of the doorway the bullets rip To the sound of the beat yeah Another one bites the dust Another one bites the dust And another one gone and another one gone Another one bites the dust Hey I'm gonna get you too Another one bites the dust How do you think I'm going to get along Without you when you're gone You took me for everything that I had And kicked me out on my own Are you happy are you satisfied? How long can you stand the heat Out of the doorway the bullets rip To the sound of the beat look out Another one bites the dust Another one bites the dust And another one gone and another one gone Another one bites the dust Hey I'm gonna get you too Another one bites the dust Hey Oh take it - Bite the dust bite the dust Hey Another one bites the dust Another one bites the dust ow Another one bites the dust he he Another one bites the dust haaaa Ooh shoot out There are plenty of ways that you can hurt a man And bring him to the ground You can beat him You can cheat him You can treat him bad and leave him When he's down But I'm ready yes I'm ready for you I'm standing on my own two feet Out of the doorway the bullets rip Repeating to the sound of the beat Another one bites the dust Another one bites the dust And another one gone and another one gone Another one bites the dust yeah Hey I'm gonna get you too Another one bites the dust Shoot out
True at the time, but the problem has been addressed since then. That was 1988, this is now.
APU's have been found to be a weakness
idem dito
An "economical" launch system is what the military needs to launch its crushing backlog of spy satellites and Vandenburg is the only launch site which can make polar orbit without going over populated areas.
The EELV program delt with this problem. Look it up on Google. Beau Coups references. Also, DoD is moving to more small payloads, not ever larger ones...
The SSME bell is not being adequately inspected for hairline cracks which could fail catastrophically during launch.
Old news, delt with long ago...
NASA continues to invest more and more money in SRB research to the exclusion of other areas of far greater weakness in the Shuttle system. Obviously, it will not invest adequate money in those areas...
NASA does a wide variety of research, though obviously not every project gets the funding that you or I would like to see. Write your congressman if you know about "fluff" projects, or if you have one that you feel deserves funding. DARPA also funds projects, and is not shy about "High Risk/High Reward" bets.
The described change in color would be consistent with a sudden inrease in the surface temperature of the underside of the shuttle. Take a look at any chart or plot of blackbody radiation and you'll see that "white with a purplish color" is a good bit hotter than orange-yellow. A couple of common examples of the temperature/color progression is coals in a fire and molten iron (or steel). As they heat, they go from black, to red to orage to yellow. If you keep heating the material, it will go to a purplish white and then a bluish white, and approach a limit at pure white.
I know the terrorist factor has been discounted but the timing and circumstances encourage me to speculate. Because of the altitude we know that a missile is an impossibility but considering Al Queda's modus operandi what about something far more simple and low tech? Here are two scenarios.
Please don't dismiss this out of hand. The most vulnerable time for the shuttle is when it is on the launch pad. How difficult would it be to inflict some small damage on the very delicate heat tiles before launch which could lead to a catastrophic failure? 2 possibilities.
1) A contractor or other worker is enlisted (by coercion or by belief)to drop a "wrench" aginst a tiled area.
Sniper rifles are accurate at over one mile. Would it not be possible to fire a rifle fom inside a truck/van from within a mile of the launch site? Sound could be muffled by placing the shooter / gun well inside an enclosed compartment. Could a contractor vehicle get inside a one mile perimeter to do such a thing?
Perhaps far-fetched, but worthy of consideration before terrorisnm is ruled out.
The basic prolem remains with the decision chain. Administrators concerned with image are making operational decisions. Paper shuffling beaurocraps should be barred from this process. Operators need to make operational decisions they know what is really happening. The astronauts and engineers at least have a clue.
The other problem is sending a shuttle up without an EVA suit, so the skin can be checked. Weight savings for experiments is important, but not at the cost of crew safety. A way to rescue a stranded crew would be a nice feature. But that might cost too much, so it has not happened.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
As I understand it, there was no way to do a space walk to check the underside of the shuttle. The arm which is used to assist in EVA was not available because the cargo bay was entirely filled with the payload. Even if the bay was not filled the underside has no hand holds to allow for inspection.
One pundit on TV suggested that it might have been possible to fly over the space station and be inspected that way.
Even if a problem was found there would be no quick way to remedy it since each of the thousands of tiles is unique and replacements would have to be brought up.
But what causes the crack propagation? You keep saying things "just happen" but there is always a cause." Seeing crack propagation happen without the Yakuza just means that something else made it happen. You do not tell me what made it happen in your case, nor do you give me any information with which to come to the conclusion that the same thing that caused the crack propagation in your lab is what caused the crack propagation in the airplane.
Your suggestion of using a high-powered cannon to shoot an object into LEO is NOT a good idea. The reason is simple--the initial physical force need to get the projectile to near-orbital speed is so high that very few components can survive that shock.
I don't think atheists are looking for any sort of "special rights" any more than gays and lesbians are...just the same rights that you and I already enjoy.
What bugs me is the idea that "freedom of religion" never seems to include freedom FROM religion.
Did he announce anything in his State of the Union Address? (I was not going to watch the whole thing, and the synopsis concentrated on Iraq.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
- subject
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
Still, the inevitable question for the history books is: Which Space Shuttle disaster looked cooler on television, the one in 1986 or Columbia's flameout?
The edge probably goes to the 1986 Challenger disaster because the close-ups were much crisper. You could practically imagine the horrific screams of unbridled terror from girl astronaut Dr. Sally Ride as she watched her space perm singe like a botched Martha Stewart recipe.
Today's Columbia astronauts were a bit less media savvy since they chose a location two miles above the country bumpkin state of Texas to exact their suicide. The images of their demise were barely photogenic. Instead, all we get are blurry jet trails that look like they were hastily formed by a skywriter who just downed five espressos.
How will America handle its collective Shuttle angst? Burger King will be asked to pull its "flame broiled" ads off the tube for a few days. And Cher will be instructed to cancel all her concerts since this diva's voice will remind anyone listening of the final shrieks an astronaut makes just before the after burner produces a new snack food: NASA Crisps.
Talk about Shuttle Diplomacy blowing up in Bush's face. This bird dropping occurs on a mission that includes a Jewish scientist from Israel. The Chosen People have more to fear from U.S. aeronautical lubricity than Yassar Arafat.
Before NASA scrubs all future missions, the agency needs to find a way to "turn the frown upside down" through a masterful stroke of public relations genius.
Our solution: Hire Neil Sedaka as official NASA spokesperson.
After all, his signature song is: "Breaking Up is Hard to Do."
Not wasting any time Wikipedia has published an entry on Columbia's last flight.
Looking at a picture of this crew brought to mind a quote from a movie "Talk about the wrong stuff."
Refer to this database and fill in your own title to the crew picture
That is what HAL thought
I think that we may never know the true cause because space travel itself is a very dangerous job. A paint fleck travelling at 26000mph in orbit can demolish the space shuttle. Something like that could of hit the xcraft on the way down.
But I do know that NASA's been under budget stress for years with their "Faster-better-cheaper" missions that generally fail. The space shuttle is also under this guise.
My point is this - an accident of this nature doesn't just have a single cause. It has multiple causes that result in a chain reaction. Looking for the single source is like blaming a car accident on bad tire when it's usually a combination of faults dating back to the shop and owner abuse.
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter F. Drucker
Today my wife and I had the good fortune to see Mstislav Rostropovich perform with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Before the performance, the PSO program director entered to a darkened, empty stage. He said that, in honor of the 7 astronauts killed in yesterday's tragedy, Maestro Rostropovich wished to perform a piece by J.S. Bach. He asked that no one applaud before or after the performance. Slava, still considered by many to be the greatest living cellist at age 76, quitely walked across the stage. He took a seat, then a deep breath, and delivered one of the most haunting and mornful pieces of music I have ever experienced. The entire audience was breathless. As he concluded, every person quietly rose from their seats -- some weeping -- and rememberd the Columbia. It was unexpected and touching.
"A boost in NASA funding? I predict, if anything, the opposite."
b ud get.nasa.reut/index.html
Bush is pushing for another $500 mill to go towards Nasa.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/02/02/bush.
Does that mean it'll happen? I wouldn't be figuring out ways to spend it yet with all the other budgetary concerns. But at least you understand a little bit why I said that.
Tomorrow's Time Magazine has some sound financial agruments against continuing the shuttle program. http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101030210/sceaste rbrook.html
"For 20 years, the American space program has been wedded to a space-shuttle system that is too expensive, too risky, too big for most of the ways it is used, with budgets that suck up funds that could be invested in a modern system that would make space flight cheaper and safer."
"Originally projected to cost $5 million per flight in today's dollars, each shuttle launch instead runs to around $500 million."
You obviously have you head up you arse. Governments do this. You current government tricked their way in. THey want war - not public debate. A few dead here could be the difference between billions and billions of income for the US (or thier us more likely).
.gov has whole departments dedicated to stopping the public from knowing what they are doing. It is not hidden, it is PR.
Think about the shit that you do to manipulate your world then multiply the stake by [lots].
The
Ignore it at you peril oh brainwashed citizen.
Maybe the shuttle was not deliberately brought down but maybe it was.
http://www.infowars.com/shuttle.htm
I don't think atheists are looking for any sort of "special rights" any more than gays and lesbians are...just the same rights that you and I already enjoy.
Every time I hear an atheist claim that atheism isn't a religion, they're looking for special rights.
As far as the government, the legal system, every business in the world, every scientific institution, and just about every other secular aspect of society is concerned, Atheism IS a religion, and should be treated as one among equals. Doing otherwise gives them special treatment. (If an atheist scientist says "there is definitly no God", he should be as ridiculed as if a Christian Scientist says "God is proven to exist.")
As for Gays and Lesbians: I'm all for government setting up a strucutre where two persons (or, heck, more than two persons) can bind their legal personage together for medical, legal, and tax purposes. The church doesn't have to let them come, regonize their union, or even treat them as human if it doesn't want to. But the agnostic government sure as heck should.
Plus, atheism/major religions and gay rights/legislated morality are two very differnet things. You don't see homosexuals saying "marriage is a myth", and you don't see atheists just wanting the right to get together and talk about how there is no god.
What bugs me is the idea that "freedom of religion" never seems to include freedom FROM religion.
What do you mean?
Should we withhold government money from groups that happen to be religious--despite that they serve the same purpose as non religious groups?
Should we ban speaking about religion in schools-- but allow speaking against it?
Should you be able to tell everyone who wants to prostleytize you to go away--why, sure we should, but only as much as you can tell someone who wants to sell you something to go away.
Atheism is a religion, in every practical and objective measurement of what "a religion" is. Getting into specifics such as rejection of deities is a religious argument, just as if we Christians were to say "Hinduism isn't a religion because they don't worship God."
A religion is what you believe is "out there". If you believe that nothing is out there, you're an atheist and you have a positive belief in nothing. (If you _don't know_ what's out there, either by not being sure of your beliefs or being sure that you "can't know", your're agnostic, not atheist.)
When it comes down to it: Atheists allready have all of the special rights that anyone who belongs to a minority religion (like satanism or wicca) allready enjoys, and the "rights" that come with the majority religions are a reflection of numbers, and the government has litte right to interfere with that kind of thing.
I watched the local news and they spoke of 70 people visiting emergency rooms after coming in contact with debris. They said that they had no symptoms to report. What does this mean? People go to the emergency room without symptoms or is there something being held back? What sort of symptoms would one expect to have after coming in contact with some hypergolic fuel?
More on fuels used in shuttle.
If the tiny pieces of material are toxic to the touch how toxic is the huge cloud of vaporized shuttle parts? This cloud could certainly travel around the world.
I noticed that someone posted here from carbon60. Were there buckyballs on board? Will a cloud of buckyballs released at high altitudes contribute to global warming? How long before a buckyball dropped at say 200,000 feet hits the ground? What is the terminal velocity of a buckyball? Is it like a penny dropped off the empire state building flattening a cab?
Is this an environmental disaster? FEMA was called in early on this. The radar images show a huge cloud that stretched for hundreds of miles. Some of the debris may have stayed in the jet stream where will it go.
What happens if some birds eat some of the debris? Will it then be toxic to it's hunter?
I saw pictures of officials picking up debris using what appeared to be standard latex gloves. Shouldn't they be using something more chemical resistant like PVC gloves?
What about plutonium? is there any plutonium? I haven't seen anywhere where NASA has come out stating there is no plutonium in use anywhere on the shuttle. What other radioactive substances were aboard?
What about these tiles? Are the tiles toxic too? Many ceramic materials are toxic. If you vaporize a ceramic shuttle tile and someone in a room with toxic ceramic shuttle tile dust in the air will it make that person sick?
I am going on and on but I get the feeling that this topic has been squelched. I don't like hearing about people going to the ER when they don't have any symptoms.
-wargames
-- Each tock of the Planck clock is a new world and here we are still life. --
The last message from the crew to ground control sounds like the one who talks is about to faint.
I believe what he actually says is "roger rabitt" - and it would have been interesting to hear from insiders whether this is some known aviation joke of sorts. Anyway - considering the circumstances - a serious landing operation - it isn't what you say if your mind is clear. I think they were about to faint at that point - perhaps from a combination of overheating and pressure. There was overheating problems earlyer on the journey. Was that fix good enough?
Why the hell are we mourning 7 people in particular - when over 100 people a day die just in the U.S., just from car crashes?
Why don't journalists hear "toxic" and think of these obvious followup questions?
What I wrote above was what I meant by "morally sound". Privacy protection should take precedent over the "right to know", unless somehow invading a person's privacy is able to help society. Perhaps I should have taken the vagueness out. But sometimes it's best to leave things vague, so that in a democratic society, the people can choose what's best. This is the way the US constitution is, which is for the best. The only problem right now is that the US is no longer democratic, and the people aren't given a choice of how to interpret the constitution, it's the supreme court, and corrupt legislators. Vagueness isn't a bad thing, it's only bad when it can be exploited by corrupt government.
There are tears in my eyes.
CNN has a link to a Johnson Space Center web page listed where you can submit info/pics/video that may be useful to the investigation.
As this is only other flag on crews patch, does this mean that the Israeli was only foreign national?
I just happened to be visiting my in-laws, who have cable TV. I'm amazed that a single piece of wreckage was shown on CNN for most of the day in order to make people look at soap comercials and what not. More money was made there than any silly ebay aution. I imagine the descending chaos of reporters will hamper the investigation more than it usefully reports it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Poulation size, 102. Crashes 2. These are not useful statistics for projection, and all else is speculation.
Not using nukes because chemical rockets are dangerous is like not using cars because horses throw people. Nukes are the ONLY way to exploit the solar system. We use them, come up with something beter, or play the zero sum game on Earth till extinction.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Hmm, so far it looks like my guess was wrong. But I still hope some of the money goes for new technology.
No, really.
http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewsReleases-bak /1999/99-01_pf.html
So in addition to the high rate of auto deaths because of dangerous, light cars; the overcrowded traffic jams that plague every American city because of lack of road construction; the nuclear waste that sits out in the open air because Yucca obstructionists; the dependence on Mideast Oil because we haven't built any new nuclear power plants or exploited reserves in Alaska; we can now also lay the death of our manned space program at the feet of the Southern California Sierra Club Enviro-Nazis.
>> Every time I hear an atheist claim that atheism isn't a religion, they're looking for special rights.
...and I do...trust me! But some of them get downright belligerent. I have a Pagan friend who was lounging around his house one afternoon, when a knock at the door revealed a couple of Jehovah's Witlesses. He allowed them to do their spiel, and told them at the end, in a very deadpan voice, "No thank you, we worship the devil here." Later on that night, he and the friends he had visiting heard strange noises outside his house. Outside was a busload of JWs all over his front lawn, candles in hand, singing hymns. He called the cops.
Absolute horseshit! Where the fuck do you get off on saying that?
>> As far as the government, the legal system, every business in the world, every scientific institution, and just about every other secular aspect of society is concerned, Atheism IS a religion, and should be treated as one among equals. Doing otherwise gives them special treatment. (If an atheist scientist says "there is definitly no God", he should be as ridiculed as if a Christian Scientist says "God is proven to exist.")
I don;t think I've ever heard this before. I think that's some sort of popular myth. Again, I don't see where you get off on saying this. Most, if not all, of these institutions really couldn't care less.
>> As for Gays and Lesbians: I'm all for government setting up a strucutre where two persons (or, heck, more than two persons) can bind their legal personage together for medical, legal, and tax purposes. The church doesn't have to let them come, regonize their union, or even treat them as human if it doesn't want to. But the agnostic government sure as heck should.
Agreed, but if a given couple or orther group want to be unified according to whatever they happen to believe in, independant of any government requirements or benefits, nobody should stand in their way.
>> Plus, atheism/major religions and gay rights/legislated morality are two very differnet things. You don't see homosexuals saying "marriage is a myth", and you don't see atheists just wanting the right to get together and talk about how there is no god.
That wasn't really the point. I was trying to point out that people think both of these groups are after some sort of "special" right, something that you, as a religious person or myself as a straight person already enjoys. What they're really after, rightly so, is the freedom to enjoy the same rights that the rest of society enjoys, and to do so free from discrimination.
>>> What bugs me is the idea that "freedom of religion" never seems to include freedom FROM religion.
>> What do you mean?
What I mean is the idea that I shouldn't have to have religion forced down my throat whether I like it or not. Because I'm forced to live in a Christian society, it's rammed down my throat every day...from Christian based "morality" right on down to when I get certain days off. If I were stateside, I'd even have to put up with the G word on my money, (which wasn't added until McCarthy, BTW).
>> Should we withhold government money from groups that happen to be religious--despite that they serve the same purpose as non religious groups?
>> Should we ban speaking about religion in schools-- but allow speaking against it?
I have to put up with not only a public school system but a catholic one as well. This, IMHO, is unnecessary duplication at it's finest, and the one thing that didn't seem to get axed on the same altar of budget cuts that everything else, from hospitals to roads was. They ripped the SHIT out of education proper, but they didn't touch this one glaring thing. Problem is, by doing it for one special group, they may very well find themselves in a position where they have to do it for all the others...so we'll have Jewish schools, Muslim schools and so on. The smart thing to do is to pool all the resources, and have a truly public system in which everybody's treated the same, and do all the religious education on your own time, not teaching your kids at the expense of my kids.
>> Should you be able to tell everyone who wants to prostleytize you to go away--why, sure we should, but only as much as you can tell someone who wants to sell you something to go away.
>> Atheism is a religion, in every practical and objective measurement of what "a religion" is. Getting into specifics such as rejection of deities is a religious argument, just as if we Christians were to say "Hinduism isn't a religion because they don't worship God."
To me, there's a difference between a faith and a religion. A faith is a set of beliefs or thought processes that is unique to one person. These unique beliefs have the ablility to adapt and evolve based on that person's life experience. When a group of people with what they think are similar beliefs get together and carve things in stone or paper, that process of adaptation ceases, because all of a sudden, there's a defined set of rules, usually somebody else's rules, and what they thought were common beliefs is now a religion, with all the thought control and politics that goes with it, (and people who think that politics doesn't exist within a given religion is seriously deluding themselves)! Is Hinduism a religion? I don't know enough about it to judge, but it does seem to have it's own form of cleric, i.e. those that enforce the doctrine. I suppose that's the biggest difference between a religion and a group of people that share a common philosophy...there's no central agency that controls what is believed or thought about.
>> A religion is what you believe is "out there". If you believe that nothing is out there, you're an atheist and you have a positive belief in nothing. (If you _don't know_ what's out there, either by not being sure of your beliefs or being sure that you "can't know", your're agnostic, not atheist.)
Out where? You imply that, because atheists do not have a belief in some sort of supernatural being, we don't believe in anything. I believe in myself, and in the power of nature. Both, as far as I can tell, are pretty real. Bump your head into the next tree branch if you think it's not.
>> When it comes down to it: Atheists allready have all of the special rights that anyone who belongs to a minority religion (like satanism or wicca) allready enjoys, and the "rights" that come with the majority religions are a reflection of numbers, and the government has litte right to interfere with that kind of thing.
Ahh...so it's something that's voted on! I wasn't aware that your religion or my atheism was a democracy. That's a pretty fucking lame hypothesis. I have no intention of putting my own personal philosophy to any sort of vote, just as you wouldn't either. What you're saying is that, unless you're part of the majority religion, or at least a Republicrat, you're less equal than those that are. Show me where it says that in either your consitution or mine.
And take your christian blinders off, and realize that not everybody needs that imaginary superfriends as a crutch for reality.
Well if its an orbiter fundamental structural problem I agree, it would be much longer than Challenger... in fact it will likely mean no shuttle launch again ever of the current orbiters. I am kind of assuming that the fundamental structure is sound.... while a hundred flights isn't an overwhelming data set I think it would have turned up any fundamental structural flaws by now. The orbiters are by most accounts I am aware of immensly over engineered in that aspect and columbia by far and away the orbiter with the strongest structure. After they had real data of stresses experienced during launch and re-entry they were able to safely shave weight in the structures on the other orbiters.
.... weakpoint may be too harsh... Tile is an incredible aerospace achievement and without it shuttle wouldn't be possible, but it has a slim margin of error.It dosn't even have to completely fail as a capable heat shield if it alters the areodymanics enough to render the re-entry uncontrolable.
:-).
I was thinking ( in my definatly finite wisdom ) if a design flaw is turned up it will revolve around the heat shield... something that was a contested issue with the initial design in the first place. I may be on a step out but in addition to the adminsitration snafuus it was the problems surrounding the development of the tiles/heat sheild that played a key roll in delaying the shuttle to the point where skylab's orbit deteriorated and could not be salvaged. The slight margin of error ( compared to capsule ablative designs ) and fagility of the tiles has long been known as a glaring weakpoint in shuttles design. And one that tends to be glossed over by the incredible achievement of designing anything capable of providing a reuseable re-entry shield and maintaining the aerodynamics required to land the orbiter like a plane.
If thats the case the ability remains to try and create a better more resilient tile material, implement a more secure tile application or perhaps a more effective material application than thousands of small tiles placed by hand. Such things have been looked at before but action in that direction may have been stymied by the fact the tile system worked. In fact, untill saturday, it has been working flawlessly above and beyond expectations.
It could also revolve around the foam comming loose... ie tile is a perfectly capable design however we wind up learning it is to vulnerable to allow that risk any longer and a foam or insulation method will have to be found which we can assure will not come loose during launch.
Or something completely different of course... who knows I am not a NASA engineer, just a space program geek
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
Absolute horseshit! Where the fuck do you get off on saying that?
It's my opinion, and I can support it rationally until the cows come home.
I don;t think I've ever heard this before. I think that's some sort of popular myth.
No, it's my opnion of how things SHOULD be. The "popular myth" is that atheism isn't a religion. It is. Agnosticism is what isn't a religion.
What they're really after, rightly so, is the freedom to enjoy the same rights that the rest of society enjoys, and to do so free from discrimination.
The only atheists who call themselves such and want anything aren't just after a place to assemble and some tax breaks for their "anti-church." They're after a descruction of what We as a Nation have given religions.
I have never heard of someone being discriminated against for being atheist--religious employment notwithstanding. I _have_, on the other hand, heard of all sorts of discrimination based on classic religion.
When a group of people with what they think are similar beliefs get together and carve things in stone or paper, that process of adaptation ceases, because all of a sudden, there's a defined set of rules, usually somebody else's rules, and what they thought were common beliefs is now a religion, with all the thought control and politics that goes with it, (and people who think that politics doesn't exist within a given religion is seriously deluding themselves)
A religion is a way of getting people to have the same faith. Every church is a means to an end, not an end in itself--and their worst problems happen when they forget that.
Is Hinduism a religion? I don't know enough about it to judge, but it does seem to have it's own form of cleric
The defining aspect of a religion is tradition, not enforcement. Wicca is a religion, despite being so segmented that no three wiccans I've talked to have told me the same thing about their faith.
Out where? You imply that, because atheists do not have a belief in some sort of supernatural being, we don't believe in anything. I believe in myself, and in the power of nature. Both, as far as I can tell, are pretty real. Bump your head into the next tree branch if you think it's not.
In the realm of the supernatural, where spirits go when they die and where God and the Angels and the Devil play games with man. Or, if you like, "everywhere."
Atheism is a rejection of divinity--"there are no Gods out there at all." It's not universal divinity--that'd be Bhuddism or Satanism. It's not the spiritual power of nature--that'd be wicca, druidism, or shinto.
Atheism is the positive belief that the God I belive in, the gods my wiccan friends believe in, and the spiritual oneness that a buddist believes in are all not just mistakes about the same thing, but totally false faries tales that are not true.
To be blunt: Atheism is science taken to a religious levels, and with the doubt removed.
Ahh...so it's something that's voted on!
Er, no. All I said was that what special benefits Christians or Jews have are a reflection of their numbers among the population. Any social group that gains a significant proportion of the populace gets special rights just on the basis of that affiliton--be they a religion or a political party.
What you're saying is that, unless you're part of the majority religion, or at least a Republicrat, you're less equal than those that are. Show me where it says that in either your consitution or mine.
(Aren't you an American?)
Bill of Rights, Freedom to Assemble. If you have ten friends, and you all put in a dollar, you can get some beer. If you have a million friends and you all put in a dollar, you can buy a small town.
And take your christian blinders off, and realize that not everybody needs that imaginary superfriends as a crutch for reality.
The veracity of my religious choice is a different matter entirely from the legal and ethical and social aspects of the individual's right to a religion.
Take your atheist blinders off, and realize that rational and intelligent people CAN believe in religion.
Here's all it boils down to, you fscking christian supremacist!
Atheism is not and cannot be a religion. We do not need to hold assembly together. We do not need to be governed by a central body. We do not need to follow a leader, fictitious or real. We do not need to have a text, oral tradition or whatever that dictates a set of "divine" or other laws or rules.
Do you realize that political parties have more in common with religion than do atheists?
So stop lumping us in with the rest of you religious types that obviously can't think for yourselves, and need all these to maintain your slim grasp on reality!
If you can't live with that, that's your tough shit!
Atheism is not and cannot be a religion.
And baldness is not and cannot be a hair color.
But--and this is important, so listen closen--as far as anyone who is neither atheist nor religion cares, they ARE the same thing. And since the law, business, science, and a whole load of other things are neither religious nor atheist, atheism and all 'other' religions fall under the 'religion' catagory.
Atheism is not and cannot be a religion. We do not need to hold assembly together. We do not need to be governed by a central body. We do not need to follow a leader, fictitious or real. We do not need to have a text, oral tradition or whatever that dictates a set of "divine" or other laws or rules.
Odd, the exact same things can be, and often are, said about Wicca, which is very much a religion. (And for the record, most of them could be said about my flavor of Christianity.)
So stop lumping us in with the rest of you religious types that obviously can't think for yourselves, and need all these to maintain your slim grasp on reality!
If you can't live with that, that's your tough shit!
The _only_ difference between "atheism" and "a religion" is sematnics. You're too insecure in your religious choice to state it without attacking the choices of others. You've probably experienced a bad attempt at "saving" on the hands of someone who would otherwise be close to you, and you haven't dealt with it in a healthy manner.
I haven't gone to church in years. I regularly hold discussions on my own with people who do not believe the same way that I do, and I have yet to quote religious authority to justify my morals or my beliefs--and I have almost no religious beliefs that I have not thought out and justified in an agnostic meme.
Please, for your own sake, drop the zealotry. You don't have a cause to advance, you don't have a people to applaud you, and you don't have a divinity who will reward you--that is, unless of course you're just lying.
Either way, all that you're accomplishing is making yourself look poor.
I should have known better than to continue this.
Talking to a christian supremacist about religion is like talking to a racist about black people...or talking to a brick wall.
Talking to a christian supremacist
Again, what makes you think that I'm a 'christian supremacist?'
The only brick wall I'm seing here is an apparantly insecure atheist who can't get "Atheism is not a religion" out of his head long enough to let even a little bit of "atheism should be treated equal to a religion by the government" in.
*sigh*
Atheism is NOT a religion, I'm not insecure, and I DON'T have to hide behind the sort of imaginary superfriends that you seem to need to keep your false sense of security.