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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?"
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 ?
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
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 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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
That is 40% out of 20 years.
And less than 2% out of the total number of launches. And?
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?
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.
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".
Please be careful throwing things like this around - if you check the actual Reuters story here, you'll see it was "a government employee" and "a car-mechanic" who are quoted as sources. I'm sure you could find an idiot within this country, heck even one working for local or federal government, who would say equally stupid things regarding disasters who happened to other countries (or even our own country - see Scripting News for a link to someone trying to auction salvage off on Ebay).
Punishing a group due to the words or actions of an individual is the cause of most of the strife in the world.
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
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.
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?
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
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.
...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...
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?
You're assuming that the sensors didn't react in time to report the heating. We'll see.
Hmmm--- the reports on NPR say that the sensors were detecting:
1) Hydrolic failure in the left wing
2) Left tire losing pressure
3) Structural heating in the left wing.
This is the same place where the foam hit, so that is where I would start. As William of Occam said "one should not needlessly multiply entities."
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
"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.
I think it's time that NASA takes a look at the Delta Clipper design again and eventually develop it into the primary method of carrying astronauts into space. Heavier loads will be launched by a new generation of rockets such as the heavier Delta IV variants with the large strap-on boosters.
That way, in the future astronauts will be ferried to ISS via Delta Clipper and space station supplies and ISS expansion components will be lofted up by unmanned heavy booster rockets.
>Take a look at these assholes in iraq
>celebrating this tragedy at Reuters
>What f'ing assholes.
I agree. What callous, insensitive, opportunistic people to take cheap advantage of a tragedy to stir up anger.
Oh, you weren't talking about Reuters? Then I have nothing to say.
~Chris
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.
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
I don't really think they're "heroes" either (in the same way getting trapped in a mine doesn't make you a hero) but there is something "heroic" about peopel who willingly risk their lives to explore space, etc. Or at least a lot of people feel that way about it.
I had this frined, in a wheelchair. People used to come up to him and tell him how "brave" he was. It really pissed him off. It's really self-serving to tell some poor guy whose legs dont work that he's brave. Even if he is. All it does is make *you* feel good that you have compassion for others. I think it's the same with calling (insert victims of tragedy here) "heroes".
But if you're gonna pick someone in today's world to call "hero", astronaut is probably a pretty good choice. They're very disciplined, highly trained, responsible people. It's really really hard to become an astronaut and they dedicate (sometimes) their whole lives to it.
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
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.
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
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.
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."
Reeve is a hero because of the work he's done on behalf of paralyzed people everywhere. He is keenly aware of his own propaganda value (I used to be Superman, now I need my diapers changed) and he has wisely taken advantage of it.
There's always the question of "fairness". What if no celebrity gets the disease YOU have? But Reeve has been piping up and making noise about the religious suppression of medical research, and this helps all sorts of disabled people.
I would call Christopher Reeve and, suprisingly, Michael J. Fox heroes insofar as they both maintained positive spiritual stances in trying circumstances, choosing to be grateful for what they had rather than resentful for their losses. Seeing that sort of attitude is a direct inspiration to me - I would like, in similar circumstances, to do likewise, and that makes them heroic. It's their attitude, not their condition, that makes them heroic.
According to NPR,interfering with evidence at a crash site (even just airplanes) is a violation of federal law punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
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
And that shows you just how risky space flight is, there's a 2% chance that the trip you're about to take will result in your death.
I bet you wouldn't drive your car much if those were the odds, and if you only had a 98% chance of surviving an airplane trip, you wouldn't see nearly as many business trips.
Assuming you'd die every 1 in 50 trips with your car, if you were lucky, you might make it safely through your daily commute for 2-3 months before the odds caught up with you.
I'm wondering if life insurance companies would even write a policy on an Astronaut. I'm betting the answer is no.
Astronauts work their asses off for most of their lives to get one of the hardest and most competitive jobs ever in human history. How many people have gone in to space? 100? That's a pretty elite club, demanding not only technical skills, intelligence, but a tremendous amount of patience and discipline over the course of several years.
In short, they are heroes, they risk their lives on a glorious adventure, and do real science that benefits all of mankind.
The fact that many people would be willing to go to space doesn't diminish the courage of those who do, there's a hell of a lot more to it than just hopping into the rocket, this is something these people have worked towards for decades.
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
You're the asshole
So obviously you are the exact same way... Hating another people.