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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?"
"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."
Nasa probably has good working hypotheses right now, but they're reluctant to do anything but gather data right now. I believe it was Dittemore who was saying that they're strictly in a data gathering mode right now. To make assumptions about what happened would taint the investigation.
I can see what they're saying. They don't want to look for evidence to support their hypothesis, they want to objectively discover what happened.
To put it another way, they've said that the possibility exists that the damage to the wing during takeoff could have been a contributer to the tragedy. But they're not willing to commit to that until they have all their data gathered. They said that the sensors went out starting at the back of the wing and worked their way forward. The life-off damage happened to the front of the wing, so to start at the opposite side of the wing and to head forwards was wierd.
So yes, I think your statement is correct.
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.
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
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.
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?
The author of that article should have done more research before making these speculations. The Shuttle was in the automatic descend mode at that moment. So piloting error is out of question, unless the pilot manually overrided the control. Also, there are a whole bunch of sensors around fuel delivery mechanism. If anything went wrong there, NASA would have mentioned it already (but they have not). So the only probable theory is the structural failure.
~Chris
They said that the sensors went out starting at the back of the wing and worked their way forward. The life-off damage happened to the front of the wing, so to start at the opposite side of the wing and to head forwards was wierd.
They also said that the order of the sensors failing was no indication that the wing was destroyed from back to front. Keep in mind, the sensors were reading "off-scale low", ie no connection. If the temp sensors went offline due to destruction of the sensors themselves, one might expect them to read abnormally high values just before dropping offline. Most likely, the damage was happening at a wiring harness elsewhere.
They have a *lot* of data here, compared to Challenger. I think we'll have answers very soon.
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.