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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?"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...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.
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)
Here is a mirror of some pictures from pdrap.org.
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
To launch soon.
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.
...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.
...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 &
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
It would seem more likely that at this point they don't know what happened. If they knew what happened that would suggest they knew enough to fix it.
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. Before that NASA was claiming that the O rings were fine. Feynman had been tipped off by engineers who thought otherwise. It was not an accident he had very cold ice water to hand.
I doubt the fuel lines would have anything to do with disaster on re-entry. The orbiter has no fuel at that point. It is the famous flying brick.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Minor blurb: here
...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?
Read this then fucking tell me the media aren't stupid:
(It was published on www.washingtonpost.com they took it down around 6:30 PM)
Columbia Streaks Toward Florida Landing
By Marcia Dunn
AP Aerospace Writer
Saturday, February 1, 2003; 8:28 AM
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- With security tighter than usual, space shuttle Columbia streaked toward a Florida touchdown Saturday to end a successful 16-day scientific research mission that included the first Israeli astronaut.
The early morning fog burned off as the sun rose, and Mission Control gave the seven astronauts the go-ahead to come home on time. "I guess you've been wondering, but you are 'go' for the deorbit burn," Mission Control radioed at practically the last minute.
Ilan Ramon, a colonel in Israel's air force and former fighter pilot, became the first man from his country to fly in space, and his presence resulted in an increase in security, not only for Columbia's Jan. 16 launch, but also for its landing. Space agency officials feared his presence might make the shuttle more of a terrorist target.
"We've taken all reasonable measures, and all of our landings so far since 9-11 have gone perfectly," said Lt. Col. Michael Rein, an Air Force spokesman.
Columbia's crew - Ramon and six Americans - completed all of their 80-plus experiments in orbit. They studied ant, bee and spider behavior in weightlessness as well as changes in flames and flower scents, and took measurements of atmospheric dust with a pair of Israeli cameras.
The 13 lab rats on board - part of a brain and heart study - had to face the guillotine following the flight so researchers could see up-close the effects of so much time in weightlessness. The insects and other animals had a brighter, longer future: the student experimenters were going to get them back and many of the youngsters planned to keep them, almost like pets.
All of the scientific objectives were accomplished during the round-the-clock laboratory mission, and some of the work may be continued aboard the international space station, researchers said. The only problem of note was a pair of malfunctioning dehumidifiers, which temporarily raised temperatures inside the laboratory to the low 80s, 10 degrees higher than desired.
Some of Columbia's crew members didn't want their time in space to end.
"Do we really have to come back?" astronaut David Brown jokingly asked Mission Control before the ride home.
NASA's next shuttle flight, a space station construction mission, is scheduled for March. The next time Columbia flies will be in November, when it carries into orbit educator-astronaut Barbara Morgan, who was the backup for Challenger crew member Christa McAuliffe in 1986.
© 2003 The Associated Press
I predict that the problem was in the updated avionics software.
You heard it hear first.
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/
Newsgroup thread last week about possible Shuttle disaster (spooky)
Quit Slashdot Today!
I've put together an animated GIF from radar archives showing the initial appearance of the Columbia radar track and the subsequent growth and drift of it,
Go to my blog and scroll down to the "Shuttle Disaster on Radar" item and click the link at the end of the article (labeled "radar image loop").
The only good weather is bad weather.
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.
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.
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!
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
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.
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!
I just saw a Discovery Channel documentary on Cheyenne Mountain and NORAD the other day and the NORAD officer they interviewed said that they track every object in space, all the debris down to stuff the size of a washer. When a shuttle mission is planned, they plot a 10km by 60km box around the shuttle and help NASA out with a flightplan which means that no object intrudes into this space. In the history of the shuttle it has had to manouver something like 7 times to avoid debris tracked by NORAD.
--is not to be confused with user #672982 - Bame Flait
Infact only the computer can land the plan because any angle that is more then a few degree's off what the designed limits are would brake apart the vehicle. The computer probably was confused since it could not recieve a sensor reading on the left wing but decided to go at it anyway which caused the shuttle to spin out, burn and break within seconds.
The astronaughts just sit there untill the final part of the mission near the runway. The computer takes care of everything and a human is not capable of handling the precision.
I just found out about the temperature reaching extreme conditions for a few milliseconds before the shuttle broke. New news. My guess is the cabin leaked and filled with fire when the the seal seperating the cabin air from space broke open bringing in super heated air. The rudder probably flipped voilently upward or downward due to the lack of hydro fluid which probably boiled away if the left wing really did infact overheat.
Even if the astronaughts did not run the program the cabin would turn into a furnace anyway from just the lack of a heat shield where the landing assembly broke as well as the left wing. The layer seperating space from cabin air is as thin as a blanket and can break easily. They did what they had to do and just hope it would work because you really have no options. At least it was quick and painless.
They were not wearing spacesuits so I am sure they did not meet the same fate as was rumoured from Challenger astronaughts. The orange suits only provided oxygen and pressure. No heat insulation.
http://saveie6.com/
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...
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.
Spacewalk is a very hazardous operation. Why can't NASA develop a small tethered inspection robot? It is technically quite viable.
If in further operations, the robot discovers some problems outside the shuttle, they can then decide whether it worths to risk the life of the astronauts to go out the shuttle and carry out an unscheduled repair.
Cox News Service
An East Texas high school was turned into a morgue as authorities collected the remains of astronauts from the doomed space shuttle Columbia.
Authorities said remains were being collected in an area between Hemphill and Jasper and taken to Hemphill High School. A local funeral home was assisting officials from the FBI and Defense Department in the grisly work.
One official said investigators were using a global positioning system to record where the remains were being found.
The remains -- which included an arm and a hand found near Chinquipin -- were part of the debris scattered across East Texas after the shuttle broke apart Saturday as it made its way towards a landing in Florida.
A flight helmet landed on James Couch's property near state Highway 103 and F.M. 1751 in San Augustine County. Couch kept guard over the helmet by setting up camp five feet away.
Couch said he and his family were eating breakfast when he heard something -- it turned out to be a piece of pipe -- hit the roof of his house.
"It didn't really scare me," Couch said. "A lot of people around here dynamite stumps on the weekend
Mica Miller was working on some equipment at his farm near Etoile when he heard some rumbling and noticed swirls of smoke in the sky. About two minutes later, he heard a swishing sound and saw that a large piece of debris had landed on a flatbed trailer 30 feet away.
"I'm devastated to see the aftermath of what just happened," Miller said.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Ice hasn't disloged or damaged any tiles for some time now. The ice used to build up on the top of the external tank (ET), and was shed during the liftoff. Nowadays, there is a big cap over the external tank, and dry nitrogen gas is blown down over the ET nose, so no ice forms. On this launch, some of the foam insulation was shed. It isn't hard like ice; it's kind of light and foamy like a dry sponge. It could have done some damage, but not like the ice used to do. The ice used to damage the external tile surfaces of ceramic (white) tiles (not the back carbon/carbon tiles).
In addition, whole tiles used to come off because they weren't glued in place properly. This hasn't happened in the last 75 flights, because of an improved pull test, which yanks off the improperly glued tiles.
The final tile failure mode which has been fixed was this: water intruded into the joints between the tiles while the bird was on the pad (in rainstorms etc). The water flashed to steam during reentry (if memory serves) and that popped the tiles off. Improved seals between the tiles fixed that problem around the same time as the improved "pull test".
In spite of all these improvements, some problem needs to be found and fixed. Given the very low aerodynamic loads when it came over the coast (at 7:43) a chief suspect would be still have to be a failure of the Thermal Protection System (TPS), just as you say.
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.
And it took Dick Feynman's demonstration with the ice water for the theory to be accepted as fact. Before that NASA was claiming that the O rings were fine. Feynman had been tipped off by engineers who thought otherwise. It was not an accident he had very cold ice water to hand.
Unfortunately, it wasn't Dick Feynman's thesis. Dick himself acknowledged that General Kutyna (another member of the commission) tipped him off to this (rather blatantly, too).
I never really liked the idea of referring to Christopher Reeve as some sort of "hero", but portray him as a "hero" the media did. Think about it...what did he do to become a hero? He fell off a fsking expensive toy...his horse! Pretty fsking heroic, if you ask me! They should put up a statue!
Hyping the event no doubt drove their ratings through the roof. Not just for a day or two, but for several months. It is likely they gained a quite a few viewers who are still watching today.
With stronger ratings, the media can pull in far more money than they could if they hadn't covered the WTC attack.
While I'm at it, I'd like to mention that war is also good for ratings. And all five of the major television conglomerats have ties to the defense industry (NBC is actually owned by a defense contractor).
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!
I'd say Boeing should bear at least part of the blame.
In the real world, when you have a contract to do something and you end up going over budget, you have two options: Swallow the loss or swallow the loss. However, government contracts don't work that way. Contractors get to write clauses in the contracts that essentially say "If we go over budget, the government will pay us the difference." The original bids are nothing but ink on paper.
As an example, Northrop-Grumman recently purchased Avondale Shipyards in SE Louisiana. Currently, they're working on two projects. One is to build transports for the US Navy, and the other is oil tankers for what is now Conoco-Phillips. As with all US shipyards, they've grown fat and lazy with government contracts and the work they do is sub par (the private sector avoids US shipyards like the plague they are unless the Jones Act requires one).
Both contracts are way behind schedule and well above budget, but the Conoco-Phillips contract is the only one hemorrhaging money. The US Navy (ie. you and me) keeps on pouring good money after bad because the contract requires it. Sure, the GAO sniffed around a little a few months back, but nothing has changed because of it (it keeps people employed for the time being, which is all congresscritters really care about). The shipyard has already sworn off all future commercial contracts (like Newport News) and has actually offered to pay Phillips if they pretty please don't opt for the additional hulls in the contract.
NASA is over-budget because the ISS is over-budget. The ISS is over-budget because
- Boeing is over-budget, and
- NASA was dumb enough to sign the contract
Congress and the White House, for whatever reason, essentially told NASA "Too bad, you deal with the lost money," which meant NASA had to cut funding for other things (Pluto-Kuiper Express, shuttle replacements, ISS lifeboat, etc.).When all is said and done, you cannot place all the blame on either President Bush in particular or the Republican Party in general. If any one "thing" is to get all the blame, it's the whole God damned bureaucracy.
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.
There is perhaps an outside chance that Congress will fund a completely new fleet.
I, too, thought about this - we have so many new designs and experimental designs, engines, etc that NASA and others have developed - now seems to be the perfect time to fund the development of a new orbiter.
Not only did I think about this, but I decided to do something to make it happen. I used congress.org to find the info on my US senator and representatives and found out that one of them, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, is on the Senate Subcommittee on Science, Space and Technology. I wrote her a letter expressing my feelings about the disaster but also my feelings that the astronauts would want to see NASA florish - and not flounder in 2 years of virtual exile from space as was the case after the Challenger disaster. I found her local office's fax number off of her website and her mailing address in DC (Fax and mail are MUCH better - email and web forms aren't taken too seriously yet by most congressional staff members) and sent her this letter...I'd urge all of you who would like to see a 'silver lining' in this to contact your senators and your representatives, as well. This accident is the perfect time for NASA to push for, and get, a new orbiter design.
Anyway, just my thoughts...
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".
More important than the Israeli astronaut's nationality is what he was doing up there. These fuckers en masse can't agree on living side by side but a (tragically small) few have no problem working together for the common good. The world needs more people like them.
[o]_O
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"
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.
If it is suspected that the heat shielding effect of the tiles may be reduced by damage, it might be possible for the shuttle to approach at a less steep angle, resulting in less heating and stress.
I don't know whether the shuttle design is actually aerodynamically capable of this, though, so it's just speculation.
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).
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.
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.