Slashdot Mirror
Columbia Coverage
ke4roh writes "Space.com offers a list of questions and answers about the events and hardware surrounding Columbia's destruction Saturday. They address suspected causes, foam, tile, and some of the alternatives had NASA known the ship would not be able to re-enter the atmosphere." viewstyle writes "PC Magazine has a pack of stuff put together on the space shuttle accident, as they recognized the fact that the space program inspired a lot of tech people in general. What's pretty cool is the section written by a guy there who worked on the computer components in the shuttle." And naturally, the idea of a space elevator is back in vogue again.
I've been hearing a lot about the 30 seconds of telemetry that was too weak for the computers to display during the shuttle break-up but that is now being analyzed from backups. Does anybody have any more information on what this data?
As I understand it, the last 'good readings' were full-scale low or high on a lot of the temperature sensors, which to me would indicate sensor failure. Several of these sensors reported such values before communication was lost. This kind of makes me wonder what benefit there would be in examining whatever else came back after those failures--I can't imagine the data would be particularly accurate, though there may be some valuable information. Can anybody elaborate?
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
I'll bet you wouldn't be so cavalier about this if you dad or mom or brother or sister would have been aboard. A little respect for the people that risk their lives would go a long way. Your so damn cavalier about this because the only adventure you've ever been on is a walk in the park.
My favorite quote:
"Technology has its limits. Information systems have their limits. Human analysis, foresight and insight have their limits."
I firmly believe that what limits us and/or holds us back is not how horribly broken is, but how we choose to abuse/use it.
Columbia likely was doomed by damage incurred during launch. However, those astronauts were likely doomed by a faulty damage analysis.
Don't believe anything I say. I crash test crack pipes for a living.
One thing that suprised me was how FEW detectors there appeared to be on the shuttle. You'd have thought that it would be mostly wiring and lots of redundancy and measuring every millisecond, but it appeared to be much coarser and less often. Surely in 1980 they had small electronic detectors so as to enable more accurate reporting ?
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Here is an insightful editorial on K5 which should help put some things into perspective. It's worth reading if you haven't already.
At least they didn't waste our time by even answering "was it terrorism". this is good. (you know, just because I always rail on that question its going to turn out it WAS terrorism... I guess its only slightly more unlikely than terroists stealing planes and colapseing buildings... but god damn it... I will not belive its terroism! its not! thats rediculus!!!)
-You're wasting your time. Alfador only likes me.
So, how the hell do you get down if there's a fire? The "Space Stairs"*?.
* (c)2003 kir
3cx.org - A truly bad website.
Why dont you keep your stupid gub'ment conspiracy theories to yourself?
Big chunks of ice fall off that big gas tank every time it goes up (it's filled with liquid hydrogen, IIRC). There was no more damage to the shuttle than occurs on any given launch.
They did inspect it, and if you were paying attention to the mission BEFORE it became a tragedy-cum-media-feeding-frenzy, you would have known that they assessed that there was no issue with safety.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Columbia likely was doomed by damage incurred during launch. However, those astronauts were likely doomed by a faulty damage analysis.If the "likely" cause was damage during launch, how do you propose, genius, that they could have "repaired" the "damage" in space? Faulty damage analysis indeed.
"As for that retarded idea of space elevator, let's repeat for the zillionth time: It won't work. It's just an occupation of "acaedmics" to keep them occupied with such "ideas".
Yes, it is exactly the same as the other huge time-wasters some idiot academics spent time on in the past, such as:
- That improbable heavier-than-air flying machine
- The ludricous notion that one could reach India by sailing west around the world instead of east...
- That silly experiment of using steam to turn wheels and do useful work.
- Trying to figure out the course of planets by assuming they revolve around the sun, where any fool can see that everything revolves around the earth.
Seriously, with a mentality like that we'd still be hunting wooly mammoths with sticks.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
OK so there wasn't enough fuel on board to get to the ISS why not either send up a Delta IV with more fuel (if possible) or enough supplies to last a couple of weeks until a proper rescue mission could've been made.
Or how about using the Soyuz rescue craft to ferry folks to/from ISS? Or at least a one way supply drop?
I guess the point is "if" NASA knew there was a problem they would've figured something out... What would that something be?
No
The insulation stops the ice from forming so that much is denied you
And they inspected it and the only public release was that it was OK. there was no other choice to say anything else by NASA. If you were to 'think' instead of just believe what you are wanted to 'hear' then you would understand.
People wishing to express their sympathies can send notes to this address:
Johnson Space Center
NASA Road 1
Houston, TX, 77058
The astronauts are heroes who risk their lives to better our world. They are truly the best of the best and I think we have taken them for granted. Since Apollo, the missions they've been on haven't been attention-grabbing and shuttle launches became routine. But I think this event has awoken us to the fact that space exploration is one of the most important fields and we need to give NASA more funding. It's time to realize that space exploration is costly but to make it safe, it is even more costly. I'm also going to draft a few letters to my national representatives and let them know that NASA needs omre money. THe launch of a space shuttle is not mundane and we should still be in awe of it.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
Leur sort sera divisé en depart,
Their fate was sealed on departure, but they were not informed about their destiny by mission control...
Don't feed the trolls.
espescially those filled with such venom and ire as this one.
I've seen the footage that CNN et al see fit to publish regarding the Shuttle, but where are all the street-level pics being posted these days?
... as an avid space nerd, I want to see as much as I possibly can about this incident (save, perhaps, pics of the charred skeletal remains that were found the other day ... I can leave that for stile.)
Surely there are sites out there for folks to upload pics of debris they've taken out in the field, etc? I'm tired of having these sorts of things filtered for me by mainstream news - so anyone got any URL's?
Pissed me off that I have to *subscribe* to CNN to see the amateur video that was taken in California of the breakup
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
The article on space elevators said the physics were sound, but it didn't really explain how it works. Here's the short of it:
The structure extends from earth to a point in space beyond geostationary orbit. As the earth spins, centrifugal force keeps the structure under tension to prevent it from collapsing. To place something in orbit, you just climb the structure and let go.
"it's feasible to talk of building a meter-wide "ribbon" that would start on a mobile ocean platform at the equator, west of Ecuador, and extend 62,000 miles up into space."
I'm not gonna be able to stand that much Space Elevator music!
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
There's a good story about the software team at NASA here.
From the story: "Consider these stats : the last three versions of the program -- each 420,000 lines long-had just one error each. The last 11 versions of this software had a total of 17 errors."
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
On the BBC was carried an interview with a fellow representing India's fledgling space program, including talk of a moon landing (perhaps as yet another confirmation that technologically India has 'arrived'?) China, too, has expressed interest in manned space-flight, and moon mission. Could this be a replay of the U.S. - U.S.S.R. space race? India and China are viewed as rival nations, perhaps the establishment of an international station on the moon, with four countries behind such an effort, could happen.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
3 to 4 times? No, eighteen!
I appreciate your enthusiasm, but try to understand the enormity of this space elvator idea. Most human engineering feats, dams included, would pale in comparision. The energy required to make a "space elvator" would be better spent in launcing individual rockets/spaceships, as and when required.
No, I find the Slashdot discussions useful. The mainstream media can't give the scientific insight which so many of us crave, and assuming you browse /. at a suitable threshold there are a number of intelligent contributions which stimulate the braincells.
/. treatment, and in this case at this stage starting a new discussion every couple of days provides a refresh to the intelligent discussion.
Yesterday (or the day before perhaps) someone posted a link to Feynman's Appendix on the Challenger enquiry about risks being de-emphasised if they had previously not resulted in catastrophe - and there *may* be elements of this flawed analysis involved in the Columbia breakup.
I welcome the opportunity for mainstream news stories to receive the
Dunstan
The last scintilla of doubt just rode out of town
I firmly believe NASA knew that the insulation hitting the wing doomed the shuttle.
BOL^H^H^HI respectfully disagree...
While it may not seem much, the shuttle was travelling as awesome speed already as the insulation fell. It would have hit the wing at some shocking speed. This had sealed the fate.
Yes - the space shuttle was travelling fast. But the insulation fell OFF THE SHUTTLE. This means that the relative speed of the insulation hitting the shuttle was just the deceleration felt by the insulation in the time between coming loose and striking the front wing edge. The insulation is almost certainly inside the bow shock caused by the nose of the fuel tank itself so the insulation was probably tumbling inside the turbulent flow inside the bow shock and not exposed to the still air ahead of the shuttle.
Look - the astronauts were up there for 16 days in orbit. I don't know if there were any scheduled EVAs during that period but I suspect that the first thing any EVAs might have looked at would be a visible inspection of the wing edge.
I also firmly believe that had NASA felt that the dangers of re-entry would have a modest chance of causing a severe structural failure, they would have ditched the shuttle in orbit and looked for other ways to get the astronauts back down. There is always some sort of plan B - in this case the most obvious one is dock with the ISS and look to the other shuttles or the Russians for extraction. You don't play games with peoples lives, especially under such scrutiny and at a time when NASA funding isn't so good. When a shuttle explodes, it's inevitably a major public event.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
I bet teh shuttel wuz running on Windowes NT!!!! AHAHAHAHAH!
If we built a magnetic accelerator on the side of some mountain, how much would it reduce the amount of propellant needed to reach escape velocity?
"There's so much left to know/ and I'm on the road to find out." -Cat Stevens
The destruction of the shuttle Columbia was a terrible accident. It was a tragic loss of seven, very brave, lives.
I understand the interest of the Slashdot community in this event due to the scientific, cool, geeky nature of the shuttle and space flight. I understand that the shuttle program is a matter of national pride and the 2 billion dollar per launch price tag makes it an important event. But, I don't understand the mainstream interest in this event and this leads to my question.
Why is this tragic accident SO much more important than so many others? Why is it being harped on and reviewed so much? Three weeks ago a commuter plane crashed during take off in North Carolina, killing 24 people. Yet this is an insignifican blip in the lives of most people. No presidential or international condolenses were offered. No one cared. At the same time as the shuttle accident, a train wreck in Zimbabwe killed 40 people. No one cared. The next day, a bomb in the banking district of Nigeria killed 40 people. No one cared.
So, my real question is: Why, if no one cared about the deaths of over 100 people, do so many people regard the shuttle accident as being so dramatic, so deeply touching and so important to them? Seven people died a tragic death and this should not be minimized or marginalized but, it was an inherently dangerous profession and everyone knows that this risk is always there. But, if you don't give a crap about the 100 people that died, why are the seven astronauts so important?
A valiant attempt to inject mysticism, I'll grant you, but there were only seven crew members, not nine. Bzzzt. Thanks for playing.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
First of all, there are technical problems. Exotic, untested and novel materials would have be used. Nanotubes are still not well understood under laboratory conditions. How to weave them into filaments and eventually cables is completely unknown at this time. How these filaments will react to the extreme environmental conditions in the upper atmosphere and low orbit is also unknown. I am not saying that these problems cannot be overcome. Not at all. What I am saying, however, is that using radically new technology for getting to orbit is not a good idea when reliability and safety are an issue. Take the Russian Soyuz, for instance. It's a real workhorse with great safety record in spite of its age. Keeping it simple and evolving from existing, well established solutions is the way to go.
Space flight should also be about flying - not about climbing some high tech bean stalk to orbit. Yes, this is an emotional argument, but still... So you climb to the orbit in the space elevator. What then? You'd still need to develop boosters and fuel to carry on from there. Space elevator helps, but it's obviously not the way to commoditize space travel.
The owls are not what they seem
I have to wonder if people are focusing too much on this 2lb piece of insolation. Sure, it needs to be looked at, but the shuttle is designed to withstand the force of a Mach 7, 4000+ degree re-entry AND exit of the Earth's atmosphere, both events punishing in their own right. It's an armourd flying tank for cryin out loud. Another reason why it's glide ratio sucks. This piece of insulation weighed less than your average laptop.
I'm willing to call it an engineering defect before a piece of frozen isulation. Frankly, i'm surprised random chance hasn't caught up with us sooner outside the Challenger incident. I guess the best thing you can do at this point is to drop a 2lb piece of material of the same composition on a test wing an see what it does.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
I read the full-on 30 odd page PDF report when this was discussed a few months back ago, and was left largely with the impression that the space elevator has one problem and one problem only: the design of a process to manufacture the cable.
Before you say, well, duh! what I mean by this is that we know what the chemical composition would be, and almost all of the problems with regard to cable damage (slow decay through ionization, meteor strike, etc) have been solved, on paper at least.
So what remains is the process by which we can manufacture large amounts of carbon nanotubes and precise configurations. This would seem to be a good research project whether it results in a space elevator or not. The spin-offs could be incredible.
On a second point, I wonder whether NASA is questioning the insulation damage hypothesis as a precursor to pointing at something they couldn't control, like a lightning strike or collision with something. Perhaps I'm too cynical, but right now NASA seems to be saying "it's not that, but we can't tell you why it's not."
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
I always thought foam to be very light weight and could never damage anything. Is it the same kind of foam that is used in packing? I hate when people try to theorize a problem and solve it on paper when it is easy to practically check it out. How hard it could have been for NASA to do a physical inspection using a telescope from earth or satellite. After the cold war, NASA lost the motivation to innovate. Instead it sat on the same old technology for more than a decade. Budget is also to blame. I don't think there is any other country that can beat US in militray power, but yet more and more money goes into defence.
I couldn't agree more, which is surprising since I usually don't agree with anything he says. But I really believe that changing NASA's focus might be the ideal solution to the public's (read: media's) boredom with our space program.
This is the same quatraint that was mentioned over and over when Challenger exploded. Seems pretty vague to me, especially if you try to link it to Columbia since there were 7 astronauts and not 9.
If I remember correctly, the Kappa Theta Lambda thing was supposed to be the initials of some company that made some component of the rocket boosters on Challenger.
I still having trouble believing this stuff though. Kinda like a horoscope. Interesting at times but just a load of crap.
Just my $0.02.
I couldn't fail to disagree with you less.
Oh yes. And they just didn't think of having the crew wait for a rescue mission on the IIS or even on the Shuttle. They overlooked that, and let them burn. Sure.
Idiot.
Not talking about the disaster here, but I can't imagine how they use up a budget of fifteen billion dollars, every year! That's $ 41.1 Million every day (well a bit less for 2004 because it has an extra day).. geez, that's 47.5 cents every millisecond.
A critic already claims the shuttle is too old and too expensive, but the management likes it that way because a cheaper shuttle means less money for the contractors.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
check out www.nasaproblems.com , check out his recent interview with amy goodman on 'democracy now'. he was an engineer at nasa who got ignored and reprimanded for trying to solve the problem.
This is so troll bait but I'll bite.
As it was, I am sure they noticed this was irrepairable. What's worse then for NASA PR? to have 7 astronaughts up in the sky knowing they will die with the world waiting and watching helplessly. Two weeks of the mission of doomed people in space. People we feel attached to because they are doing what we see as good.
Yes. Yes. And everyone knew Apollo 13 was going to work out.
The so-called "journalism" media have already determined the accident was caused by foam from the external tank. They will never let it go. Any other theories, regardless of scientfic validity, will be dismissed as a NASA cover-up. The news meadia already have their slings out and they're just looking for asses to put in them.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
That is a typo I would say
The shuttle typically travels 25 times the speed of sound. The speed of sound has no meaning in space, but as a relative measure it is sometimes used
By the time it had come through part of the atmosphere it has slowed to 18 times the speed of sound.
I firmly believe and support that this is what they meant.
"The foam is fragile enough to have been damaged once in a hailstorm, forcing a previous shuttle mission to be delayed while the insulation was repaired. Chunks have come off in flight before, too. They can be ice-coated, making them heavy projectiles. Columbia sustained damage in this way in 1992 and 1997, and foam struck a booster rocket of Atlantis in October."
RTFA
I live in the D.C. area, know many who work for NASA, and was actully at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD last week doing a dog and pony show of our RMS system to their security chiefs and some of the bigwigs. I've met the people involved, higher ups and lower-downs. They dont let 7 people die to 'save face' on TV.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I meant ISS, not IIS. LOL...
They would have just launched another shuttle to go and get the astronauts. If they couldn't ready a shuttle in time, then another nation would have stepped in to help.
Amazing magic tricks
I though there already was a space elevator. Unfortunately, you may need one of these.
You forget that there are still 3 people on the ISS... Well, the good news is that one of them will survive...
I think its sad how everyone wants to add his or her "expert" opinion to this matter. I'm not a rocket scientist, nor do I have a clue about the science involved in the space shuttle. So for me, or anyone else to speculate as to causes of the explosion is an insult to the men and women of the space program (although I'm sure some of the Slashdot crowd may actually be more qualified since they probably have followed the program since they were kids and some are actual engineers now). There's all sorts of finger pointing that could go on (and seems to in the media), but lets not try to lose sight of the fact that 7 people are dead. That's just my rant; after all, I'm sick of hearing the journalists and speculators "expert" opinions.
From the human flock nine will be sent away,
...and now for something completely on topic.
sorry bud, I count seven. Since I've never seen you before, I dub thee the nostradamus troll.
I honestly don't know how to feel about this whole thing. On one hand, I obviously feel bad about this because people died trying to do something good. On the other, maybe it'll light a fire under congress' ass to get some funding, or maybe a major reform on nasa.
Let's face it- in it's current state, Nasa isn't doing much- just slurping down gov't money and doing nothing groundbreaking. Part of that is from budget cuts, the rest is because it's safer to maintain the status quo.
I get the feeling that Bush might want to privatize the space industry now that he as an excuse (he likes to privatize things- that means more campaign contributions).
I'm starting to get the feeling that it might be better off that way.
As for previous comments about nasa conspiracies that they knew before the shuttle tried to land, I have to agree that it's a possibility. If you were in nasa's shoes, would you tell the world that they were deadmen? I think not. It was a lose-lose situation, and it was better off for them to play dumb.
Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
What's worse then for NASA PR? to have 7 astronaughts up in the sky knowing they will die with the world waiting and watching helplessly. Two weeks of the mission of doomed people in space. People we feel attached to because they are doing what we see as good.
That is utter bullshit and you know it.
First we have a silly thing we like to call a "space station" that yes, the shuttle was NOT equipped with the docking module but what is so fricking hard about doing a spacewalk? Hmmm, risk getting lost in orbit or guarenteeing that I'm barbecued on the way home? Gimme the fricking suit. If they knew they would have simply chucked out the lab module from the cargo bay, lightening the load and simply beat feet for the ISS.
second, we have more than one shuttle.. they can launch one in time to perform a rescue, or ask the country formerly known as russia for help.. a soyuz capsule can boost the shuttle higer/ resupply.
what you say is made up drivel from someone who really doesnt know much about the space program and the dedication that NASA has in not killing it's heros.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I don't mean to be opportunistic, but I think your typo (?) "astronaughts" aptly captures the relevance of manned spaceflight to scientific progress.
I do think you vastly overestimate the competence of NASA to believe they even had the information to make this coldhearted analysis. They did analyze the problem and came to the wrong conclusion. You know, Occam's Razor beats a conspiracy theory 99 times out of 100. Personally I'd hope they botched it rather than played god.
The military says they will give NASA a video taped during the landing. Is it normal procedure to videotape all shuttle landings from a military helicopter?
Only 10 billion to build an elevator into space?...wow...I'm just worried about the wind shear, dude... 1 metre wide by 62000 metres long? Thing would be like silly string in space!
But seriously, the concept is *DAMNED* cool. Especially given its interface. Skyhooks are pretty common in scifi, and the relatively low costs could mean NASA could get its job done MUCH more effectively on its increasingly modest budget.
Imagine the cost-saving effect space vehicles that don't need huge fuel pods and boosters! You could conceivably create a low orbit space vehicle construction yard, for servicing shuttles - in space. Refueling station in space, hell, you wouldn't even have nearly as many problems with astronauts physically degrading due to the lack of gravity - with such an "elevator", cycling astronaut duty shifts could be easy to do. I mean...if we pull this off in my lifetime, it could be seen as the next "big" leap into space. You old fogies had your moon landing, we have our low-cost penetration into low orbit! Spacecraft wouldn't even need to ever come out of orbit! Whoops, there goes all the costs associated with making general purpose re-entry vehicles! At 10 billion per skyhook, Nasa could simply abandon all those failed X series vehicles, and focus on smaller, lighter, less fuel, more reliable. And just think of this - what currently keeps shuttle missions so short in time? -Human problems, fuel, oxygen, food...hey look, boom, space missions aren't "once in a blue moon" events, but *daily* occurances. Hell, the tube itself could be powered by solar collectors on from a station in low orbit...
And hell, just look at how LUCRATIVE a nanotube elevator would be. Satellite launches would no longer be an expensive, risky ordeal. Just send the sucker up the tube, have an astronaut chuck it into a slightly higher (or lower) orbit, and there ya go! Instantly, satellite TV becomes technologically cheaper. Instantly, satellite cellphones might actually become *feasible*...the possibilities are mind-boggling...not to mention tourism in space!
This is one of those times where I really look forward to the future, nanotubes have huge potential, and a space elevator might just reignite the spark of passion and interest the populace once held in the Space programme.
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
I've started to wonder if the insulation hit isn't a red herring. NASA themselves have said it doesn't explain the breakup - that there's a "missing link" (their exact words) that they've yet to find. The temperature on the left wing only rose by about 40 degrees despite 3,000 degree temperatures outside the shuttle - which doesn't sound to me like there was much tile missing. The Atlantis, I believe, was hit in much the same way as the Columbia was on an earlier launch and showed no ill effects. And the Columbia itself lost more than 100 tiles from its nose area on one flight and still made it home fine.
I could very well be wrong, but I would almost bet at this moment that the foam hit on launch is mostly a coincidence - or at most the beginning of a long chain of implausible events that preyed on some other, pre-existing fault. This is the case with most airplane disasters, where it's rarely one single problem but rather an entire series of highly implausible but still possible events that coincide in an extremely unlucky chain. The shuttle is not as fragile as some people are making it out to be right now; it was built to withstand the repeated abuse of the shock of liftoff and the heat of re-entry over many, many years and many, many cycles. The Columbia in particular was also just recently refurbished and had its heat shielding inspected and, where appropriate, upgraded to the latest materials available. It does not sound to me like a piece of foam hitting it at launch alone could bring it down - there has to be something more, and NASA seems to agree with their "missing link" statement.
This report claims that it was recommended that NASA use a laser-based system to scan foam insulation before launch.
Also claims the lithium used in the super-light versions of the external tanks will only make the foam debonding situation worse.
From the human flock nine will be sent away
Maybe the two missing crew members could have helped.
So what the engineers will do is pull the threads. For example, it may be possible to explain all the off-scale and zero readings by assuming a particular wire bundle was cut at a certain point. This can lead them to look at the surrounding structure in more detail. They'll also look carefully at the times at which sensors went bad to determine how the structural damage evolved.
Basically the effort is to look at all possible causes of the disaster and use the telemtry to eliminate them one-by-one. Zero readings in sensors will probably be inconsistent with some possible explanations, thus eliminating them.
Gee... These people are not too bright.
A 60k mile ribbon of nanotubes.. OK first of all how are you going to anchor it up in space? Second..
WIND>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ;
It is the only good thing that could come out of this horrible event.
Both of these programs are doing next to NOTHING in helping us to colonize and explore space. They are robbing billions of dollars each year in resources we could devote to developing better launch and propulsion technologies.
So why is the shuttle and the ISS still around if it is so worthless? Two reasons 1) Pork politics. NASA has cleverly made sure most of its contracts are spread out into districts controlled by powerful congressmen, and 2) nerds who know little about science but keep naively swallow the nonsense that is fed to them by NASA that the current incarnation of manned space flight is an investment in the future.
Canceling the shuttle and the ISS is not turning your back on manned space flight. Don't make more people senselessly lose their lives.
Manned spaceflight has little to do with space exploration, especially the shuttle which goes no higher than low Earth orbit.
There is no reason to turn the tragedy of the present into future tragedies. The shuttle program should be scaled back drastically.
I would call these innocent people martyrs, not heros.
Space Elevator? Can you say "terrorist target?" Besides, I dont' see how that could possibly be viable. Raw materials would be one factor, and I can't stand an elevator going up a couple of dozen floors, let alone several miles. If a couple of people fart, it'd be all over. And besides, bin Laden and crew would drool over a high profile target like that, and it wouldn't even get very far under construction without getting nailed by some radical towel heads who can't wait to get to their how-ever-many virgins in the name of their god. That's just reality, folks. Next idea, please...
Aren't we supposed to be on the next generation shuttles already? Or did Challenger set us THAT far back? Don't we have some new birds like those seen in Armageddon yet? Oh yeah, that's right. Our President cares more about dropping bombs in a sandbox than he does about Space Exploration, so NASA goes underfunded, and the War for Oil gets top billing.
Yes, we'll return to space. It took us a while after Challenger, but I don't think we'll have that much of a delay this time around. Trouble is, we're running low on Shuttles, and now that we're down by two, with the others aging, how much longer can we keep up that program? We need new shuttles, which means NASA needs more funding so it can get contracts rolling....
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
The research into nanotubes could have some *very* nice spinoff techs...nanotubes, if one or two hurdles are overcome, could be heralded as a pretty much "perfect" tech for making ICs...mmm Pentium/Athlon 10 400GHz... Nanotubes are as close to "unbreakable" as it gets :)
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
Yeah, the keys for "light" are right next to the keys for "sound". Happens all the time.
all you have to do to realize that fact... is drive on the interstate in Atlanta GA
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
I'm no expert on space elevators by any means, but I've never read about whether or not the actual elevator would be retracted after each use. If not, that would make quite a target for terrorism.
related article, former astronaut wowed by images snapped of shuttle breakup The images purport to show a very interesting ...uhh... anyone can go read it for themselves.
They are not. They are just over one billionth of world population, which will all surely die. They would have died anyway, someday, probably not later than 50 years into future. So I don't care much about those seven people. And when I do, I envy them, 'cause they have been where I want to be.
I, and many of my friends, mourn for the loss of the shuttle, as in "the thing that can fly into space and carry people with it too." I would be more distressed compared to when two mars probes were lost back a few years ago had the shuttle been any other shuttle. But Columbia was what fueled my childhood imagination, it was whose first flight I watched in awe...
Whatever. It is sad.
Let me ask you another question, you probably went ape over 9/11 events. Terrorism killed ten times that amount in my country in the last decade, yet you didn't even notice. Should I tell you that you should care about 9/11 when ten times that amount had died elsewhere? Does that make any sense at all?
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
First of all, the difference in degrees across the two wings will create turbulence. Now the onboard computers is going to try to compensate for that.
The Angle of re-entry into the earth's atmosphere barely has any margin for error. Either your angle
is correct or you skip off the atmosphere and have to try again, or you burn up. In this case the extreme heat and turbulence broke the shuttle to pieces.
That is utter bullshit and you know it.
First we have a silly thing we like to call a "space station" that yes, the shuttle was NOT equipped with the docking module but what is so fricking hard about doing a spacewalk?
I agree that it's likely utter bullshit, but Columbia was in a much lower orbit than the ISS and didn't have the fuel to reach it. So even if NASA knew there was a problem, the ISS would not have been an option.
Yet Another Web Site
Actually, that much (and more) is denied you, because you obviously know nothing about it and choose to spout off anyway. Quote from space.com article: "Ice forms on the tank because of the super-cold liquid hydrogen and oxygen inside." --Paul Fischbeck, an engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University who conducted the 1994 analysis.
You sound like every other conspiracy theorist* here. Short on knowledge, but long on theory.
*conspiracy theorists are often control freaks who can't stand the thought that something might happen beyond their (or someone else's) control. The idea that we're fallible, or that circumstances can be such that Bad Things happen despite all attempts to prevent them is inconceivable to them. No, there's no way a single, very lucky and very skilled nut could've killed Kennedy, it was a CONSPIRACY. Yeah, if that makes you feel better, go ahead and think it. But in reality, there are some things beyond our (or others) control...{/rant]
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
but it is in a stream of air which is travelling nearly twice the speed of sound where I come from the speed of sound is fast.
In the short term, yes, a huge amount of energy, (not to mention money and materials) would have to be expended to build a space elevator. The whole point is that once it's built, moving stuff up and down requires very little energy at all. This is because energy can be generated by the lifts/shuttles/cars/climbers/whatever as they descend down the elevator, convert gravitational potential energy to, well, electricity would be probably be most useful. This energy is then used to power the lifts back up. Sure energy will be lost, but not as much as it takes to lift the entire shuttle+external tank+boosters combo up to even a low orbit.
And where is the photo? Release it alreaddy.
don nelson was an engineer at nasa. qhat are you qualifications.
Putting people into space just doesn't seem like the best use of our resources at this point. But with more unmanned experience, manned space travel will eventually become fairly easy. Let's pace ourselves, do the easy stuff first, and not rush out there.
They were in a lower orbit than ISS and didn't have enough fuel to reach the higher orbit of ISS.
Plus Columbia was the only shuttle UN-ABLE to dock with ISS. Although maybe if they could have gotten there they could have space walked to ISS.
Look, I just made you read my signature.
The Space Exploration Act of 2002 seemed a great first step, but received very little backing. NASA's NExT group plans look very promising - but do they have any money, even in this year's budget? The goal should be human exploration, development, and settlement of the solar system. The National Space Society has a clear roadmap for space development, and a vision of people living and working in thriving communities in space - but membership there has been dropping for years. The goals actually are pretty obvious - what's needed is for the public to get behind them. Go join these organizations, write your senators and congressman! If you care about space, do something about it!
Energy: time to change the picture.
Not too funny.
Maybe funning in NY but Jews and Texas just don't have too much history.
While we're on the subject, why does /. insert spaces into URLs? Link works, but cut and paste requires some editing.
I agree that the space elevator is a crazy idea. And I agree that resources better be spent working on more incrementally useful things.
/. of the shuttle useful. I am still talking about the shuttle with my friends.
But the space elevator will eventually be built whether you like it or not, since it is the most efficient way of getting things into space in the long run (it's the ultimate single stage to orbit vehicle since all the energy used, once the elevator is built, can be generated on the ground, not carried along.)
In addition, I find discussions on
If you don't like it, why are you here posting?
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
You know, if we had done what should have been done in the early '70s and started colonizing the moon, all this could have been avoided. Shuttle's damaged? We'll fix her once she's landed on Luna and send her home.
Also, it's too bad that there's not going to be a "Feynman moment" at the inevitable hearings into what happened to Columbia. Remember the Challenger hearings, when he pulled the O-Ring out of his glass of water?
In related news.. the new space elevator ripped out of it's moorings.. a scottish viewer responded "Good God.. That throw has got to make guiness book of world records for the hammer throw."
The space elevator is now in orbit and on its way up, took out several weather satallites and a previously unknown US military satallite causing a violent nuclear explosion.
The US president claims that it must be work of terrorists and is currently preparing to lauch a nuclear attack against the people responsible.
A slashdot user was claimed to say, "in soviet russia the elevator lifts you" which for some reason actually made sense for the first time yet..
In other news.. the RIAA and MPAA are planning to sue the terrorists that unknowingly released hundreds of albums and movies into the dead of space that were destined for the mars colony, resulting in any alien being able to listen to and view the album contents which is clearly against the space region coding and audio receptor and video receptor intellectual patent and copyright laws.
As a tribute to Columbia & the crew, I am dedicatingn them the Space Truckin Song.
Am I right?
Maybe the two women were pregnant...
Don't bother looking for evidence, our mind is made up.
By reading this sig, you agree to the terms of my sig license.
nasa ignored many engineers who tried to point out this problem
is this.
If you stretch a rope between your hands I will need to apply only very little force onto the middle of the rope to force your hands together.
This 1 meter band, attached to the earth on one side and a big chunk of something high enough up in orbit to stretch the band, will have to withstand enormous tropical storms that will work to pull that chunk of something down.
I'm not saying it can't work. I'm just saying that if it does, it is amazing.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
The space shuttle is not a model rocket sailplane.
I've ridden a bicycle, but that doesn't mean I'm qualified to talk about the physics of motorcycle racing.
"Could the damage have been investigated with satellites? Perhaps, but that was tried during a 1998 mission and the pictures were of little use."
I found this quote from the article odd. We can take pictures of license plates from space and we can see the divits from meteors on the hubble telescope, but we couldn't look at the shuttle? As far as the 1998 reference, satellite picture technology has come quite far since then.
Holy s-, it's Jesus!
One thing I've been wondering about is whether it might be possible to spray some kind of sealant on the tiles to help protect them from damage before orbit. Maybe something wax-like that would melt off during reentry. Off course we'd need to be sure that it wouldn't damage the tiles itself.
By reading this sig, you agree to the terms of my sig license.
It appears people here cannot 'think' for themselves, only follow.
I post many posts, and many are moderated up to +5
Soon after the gatecrashers party in and abuse my posts. They post derogatory.
Then soon again after my posts are moderated down.
Perhaps the first solution is the better and I have scared those of you who choose not to 'think' but to 'follow'
Most military aircraft have video recorders of some sort. During training flights, it is not uncommon for pilots to record things they see that are interesting. Whether that's babes on the beach or shuttles falling out of the sky. I've personally seen incidents that were recorded by chance that latter turned out to be valuable to authorities. The pilots never having a clue that they were being helpful by accident.
--I agree. If the guy was that concerned about it, his best defense was full release immediately. He also is really dumb to give up ownership and control of the camera, to let it out of his sight. He's screwed now, and as far as I am concerned the camera is now tainted. Any investigation of the camera and negatives should have taken place in full and open view of any interested press persons and especially his lawyer present and a hired camera tech scientist. IF his photos do in fact show some sort of "lightning bolt" or "beam", especially coming from ABOVE, that is some scary stuff potentially.
I do NOT trust the government. ANY nation's government. I also don't trust scammers. So we are stuck on this one. The good news is he doesn't seem to have tried to immediately sell the photos, that's a good sign.
With that said, I'll wait to inspect the photo myself before commenting on it. At least it needs the highest resolution scan possible to be released on the net.
Think about this for a moment. . .
It currently costs thousands of dollars to launch a pound of material into space.
Even when the technology to grow carbon nanotubes large enough to handle the immense forces involved in being used for a space elevator, the cable is still going to weigh thousands and thousands of tons.
The cable is also going to have to have a counterweight weighing at least as much as the cable itself to balance the space elevator in orbit.
Plus, there are a whole host of engineering concerns that haven't been addresed about a space elevator yet. These would have to be a dead issue, given how much of a catastrophe it would be should a space elevator ever come crashing back to earth.
So it's not really a question of if it's possible, so much as a question of safety plus who is going to foot the bill for its fabrication, launch, and assembly. Given the financial woes that have surrounded the ISS since its conception, I think the clear answer would be nobody.
And by the time we do have the prolems solved, the money to do it, and the industrial capacity to manufacture such a beast, someone will almost definitely have come up with a much better idea, anyway.
Or maybe the two flies on the wall counted too.
I found this video on a Mexican news site. The story is in Spanish and mostly talks about NASA's plans for the shuttle, but the video link was new to me. It seems to show the beginning of problems with the shuttle. I haven't seen this on any US news reports or sites. Does anyone know if it's legit?
Have you seen my stapler?
Has it occurred to anyone that a space elevator could be a tempting terrorist target?
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
As early as the day after Columbia was lost, we are starting to see reports of management decisions that affected safelty, design, and ignored problems what were spookily predicted when it came to the foam. Sure, lots of letters might cross managements desk in regards to shuttle problems. But it's the fucking shuttle, you check them ALL or you just don't DO the shuttle. Suddenly the pointy haired boss in Dilbert strips isn't so funny, knowing how accurate he is to real managers in the real world.
In the past four years as a computer programmer (doing other shit now, self employed, NO management to harrass or to blame) I've gotten to enjoy the view as in each and every company I worked at, managers were the cause of almost every problem that happened with the products. To all the managers reading this: goto www.dilbert.com and check to make sure you are not an idiot leading a team of people who know a lot more than you. THINK. LISTEN. THINK MORE. TRY TO DO SOME FUCKING GOOD since you do the "planing of the work" and not the actual "work". Make the best of your time in your leather chear and wall-side office, and LEAD. Watch Braveheart, get motivated!
While we're all doing the armchair-quarterback, hindsight-speculating on what caused the breakup, let me propose another scenario.
Assume that yes, there was significant damage to the insulating tiles, but it wasn't enough to really make a burn-thru happen to be the primary culprit, but instead that there was significant aerodynamic drag imposed to make the autopilot software which controls the aft RCS thrusters, to try to correct the ship's pitch roll and yaw errors. Imagine next that the amount of additional drag on the left wing is substantial enough such that the software wasn't written to accommodate that wide of a range of correction and due to bug/lack of design consideration in that piece of software, that the RCS thrusters either undercorrected or overcorrected, and the nose of the ship got pointed too far off-center of the relative wind (now that the ship is just getting into enough atmosphere for there to exist a relative wind). Once past past that critical yaw-off-center-range point then the ship suddenly enters a violent flat spin and flys apart. In essence a software problem or deficiency could have been a likely candidate. You can probably be sure that a theory similar to this will be rigorously tested.
just as enineers told em not to launch the challenger at those tempratures if they didnt want it to blow up on the pad ?
how wrong where they eh
42
I am sure that they would have found a way. We kept 3 men alive for many days with duct tape and baggies on Apollo 13.. never ever underestimate the cleverness of NASA in a tight situation.
they can even calculate the benefits of an explosive decompression. the science bay could have been used as a propulsion system... there are many things that could have been done but a soyuz launch or the second shuttle launched within 7 days is much more plausable. hell the EU could have simply launched supplies/fuel on an ariane to them.
This isn't 1968 we have many many ways of launching things into space within a couple days notice.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Is the science that NASA has researched in the past 40 years helped to eradicate certain types of diseases? Yes, it has. So astronauts and, in fact, all those who work at NASA, have helped to save lives and will continue to do so. The astronauts rush headlong into a dangeorus situation in the hopes of helping others. You say that soldiers have "exposed themselves to heavy fire in effort (sic) to save a (sic) someone else" but the astronauts have done just this. Do you know how much safer you are from disease because of NASA? Have you ever been to a hospital and received treatment? The tools used have been influenced by NASA's research. This is the type of ignorance I am talking about. People think NASA is just going on field trips into space and not doing anything there. Do a little research before you troll me again Mohammed.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
No matter how good of an idea the space elevator may be, we would definitely have to consider the possibilty and consequences of a terrorist attack on it. Not only would a space elevator be a Huge Damn Target, but it would also be iconic of the US's technical achievements.
Look at how Al-Qaida was obsessed with the twin towers. They made an attempt in 1993 which didn't work, so they regrouped and drew up new plans. I can see terrorist organizations simply salivating at the prospect of destroying a space elevator.
If we attempt this at all, it would definitely have to be on a military base, way out in some desert in the middle of nowhere and surrounded anti-aircraft missles. Even then, that only buys us time.
just as enineers told em not to launch the challenger at those tempratures if they didnt want it to blow up on the pad ?
That was different. Whatever happened to Columbia occured in flight, and the damage was therefore unpreventable. Given that, questions are: "Could they have detected this after reaching orbit?", "How did they reach the conclusion that it was safe?", and "What could have been done about it?"
Ever handled the tile material? I have. They had a neat demonstration where they heated a cube of it cherry-red with a torch and then handed it around a moment later. Incredible material, light and essentially fireproof.
But also brittle and fragile as hell, comparable to styrofoam or balsa wood. I've handled this stuff and it would have been trivial to damage with my bare hands. Armor against a blowtorch, but not a pebble.
NASA apparently has had a number of incidents involving damage to the belly of the orbiter from separated insulation and ice on launch. Apparently the polyurethane (or whatever it is) can become ice-impregnated, too, with the hardness of a brick. The report I read reported that on one occasion 300 tiles were damaged beyond repair, and that tiles had been sliced as deep as 1 1/2" out of 2" -- "enough" for re-entry, but there's always the next time. Perhaps Columbia was that next time and your random chance came up.
There have only been a bit over 100 missions, and the composition of the foam has changed over time -- perhaps also the tiles? Yes, the Shuttle was designed for brutal re-entry, but not to HIT anything at supersonic speeds. The tile would be destroyed by mere rain. Apollo by contrast launched in just about anything. Apollo 12 even survived a lightning strike (barely -- the capsule guidance system was scrambled, which would have led to a breakup of the launch vehicle had it not had its own redundant guidance).
I'm unwilling to draw any conclusions this early, but the damaged-tile theory is plausible. If we're lucky we'll recover that wing.
Some are suggesting that because the Shuttle was traveling at mach 2, the foam would certainly have done damage. This is hugely incorrect.
Remember, both though the foam "and" the Shuttle were moving fast, and both were moving mostly in the same direction.
The speed differential between the two has been estimated at only between 60 and 100 miles per hour.
That's pretty slow and probably not fast enough for an iceless, 1KG piece of foam to do much damage. But infuse 35kg of ice into that foam and things could come out much differently.
Yes, I realize that the neutrons are generally moving much, much faster.
I read the article on space.com and I saw no discussion of what other alternatives there were, only what alternatives wouldn't have worked.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Maybe, but NASA was a much more agile organization back then. Plus the Apollo moon missions had many more abort options built in to their flights than the shuttle. Apollo 13 followed a free return trajectory which was built into its flight profile and using the LEM engine was planned contingency, the big bit of improvisation was using the LEM as a lifeboat.
they can even calculate the benefits of an explosive decompression. the science bay could have been used as a propulsion system...
I doubt very much that explosive decompression would be able provide anything near the delta V required.
This isn't 1968 we have many many ways of launching things into space within a couple days notice.
Possibly, but could any of them have been ready in time?
Yet Another Web Site
Simple mistake. Hrm.
;)
Mach 18==(18x(speed of sound @ sea level for comparison)) == 13,680 mph
Warp 18 (to use Star Trek-style indication) == 200,880,000 mph
Slight difference.
"If there's hope, it lies in the proles..."
"one in fifty chance of total failure isn't exactly stellar"
Nice.
(You see it's funny because astronauts...ah nevermind)
What should I do if I find Columbia debris?
Do not touch it. Monday evening, NASA officials issued another warning that the debris "may be dangerously contaminated with toxic substances and cause serious injury if handled. Individuals who think they may have come in contact with shuttle debris should take a shower with soap and water and then seek medical attention.
What is the nature of this contamination? Does anyone here know?
Siggy Wiggy Figgy Tiggy a bana bo Biggy!
With all this talk of foam coming off the feul tank, and recovering as much debris as possible for forensic analysis, why is nobody talking about recovering the feul tank itself?
Is its position not known accurately enough to find it (oops)? Would it provide no useful information anyway (how are you sure until you look)? Would a salvage effort take too long (not a good excuse)? Are there 10 other feul tanks in the same area, making identification difficult (not a good excuse)?
main(O){10<putchar((O--,102-((O&4)*16| (31&60>>5*(O&3)))))&&main(2+ O);}
LN2 is cool!
I would say there are (at least) three kinds of heroes:
People who knowingly risk their lives in order to either try and save the lives of others or to try and help advance humanity as a whole.
Or people who put themselves in harm's way on the spur of the moment in order to protect or rescue others.
Finally, people who dedicate themselves to helping others or performing a valuable service to society (whether or not they risk their own lives) are heroes too, I think.
So no, a person who gets hit by a bus may not necessarily be a hero, but when that person sacrifices their own safety to push other people out of the path of that bus, they could be called a hero.
And if that person who was hit by the bus had been an astronaut, then I think given the nature of what they do and the risks they take, that a hero was hit by that bus - even if dying in a bus crash isn't itself a "heroic act".
For better of for worse, society has assigned a value to the work performed in space by astronauts who were trained to go there and assume those risks. Ergo, astronauts are heroes. The bus driver may have been a decorated military veteran. Or not. It doesn't matter for these purposes. Ordinary people die doing heroic actions, and ordinary people also rise to the occasion, do something heroic, and live to tell the tale. Heroes also die peacefully in their sleep at a ripe old age - heroism and martyrdom are not automatically related.
Which is good, otherwise all our heroes would be dead ones.
(as the old quote goes, "...a statesman is a dead politician. Lord knows we need more statesmen!")
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Tne links I followed seemed awfully dumbed down. Much better material on the NY TIMES (regn required blah blah why tell the truth in regn anyway blah)
Ie. The shuttle was sitting on the pad an extra-long time and it's tank insulation was soaked with rain.... filling tank with fuel shrinks it away from the insulation... insulation filled with ice = much harder than regular insulation etc. etc.
(N)ot (A)nother (S)huttle (A)ccident
"The cable is also going to have to have a counterweight weighing at least as much as the cable itself to balance the space elevator in orbit."
Actually I thought the latest design showed that a counterweight was not required. The cable itself acts as its own counterweight.
"Plus, there are a whole host of engineering concerns that haven't been addresed about a space elevator yet. These would have to be a dead issue, given how much of a catastrophe it would be should a space elevator ever come crashing back to earth."
In short: the academics are not wasting their time studying this. There are indeed issues that we need to address before we begin building this thins, or decide not to. As for the catastrophic failure: studies show that most of the cable would burn up, with the last bit crashing to earth at a moderate speed, in a part of the ocean devoid of human settlements or even shipping lanes.
"So it's not really a question of if it's possible, so much as a question of safety plus who is going to foot the bill for its fabrication, launch, and assembly. Given the financial woes that have surrounded the ISS since its conception, I think the clear answer would be nobody."
Indeed. Part of those academics studying this thing are working on those questions: what does the elevator cost to build and operate. And unlike the ISS which was built purely for scientific reasons (and bad ones at that), the space elevator can show a decent return on investment once it is built, according to some studies.
Whether you want to believe those studies is another matter. But to abandon the space elevator as impractical is way too early.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
When I was in grade school, about a year or two before Columbia's first flight, NASA came around with a dog and pony show. One of the ponies were some demo tiles, one that they handed around to the kids (is was very light, as I recall) the other on stage they held in one (unprotected!) hand and heated with a blow torch until glowing! very cool.(pun intended)
But they also said that there was a hell of a time keeping the tiles glued on to the shuttle, that in case some tiles came off during take off that there was a repair kit with some space age adhesive and numerous tile of varying sizes.
Now the space.com article said that there were not any replacemnet tiles on board. Makes you wonder:
Did the adhesives get better and they thought they didn't need replacement kits any more? Was it cut as possibly a cutback, either for more weight for payload or the cost of the replacement kit itself? Or did NASA just think it wouldn't do any good?
Granted this Demo was in 1979 or 1980 so many things could and would have changed.
Poste Scripte: Word has gone out from Nasa and Texas Regional Emergency Services seeking volunteers with Professional GPS (geography,surveying) experience, and professional equipment (Trimble Pro, GEO type stuff) to help catalog the debris field
For future Shuttle flight, indeed ANY manned reentry vehicle, my opinion is that they will:
1. Do a visual postflight once it gets into orbit. Dittemore has said they they have the capability to take picture of it in orbit. Maybe even once again on the last orbit before reentry.
So, after every flight, they photo and study the vehicle, to see if there is any visible damage on the outside. If none, ok...continue with the flight. If there is, then:
B. An EVA using a second generation MMU to check it out. At least one of these will be on EVERY shuttle flight.
An up close inspection can reveal far more than any telescope. If damage consistent with reentry failure is detected, then:
C. Fix, using some sort of tile repair kit. Obviously, they cannot carry a replacement for every tile. So we develop some sort of expanding heat resistant foam. Maybe a 2 part process, one for the underlying foam, second for the top glass layer. One time use, then replace on the ground, but good enough to land.
Note that I have NO idea how this expanding foam would work, or what it would be made of, but it is obvious SOME sort of inflight repair is needed.
Sending up the shuttle without some sort of inflight repair is like driving your car with no spare tire.
Looking at his webpage (not yet updated to reflect recent the disaster) his analysis seems quite prophetic.
Why was this modded insightful?
... ??
... ??
Columbia likely was doomed by damage incurred during launch.
And you know this how exactly
However, those astronauts were likely doomed by a faulty damage analysis.
And you know this how exactly
If only NASA read slashdot, they could save themselves the entire failure investigation. sigh.
"Because it's there." - George Mallory, when asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest, March 18, 1923 (New York Times)
It seems like sticking a (sufficiently heat resistant) RFID tag on each tile would be a simple way to detect missing tiles.
Actually, since the real heat is during reentry, and the whole point is to verify them before that, you could probably just glue them to the outside of the tiles, let them burn off during reentry and simply glue new ones before the next launch.
Slight correction... that's miles per minute :-P
warp 18 would equal (200,880,000 miles/min) * 60 min = 12,052,800,000 mph. Not that it matter tho
The best thing about Nostradamus' prophecies is that they are reusable.
Did you know the same quatrain that predicted the WTC disaster also predicted the TWA 800 disaster?
Clearly Nostradamus had much more insight than we give him credit for!
Disclaimer: The above is sarcasm, for the sarcasm-detectionally challenged
By reading this sig, you agree to the terms of my sig license.
I was thinking about the process followed after the launch and the discovery of insulation hitting the shuttle. Couldn't someone make a softball sized robot (USV?) that is remote controllable and has a camera? The astronauts can send the robot outside for inspections in case questions arise. I would assume this robot can perform a far better inspection than other techniques currently used (ground based cameras, satellites not in same orbit, etc)
Yeah, they can't fix the shuttle, but can't they send another shuttle up in an emergency time frame to rescue the others? Is there absolutely no contingency plans at all when the astronauts go up...
Gleaned from the net, these appear to have been the vital experiments that the Columbia astronauts were risking their lives for. Now how many of these couldn't have been performed in an unmanned mission? And how many of these are really useful and not just a way of filling up the crew's time in orbit?
a study of how bacteria and yeast develop in space and how reduced gravity affects their response to antibiotics.
an attempt to photograph desert dust drifting over the Mediterranean in order to assess its impact on the weather
the Water Mist Fire Suppression Experiment (MIST)designed to study how a finely-sprayed water mist puts out a fire
One experiment studied the formation of soot while another looked at creating flame balls with low mixtures of fuel and air.
another experiment to grow bone and prostate cancer tissue inside a device called a bioreactor is going so well that scientists have had to take measures to slow down the growth.
a project to see if a spider can spin a web in zero gravity and, if so, whether it would be different to those spun on Earth.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
extend 62,000 miles up into space
Wow! 62000 miles is long. Consider the fact that the radius of earth is about 6371.01 km (3981 miles), I seriously wonder the necessity for a shaft almost 8 times the diameter of the earth hanging off into space. I know it's a typo on their part but they really shouldn't let something like this to appear twice in one page.
here is a snippet of CNN's false coverage: http://www.o-t.us/upload/guest/cnnsucks.jpg
From the article:
If NASA knew something might have been wrong, why did they try the re-entry?
the astronauts did not have jetpacks aboard.
WHY FUCKING NOT?
In any case, no spare tiles are carried aboard shuttle flights.
WHY FUCKING NOT?
Essentially, we're being told that an absolutely critical piece of the shuttle has no backup at all, no method of repair at all, and that NASA can't even be bothered to provide the means to assess the problem.
I know these are bright, dedicated people, but this just seems totally wrong.
Even if, for temperature or other environmental reasons, it's impossible to repair/replace tiles, why not at least know what you're dealing with and try alternatives? The russians had an unmanned ship going up on Monday or Tuesday to the ISS - maybe something could have been done using that to get the Columbia crew to the ISS.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
Heh. Like your sig.
News-Felch!
"The Milliard Gargantubrain? A mere abacus - mention it not."
FAQ Version 1.4
Link to low-bandwidth version to minimise slashdoting.
I think this is more like da Vinci's flying machine than a steam engine.
Volatile - noun - readily vaporizable at a relatively low temperature.
I'm not making fun of you for saying hydrazine is volatile. I'm making fun of morons at NASA and elsewhere who think something VOLATILE is going to survive savage temperatures, a 40-mile plummet, and an impact into the surface, and leave anything more than a molecule or two behind at the end.
Bwahaha - it's ludicrous. Say, I wonder what they are REALLY afraid of someone finding?
Boy that the most pompous piece of crap that I've ever heard.
What do people expect? People want to know. So the media provides? You don't like that? Thats what the off button is for.
All talk I've seen of any space elevator is insistent on putting it in the middle of the pacific ocean- a location you'd don't exactly sneak up on. It would also be a safe assumption that we would protect the space elevator base with a force substantial enough to destroy any conceivable terrorist attack, having learned our lessons on 9-11.
Moreover, since the base would be in the middle of the ocean, and not in a city, there would be little opposition to stationing a couple cruise missiles (for ships) and SAM sites there.
I think it's also safe to presume that all cargo and passengers would be thoroughly checked before beginning the journey to the base, to avoid any problems from that angle.
Having the base in the middle of the ocean, 3000 miles from land, and protected by the US military does more than buy us time. It's damn good insurance against the likes of Al-Qaida, who, at best, have access to Cold-War era Soviet weapons. An organization that must highjack passenger planes and fill rental trucks with explosives to carry out it's goals cannot evade or overwhelm arrays of active sonar bouys, a Los Angeles Class submarine, AWACS radar planes, SAM sites, Tomohawk cruise missiles, Commanches, JSF, or whatever else we station there if we build it.
New York City is a busy city, with 16 million people. It has it's own airport, and several other airports within an hour's flight time. It makes a great target.
A space elevator installation, in the middle of the ocean, protected by the United States DoD, would be well protected against the likes of Al-Qaida. They couldn't sneak in if they tried.
Even if they acquire surface-skimming cruise missiles, they're of little good. You can't hide from JSTARS and AWACS on the ocean, and once they get close, the phalanx guns (which we have mounted on destroyers and aircraft carriers) are quite capable of destroying a missile in flight.
I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
What I think you must consider is the limited amount of time available. From first indications of a problem to final destruction of the shuttle was only a few minutes. When you have an off-the-scale reading, you want to make sure its not a bad sensor. It's easy to expend a few minutes double checking readings, reviewing documentation, etc. Combine this with the telemetry drop-outs... Also add in the fact that they had done this routinely a hundred times.. By the time it sunk into the operators that the shuttle was destroyed was probably minutes after it actually occurred.
Yes, the contigencies were limited by a number of factors, but I can't immagine that the situation was nearly as bad as the one on Apollo 13. First analysis of the options didn't give much hope, and even the survival solution that they came up with wasn't exactly "ideal" (i.e. lots could have gone wrong with it, still).
Bottom line is that if they knew they already had a problem that prevented safe re-entry, they would have been strongly motivated to find a solution. IMHO, the biggest human failing here was using the idea that "we can't do anything anyway" as part of the decision making process. If there was any concern that the outcome would be "breaking up on re-entry", they shouldn't have stopped until they could assure themselves that the rist as minimal. The parent post is right, this is a human failing, not a system or hardware failure. Not as blatantly so as with the Challenger disaster (pure management failure), but the whole point of hiring a lot of very bright people to work on these programs is to allow them to use their judgement in these situations.
How long would it take to creep up the ribbon into space anyway? The climber doesn't look very aerodynamically efficient and is only working on a traction system - how long will it take to travel 62,000 miles!?
Also, even if the ribbon itself is kept tense by centrifugal force (enough to withstand stormy weather and planes crashing into it), wouldn't the climber itself be particularly vulnerable in high winds? It's going to need a lot of grip.
Did anyone see the pictures of the large dent and crack on the back of the left wing. It was taken during Ilan Ramon's downlink with the Isreali president. I saw it yesterday on either CBC newsworld or CTV Newsnet. They commented on NASA's reaction that it did not see of the footage. Also the story went on to say that the images where not being shown by US news media.
Niether Canadian news channel mentioned it this morning, and I have not found anything about it online.
I'm no conspriacy theorist, but this looks a little shady to me.
While I whole-heatedly agree with your sentiment about Conspiracy nuts, I totally disagree with your comments about the Kennedy assasination.
What is more plausible:
A) A "very lucky and very skilled nut" gets off a shot that CIA marksman were unable to duplicate later. Its a coincidence that he happened to be killed before he was able to give testimony. It's a 'miracle' that the bullet that purportedly killed Kenedy was found SITTING ON A GURNEY IN THE HOSPITAL HE DIES IN WITHOUT A SCRATCH ON IT. The picture that sealed the guilt of Oswald showing him with a gun just happens to be doctored for no reason. Oswald just decided to not take credit for the crime of the century.
-OR-
B)Some very powerful members of the newly arrisen Military Industrial Complex decide to off an extremely popular and powerful president who's goals are diametrically opposed to theirs. They make various mistakes in their plotting which are obvious now, but less so then (magic bullet etc.). They frame Oswald for the crime, hoping to get to him before he can testify.
No, moron, 62,000 miles is not a typo. It HAS to extend well beyond geosynchronous orbit altitude (22,500 miles) in order than centrifugal force will exceed gravity, and it will stay up.
Whatever happened to Columbia occured in flight, and the damage was therefore unpreventable.
Just s/Columbia/Challenger/ and you'll see that statement doesn't hold water. Should they have launched Columbia at all?
NASA has already said they had problems in the past with insulation falling off the booster tank. We don't know the details of those failure modes yet, but what if the problem was that moisture gets behind the insulation, condenses as ice on the tank surface, and then forcibly separates a chunk of insulation from the tank with ice attached? How much flaking of ice-covered insulation was considered acceptable before it became a safety risk?
Then there are bandwidth concerns. You only have so many frequencies available for telemetry, so bandwidth trade-offs occur. What update rates are required for various types of data? Do you need more temperature data or spacecraft orientation data?
In the end, there are only so many sensors you can carry, and so much data you can transmit. (That's not to say that newer technology may have allowed better telemetry from Columbia.)
While nobody yet knows what caused the disaster, and while numerous alternative scenarios have been suggested to explain it, absolutely everybody agrees that current space vehicle technology is extremely fragile. Not fragile per se, as the shuttle is designed to survive a whole range of minor problems and has done so repeatedly. However, it is effectively very fragile in the context of the extremely harsh conditions of space and the huge forces of launch and reentry. Nobody disputes that the risks of manned space exploration are currently very very high in the face of things "going wrong".
I wonder then, what would be needed to reverse this situation? If we knew what was required, we'd have some idea of how far away from such a future we currently are. It is after all not an impossible dream --- for example, as one part of a transport system, you could hypothesize that a seamless body built out of (say) 1000-times as strong self-sealing materials comprising millions of layers of ablative and structural thin film, with a passive self-righting shape, might not have any problem at all in dealing with reentry conditions. (This is not a proposal --- I'm just suggesting that you can always come up with a less fragile basis for a space vehicle by extrapolating current-day technological developments.)
So, given the (futuristic) possibility of eventually having vehicle technology that is inherently less fragile than the current one, what would we need to develop towards such a future? We all know that there are pretty amazing developments in materials technology heading our way already, within human timespans, but there is more to it than just materials.
For a start, is there a completely stable, self-righting shape that would be a clear candidate for a design that eliminated the risk of guidance electronics failure by not requiring any stabilizing controls once the reentry trajectory was established outside of the atmosphere?
If so, transformation from that to a gliding shape is only one of many possibilities for handling the landing, ranging from on-end-landing propulsion to catching the darn thing to good ol' parachutes and many other approaches.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
...of the relevant area of the shuttle, with notes on sensor reading, times of bad readings, and significant paths coupling those readings. I've kind of figured what the parent post was saying, but it would be good to see that, "These two sensors are both wired in this bundle or to this multiplexer, and both failed at this time. That other sensor failed at that time, and its wire was so-many cm away from the first bundle/multiplexer."
Thinking about WHY they should publish such information, the answer is simple. It's partly MY space program. My taxes help fund it, and I'm a pro-space voter. Currently NASA carries the torch for my wish to go into space, myself. (and others like me)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I think they decided not to know.
I for one have a problem with the assement. They opted NOT to use spy sats and telescopes to look at the shuttle based on ONE past use that provided no usefull information.
On Columbia first flight tiles were lost and they DID use those assests and got good photos then.
So what to make of the statement? Did they really look, then lied to the public and the crew, that they found out the truth or did they just not use the assets at hand because there was no point?
They other statement that is repeated is that even if they knew about the damage there was NOTHING they could do. This implies that they have in advance ruled out any possiblility of rushing a shuttle to launch to rescue a stranded crew. That in of inself is not really suprising. I really doubt that a Shuttle that takes nearly 6 months of work to be preped could be rushed up safely to go up and rescue the doomed shuttle. (And even if you could go up, then what? Columbia had no space suits, no docking ring, and no airlock. The orange suits are pressure suits not space suits and lack radiation protection and are not easy to move in at ZERO pressure. They are intended for low pressure use not zero.)
So basicly you have the opition of spending time and money to find out for sure that the shuttle is doomed and having NOTHING that can be done about it or just closing your eyes crossing your fingers and hoping that it will be OK. I can see how a NASA boss might choose the latter. I certianly wouldn't want to be the one to say to the crew that they are screwed. In the Apollo days it was rumored that they carried suicide pills to use to avoid prolonged death. I don't know if they still, if ever, do that today.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
[country music]Where were you when they built the laaaadder to Heh-vun![/country music]
I think that the Space Elevator is a really good idea, and there have been some very interesting(and detailed) studies of the feasibility.
Previous Articles:
Space Elevators: Low Cost Ticket to GEO?
More on Space Elevators
Going Up?
Calling the Space Elevator
Space Elevator May Become Reality - The Linked Study(PDF) Was fascinating.
Space Elevator Could Cost Less Than You Thought
Stepping Closer To The Space Elevator
I want to walk into an elevator some day and see two buttons - "G" and "O".
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but copyright will always protect me.
The space elevator is a dumb idea.
My vote is for the Space Shuttlecock.
Read any good sonnets lately?
". As for the catastrophic failure: studies show that most of the cable would burn up, with the last bit crashing to earth at a moderate speed, in a part of the ocean devoid of human settlements or even shipping lanes. "
what studies? there is no reason why it would "burn up".
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Man, here I was getting ready to tell you what a dumbass you are, and you go and correct your own mistake. ;)
We need to make our "quota of pointing out dumb asses for no reason" to keep coming back to slashdot, right?...right?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
i'd like to ask a question that has not,
...
to my knowledge, been asked yet:
why, excactly, the communication was lost
so abruptly at 7:59 AM ??
was it an electrical type of fault,
perhaps some communication subsystem
started to burn ? perhaps the antenna ?
if so, how could a termal failure
propagate itself through the
communication system ?
or, rather, the shuttle itself began
rotating so everything started to burn,
and the communication was lost after that ?
given that shuttle attitude was "almost" normal,
at the moment in which the communication was lost,
it seems more an electrical type of failure.
a related question is if it is known (by the
many videos) at what time exactly the shuttle
was broken in two pieces
giampy
Premature Optimization is The Root of All Evil - D.Knuth
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history - Tom Veneziano
Redesign the main fuel tank so the insulation is on the inside. Build in the capability to warm the outside skin to prevent ice buildup. No falling insulation, no falling ice.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I wanted to vent a bit about ABCNews.com's coverage of the shuttle disaster. In this story, the fourth from the last paragraph reads (note about challenger, not columbia):
... death plunge." The correct information can be found here.
Challenger's nose section, with the crew cabin inside, was blown free from the explosion and plummeted 8.7 miles from the sky. NASA learned from on-board voice recorders that the astronauts lived through much of the capsule's death plunge. The capsule shattered after hitting the ocean at 140 to 180 mph.
Now, for those of you that are aware, the second sentence refers to a weekly world news article, which as you know, is america's second finest news source. A google search quickly found a debunking article. There are no audio tapes suggesting that the pilots survived "much of the
Anyway, I just wanted to vent, because ABCNews has a responsibility to print facts, and, AFAIK, they didn't even announce the correction, although subsequence stories with the same content did fix it. What's with internet news services and not announcing corrections (again AFAIK)?
If they can't get history correct, how can they fairly report on the present?
-Sean
Here are a bunch of details.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
UNder emergency condition, we could of had the atlantis up in 5 days.
I also wonder if the russians could have launched somethig for a rescue, or perhaps resuppy until we had another plan?
NASA isn't agile as it was, in general, but if we had an emergency, the people neede to solve the problem would have been given whatever they needed, immediatly, to start brains stormng contingncies.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
>just as enineers told em not to launch the
>challenger at those tempratures if they didnt
>want it to blow up on the pad ?
If the engineers could have made a credible case for their argument, (or if they had a case that they were not allowed to present, as some have alleged), the mission could have been aborted.
It isn't HARD to abort a mission (in fact, it's a miracle every time one flies -- LOTS of stuff has to be 100% or it's no-go!) But there does need to be a reason. With the gift of hindsight, it is obvious that the engineers who saw the risk did not make, or were not given the opportunity to make their case. The notion that NASA management chose to proceed with a launch that they knew had risks beyond the "normal" VERY RISKY mission parameters is flawed. Nobody ever said "yes, I know if the O-Rings are frozen the fuel tank will blow up killing the astronauts and ending my career."
Hindsight allows us to look only at the incident of disaster. Everyone involved in the launch had a LOT of work, was evaluating any number of risks, and every choice is a compromise. Otherwise, we'd never leave the ground.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Also I heard about the CFC stuff before, from the *LOS ANGLELES TIMES* which is a well-known leftist tree-hugging source. Your claim that it is being covered up is totally bogus.
But in your little fantasy world I guess you can find reasons environmentalists are to blame for everything, huh.
I just thought of a useful application for Smart Dust self-organizing sensor networks with respect to the shuttle. Since no sensors can survive the heat on the exterior of the shuttle during re-entry, perhaps applying these disposable sensors on the underside of the shuttle would serve a useful function. During take-off these sensors would send data to the shuttle and give a perfect map of the heat tiles damaged. This data could be sent back to ground control in real time where instant computer analysis could determine if the mission should be aborted before the shuttle passes the point of no return. It is clear that there is nothing the Columbia could have done once reaching space. It is necessary to know the tile damage before orbit is achieved.
Remember... ZG9uJ3QgZm9yZ2V0IHRvIGRyaW5rIHlvdXIgb3ZhbHRpbmU=
It would be interesting to see any photos from satellites of the shuttle on re-entry.
Some past articles discussing the progress of a space elevator can also be found over at Sci-Fi Today:
The Aftermath of Another Shuttle Tragedy
The Business of Building a Space Elevator
Drog
Looking for political forums? Check out "The World Forum".
This would make the second time that ice/cold weather played a part in the deaths of astronauts. If so, something as simple as just shutting the program down during cold weather would seem like the thing to do.
Live in your world. Stay out of mine.
Usurper_ii
Ron Paul
Q: Does anyone have more on the physics of a space elevator tether?
If the attachment point at the Earth's equator is rotating around the Earth's axis at 1,000 miles/hour, how fast would the space end of the tether be moving? (Depends on how far out the tether goes)
What sort of tension would the tether be under? Both unloaded and loaded, which would change as the loaded move up (out)?
How would the elevator platform climb the tether?
Any FAQs on similar points (I've seen the HighLift FAQ)
There's another video floating around - I think I saw it on Arizona Republic - not of foam, but of ice hitting the bottom of the left wing. After it hit, it rebounded in a large, fine spray, as you would expect ice to do.
Another possibility is that an otherwise survivable defect was made deadly by the weight of this particular mission. A shuttle normally reenters at about 210000 lbs, this one came in at almost 250. Maybe that much extra heat to disipate fuxored them.
There ARE good managers out there, but not many. The problem is the position lends itself to creating someone who becomes numb to the real world. "Make it so!" syndome I guess. Most managers are PC Magazine educated, yet make decisions that are huge! Every programmer out there who works for a manager that doen't know the difference between AWT and Swing expect for the fact that "Swing is newer" knows what I'm talking about.
well, I knew fsckall about scamjet until I read you comment, so the honours all yours! ;-)
Was a very good thread back there IMHO.
if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
I just want to know when we are going to start declaring war on space shuttle crashes.
I sure enjoyed posting on that thread. Discussions like that here on /. make all the flamebait and trolling worth sorting through.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Pros:
- We (the country likely to build a space elvator) own it
- it's 22 minutes from the equator
- it's surrounded by a reef (makes amphibious attacks difficult)
Cons:My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Columbia was the first shuttle to fly in space. The first shuttle to fly was the Enterprise, but it was used only for drop testing and was not capable of flying under rocket power or operating in space.
Because Columbia was the first fully operational shuttle it is by far the heaviest shuttle with the lowest payload. For that reason it was not flown much after the later shuttles were built. IIRC Columbia could not reach the altitude of the space station with any useful payload.
Columbia was originally built with ejection seats on the flight deck that were later removed.
During the first few flights of the Columbia NASA was very worried about the tiles coming off. They had developed a thing a lot like a caulking gun that could be used by an astronaut to fill in the gaps left by a lost tile. But, IIRC it was never flown. So, this is a problem that NASA has considered, and one for which they already had a potential solution more than 20 years ago.
On a personal note, I can think of no better way to die than to do it while following a dream. And not just a personal dream, but a dream that benefits all of humanity. They are heros not because they died, but because they dared.
Stonewolf
They knew insulation fell off at launch. It has happend for years. It never caused a problem before. Why would it have this time? The track record said it was okay. The tools they used to analyize tile damage had been used for years, and never failed. In fact the program overestimated the damage to tiles.
They've lost a few tiles on every flight of the shuttle. Some from the underneath, but there was never a "zipper effect". It was well known as a potential problem, but simply never occured. Losing 1 tile never caused it. Scooping out material from several tiles never caused it. Past experience indicated that for the "zipper effect" to occur, the shuttle would have need to occur much greater damage.
Let's say for argument that the probability of a large enough piece of ice coated insulation to cause catstrophic damage to the orbiter is 1 in 10,000. That doesn't mean there will never be catstrophic damage, just that it is incredibly unlikely.
The world is full of uncertainty. I could step outside and get killed by a meteor, I probably won't, but it could happen. That doesn't mean that I shouldn't go outside.
Jesus, don't let this man do my fortune!
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
wow! what an intelligent troll! Tell ya what bufoon, why don't you provide a link disputing the lady astronaut didn't interview the photographer, and that the government didn't think it important enough to go pick up the camera in a military jet. Oh ya, why don't you ask the science editor of the chronicle while you're at it, if it's a real story or not.
try again next time after you grow up and your brain hairs out, really pathetic trolling,sub- amateur quality
As I understand it the shuttle reenters the atmosphere at a 40 degree angle. This steep angle then causes drag, slowing the craft, and generating extreme heat in the process. I was wondering, if damage had been suspected, if it would have been possible to reenter the atmosphere at a smaller angle to reduce the heat load?
I am using Dennis Jenkins Space Shuttle - The History of the National Space Transportation System - The First 100 Missions - 3rd Edition as my reference point.
Shuttle's Electrical Power System uses hydrogen and oxygen to create electricity through 3 fuel cells. The Shuttle's cooling system also depends on this power.
For supporting Spacelab and long duration missions NASA and Rockwell developed the Extended Duration Orbitor (EDO) cryo kit. It wieghs 7000 pounds and is 15 feet in diameter. It attaches to the payload bay rear bulkhead on OV-102 (Columbia). OV-104 (Atlantis) was modified to be EDO compatable but it's not been finished. OV-105 (Endeavour) also had the EDO capability deleted to save weight. I am unsure of Discovery's EDO compatablity.
As for life-support, a lithium hydroxide canister is used to remove CO2 from the cabin air, Columbia had another system which used a regenerable carbon dioxide removal system which will operate for 10-16 days.
A LiOH canister will last 48 man-hours and up to 30 can be carried. If Columbia had 30 canisters and it's RCRS, then it'd have up to 24 days of CO2 removal capability.
NASA has Columbia's flight duration as 15 days, 22 hours, 20 minutes
A couple extra days would not have saved the crew, and it isn't comparable to Apollo 13 because without a thermal protection system that worked, they'd be dead.
Apollo 13's recovery operated under the assumption (correct) that the heat shield was intact.
Another Shuttle couldn't be launched in time to rescue Columbia, it couldn't make it to ISS and the thermal protection system wasn't repairable on orbit.
Columbia didn't have enough fuel to change it's orbit to that of ISS.
Does it make anyone else just a tad uncomfortable that such critical systems, exposed to such extreme temperature and pressure stresses, are so bloody delicate? In a way, it's remarkable that the shuttles made it through as many flights as they did without serious re-entry damage.
Life is like surrealism: if you have to have it explained to you, you can't afford it.
So, getting publicity is not needed to be a hero(tm). Putting yourself at risk in the service of your fellow man is.
So, when I was nearly killed working in a tomato field, I'm a hero? Cool. Because I was Working For My Fellow Man, being hit by a tractor makes me a hero.
Reality check follows.
Heros are those who get lots of attention, who happened to do something cool, or foolhardy, or lucky. People like to look at them and think they'd do something similar. Nation states like to memorialize them to encourage certain behaviour.
I'm not disupting that heroes exist. I have several, personally. I do agree that the shuttle crew were not heroes.
I forget what 8 was for.
Makes one wonder if this problem (whatever it may turn out to be) would have happened to the Russian Buran? Shame it never flew production flights.
http://www.aerospaceguide.net/buran/
2) Do they Need Another Shuttle Also?
They had to perfectly good chicks with them, they could've left one behind for some fun-n-games. And so they got two guys up there, staring at each other's dicks for 6 months.
Oy vay.
...was when CNN broke the news that astronaughts
remains had been found in some guy's back yard
(a leg I believe) and then cut to a clip of this
dog chewing on some debris with the owner shouting
"no, no, bad dog, bad dog".
I haven't seen any links to the russian verison of Shuttle Buran. Here is the link
All the smart, white guys left the program a long time ago.
And there wasn't asian guys to take up the slack.
I'm not trying to be racist. But when you want to get stuff done, you hire a bunch of white and asian guys and get it done.
You hire the women and the others when you're building an organization.
So no, the people at NASA today simply don't have the brainpower to (a) save anybody's ass in space (b) come up with a way to fix the problem.
Hire a bunch of smart white guys if you need something done, but that's too late for the columbia.
The more people say this accident isn't like the Challenger, the more it seems like 1986 again: NASA wringing its hands, the press coming up with the same pipe dreams they touched on in 1986. Space plane anyone? Unfortunately little of anything interesting has happened with manned space flight since the early seventies and it will continue to be like that until the somewhat distant future. NASA will recover from this, but that won't change anything.
Their shuttle sucked worse than ours.
Our is sucky. But the russians was a major league suck. It sucked and blew simultaneously.
The suck was taking paint off neighboring stars.
The blow was knocking jupiter out of orbit.
Are you getting the idea yet?
It would be very risky for NASA to try and keep this stuff secret - at least from the post-crash investigation. If Congress got word of it, they'd be crucified.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
IIRC (ok I am being anal about this I know and this is starting to get way OT) Warp 2 != 2*Speed Light, by the time they hit Warp 9 they were going about 1,516 time the speed of light. But this may just be TNG and not TOS warp scaling because TNG they couldn't get warp 10 (something about infinite power and existing at all points in the universe or something) whereas in TOS they did hit Warp 10. (Ok found something that said TOS Warp 10 almost = TNG Warp 8 (TOS Warp 10 = 1000*c, TNG Warp 8=1024*c))
When a space elevator goes wrong, the people currently ascending it might well die. The rest either flies off into deep space, or burns up on reentry. That would be a shame, but it's not going to kill anyone.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
The talk from some NASA bureaucrats about things being "impossible" sure did make me think of Apollo 13, and how things have apparently changed. (There are certainly still some at NASA who are not deceptive bureaucrats, but some high-level NASA administrators did really sound like scummy politicians on the news networks.)
Break it apart.
The claim is that something vital for humanity is happening. Like, say, making food, or doing cool things in space.
The claim further assumes that someone doing accepts risks and does so for whatever fame and glory they can get.
Contrast this with my statement, which I intended to be an amusing sideline, with a little bit of actual pointy bits here and there, towards the end.
Let me know when you get the point. Maybe, then we can actually talk about what it takes to be a hero.
I forget what 8 was for.
Many have written that the Space Shuttle was obsolete before its maiden voyage and that it added nothing new to our space capabilities, given the availability of relatively cheap expendable boosters. I disagree. The Space Shuttle was used many times to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, giving it newfound sight. (The HST probbaly could not be launced through ELV because of the weight and G-force restrictions of its contemporary ELV.) And in addition to resupplying the International Space Station, the Space Shuttle keeps it in the air with judicial firings of its three main engines while docked.
Lastly, the greatest service it has provided for us could likely be the telemetry it has generated over its useful life. Imagine the tremendous stresses bourne by the craft on ascent and reentry, and the conditions it must weather up there in orbit for extended periods of time. These informations could be used towards the next space plane. Because of the Space Shuttle, there will be much less uncertainties of how things will react in these conditions.
Yes, perhaps recent uses of the Space Shuttle have been useless. But it has extended our space access capabilities as well has broadened the horizons of our knowledge.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Now they're claiming that debris is found in San Bernardino County California. Anyone know how this is possible, given that the Shuttle passed into Nevada just east of Bishop, CA (e.g., northern Cal.)? Anyone have alink to an image of the flight path on re-entry across the west coast?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/ a/2003/02/05/MN192153.DTL
-ThreeToe
-(two killed in battle with raging typhoon)
He came up with it after the reports came out saying Houston watched the temperature rise in the tire for a while without saying anything. If something started showing up that could only mean certain doom they might not say anything about it. Otherwise Houston would tell them they are straight fucked and the astronauts would have 5 minutes to think about.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
Ever see a paper airplane flip over?
Drag is greater on the left wing because of tile damage so there is flight computer induced yawing and rolling to stay on course. What happens if the yawing and rolling become dynamically unstable? The craft is damaged so it doesn't react normally and the flight computer doesn't know the damage exists. When does correction become unstable enough to pitch the shuttle over or provoke occilations that cause break up?
Are the puffs in the shuttle wake additude jets trying to maintain course, but provoking instability in a damaged craft?
Has anyone run any computer simulations on a damaged shuttle to see how it would behave in an attempt to stay on flight path?
I know that this sounds a little paranoid, but when I was watching the first coverage, and they mentioned that the temperature in the left wing rose suddenly, all I could think of was a high powered laser blast hitting the shuttle.
I mean, let's be honest--the first mission with an Israeli, the whole mess going on right now, ok, it is a little paranoid.
I've had a lot of caffine, give me a break. Still, something to think about.. foul play..
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Assuming damage from a launch collision, etc, could both losses have been mitigated in the first place with an Apollo-style design approach in which the crew compartment was above the launch boosters?
Thinking out loud.
That you make your point without racist drivel.
So, it wasn't so much management saying "fuck the cold," with engineers saying "they could be too cold and could leak," but instead was engineers saying "we think it could be too cold," management saying "prove it," and engineers trying to do so but not being able to present a convincing argument.
And getting that fundamental principle wrong was the problem. The default status of a mission is on hold, it is "good to go" when the entire team is sure it is safe. Unless the whole team can in good faith claim that all systems are OK, it doesn't (in theory) launch.
The burden of proof should be with those who claim that it is safe.
In every company I worked at programmers were the cause of every problem.
Undocumented code that never adhered to the standards was the norm of these misfits. They had not got a clue of the bigger picture and could not understand why decisions that were absolutely necessary could not wait for their prima donna attitudes regarding corporate needs.
The code monkey that believes he knows what he is talking about is perhaps one of the most nocive types in the IT industry.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... arise from completely unrelated stuff. The only way that scientists can connect the points is to create the disjoint points for them to connect in the first place.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
They have tested an EVA helper like you describe, it is called Sprint. It flew on STS-87, ironically this was a Columbia mission and also the only other flight for Kalpana Chawla.
Remember, Amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic
A 1995 lightning incident on the plane that was to become TWA 800 caused "the wheel brake temperature indicators to register full scale when the brakes had scarcely been used" Could the tile debris plasma trail have caused "Rocket Lightning" where atmospheric charges connect via an aircrafts contrail. This could lead to sensor malfunctions and cause enough wing damage for the rest to occur..
oops.. missed adding this rocket lightning link
The Phalanx cannons are reputed to only achieve a 1 in 3 success rate; I think they might just have to come up with something better.
:)
And Im sure they would
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Here is how an electric bolt may have occurred:
The tiles were damaged heavily at launch, scratched deeply as in previous incidents.
The rough tiles heated and shed, leaving a trail of debris plasma.
The plasma trail acted as a conduit for an electrical arc from charged particles in the high upper atmosphere,similar to the Ben Franklin kite legend.
A huge bolt travelled along the plasma trail to the left wing where it caused enough damage to induce a cascading failure over subsequent minutes. Blue jets, elves and sprites are large atmospheric electrical phenomena which occur at the altitude the space shuttle was passing thru and were being studied by Ramon in the MEIDEX dust experiment.
The solution is (d) all of the above.
hey! Good work! thanks for the reply!
A) A "very lucky and very skilled nut" gets off a shot that CIA marksman were unable to duplicate later.
CIA? Why would a CIA marksman have anything to do with investigating a presidential assasination? The CIA cultivates, collects, and analyzes intelligence regarding foreign countries. Did you mean perhaps the FBI or the Secret Service?
-OR-
B)Some very powerful members of the newly arrisen Military Industrial Complex decide to off an extremely popular and powerful president who's goals are diametrically opposed to theirs. They make various mistakes in their plotting which are obvious now, but less so then (magic bullet etc.). They frame Oswald for the crime, hoping to get to him before he can testify.
They made all these mistakes that are "obvious now", but somehow have managed to remain anonymous? Sorry, but while some of this "evidence" is admittedly suspicious (though I have seen equally plausible scenarios explaining the Magic Bullet in not-so-magic ways), until I see something explaining exactly who the conspirators are and why/how they did it, I'm more inclined to believe it was the classic Lone Gunman. That's just me, though.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I actually just joined Slashdot so I could ask a similar question. Actually, two related questions: First, could a ground-based laser be a threat to a manned spacecraft in the first place (and, along with that question, should NASA be taking this into consideration for future missions)? Second, assuming the answer to the first question is yes -- that a laser threat is realistic -- should NASA be including that possibility, far out as it may be, in the range of possible causes of this disaster? Unlike inKubus, I wouldn't think that a hostile power aiming to bring down the shuttle with a laser would do it during the vehicle's reentry. I would think a more likely scenario might be for the laser to be trained on the shuttle as it passed overhead during orbit, with the intention to simply do enough damage to ensure its destruction on reentry. The malefactor could seriously damage a few of the heat-resistant tiles on the bottom of the craft, and I suspect such damage would go undetected until it was too late. (Q: Would temperature sensors on the shuttle be likely to detect anything happening while the lasering was occurring?) Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty certain it's established fact that the Soviets and, more recently, the Chinese, have investigated the use of high-powered ground-based lasers to disable our surveillance satellites, so the general idea isn't science fiction. Another question is, how sophisticated would the technology have to be? Do we need to be concerned about rogue states developing this capability? Would Saddam hesitate for a moment to use such a weapon on our craft, especially if he could be reasonably assured that the resulting tragedy could not be pinned on him? Again, for anyone who can answer, there are two questions here: (1) is it possible to do (and should we be worrying about it) and (2) is it possible that it was done? Thanks, Dave