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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.
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.
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.
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.
"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!!!!
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.
It was management that said "We have a teacher on board and a world waiting, fuck the cold weather, we have to launch now" despite a handfull of engineers saying "The o-rings could be too cold and they could crack and leak."
That's not entirely true. Sure, there was a lot of pressure, but the engineers were having a tough time convincing management that there was a problem. There had been an o-ring malfunction before (one of the two rings in a joint was burned through), but it happened in warm weather, to which NASA middle management said "see, it's not cold related," and the engineers didn't have a good response to that argument. Like it or not, you have to be able to prove your argument to win it.
There's a very good description of the problem in one of the Tufte books (a series of books on visual design and display of data, usually hawked during seminars, see http://www.edwardtufte.com). It concentrates on how not all the data was immediately available to engineers, so they made presentations (and drew conclusions) on incomplete information. Further, he argues that the data they presented was done so in a confusing, and hard to interpret, fashion. Had they had more data, they would have been able to make a much stronger case for delaying launch, but as it was, the "suits" had to go with what they knew, which was that "it seems safe enough, and nobody can convince us otherwise." (I should also mention that at least one paper takes issue with Tufte's methods and findings, but I feel that the basic truth remains -- not enough data, presented in a poor fashion, failed to convince management of the imminent risk.)
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. Management listened, but in the end, had to go with what they knew.