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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So let's assume that you had a temperature sensor behind every protective tile on the shuttle.
...but unfortunately you're already going about Mach 18 in what is basically a high-tech meteor. You have only a few minutes before the heat buildup destroys the shuttle. What are you going to do, pull over?
One of the tiles becomes damaged during takeoff, but perhaps not so bad that there is any concern. The tiles are designed to take some amount of damage from space debris after all.
You begin re-entry with a damaged tile. Maybe the damage was a little more than you could have suspected, and it comes off! Now your temperature sensor is screaming and you kow you've got a real problem...
No matter what you do, no matter how careful you are, no matter how much redundancy or how large a safety factor you have, there will always be something that can go wrong in a very bad way.
All things considered, the shuttle is an extremely well built and carefully looked after machine with an exceptional safety and performance record. I don't feel anyone is at fault for what happened... it was just the luck of the draw.
=Smidge=
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.
"HEROES" you must be kidding. This people are not heroes, I have seen this reference far to many times in the last few days. Does it stink for the people who died? Yes, also for their families and friends. But just because you happen to catch a bad break in a very public location is not an automatic ticket to the exulted status of hero.
The United States of America has collected its fair share of those who have justifiable earned the title of hero, without the need to inflate the ranks with random people every time a tragedy has occurred. Think for a moment of the Marines who fought in the Pacific Theater during WWII. Those that landed on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Most of these men did not want to be there, they knew going in that their odds stank and many got to see bodies stack up all around them yet most still charged forward to what must have seemed certain deaths. That earns you the right to be called a hero. In countless battles by many different forces, there are examples of those who have exposed themselves to heavy fire in effort to save a someone else, they have earned the rights to be called a hero.
The person who catches a bad break and has their office building fall down upon them, their car crushed by a tractor trailer, or their bus explode on them are indeed people who have faced tragedy, but that in itself does not a hero make.
So why couldn't you have come up with this before the fireworks???
Never give any object more potential energy than you want it to have.
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!
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.
How is this interesting?
It's extraordinarily easy to bash the media. (And sometimes appropriate.)
It's not extraordinarily easy to organize the logistics of getting people and equipment to the right place and filtering the information that comes in into newsworthy and white noise.
Of course we have media overload. Supply and demand. Is your point that Americans spend too much time glued to their TV sets? If it is, I absolutely agree. But why would you pick this as an example? I don't even own a TV, but I'd have been glued to it last Saturday if I did (instead I was glued to cnn.com).
Supply and demand. Until people get off their arse and choose not to eat what the media is all too happy to spoon feed them, you can't blame the media for doing their jobs. If you don't like how a certain media outlet does their jobs, then you can pick another! Or another!
Im seriously wondering what plans they have to deal with the electrical charge that will build up on that cable. If you follow the TSS (tethered sattelite system) tests that were perfromed on (I think) STS-46 with Atlantis and then again a year or two ago, where they reeled a big globe out on a tether to test for A) static buildup/generating capability B) the opportunity to build a rotating generation ship using a tether to create the rotation, rather than a hub (at least if you believe Nimoy on Destiny in Space (filmed on Atlantis), you will see that a cable strung out in space builds up one HELL of a charge. Enough to (they think) melt the tether off clean in the second and most recent test.
I dont know about you.. but I really dont want to be climbing (or anywhere near) a giant electrode.
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
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.
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.
Humans also think, interpret, judge, guess and intuit things. Beyond that there is creativity and drive that just aren't in computers. Sure, a robot or unmanned device can do a lot, but a human being can take things to the next level.
The further we get from "home", the more necessary someone that can make split second judgements based on incomplete data becomes.
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but copyright will always protect me.
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.
I think the point that a lot of people forget about this is that the Space Shuttle is something that we launch into space strapped to a pair of 15-story solid propellant rockets and a fuel tank larger than you can even think of.
Then we let it sit around in an environment that has all sorts of tiny little rocks and pieces of metal and neutrons and such flying around at bullet speeds for a week or two.
Then we drop it back into the atmosphere and try to land it on the earth. During this process it accelerates to speeds faster than just about any manmade object as ever moved before and heats up to thousands of degrees.
As you can imagine, there is quite a lot of danger involved here. Rather than criticizin NASA for the accident, let's recognize how amazing it is that their safety record is as good as it is, and see what we can do to learn from this catastrophe.
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."
"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...
The ISS and Columbia were in *very* different orbits. Realize, the orbits we're talking about are not just circles over a fixed latitude. The orbits are at an angle to the equator (called the inclination). That's why you see the orbit path move across the earth in a sinusoidal path....it's not orbiting at the same angle as the rotation of the earth.
ISS' inclination is about 51 degrees, which is pretty big (ie, it's over 45 degrees off of the equatorial line). I don't remember what Columbia was at, but that wasn't it. To get the Shuttle up to that declination from their orbit would have taken a buttload of fuel, or a lot of time, neither of which were available.
Sorry, nice thought, but not possible in this case.
Just to play devil's advocate, is it possible that some of the 'off-the-scale-high' readings were in fact accurate, i.e. into the "this ship is now officially a flying coffin" area of the scale, and that NASA chose not to present it in that light to avoid further grief to the family (or astronauts themselves)? (i.e. no point distressing them by announcing that they are about to die and nothing can be done about it.) How much before the actual breakup DID the ground crew know that it was doomed? (I'm sure we'll never know.)
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
Agreed whole-heartedly. What people need to release is that life is not something that has gaurentees. Planes crash, shuttles explode, computers break, ships sink, buildings fall down, people die. No matter how much redundancy and planning you put into to anything... Shit happens.
This doesn't mean that it's not a tradegy, and it certainly isn't meant to belittle the events... But life offers no gaurentees.
Ya know, I've been wondering about this ever since people have started debating it. I honestly don't know the answer, but I'd be curious if someone else does:
Some time ago, I remember seeing/reading about these small devices called 'Rescue Balls' that the shuttles carried aboard them. They were basically just small, single-person sized foldable containers which could be sealed and pressurized with someone inside. The idea was, if a shuttle ever were stranded in orbit, there wasn't room to have spacesuits aboard for every crewmember, so most of the crew would get zipped up into these little doohickeys and the two that had suits would basically carry them over to the rescue ship.
Now, I understand there wasn't fuel enough to make it to the ISS (although I think people who think that was the only orbital option aren't thinking hard enough--I think there were more avenues that would have been explored for an orbital rescue had this been debated before rather than after the fact). But does the 'only two suits' or 'no one was trained for a spacewalk' argument really hold, or are these rescue balls still carried? Does anyone have any better information about them?
No relation to Happy Monkey
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.
Sounds like your saying that management's intuition is better than engineers' intuiton ?