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.
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.
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.
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.
Finally, if the world community knew that there was a problem, I bet one or two people out there could've come up with a way to get them back safely.
I bet you one or two couldn't. They couldn't repair the damage. There is now escape mechanism on the shuttle from orbit. They had no suits or training for extra-vehicular activity. Their orbit made it impossible to get to the ISS and even if they did they had no way to actually DOCK with it. The only way they could have come down was using the shuttle. If there was damage to the left wing, the only way they could have prevented a burn-up is by altering their de-orbit trajectory. For example, the shuttle performs a series of rolls to turn right and left. When you turn right, the right wing has the majority of the force applied to it (and vice versa). Limiting the amount of force on the left wing may have solved the problem, but we really do not know.
All of these possiblities are under the assumption that NASA KNEW THE SHUTTLE WAS BROKEN to the extent that they'd all die. NASA did not know, otherwise they would have atleast altered the shuttles reentry trajectory (at the very least).
Short of preparation for this trajedy, there was nothing NASA could do to prevent it.
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.
"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...
Yeah, you really can't change tiles in space. First of all, you need the custom tiles, and affixing them is NOT easy. Check out this article from 1980, about the building of the Columbia:
0 4.easterbrook.html
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/80
Also, there are no foot/handholds anywhere on that part of the Shuttle, and Newton's laws apply up there. That's the problem they had on the first Spacewalks of the Gemini program, no one realized that without footholds or handholds, you can't even turn a screwdriver, because the screwdriver is also turning you. (No Soviet Russia jokes!)
In short, if the falling insulation is what caused Columbia to break up, they were doomed the day they launched. There wasn't nearly enough delta-V to get them into a higher orbit to rendezvous with ISS, and no way that Atlantis could be rushed in time to reach them before they ran out of Oxygen. I don't know how long the shuttle's batteries/fuel cells can keep it heated, but I'm guessing that really the only way anyone could have survived would be if they drew straws and 5 of the 7 went out the airlock. That's assuming there's enough power to keep it at least 40 degrees F in there until Atlantis could be scrambled.
Otherwise, maybe the Soyuz escape pod at ISS could be routed to them, or the Russian Progress capsule with O2 and supplies sent to ISS the next day could have been routed to them, but I highly doubt both of those were possible.
Columbia was most likely lost at launch, and there's nothing NASA could have done, even if they knew within 30 minutes that the damage would prove fatal.
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
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
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.