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Russia is suspending its space tourist program, for fairly obvious reasons. An NYT story notes that the obsolete but reliable computers driving the shuttle are to be examined as part of the inquiry. But most interestingly, a story in Aviation Week claims that a tracking camera trained on the shuttle detected damage to the wing prior to the breakup.
From what I've read, the shuttle doesn't have a black box. Black boxes are used to store instrument and voice data on traditional aircraft, but NASA's Mission Control serves the same purpose for the Shuttle. It archives all telemetry and voice communication, and there's no worry about having to find it later.
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There is no black box. This was a question at the first technical briefing on Saturday. While they do have various data recorders on board, they aren't hardened to survive a crash. For the most part, they aren't necessary, as all the relevant data is transmitted back to Mission Control in real time. Such information would only allow them to better reconstruct the last few seconds after communications were lost (some of which it turns out they did receive data from, only it was too low-power for them to process at the time). While that may be interesting, the useful information will be from earlier on in the flight when the problem first showed up.
That Aviation Week article was the best recounting I've seen yet. I get so tired of that period of time between a catastrophic event and the time real information can be disseminated. Looks like I'm not alone
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
I'd heard mention of such a thing. There's two reasons why not:
1) The black box would have to have a much higher tolerance than airplanes (200k ft traveling at 18kmph).
2) (almost?) all the data that would be recorded by such a black box is already being transmitted to the ground. While the 30 seconds of garble (after voice comm. was lost) can tell more about what happened, it won't tell where the problem started. NASA has FAR more data about what happened than a black box can provide.
In addition, such a black box could only monitor a few systems. In the event of a micrometeorite hit (there is the suggestion this happened), it would not be known until it was too late unless the impact site was being montiored. If a monitored system was hit, then the ground would know about it as well as the pilots.
From the Shuttle Loss FAQ: While there is a flight recorder on board the Shuttles, it's not exactly a "Black Box" as you'd find on a commercial aircraft. Once the power is pulled, all data collection stops. This is not considered a problem as almost all of the valuable data is downlinked anyway. What little the onboard flight recorders may contain that wasn't downlinked may or may not be relevant to the mishap, and the only way to know for sure is to locate a surviving unit on the ground. However, one should probably not hold their breath for one to turn up. As noted by the shuttle program manager during the first press conference, there is no *hardened "Black Box" on board any of the Shuttles. At the same time, it's also worth noting that since commercial hardened "Black Boxes" have had difficulty surviving airplane crashes, surviving reentry without special protection is almost an impossibility.
Well, the reasons for Russia to cease launching space tourists may be obvious if you know one major factor - the Soyuz is not reusable. Since the shuttle fleet is currently grounded, the Soyuz is the only link between Earth and the space station. The Russians don't want to waste a single-use mission on a tourist if they're going to run out of equipment before the reusable shuttle fleet comes back online - they want to keep them for station resupplies, crew changes, etc.
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
Because it takes anywhere from a week to a couple months to get a shuttle ready for flight.
As it happens, Atlantis was on the pad already, but it still would've taken nearly a week to launch with minimal crew (pilot and engineer). Columbia had enough food and water to last half a week... although with rationing they may have been able to extend that sufficiently.
Even so, what do you do then? There's no way to "dock" two shuttles and Columbia didn't have jetpack suits onboard, and I don't believe everyone was rated for EVA. You can make a "jump" from one ship to another, but that's trickier than it sounds... fortunately if you do it right and have the supplies on board then only one person has to do it - you can tether the ships together, as long as their orbits are precisely matched and close enough together. The precisely matched bit is the hard part really - it's going to take several hours to transport crew from one shuttle to the other.
It'd probably be an effort on the level of Apollo 13.
Afterwards you have a shuttle in a slowly degrading orbit that's going to do an uncontrolled burn up in the atmosphere -- although perhaps you can set a navigation program to activate after the crew is saved to ensure splashdown in a safe area (like the Pacific ocean). Dunno. Of course, this would have been better than what did occur.
According to Fox News, the pictures were taken from a telescope located at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. I haven't located the images on their site yet, but I did see them on the cabletv broadcast this morning.
If your homeowner's insurance doesn't cover it, NASA is compensating for damages caused by the disaster: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/spacenews/releases/200 3/03-041.html
This
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
Did you actually read the article? Or are you just making assumptions based on the synopsis, which on this site are known to be highly inaccurate?
Quote the article: Plans to send tourists into space have been frozen by Russia after the Columbia shuttle disaster left its Soyuz capsules as the only working link between Earth and the International Space Station.
The point is not that space is any more dangerous as a result of the Columbia disaster. Since NASA has put flights on hold, Russia needs to use more room on the Soyuz capsules to pick up the slack. That leaves less rooms for space tourists. As quoted in the article, a Russian space agency spokesman said, "Space tourism is not a priority. State interests must come first, then commercial interests."
I know that many people on Slashdot don't actually read the articles, but it sure helps to clear up a lot of confusion.
www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
. That and the brief usual blackout period of re-entry
That's no longer a problem. Since the TDRS were launched, they can send up to TDRS during the "blackout phase" and have it relayed to Houston. There's no longer any loss of contact.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.