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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.
If Russia is canning space tourism, does that mean we're stuck with Lance Bass?
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As with the Challenger disaster, there are many smart people trying to determine the cause of the accident. In addition to the wreckage, there are memos, notes, films, and other media to review. Investigations take time, and regardless of the desire to find an immediate smoking gun,I anticipate NASA will release an official report no sooner than may. Right now we have several media "experts" offering their opinions.
I am me...I think
"We continue to recover crew remains and we are handling that process with the utmost care, the utmost respect and dignity," said Ronald Dittemore, shuttle program manager.
They died advancing science so we could all live better lives. Let's keep this in mind...
I wonder if NASA will start making in orbit inspections of shuttles part of the flight plan. While things like this are obviously rare they are real and deadly.
I wonder how long it would take an astronaut to correctly inspect a shuttle in orbit.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
It's not really obvious why they're doing it. The article implies, but doesn't state, that it's because they now need to put cargo where the third, "passenger" seat would go on a Soyuz capsule.
Some people have suggested they're doing it because "space is now unsafe", which makes absolutely no sense.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
It's probably overdue that the shuttle was updated, shame it takes something like this to make it happen. Personally I hope that manned space flight can continue, and get safer.
It seems unlikely that computers were to blame for this, but the kit in the shuttle is pretty old - if we're going to ask people to risk their lives like this we must give them the best kit we can.
I know I was shocked at the loss of the shuttle, and it should remind us of how brave these people are.
Russia is suspending its space tourist program, for fairly obvious reasons
I'm glad the airlines don't stop all planes when one crashes.
Seriously, though, I'm almost positive that anyone that signs up to be a space tourist signs some document stating that there is a chance of death, and the russians can't be held liable.
I don't think that its "obvious" they should stop it. Everyone is aware of the dangers of space travel. This isn't the first time an accident has happened in the space program (especially russia's).
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Haven't yall?
I mean, we cut back a ton of spending for some of the most dangerous quests known to man, and then we're shocked when their systems are failing on a thirty-year-old shuttle.
What I would like to see is a new branch of the military take over the space program. Call it Space Force if you want to be cheesy, but at any rate, whenever the military gets involved in programs they get an incredible amount of financing. And for those of you who are concerned that if it becomes military we'll never see it again, think DARPA Net. The military is a great way to get things started, and then let blatant commercialism take a choke hold...
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
The O-rings in use on the booster rockets for the Challenger (and previous shuttles) were rated for warm weather, which was acceptable since the launches were in Florida. It was a cold day when Challenger launched. The engineers warned admin that day that the boosters might fail. There had already been numerous delays, so admin launched anyway.
Interestingly (or suspiciously?), the ethics site's page is down, but the cache is here:Roger Boisjoly on the Challenger Disaster
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
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.
Someone found this really cool article about the group that writes the shuttle software. I've always admired CMM level 5, having spent my entire career at level 1. ;) I wonder if they need more coders.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
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."
sPh
no i think the reason might be they have to keep soyez ready for getting the people on the ISS off
they could very well decide that a 20+ year old OS is too archain to be used on the shuttle.
And that would be a damn shame if they decide to switch so another OS Just Because The Current One Is Old. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" keeps echoing in my head.
Trolling is a art,
I'm sure they'll be looking at the computers to determine if there was a software problem. While it seems obvious that the disaster was caused by physical dammage, the flight computers could have been a major factor. They were experiencing excessive drag. The flight computers were trying to compensate for the poor performance, and in doing so may have failed to factor in that the increased drag may have indicated a weakened structure. Hence, in trying to stay on course, the flight computers may have put too much stress on the dammaged wing.
Most likely, software changes could have bought them at most a few more irrelevant seconds, but they certainly should be looking at it in case someday those few seconds aren't so irrelvant.
This is a PPT, but hits the main points: Challenger Disaster. An ugly page that has an actual paragraph is this. But I finally found a real page here.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
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.
If the computer is still doing its job, then why is it obselete?
There are also good technical reasons why NASA uses "obselete" computers on alot of their spacebound equipment.
It turns out that it fell through the roof of a condo complex and totally destroyed the unit owned by a friend of my wife. She believes that if she were in the place at the time, she would have been killed.
They have hired a lawyer and are exploring their options -- most insurance policies don't cover falling objects from space.
Yeah, I know "friend of my wife" is rather FOAFish, and I will try to get more details (and perhaps pictures) if possible.
You could've hired me.
It takes months of preperation to get one of these shuttles up there. Thousands of people inspect the shuttle before launch looking for any possible reason not to go. This takes a LONG time and without these precautions you would probably end up with two dead shuttles in space.
I do not believe the shuttle can remain in orbit long enough to wait that long.
It's interesting to read Richard's story of the investigation of the first shuttle disaster, and his realization that the process was political, not scientific.
He had a great deal of trouble, as an official investigator, just being *allowed* to investigate, and of course to release his findings he had to engage in what amounted to guerilla tactics.
The end fate of the Morton-Thiokol engineers who "blew the whistle" must stand as some sort of object lesson in this case as well.
One would hope that steps are being taken to prenvent another go 'round of this shabby and shameful incident in American space history.
KFG
Unless something is wrong with Discovery or Endeavor, we have 3 working shuttles remaining. Atlantis was scheduled to launch in the near future, and according to an article referenced here previously at Space.com, there's a good chance that if NASA had known that Columbia would not survive reentry, they could have rushed Atlantis and gotten it up just in time. It would have then been fairly straightforward to ferry them over in space suits, probably using one of those self-propelled units.
Of course, it's only speculation that Atlantis could have made it in time; the physical preparations for launch are very time-consuming, even without all the normal safety checks. The Russians could have sent the Progress resupply ship to Columbia, but it's not clear whether the Columbia astronaughts could have opened it and retreived the supplies.
Just as a point of comparison: The 1675th Soyuz launch took place recently. There have been only two fatal Soyuz accidents, both over 30 years ago. I don't think the Russians have to apologize in any way for their safety record.
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.
But at least one expert -- Richard Doherty, a consulting engineer who did research for a member of the commission that investigated the Challenger explosion -- questioned whether the computers onboard the Columbia had all the information they needed. After tiles were damaged on takeoff, Mr. Doherty said, NASA could have sent up a few changes in the software guidance program to adjust for increased drag on the left side of the craft.
The computer did compensate for drag on the left side -- but at some point physics catches up with you -- and it simply burns up. The shuttle basically flys the stall all the way down, it's not like they can "pitch for power - throttle for altitude". This person is an idiot."This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
New computers would have several advantages:
1) They would weigh less. That is probably the most important advantage.
2) They could do more calculations. When trying to compensate for failing parts without going off course, spinning out of control, or overstressing the failing part, additional computation power might be helpful. (I'm guessing that the software may have failed to consider that a part that is not performing upto specifications is likely to have reduced structural integrity.)
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.
It'd probably be an effort on the level of Apollo 13.
Except that with Apollo 13 they were never looking at sending another Saturn V up to rescue the crew. The things done to save Apollo 13 were done from inside Apollo 13 - this would not have been possible with Columbia if the damage was external as is being speculated since they had no way of getting outside the shuttle.
"Because it's there." - George Mallory, when asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest, March 18, 1923 (New York Times)
It seems to me that the building of winged reentry vehicles is more driven by a desire for Buck Rogers-style space adventures, not good, cost-effective engineering.
It's now that I've really gotten a grasp of how dangerous the whole space flight with the shuttle is. Let's assume that there was no foam that hit the space shuttle during take-off (whether this is the cause or not is still being debated). Let's assume instead that a small space rock or a piece of space junk hit the space shuttle while in orbit (it happens and that the speed the space shuttle travels while in orbit can result in serious damage). Well, if damage does occur to the craft and the craft isn't configured to go to the ISS, there is only a small chance and a big prayer then that the shuttle will survive the re-entry. That's the ultimate high-wire act without a safety net. It's also disturbing to hear that. I can understand that there isn't much that can be done during the launch. I can also understand that there isn't much that can be done during re-entry. These are after all the two most critical (and dangerous) parts of the mission. But there should be a contingency plan if the shuttle gets damaged during low orbit. Yes, this is written with tons of hindsight. Yes, a contingency plan that would involve reaching the ISS in a timely manner (and commensurate with the fuel the space shuttle has) would be a very difficult task. And yes, the shuttle in all these years didn't get hit too often. I realize all that. I'll be waiting anxiouly to see the results of the cause of the breakup of the space shuttle. If it was damage to the shuttle that was the cause of the tragedy, I just hope that a contingency plan is eventually designed and put in place to give at least a chance for the future astronauts to survive any kind of damage to the space shuttle (if caught prior to re-entry, of course).
There are comments after this and before this that really show a total lack of comprehension when it comes to writing (near) error free code. (The parent I'm replying gets it, but doesn't really expand too much on the SW side of it)
Just throwing in a "realtime version of Unix" because it is a "reliable and robust OS" will NOT mean the program running on it is reliable Or robust.
When I was doing my CompSci degree 12 years ago the SW Eng Prof was on sobatical to NASA to write some new code for the attitude jets so it could dock with Russian equipment. There were about 2 or 3 PAGES of code. It took them almost a YEAR to write it and verify that it was error free. And then, when he came back he said they estimated there was still one error for every 10,000 lines of code in the space shuttle program. Not only that, it was the MOST ERROR FREE CODE ON THE PLANET. Translation: More error free than any Unix/Linux OS or program.
And now people want to just throw in a newer chip with a newer OS?! WTF are they thinking? There isn't even any evidence that would make anyone think that the computers were to blame for the accident in the first place! Fix what isn't broken or even related to the accident... Briliant, only a clueless legislator could come up with something that stupid!
As the parent to this post said, the chips are working fine, they are not overloaded, and the program is tried, true and tested. Don't fix what ain't broke!
Agreed, there are very good reasons why they use older hardware with "known" problems rather than newer hardware with "unknown" problems.
James Tomayko has written an excellent book entitled "Computers in Spaceflight: The NASA Experience". It appears to be available online - Computers in Spaceflight: The NASA Experience.
Of particular interest would be Chapter Four: Computers in the Space Shuttle Avionics System
Soyuz is characterized in the popular media as an aging, broken-down spacecraft, but the fact is that it is one of the most reliable and efficient manned spacecraft that has ever been produced. The Soyuz has a launch escape system which has been used once, in 1983, to blast the crew away from their exploding rocket (in the words of one site, "The crew landed close to the launch site, badly bruised after surviving nearly 20g acceleration, but they were still alive.") This is unlike the shuttle, in which escape is impossible for the first two minutes of flight, while the solid boosters (which can't be turned off) are firing. Soyuz has not had a fatal accident since 1971, and has had no major safety issue since 1988. Personally, given the choice between flying on the Shuttle and flying on Soyuz, I would pick the latter.
Spaceflight tends to reward simple and time-tested designs over new and complex. I have read at least one account suggesting that NASA resurrect the Gemini spacecraft for crew transfer to and from the ISS, since it was one of the most reliable spacecraft the US has ever flown.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
holy shit! you've solved it!! why didn't NASA think of that?!?
[sigh] why doesn't anyone seem to understand that, with the shuttle at least, it doesn't work that way. Do you have any idea how much preparing a shuttle launch costs? And that, in order for the rescue to be effective (ie, arrive before the Columbia runs out of air, etc) that Atlantis would have had to launch with almost zero pre-flight testing. That sounds like a great idea!! Nevermind that it takes like a week to get the thing on the launchpad.
So basically, you think it's a good idea to roughly double the expense of every shuttle launch, so that in the event of a problem, you can attempt some half-witted rescue plan that has almost no chance of success. ("catch them in the cargo bay"??? please!)
Have you even read any of this thread?
I haven't seen anyone try and connect the "purple streak" picture and the break-up, so i'll post my theory references again and hope it gets considered.
New image evidence shows damage to the composite section of the wing. An increasing reliance on composite materials in aircraft construction creates the potential for additional problems because the composites can allow a connection between lightning and airplane electrical circuitsThe tiles were damaged heavily at launch, scratched deeply as in previous incidents.
The roughtiles heated and shed, leaving a trail of debris plasma.
The plasma trailacted 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 severe damage, enough to cause 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.
My,My, Hey, Hey
If Americans are not good enough to ensure a minimum security in-flight, that should be their problem. Russian are really experts.
NASA never had any problems with conventional space capsules during re-entry, and never lost a crew. The Russians have continued to use a well tested, relatively simple spacecraft, which has served them very reliably. Comparing a Soyuz to a Shuttle is like comparing a calculator to a computer, you can do many of the same things on either one, but they are fundamentally different, and designed for different purposes.
The decision to use fragile thermal tiles for the Shuttle is one that has faced much criticism over the years. It is a decision that is at the core of what happened to the Shuttle on re-entry, whatever the reason that some of those tiles were damaged or lost. The vulnerability to tile damage was known, but NASA thought they had managed the potential issues in a way that assured the safety of the Shuttle. It appears they were wrong, and the problems were not controllable in the long term.
The amazing thing to me is the number of missions they flew before these thermal tiles became an issue. I think the thermal tiles are a fatally flawed system, both because of their susceptability to damage in flight, and because they require huge amounts of expensive upkeep between missions. The fact that NASA flew over 100 missions before this kind of problem occurred is a tribute to their dedication. The fact that this system was selected shows that NASA is not perfect.
The computers on board the shuttles are *not* obsolete. 1970's technology, yes. Old, yes. If you have a device which does what it is designed to do and there isn't a suitable replacement or even a reason to replace then it is not obsolete.
Even though there are faster processors available, the entire system must be considered. The software, hardware and system has been through extensive design, development and debug. Resistance to vibration and radiation and accelleration has been tested and was designed in.
Slapping in the latest gajillion Hz processor would not have provented the recent tragedy, it likely would have created more dangers. Certainly if designing a shuttle today, we'd use a processor with more horsepower, but by the time it got off the launch pad, it would look ancient by the standard of what's sitting on your desk.
For mission critical applications, I would take old slow reliable over new fast unproven any day.
Mehercule! And Texas is a tiny place, too, far outside the space shuttle flight path! What were the odds!
If there was ever a sign for a president and his administration to rethink what they're doing, this was it.
Yep, you've pegged it. Jove is angry at the Bush Administration. The proper rite of opening the Doors of Janus was doubtless not properly followed. I suggest a propitial lectisternia.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
But then, whether you call it cynicism or realism, we accept a level of failure in all transport systems which is capable of killing people. We allow people to ride bicycles in motorised traffic. We allow manufacturers to build cars that are capable of traveling fast enough that a brake or steering failure can kill not only the occupants but anyone who gets in the way. We allow the construction of ships that break up in heavy seas, of railways where trains can pass red lights and crash. There is no public contract about this: we never actually get a chance to vote on the level of risk we want in our transport systems. What we do is react to disasters, and politicians have to decide based on that reaction whether to take some kind of action.
Sometimes they do, and as a result we have anti-lock brakes, double-hulled ships, crash barriers on freeways and autoroutes, airbags, automatic train protection systems, and a host of other technologies.
The Shuttle crews are unusual, superior human beings. But they should not need to be heroes, any more than someone who gets on a plane in LA to fly to a meeting in Tokyo is a hero.
Because if the exploration of space is ever to become commonplace, we have to get rid of the idea that this is a dangerous enterprise for heroes. We need to follow the same rules that apply to everything else. We need to ask nasty questions like "Why can't tiles be replaced in orbit, since we have had 18 years to think about things like this?" .
A WW1 biplane could keep flying after it had been shot full of holes, yet the Shuttle seems to have a number of extremely fragile technologies failure of any one of which could destroy it on re-entry. If that's so, why haven't we developed a better technology? Is it the mindset that needs to change as much as the design?
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
The US air traffic control system is still many years behind on replacing all the computers from the early 60s. They kept coming up with prototype systems with magnitudes more processing power - and magnitudes more bugs. It looks like they're finally installing stuff that mostly works; but it's around 15 years behind schedule.
On a similar note, I know of a Fortune 500 corporation that was still running its accounting system on early-60s RCA mainframes in the mid 80s. It wasn't worth it to recreate the software - which worked fine - until financial execs who were starting to put PCs on their desks got too frustrated about not being able to access the data directly.
You can build an airframe requiring extraordinary processing power just to keep it stable in flight - our newest fighters are of the sort. But the shuttle's not. And maybe it shouldn't be - since if it was there'd be no possibility of a human pilot subbing for a down computer. In combat, if the computer's down, the craft's toast anyway.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
> 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.
If in fact it was the falling insulation, and if they had figured that out within a couple of days of the launch, they would have had a full two weeks even without rationing.
> 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...
Send up the rescue ship with jetpacks, an EVA experienced crew, and lots of personnel tethers.
I suspect the Congress will demand an in-space rescue capability. Base requirement is enough food and air on-board to last until another ship could be prepped and lanuched, and another ship on (say) two-week standby anytime anyone is up.
Expensive, yes. But of course the first time there actually is a rescue, everyone will love the space program again for a decade or two.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
There is an article on Fox News that is blaming the disaster on the change to a more environmenntally friendly foam. Apparently until 1997 they used a freon based CFC foam that had much fewer problems.
Back before the proposed space station became the crippled bastardized joke that is the ISS, it was proposed to build a class of "orbital transfer vehicles" which would have lived entirely in space and would be used to ferry things from low orbits to higher ones. Had we had a real space station program, where the station is the hub of an entire orbital infrastructure, then plucking off the astronauts from a doomed Columbia would have been possible.
Then again, if we had a real functioning orbital infrastructure, the Columbia might not have been doomed... it might have been reparable (albeit expensively) in orbit. Indeed, with a real orbital infrastructure, we wouldn't still be flying these 1970s-era jalopies.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Perhaps I am thinking to simply, but if they did not have enough information about the state of the shuttle, isn't it time for more sensors , hense more information. Autombiles now have sensor systems as extensive as the shuttles. How about a rfid transmiter (or induction proven heat resistant equivelent) attached the back of every tile? If 30 thousand dollar cars have nervous systems equivelent to the shuttle (minus a couple of gyroscopes) isn't time for more sensors?
What is the most expensive part on a car the motor? The computer? The transmition? The body? Antilock brakes? Nope it's the wiring harness. Perhaps the shuttle is due for a sensor upgrade. No spacewalk needed.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Um, any reason that Atlantis could bring along the jet-pack spacesuits and then have someone ferry them to Columbia? Sure, they weren't EVA-rated, but they'd have had a hell of an incentive to learn fast. And I've got to believe that a tethered spacewalk -- out, across, in -- is simple enough to be picked up by people already selected for high intelligence.
A rescue would have been thinkable
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Blockquoth the poster:
Um, travelling that speed relative to the Earth. I am pretty sure that Atlantis, being of essentially the same type as Columbia, could have executed a similar orbital plan. In other words, it would easily have the capability to match orbits. At that point, the relative speeds are zero, making your next point
less relevant that you might want. I think a tether system between the two orbiters would have been (comparatively) simple to set up and operate. It would be risky and daring, but better than leaving seven people to die in space.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
It's not Cargo room, and Soyuz flights aren't resupply flights.
Unmanned Progress Tugs fly resupply missions to ISS, they can carry 2.5 tons of supplies (food, clothes, fuel, water, oxygen, etc).
Soyuz flights were "Taxi Flights" Soyuz capsules have an on-orbit rating of six months. So that means that the Russians need to rotate the Soyuz "Life Boat" at the ISS every six months.
What they do is fly a fresh Soyuz capsule up. Two cosmonauts are necessary for the Taxi Flight, and then that Taxi Crew comes back down on the old Soyuz capsule. They used to fill that third seat through agreements they had with other nations space agencies, and have only recently begun selling them to space tourists.
They're going to kill the Taxi Flights while the Space Shuttle is grounded, and devote them to ISS Crew Rotation.
That means that the next Long-Term ISS Crew will fly up to the station on a Soyuz, and the current crew will return to earth aboard the Soyuz currently docked to the station, and due to be rotated out.
They will continue that pattern until the Shuttle's start flying again, at which point they will resume Crew Rotation duties, and the Soyuz flights will go back to being simple Taxi Flights again, at which point the russians will start selling the third seat again.
Let's compare: with wings, the Shuttle gets relatively high L/D (lift to drag ratio) of about 3.5 if I remember correctly. Ablative reentry systems (Apollo/Soyuz/Gemini/Mercury) get L/D of about 1.
Why this matters:1. More L/D means you can control descent rate better. You can control it somewhat by steering the Soyuz using the attitude control jets, but only to a limited degree. So the Soyuz generates about 8-9 G of acceleration during descent. The Shuttle only generates a comfortable 3-4 G.
2. Equally important: lateral control gives the Shuttle and other lifting bodies significant crosstrack steering capability. This means that precision landing is possible, and also offers far more flexibility for contingency landings. With Soyuz/Apollo style entry, you get a large landing footprint, which is why the Russians land in the relatively empty steppes and the Apollos landed in the ocean.
Those are the options that are available today for hypersonic reentry. Parachutes are only used for the latter portions of the descent (typically subsonic).
The recently mothballed X-38 uses both. For the high-speed reentry, the lifting body is used to control the descent rate and to provide cross-track steering. At landing speeds, the lifting body doesn't have much lift, so a parachute is used.
Sure, Atlantis may have been ready to go up last Monday. However, I guarantee it wasn't ready last Monday to perform a rescue mission. Entire flight plans, equipment, etc would have been changed. It's not as simple as going to pick up your friends on the highway who ran out of gas.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
>Accidents are going to happen, expect it, and
>move on.
That approach works for the layman. It does not work for the engineers and the physicists who need to do the moving on -- they still need to design and fly spaceships. Don't expect the space program to simply "move on" and accept that one launch out of 50 is going to be a catastrophe.
If we must accept that, it's the end of the program.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
They did plan for it.
From Nasa's Human Space Flight pages:
The nominal maximum crew size is seven. The middeck can be reconfigured by adding three rescue seats in place of the modular stowage and sleeping provisions. The seating capacity will then accommodate the rescue flight crew of three and a maximum rescued crew of seven.
Make sure one other shuttle is always ready to go within a week like Atlantis was
Atlantis wasn't ready to go. It could be pressed into service, but only by eliminating all pre-launch testing. You know, the testing that routinely finds problems in the months prior to launch that have to be fixed and occasionally cause launch delays?
You want a shuttle ready to go everytime? Ok. You just doubled the cost for every launch. Because keeping a shuttle ready is a huge expense. The environment, even inside a building, is not friendly to the components and continual inspection is necessary for some areas... like the tiles.
It seems like a simple thing to rig up some camera or whatever to look around the corners.
It's not a simple thing. They've been trying to design one for ISS and it's problematic. And that's a vehicle that's not designed for reentry.
As long as you have water, and you can recirculate that pretty low tech, if they don't do that already.
Oddly enough, Columbia would have been in good shape here... They were actually testing systems to recycle water from waste. See here.
I expect something like this to be in place before the shuttles are taken in use again
I don't. Doing so at this stage would kill manned space flight. It's akin to eliminating seafaring exploring from Europe in the 1400s - 1600s because too many people died in the process, and so we won't do any more exploration until the infrastructure is in place to keep them safe. Except that until the exploration has been done it's impossible to put the infrastructure in place.
I'm not saying that a rescue couldn't have occurred - in fact I posited ways it could have been done (based off statements from NASA no less), but also stated the issues that would have been encountered. Nor am I saying that a rescue shouldn't be attempted in a future case.
But, realistically, we don't have the infrastructure yet. If we want to be able to prevent this kind of disaster in the future, then we have to do more missions, build more flight systems (hopefully more cost effective to run than the shuttle fleet), and put more permanent installations into space. But all of this is decades down the road... and trying to fix it the other way around is a nearly certain way to kill manned spaceflight all together.
Mod parent up. I'm an apple user and I can't stop laughing.
Even NASA spins its stories. Is management of public perception the largest business in the US today?
So, probably not.
He was a truly unique individual, and will be missed.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
"Anyone has more info on it?"
Yes. It's not the wing and it's not a crack.
Yeah, but even those post-causal symptoms can tell you a lot. Knowing just how the craft departed controlled flight (what roll, pitch, and yaw rates, changing at what rate, how those rates themselves change over time, and so forth) can be of great use in determining the configuration of the craft after the primary failure. Knowing that makes it easier to work backward to what the primary failure looked like.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
We keep hearing stories about photos that may or may not help make sense of the accident, but, the
pictures are not shown to us. In the hours after the accident, we saw all kinds of fuzzy images, such as the still of the insulation hitting the wing, and all sorts of video of the re-entry. So why all of a sudden don't we get to see the film? What's with the guy in California who apparently gave his camera, negatives, prints (I guess it was film?) to some spooks? Why are we supposed to accept a story claiming what "high resolution tracking cameras" captured, when we aren't allowed to see these images for ourselves?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
"Breaker" Morant was scapegoated. He did as he was ordered. When what he did became a political embaressment he was executed for having done it, those having issued him the orders having denyied them.
That is a scapegoat.
The Thiokol engineers were "whistle blowers." They pissed of their employer. Their employer fired them.
A scapegoat is one who is unjustly sacrificed to prevent or ausage public embaressment. The firing of the Thiokol engineers actually *added* to the embaressment because the cat was already out of the bag.
They weren't sacrificed. They were executed.
KFG
God, I hate sounding like a 12 year old child, but DUH!? I've read the entire thread, we have zero good on-orbit rescue options if a vehicle develops a problem. We have the possibility that the rescue vehicle itself will develop problems, even if we could launch one.
And it's not doubling the expense of every shuttle launch. It's the care and maintenance of a rescue vehicle that may or may not be used. Unfortunately the shuttle as it is currently designed doesn't allow for a "prep and forget" setup, like a Coast Guard rescue chopper.
And yes, catch them in the cargo bay. Without the Canadarm, and without being able to dock shuttle to shuttle without having the mating adapters preinstalled on both, it'd be the only sure way to move one astronaut from shuttle to shuttle. What would you have them do, crawl across a safety guyline like in 2010? Hell, we do this between two ships at sea on many occasions, and in that case, you have wave action moving the ships, the wires and the people around. In space, you don't have that (you have extra bulk of space suit, true) but not a dynamically changing environment that can jar you loose at any point.
If you don't think I know what the shuttle is and is not capable of, you haven't read any of my past 50 posts acknowledging that the shuttle is a failure. Complete and utter. Hell, we've never had two shuttles flying at the same time. Who's to say we could even do that, even if we could prep a shuttle in time??! And therein lies why the shuttle program must come to an end. We've never gone beyond prototype stage with these fabulous machines.
The logic behind NASA's statements that any damage to the wing was not followed up with land-based or ISS-based visual inspections because they could not have done anything about it is deeply troublesome to me.
One should not limit the aquisition of important safety data based on this type of thinking. You don't try to phone someone who lives in a burning building just because you are, at that time, unable to come up with a response to that situation.
As somone who went through a life-threatening situation (a fire), I can affirm that the mind can get pretty creative when it has to.
For example, the Progress vehicle could have been sent to Columbia while a rescue shuttle was prepared.
With only two EVA-certified individuals on board, and no docking clamps, moving supplies from the Progress vehicle to Columbia would not have been a trivial endeavor. And transferring untrained (for EVA) people between shuttles would have been difficult, at best.
Yet no one would have argued before a rescue attempt that the seven astronauts would have been better off if we had not known that the left wing was damaged.
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
This site in Finland has some pretty interesting information on the initial designs that were proposed for the Space Shuttle. In some of the concepts it's interesting to see shuttles docked with a space station of some sort and astronauts outside buzzing around.
Over on the sci.space.shuttle newsgroup there's been a flood of posts from space newbies asking what are considered "ridiculous" questions like "why didn't they take a spacewalk to survey the damage" and "why didn't they go to the space station for repairs?" At first glance, these questions are uninformed, but in the larger sense if you consider the vision that was presented to us (I was around then, albeit as a child) the reality we finally got didn't even come close to the grand scope of it all. Basically there were some mighty big plans afoot after Apollo, but they got squashed pretty fast when Nixon taught NASA a significant lesson: Just because one president wants to do something doesn't mean the next president has to sign up for it. Sad, really, but that's the way it goes.
Yes they were really doomed.
Station - not an option. ISS is in a completely different orbit than was being used by columbia which was an orbit generally used by shuttle to date.. its a relatively low orbit even for shuttle ops designed for max payload ability.
Russian launch - not an option even if it had been a soyuz, the reason Stations orbit is so funky as compared to shuttles normal orbit is so that Soyuz AND shuttle can make it to ISS. ISS orbit isnot ideal for either and to add isult to injury to reduce reboost requirements they have it as high as is feasible while still retaining a modicum of payload abilities from Soyuz and Shuttle. Even if they could send them you need a crew of two to operate the Soyuz and it seats three. One saved is better than all lost but thats assuming you could get the one from columbia to the rescue vehicle without an ARM, docking ability, or EVA jetpack. My gut says it could be done but the odds in Vegas would be pretty long. However its moot since soyuz can't make the orbit anyway.
Shuttle Launch - Most possible rescue scenario. However Atlantis was not ready to launch and still had its remaining pre-launch saftey checks that would by and by have to be tossed out the window. Next, Atlantis is the shuttle with the most launches at 30. It was the most ready to launch by far as the others are well behind Atlantis in the pre-launch prep process. Was Columbias failure due to age/stress ? If so why would you then launch Atlantis which would be at even greater risk of failure ? Was the failure due to any shuttle design flaw that Atlantis would also be subject too ? How long to determine that ? Atlantis was equiped and loaded to go to ISS, you would likely want a differant payload ability and that takes time and removes what safety checks had already been completed on payload stowage. The airlock talk is bogus, the Mideck design includes an airlock which was in general a passthrough for the science lab however it could be used for EVA with loss of the Lab if memory serves. However were their EVA suits for all seven ? EVA suits are specially fitted and don't have much tolerance for error, they are also heavy and create a significant paylaod issue if not needed, just rushing 7 EVA suits to orbit might not work.
Could it have been laid on and done ?? again my gut says yes. An awful lot of the saftey process surrounding shuttle launch is double/triple quadrupal checking on top of being double damn sure already nothing is wrong. As a one time op with a minimal level of checks laid on with a crew understanding what was at stake, the crew probably comes out shinning. In that situation you simply havn't reduced the odds of a mistake being made and caught to usual levels and given its a one time risk you probably get away with it so you are left with a one time high level alert process risk of a mistake having been made.... not a good choice for consistent ops, however for an emergency op it could have been deemed a worthwhile risk IMHO. HOWEVER there is a catch. There are some checks on a launch that are not 5 extra layers of redundancy that can be shed in an emergency. Example: As we have become acustomed when a problem happens on an orbiter it grounds all the orbiters until the flaw is identified and fixed. Unless we could conclusively have stated that there was a problem and that is was not a congenital problem in the design with an as before unkown risk. This is not a redundant check. Skipping it is not optional and launching without clearing Atlantis from that standpoint would have been moraly equivalent to trying to save someone who fell through thin ice on a lake by tossing someone else in after them. Doing all of these things requires time. Columbia didn't have time, it had very limited ability to extend its stay. The foam evaluation was not complete till flight day 12 of 16. If that evaluation had sent NASA scurrying to launch a second shuttle for a rescue mission it would have had to have been done in 4-8 days mabye as many as 10 and who knows for whatever engineering ingenuity that came to the fore or difficult decisions ( loss of some crew to let others survive longer ? ) made. Thus the odds of being able to launch a rescue with any reasonable hope of success over simply adding to the tragedy rapidly approaches nil. Not all difficult situations surround actions taken... deciding not to take action can be just as difficult.
Thus when you boil it down once Columbia made orbit it had but one choice for survival, survive re-entry. Once you re-enter you get bail out options in addition to landing but odds are if you survive re-entry you will be able to land as the margin of error for re-entry survival is very thin. Meaning if you survive it you are most likely in reasonably good condition. There are no gentler flight profiles. No swapping of risk management, if there was a better way they would already be using it. Just like on launch the very ragged edge of the envelope is being tested. On launch its generating the needed power to reach escape velocity, on re-entry its the absorbtion of atmosphereic friction generated by orbital velocities.
To cap it all off the earliest it was known there was a problem was after they commited to re-entry. People can yap about the foam all they like but they miss the point about the foam having happend before. They had data points, they had a good idea of the damage levels foam was capable of however as they have repeatedly said, even if foam did insane amounts of damage and is the sole cause of the breakup there were no options other than to attempt re-entry and pray they made it through. If you still stick on a shuttle rescue launch think on it from the other side fo the tragedy. Before you KNOW columbia was going to meet its fate the best minds evaluated the risk and found it more or less not a risk. Worst case was limited localized structural damage and drawing from previous experience with foam problems they didn't even expect that. Now based on that information why would you lay on a risky launch just in case that estimate was wrong ? Perhaps an inspection of some kind would have altered the estimate. Perhaps but then you unwrap the question of one time problem versus congenital design/process problem.. all the while the clock is ticking. Even if its obviously a one time unique problem you now have to lay on a hasty launch risking a hell of alot of known possible risks with mistakes made. I'd say even had we known it was unique as quickly as possible it woudl have been a 50/50 call on trying to rush Atlantis up espcscially given even in that case the odds still saide they would survive. If an inspection prooved they were obviously a lame duck AND it was obviously a unique problem toss a coin on the rescue launch. I certainly know I wouldn't want to make the call.
Much as I hate to put it this way... Shit Happens and it happend last weekend despite the efforts of THOUSANDS of dedicated people whose job is to see that the SHIT that happend dosn't happen. Its a loosing battle because shit does indeed happen and there is nothing we can do about it but honor the ones lost and continue on and continue to do our best to see that shit dosn't happen again. Not to mention as it seems to become more and more likely the root problem was not the foam impact at launch the less and less likely there woudl have been any serious problem to be revealed on orbit thus making the whole notion of a rescue launch even thinkable short of having Mdame Cleo call to tell us what was going to happen.
Damn this got long.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
So, let us suppose that the conclusion of the post-launch analysis of the damage done by the foam chunk was that it was in fact fatal, with absolute certainty; what would you do when you were in a commanding position in Houston?
Would you tell the crew: "Sorry, your spacecraft is broken, we do not see any possibility for repair so you will certainly die during reentry?" I think that would have been absolutely horrible for the astronauts.
I don't know, but "given" the fact that nothing can be done about it anymore in such a situation, I think it would be a realistic option (after consulting silently any other appropriate authorities) to keep them and everybody else ignorant of the imminent disaster and let them have a good flight, let them enjoy it and let them die (almost) happily.
The most serious objection I would see against the latter decision would be of religious nature: for many religions it is very important to prepare for death, say prayers and so on (sorry for my clumsy phrasing, I am not religious myself). In order to respect this, the crew should have gotten a warning somewhat longer before the expected catastrophe.
Well, just a thought.
More confirmation and information related to my theory of events in this article which describes a blue jet being created by a meteor, and a research balloon being destroyed by an electric bolt at over 100,000ft. The odds of a shuttle passing through a sprite or jet was estimated at 1 in 100.. seems pretty accurate.
A Progress could not dock with Columbia; no matching docking ring. Which means EVA.
I also doubt one could make Columbia's orbit: the Russian launch complex is much higher in latitude than KSC, and so their orbits have much steeper angles. It would need a lot of fuel to match orbits, and may not carry enough.
You'd need 3 Soyuz to rescue the crew: Soyuz only carry 3 passengers, and there were 7 aboard. You'd probably also have to have pilots in each Soyuz, since you wouldn't have months to write the encounter software.
Anyway, it would take a VERY long time to get 3 Soyuz prepped for launch. And then there's the same pesky orbit thing.
Let's consider some other aircraft:
The SR-71 could do mach3.3 (2200mph), and it's titanium skin temp routinely got up to 1000F, well above the melting point of the shuttles aluminum skin. (melting point aluminum 600F, titanium 3000F).
The exhaust outlet temp of the SR71 engines is around 3400F, so we know there are materials available for aircraft manufacture that can take some pretty high heat even when they are taking a pounding.
The SR71 was designed long before the shuttle and flew routinely up until the 1990s without incident.
How about the MIG-25. It can do Mach 3.3 or so also, and its airframe can withstand 25G! I don't know what the design specs were on the shuttle, but I know it never experienced more than 3 G, and I would guess that 10G would rip it apart.
If I were going to slap a spacecraft together, I'd give it the airframe specs of a MIG-25, make it out of titanium, and instead of tiles just bolt on a piece of disposable titanium covered with teflon for a heat shield. It could probably be used a bunch of times too before it had to have a new coating put on it if the teflon coating were thick enough. Heck, there's so many new frying pan materials out there that would probably do 10 times better than teflon too.
Such a spaceship would have weathered what destroyed the shuttle with little more than a tiny dent.
You mean to tell me that with $500 million per FLIGHT (!) that piece of junk was all they could come up with? It was half disintegrated before it ever left the ground. Tiles so delicate you could not touch them? WTF? That's like some kind of sick joke. It's almost like they're making it up. They designed a winged aircraft that is supposed to use aerobraking for reentry and made it out of aluminum instead of titanium?
Hell, I have a whole set of frying pans that are more advanced.
Lots of folks are getting screwed here people: Astronauts and taxpayers to name a few.
With only the launch video for information the analysis was 90% WAG (wild ass guess). At best the analysis would have consisted of: "We think the foam is this big, and since we assume the foam is this big we assume it weighs this much, and since it weighed this much, and it looks like it hit around here, so it shouldn't have caused any serious damage. And plus, it was okay the last few times this happened." If I were in charge of a no fail safe system (the exterior hull of the Shuttle) and I hear that kind of bullshit, the first words out of my mouth would be, "Clean out your desk, you're fired for incompetence." What about possible ice? Why did the foam fall off? Could it have been wet? Did they analyze the retrieved tank's foam? Did they measure the missing foam? What was the weather before launch? There were too many unknowns and more information was needed before a proper analysis could have been done. And ANY pictures would have added a whole dimension to the data available for analysis.
Face it, they bet the shuttle on that WAG. And they lost big. This is an exact repeat of the complacency and lack of paranoia that led to the Challenger disaster. People in charge of spacecraft should be paranoid assholes who insist on things being done as perfectly as humanly possible. And "It was okay the last few times" is not a statement that people like that make.
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
-Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
The original design that NASA were gunning for was for a vehicle that would come in steeper and then glide over a limited range to its target with two real wings. The advantage being that the vehicle would only be exposed for a short period of time to the heating effect. The shuttle would also land a lot slower with this design.
The USAF needed a longer glide range to operate from Vandenburg, so they could always get back to land, even after a single orbit. They pressed for a delta wing which allowed them to glive for about 2,500 miles. This disadvantge is that the shuttle must fly through reentry (rather than a controlled stall, that NASA wanted). This meant that reentry took a lot longer, with much greater exposure to heat.
See my journal, I write things there
NASA's afternoon press conference today produced the Air Force photo and a helpful series of slides mapping the sensor failures over time.
I hate call waitin`~+~~~
NO CARRIER
We say, "skip the safety checks", but the reality is more like, skip fixing all the problems the shuttle develops prior to launch. Given how many holds for problems there are in a normal countdown. Trying a fast launch is pretty close to certainty for disaster.
It takes a great many people, including the astronauts, to launch a shuttle. I know I personally would not want to work launch crew, mission control etc etc if I thought there was a 99% chance that the people in the ship would be incinerated on the launch pad.
Just as you would hold someone in street clothes back from running into a burnng building so you would not launch a shuttle on a moments notice.
Well, that's all well and good but:
1.) The shuttle can't retrieve the vast majority of satellites either. Unless they're in LEO, not destabilized, are designed to be retrieved, and can be refolded to fit in the shuttle bay, NASA has to pass on the job.
A robot "space taxi" of the sort that was supposed to be a complement of the space station in the earlier designs (ion engines powered by micronuke or solar, multiple grasping arms, remote operation from ISS) would do the job better, cost far less, and provide dozens of other useful capabilities. Use the taxi to bring the troublesome unit to ISS, if possible, repair it there, if not, wrap it in a disposable shell and drop it to earth.
2.) Repairs? See above.
3.) Building things in orbit? Again, see above. In addition, small mobile robots would do the job better and faster, work all the time instead of just during the brief intervals that the shuttle is up, and bring the ISS closer to being self-supporting and self-repairing.
4.) Satellite launches? Rockets work just fine for less money. Cheaper per pound, can go direct to more orbits, and are far more flexible.
5.) A soyuz-type craft cannot carry as large a crew. But tell me, so what? Is there some reason that one can't just launch more small ships? Keep in mind, btw, that launch facilities are currently being built in Brazil and Tonga, while Guyana keeps being put in play. Add facilities at the European's sites and we could have launches every week or so, year round.
6.) No, the ISS is merely in orbit *all the time*! Personally, I am nervous at having all of our eggs in the ISS's one basket. But for far less then we're paying now, we could use a disposable launch system to put up two or three Skylab-scale stations in different orbits, connected by a "space tug". By boosting up a small SPS or a few outrigger microreactors, the fuel needs would be minimal and a few tugs could be available at all times, charged and ready to go. Also don't forget that with robot-based missions, time in space just doesn't matter that much. Combine that with the moon's much smaller gravity well, and getting a few tons of moon rock up to the ISS for use as shielding is nowhere near as big a deal as one would think. Just use super-efficient trajectories (who cares? a five month trip is perfectly acceptable to a robot) and the only seriously messy bit is getting down to the moon's surface and back up to space.
People with more time then me have worked out plenty of systems where the robot miner never goes back up again, but just shoots little bits of rock up with a mass driver, where they are intercepted and brought back to the station.
7.) It's true, a Soyuz is not reusable. So? Why does this matter? The shuttle uses an awful lot of disposable gear for a supposedly "reusable" launch system. Frankly, all that I care about is cost, safety, and how much usable mass is left in space when a mission is completed. The shuttle loses on all three.
8.) A Soyuz cannot boost something like spacelab and return it. Again, so? Skylab seems to have done just fine with 1970's technology. With the tens of billions we're spending on shuttle work we could come up with some mighty fine one-time-drop systems for large payloads. In fact, NASA started research years back and has had increasing success with what is basically a huge parafoil that can drop a payload to earth far more gently then the shuttle.
I've said it before and I'm saying it again. The shuttle is a white elephant. It's past time to move on.
Rustin
Data is the lever, rigor the fulcrum, brains the force that drives it all.
Firstly, my sympathy to all involved.
Next. Has anyone seen the SPIE Proceedings Vol. 2455 (b=abstracts) particularly Paper #: 2455-23 Shearographic nondestructive evaluation of Space Shuttle thermal protection systems
The abstract says
TPS - Thermal Protection SystemSOFI - spray-on foam insulation
This paper is in the proceedings of the SPIE meeting in 1995 on "Nondestructive Evaluation of Aging Aircraft, Airports, Aerospace Hardware, and Materials"
I mean, did the guy forget his medication or does stuff like that exist?
Probably both.
According to several sources I consider fairly reliable, humans currently have technology capable of shattering the Earth. I'm not 100% about that; our technology, while enormously more advanced than the current public perception would allow, we're nowhere nearly as advanced as some previous incarntions of humanity, (Atlatian, Lemurian, etc.), and frankly, even to me, shattering the Earth seems like a fairly inconceivable affair.
Mind you, early work by Tesla demonstrated that knowing the correct frequency of an object gave one the power to make it vibrate using sympathetic resonance from a distance, (the basics of radio), and that if you continually pumped energy into that object in a certain way, you could literally shake the object apart. And as one great mind once said. . , "With a lever big enough. .
Though, screwing up in such a way is supposedly what destroyed the planet which we now know of as the Asteroid belt. And that's not from Lee & Kirby.
This stuff only seems far-out to people because everybody has been led to believe in an excruciatingly simple description of reality. When you start to think and look and overcome your programming. .
-Fantastic Lad --None Rival DOOM!