Slashdot Mirror
Shuttle Data Recorder May be Key to Accident
DreamerFi writes "A flight data recorder from the space shuttle Columbia, recovered last week in East Texas, contains readings that continue 14 seconds later than any previously studied data. Those readings are likely to play a crucial role in determining the cause of the shuttle's catastrophic breakup on Feb. 1."
This is an "Ask Slashdot" that I submitted a few weeks back.
Can't seem to find the article that I quoted from when I submitted this to Slashdot, will see if I can dig up...
'Under the conditions of a normal return to earth, the shuttle flies on autopilot until it is traveling more slowly than the speed of sound. But pilots train to take the shuttle all the way down in case the autopilot malfunctions, and so it is possible one of the pilots was trying to take control of the yawing craft in its final moments. 'It is relatively easy for the autopilot to be turned off by accident, which in fact happened just minutes before the problems with the Columbia started to become apparent. In the recovered segment of flight deck video of the waning minutes of the flight released by NASA, Colonel Husband is heard to exclaim, "Oh, shoot," and to tell mission control that "we bumped the stick earlier," briefly disengaging the autopilot. He quickly and calmly corrected the error'
What this all leads me to is this, and I have not seen this suggested in anything I have read as an important concern: Is it possible that this accidental disengaging of the autopilot CONTRIBUTED to the loss of the Shuttle? Although the pilots are trained to fly the Shuttle without the Autopilot, if they were unaware that it was turned off then the "minute" adjustments that either one would make would be missed. All accounts I have seen suggest that the slightest details on the approach make HUGE differences in the results. Add to this the fact that it has been reported that the Autopilot, when on, was acting to correct the flight path anomalies caused by the damage outside. If the autopilot is off, then what other consequences were being experienced?
Is it possible that this with the likely outside damage and other factors may have COMBINED have caused the loss of the Shuttle where any issue ALONE would have not? With all the speculation I have seen in the media, I am not sure this is any less of a possibility...
BTW, I personally am not trying to lay blame on the astronauts themselves. Much like a Cruise Control that starts to mysteriously disengage on a vehicle, I would not be surprised if the Autopilot may have "sensed" a disengage as simple as moving the stick, and the pilots assumed that one of them must have done it."
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
When the shuttle broke up, people like myself asked about a black box and were told "there is no such device due to the near impossibility of the device to re-enter the atmosphere." Nw all of a sudden there IS a box. Why were we mislead?
You might want to read this.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
They actually do. All of the data analysis so far has been based on the live telemetry that was captured. The significance of this tape lies in that it has an additional 14 seconds of data. Which as someone else pointed out, I'm not sure that would necesarily be a big help if it was already too late. Perhaps there is also more details of the time leading up to that 14 seconds.
This is really a great find, and an unintended one at that. Shuttles don't carry "black box" flight data recorders like commercial aircraft do. A data recorder, while useful in an accident, was thought unlikely to survive re-entry in a catastrophic event.
Why, then, does Columbia have the OEX recorder? Simple - Columbia was one of the first Shuttles to fly to orbit, and the engineers at NASA wanted a data recorder on board so they could examine and validate some characteristics of the vehicle design.
The OEX recorder contains far more information than a simple "black box". Finding it, intact, will greatly aid the understanding of what went wrong, and hopefully lead to increased safety on future Shuttle flights. Perhaps, something similar to the OEX recorder will be integrated into the other Shuttles, since it looks like a data recorder can survive re-entry.
---------------
Vpered na Mars!
Actually, on a NORMAL STS re-entry there is no longer a radio blackout! That is part of what the TDRS system is for. You see, the ionization of the air around a re entering spacecraft usually blocks the radio, BUT there is a BIG hole in the ionized layer - right behind the shuttle - you can transmit to space FINE, so they transmit to the TDRS, and it transmits to the ground.
The problem is that at 32 seconds before the final breakup (estimated), the signal to the TDRS was lost. This seems to be when the STS yawed enough that the tail antennas could no longer point up the non ionized track. You'll not that they got some partial data a few seconds (off the top of my head, it was 7 seconds of data 14 seconds later) after the first contact loss - this is estimated to be the time when the STS had yawed FULLY through 360 degs - aka, the shuttle actually spun fully at least ONCE. During this spin is when the shuttle lost the engine pod, and you can see the fragments coming off in the videos
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Commondreams do run some questionable stories, yes, but this one has actually featured in respectable media as well. I just picked the first link I could find.
If you think this theory is "out there," believe me, you haven't seen shit.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
... hands-on.
...
Nobody has done it except for the first crew. If I remember correctly, the first Shuttle pilot (dunno his name, some ex-Navy pilot) attempted to manually guide the Shuttle during its landing approach, and did so for a few minutes only to give up and let the auto-pilot take over, mid-way through.
I could have this story wrong (hey, it happens) but I do remember that there's little reason - other than extreme catastrophic failure of onboard systems - for a Shuttle pilot to attempt to override the autopilot. Such catastrophic failures of the onboard systems would definitely have been detected by NASA on the ground previously
So, I'd say, there's little chance that an autopilot-override was performed by the crew which lead to the failure.
But then, I dunno. I get most of my understanding of the Shuttle landing procedure from the X-Plane sim, which makes it very clear that it's extremely difficult for a human being to land the Shuttle...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Husband reporting to mission control that "we bumped the stick earlier" suggests an autopilot disengage on pilot input.
Although I don't know, it would seem reasonable that the shuttle's autopilot could be disengaged like this (much like any other aircraft). If during short-final, the pilot decides that the autopilot is leading the shuttle off the approach, a simple grab of the stick for control would seem the safest override method.
Does anyone know any more on this? - Does the shuttle allow pilot-input overrides?
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
"The device contains 9,400 feet of magnetic tape that permits up to two hours recording time. It was turned on 10 minutes before Columbia's Jan. 16 launch and then turned off about six minutes after the shuttle reached orbit.
The recorder was activated again 15 minutes before Columbia began its ill-fated, 45-minute plunge through the atmosphere.".
Is it possible that the impact of the foam on the left wing (or other launch time anomoly) was caught on tape?
The National Transportation Safety Board pulled investigators pulled people from the Flight 587 probe to help out on the Columbia investigation. NTSB Field Investigators, unfortunately, are experienced with finding the cause from many sometimes grisly pieces of data. :-)
They also know what to bring, what to do, where to go and what to ask. And of course, they known how to extract data from Flight Data Recorders Interestingly, the NTSB issued recommendations that Require retrofit after January 1, 2005, of all cockpit voice recorders (CVRs) [...] [be] fitted with an independent power source [...] that provides 10 minutes of operation whenever aircraft power to the recorder ceases. Just one of the things the NTSB fights the FAA over
But remember the "Black box" (OEX recorder) on the shuttle is very different from a CVR.
The data on the recorder may also give insight as to what did or did not happen on ascent, as it records the same sensor data during the climb to orbit. This could give insight as to how strong the foam impact was and where it hit on the wing.
I would like to see manned spaceflights continue, but I suspect that with all the thigns they are finding right now, that we will probably never launch another shuttle. The US government decided a quarter of a century that we wanted to have the world's only reuseable space craft. I have to point this out, but 1-shot equimpent is much cheaper and more flexable for this type of job. You use the ship once and never look back. No matter how much the say it's not, age will ALWAYS be a factor is the safty of this program. Also, i'll point out that rockets are no longer the "way to go". There are many ideas for new launch systems: space planes ships that use magnetic induction track and "shot" up and several other ideas. The shuttle program NEEDS to go. We need to look into using 21st century technology for the space program, not the continually re-vapmed 1975 technology that we use now. The space shuttle was a marvel when it was built, and at the time no-one could have seen that a reusable system would have been more expensive and labor intensive then one-shots, however it's day has come and gone. I hope that the US decides to develop new systems before 2012! I would suspect that if we start launching shuttles again, we will lose another group of amazing people to space within 18 months of re-starting the program.
Having done some control theory work, I have mixed opinions on this.
We know that the shuttle wing suffered a catastrophic failure (as in it broke apart), and flight stability was lost. With a tail wing and one side wing, the shuttle should have gone into a corkscrew. Immediately, sensors onboard would have kicked in, saying "the current flight path is not desireable, adjust the flaps to stabilize". Well, the computer has no clue that half the flaps are gone, and nothing in the scenarios could have fixed the rolling. It is a case where the problem is beyond the scope of the software that controls the system. At that point, you can only hope that the ingenuity of the human mind would find the right solution -- in this case, it was beyond hope.
I recall reading that when the shuttle was originally designed, it assumed 100% computer control flight & had no cockpit, and adding the viewing glass added a multitude of structural weaknesses to the design. But the pilots wouldn't ride if they didn't have the option to drive... designs were changed, politics reigned, and we got what we have today.
On the flipside, you could argue that the complexity of the situation is beyond human reflexes, and instead we should allow the computers to fly all the time. This is the current setup, and it worked for every situation ever encountered to date. If NASA would just give up on the option for human-controlled flight, they would be able to scrap the cockpit, and design a shielded "passenger" bay instead. This would remove a lot of the material weaknesses, and it would allow more "common" scientists to travel in space, since it would remove that aspect of required training.
Would a shielded compartment have saved the crew? The forces involved are (pardon the pun) astronomical, and even had they survived, I doubt it. But, our country designs some amazing things, and it's only a matter of time before we discover the materials to make it happen.
How the heck does a magnetic tape survive a suttle launch/orbit/reentry? The recorder and tape must be continually subjected to dramatic temperature changes, electro-magnetic radiation, radiation from the sun, as well as violent vibrations - it's really hard to do ANYTHING with any degree of precision when being subject to 8g of force. On earth, magnetic media is already one of the least reliable storage mediums.
It seems to me that the most reliable format for data storage in this type of enviornment would be some sort of punch card/optical disk combinarion (no joke!) Why couldn't NASA use a high-speed water-jet torch to bore tiny holes into a circular disc made out of something really really durable (synthetic diamond comes to mind). In function, it would work like a cd, execpt that it would have holes instead of pits.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
It seems that the top 24" of the vertical stabilizer also houses an infrared camera system that takes a snapshot of the shuttles thermal image as looking forward. Its (was) called the "SILTS" pod. Its data went to one of the OEX recorders. A link here Http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/technology/sts -newsref/sts-inst.html#sts-silts
describes its operation. I'd be very interested in what the data from it indicates.
*--- Sometimes a majority only means that all the fools are on the same side. ---*
there's little reason - other than extreme catastrophic failure of onboard systems - for a Shuttle pilot to attempt to override the autopilot
So don't you think whatever happened to Columbia in the last few moments might fit into that "extreme catastrophic failure of onboard systems" prerequisite?
NO CARRIER
> I heard one of the pilots in the USAF with the most air time comment something like "Landing is easy. Landing without dying is a bit more tricky. Landing without damage is tricker still."
Someone also described it as "like flying a brick".
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade