CAT Scans Suggest Cause of Columbia Disaster

Kathy Miles writes "The latest information from Columbia's flight data recorder, along with CAT scan results from RCC layers from shuttle Atlantis' leading wing edge, may give clues to what really happened to Columbia. The flight data recorder shows that there was likely structural damage before Columbia began re-entry. Investigators have been looking at the remaining shuttles and have done CAT scans on Atlantis' reinforced carbon-carbon layers, which show gaps that should not be there. If Columbia had similar gaps, it could have doomed the orbiter."

Comments

Good Idea

[the_other_one]

On future shuttle missions they can just take a feline or two to do a wingwalk and scan for problems.

20 seconds

[geoswan]

Today's NY Times has an article about analyzing those recently found tapes. It says that there was something like 20 seconds from the loss of voice contact, and the shuttle's breakup.

I wished I could trust NASA...

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

But I strongly suspect that any cause of the shuttle loss will be phrased so that Ron Ditmore doesn't have to lose his job.

He lost tons of credibility in the beginning when he stood up and said that it couldn't be the foam that caused the problem. Soon after, we learned that he refused the request of NASA engineers to have pictures taken of the craft while in orbit.

Re:I wished I could trust NASA...

[Anonymous Coward]

He lost tons of credibility in the beginning when he stood up and said that it couldn't be the foam that caused the problem. Soon after, we learned that he refused the request of NASA engineers to have pictures taken of the craft while in orbit.

First I will point out that Ron Dittamore is not the kind of person to cover up his mistakes. If only most of us Techs/Geeks had the honesty, engineering and management skills Ron has - maybe a lot of these dotcom's would still be around.

Part of the normal procedure is to analyze videos of the launch. When those pieces of ice and/or foam were seen, Ron held a series of meetings with some of the top NASA Engineers while the shuttle was still orbiting. The team determined the pictures wouldn't provide the detail needed to determine if it was a serious problem. The team decided that, not just Ron. A good manager listens to his team members, not like some of the dot bombs I worked for.

It isn't like the shuttle hasn't lost tiles before and landed safely, it has lots of redundancy. If in the very unlikely event military satelites had seen a serious gash, they couldn't have done anything about it when it was in space. And just what would they send up there to get them? It takes time to get something ready to go into space with enough room and docking capabilities to perform a rescue. The shuttle doesn't have months of provisions and fuel would not have allowed it to rendezvous with the space station.

Right now, the insiders at NASA think they have found the cause and if it these gaps between layers of multilayered reinforced carbon-carbon (RCC) are the cause, it is Congress and President Bush who deserve the credit for the accident. The budget for NASA has been flat for too long, the NASA people are working 60-70 hours a week at the same pay rate (works out to a big pay cut), and they have had to take short cuts like reducing thorough and rigorous testing such as mentioned in the article. The article said "One NASA engineer commented that the in-depth checks had not shown cracks, and that, coupled with NASA's shrinking budget, forced them to do the less involved between flight checks."

Culprits

[DoraLives]

What's got me worried, is the fact that this seems to be more and more a problem stemming from the damnable budget cutting processes where personnel and resources were simply NOT AVAILABLE to perform in-depth engineering and QC work.

The Shuttle program has been plagued with this since its inception, with congress demanding $5.00 worth of labor and material for $1.50 and then sending people into the most hostile environment we know of, assuming that somehow everything will work out.

When looking for culprits here, please don't forget your elected representatives in Washington DC. There's folks in DC who, to my way of thinking anyway, are guilty of cold-blooded murder.

The real problem

[Muhammar]

was that the manned space missions were always about politics/prestige stuff and military race with Soviets rather than about doing science. (I do not mean the space probes, and all the JPL good stuff)

There is not the political will to provide adequate funding. So NASA had to go into salesmanship stuff (bulshit - to get funds) and cost-cutting. This is not good for engineering.

They should have been honest to NASA: get the bloated agency cut down after the end of Apollo programm - to have the reduced money spend in more efficient way. NASA is now a hugely bureaucratised venue and aging fast, it does not attract talented young people anymore. Plans to save it are overdue and it is too bad that the radical reforms were resisted, after the Challenger disaster.

Re:The real problem

[RevRigel]

That's not the case. Are you an engineer? NASA has plenty of money to do what they do. The problem is they spend it all maintaining the pork barrel for their contractors.

Having too much money means you design systems that depend on having too much money. That means you get systems with exotic materials that no one understands, that are difficult to maintenance, and cost too much to launch. The Russian Soyuz launches for 10 million. The shuttle is 50 times more expensive. Given, for some increased payload capacity, but not that much payload capacity.

NASA (or someone else, since they're so broken..perhaps the private sector) needs to be told to design a new space vehicle on a Russian-sized budget, instead of a NASA one. I guarantee they'll come up with the functionality we need, at the price we want, and because it had to be designed on that budget it'll be simpler and more reliable.

Re:The real problem

[coyote-san]

They've already tried that, at McDonnell Douglas. The engineering prototype even did a few test flights.

But NASA shut it down in the contest to choose the successor to the shuttle fleet. Why go with proven technology when you can pin everything on the development of new hypersonic jet engines and similiar exotic materials?

there *are* things they could have done after find

[Tablizer]

If in the very unlikely event military satelites had seen a serious gash, they couldn't have done anything about it when it was in space.

That is not true from what I read. Some things that could have been done:

* Reduce the weight of the shuttle by tossing non-critical systems. This would decrease friction.

* Rotate shuttle to put damanged portion in shadow just before reentry. This would reduce tempurature a bit.

* I have read that there were ways to reduce the peak reentry friction by spreading it out over time