Slashdot Mirror
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."
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."