Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Wing Seals Blamed in Columbia's Demise

Posted by michael on from the yellow-and-blue-make-green dept.

MoonFacedAssassin writes "MSNBC has this article stating that a 'seal from Columbia's left wing was apparently the mystery object that floated away in orbit, and it was almost certainly struck by something - like a chunk of foam - before it came off, accident investigators said Tuesday.' The article also quoted Navy Rear Admiral Stephen Turcotte, a CAIB member, as having a confidence level 'up there near the 70s and 80s percent' about the T-seal."

3 of 252 comments (clear)

  1. more info by pjgeer · · Score: 5, Informative

    New Scientist also has the latest.

  2. Re:A chunk of foam?! by athakur999 · · Score: 4, Informative

    The foam is quite a bit more rigid than nerf ball material :) It's more like hard foam some bicycle helmets and knee pads have in them... I used to intern at the place that makes the external tanks and had a chunk of the foam at my desk.

    --
    "People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
  3. Re:What a suprise by Soft · · Score: 4, Informative
    Well, there was no contingency plan. The Soyuz on the ISS has enough fuel for a complete deorbital burn; would that be enough to drop to LEO and the shuttle, and then reascend?

    No. The ISS is in LEO (400km altitude; neither shuttle nor Soyuz can get much higher), it's a question of orbital inclination, which takes as much fuel to change as it took to get the spacecraft in orbit in the first place. (Well, roughly; I had calculated that 120-160tonnes were needed, the external tank at launch holds 2000, and the Soyuz less than1...)

    But I imagine if you abandon the idea of a deorbital burn on the shuttle and instead use the fuel to get to a higher orbit

    Not even close, I'm afraid.

    I don't know if you could squeeze all seven astronauts into a three person capsule either.

    Not for a return to Earth (the seats are form-fitting and the landing quite hard), otherwise possibly, but the more people aboard, the more fuel is required to get anywhere...

    Maybe multiple trips would have been required. Can the shuttle and the Soyuz even dock?

    No. And they don't use the same docking ports on the ISS either.

    That might have required EVA's...in any event, I think that with all of those resources in orbit, something could have been worked out if NASA had committed to a solution.

    No. The best bet, provided that the danger were known at the beginning of Columbia's mission, was to conserve power so as to last maybe an extra week or two in orbit, and rush Atlantis through launch preparations, bypassing a number of safety regulations to have it ready in less than a month. And only because it happend to be already sitting on the pad.

    Sorry to sound rude like that, but I hear this kind of misconceptions so often...

    This may all seem pointless, but it's not: at some point, we will encounter this situation again in some form. "Orbit to ISS" is not part of the any shuttle mission profile; perhaps it should be from now on.

    It is said to be in the cards. Not that it would help (the ISS can't hold that many people for long), but no mission was planned elsewhere except for the last Hubble repair before its planned end of life, and all interesting places to go are out of the shuttle's reach anyway.