Wing Seals Blamed in Columbia's Demise

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."

Comments

What a suprise

[(54)T-Dub]

From the begining they said that at least two pieces of debris hit the wing during launch. It seemed pretty obvious to me that this caused the problem. I guess they didn't want to admit that they had been wrong when they gave the go ahead to re-enter.

Re:What a suprise

[Wyatt Earp]

"I guess they didn't want to admit that they had been wrong when they gave the go ahead to re-enter."

There was no other option than to re-enter.

On Columbia's mission there was no abort to ISS. Once it was up there, the only way for those astronauts to come home was to re-enter.

Re:What a suprise

[Fastolfe]

Based on the information they had at the time, the risk that there would be catastrophic damage from the foam hitting the wing was not significant.

If you are 99% positive about something 100 times, you will be wrong once. Sometimes margins of error and lack of data lead you to an incorrect conclusion.

They could not have foreseen the damage and based on their extensive knowledge of the orbiter and the nature of the foam and impact, determined that any damage was unlikely to pose a re-entry risk.

This may seen "obvious" to you and all of the other armchair NASA administrators out there, but they had to investigate to be sure, and to understand precisely what happened and how it happened so that when similar situations come up in the future, they can make a more educated analysis of what form of damage is likely and what that damage is capable of. It would be just as irresponsible for them to claim this was the problem and close the book on the case in the first week.

Please give the guys at NASA a little more credit.

Re:What a suprise

[Fastolfe]

And you know this how?

Because they said it? Repeatedly? Because this is what all of the published information about the conversations, e-mails that went between researchers, managers, etc.? The event and review have undergone a tremendous amount of scrutiny, and most of that was as transparent as I've ever seen.

The leading edges and the protective tiles were never designed for ANY impact.

So? I have a picture frame that wasn't intended to withstand an impact. If I throw a ball at it, though, I can pretty accurately estimate whether or not that frame will be damaged based on the nature of the ball, the speed I throw it, and where the impact occurs.

Do you want me to repeat that.

If it makes you feel better..

he leading edge Carbon-Carbon structures and the protective tiles were never designed for any impact.

Do you feel better?

under conditions it was not designed for and which they did not understand.

I don't guess you're in charge of many missions to space, so I'll try to explain this in layman's terms. Operating an orbiting spacecraft is a high-risk endeavor. You very much do take into account potential unexpected hazards when you design and build one of these crafts. You take certain economical measures to ensure that things like micrometeroid impacts don't threaten the life of your crew, and try to plan contingencies to handle unexpected events. Just because someone didn't "rate" the craft's hull for a certain type of impact doesn't mean impacts of that type were completely ignored or unplanned for, or that the craft will be unable to withstand them.

Again, go look at the immense volume of information published during this investigation. This wasn't a cursory ho-hum "it doesn't matter" check, nor was it a "holy crap, it wasn't designed for this, they're going to die, but let's not tell anyone" type of thing. The experts there (of which you are not one) examined the data at their disposal (which you do not possess) and consulted their own education and experience with the program (which you do not have) and made a determination (which you are not qualified to do) that the risk to the orbiter was low. This is proving to be incorrect. That doesn't mean they "fucked up". They had no way of knowing any better. Again, if you're 99% right 100 times, you'll be wrong once. It happens. Deal with it.

If you're going to ignore the advice of the experts, just because that advice very infrequently ends up being wrong, you are going to end up wrong far more often than not, much to the detriment of the space program and the lives of those depending on you.

Especially when equipment is experiencing conditions it was never designed for.

If you can design a spacecraft that's perfectly safe, and designed to withstand any and all forms of abuse and unexpected events that the existing orbiter could potentially experience, and do that at a cost less than 100 times what the existing orbiter costs, you will be rich.

Again, sending people into orbit is a highly risky activity. You have to spend money to be prepared for certain types of events, but when the likelyhood of those events is low and the cost to mitigate them is high, you have to make a decision and frequently a compromise. If you don't understand this, or have issues with it, feel free to make them known, but I applaud our astronauts for being willing to take these risks on our behalf, and I applaud NASA for making the achievents they do with the funding they have. I wouldn't have it any other way.

continued to flaunt their disregard for basic engineering principles.

Whoa there, this is a pretty loaded statement. In what ways does NASA continue to "flaunt their disregard for basic engineering principles"? Care to give us some examples? Or are you just throwing out unsubstantiated, emotional statements because you're pissed off at something?

Do we continue to have Slashdot readers that think they can do a better job than the guys with the PhD's and decades of experience? Maybe you should start up your own space exploration company.

Long Live the Shuttle ... now lets move on.

[Jedi Holocron]

The Shuttle is a wonderful experimental spacecraft. Let's all keep that in mind. Designed in the 1960's, built in the 1970's, finally flown in the 1980's on 20 year old technology. The world's first partially reusable launch vehicle. Kewl!

Okay, let's move on. Oh wait, we didn't. We floundered with National Space Plane projects. The X-33 was sacked. The Delta Skipper was sacked.

Hey, let's continue to rely soley on an outdated experimental concept vehicle can continue to stick roman candles up our kiesters as a way to get into "space". We'll live with the limited altitude (no micrometeorioid protection), limted power, limited duration, etc... etc...

Okay, sorry for the slight rant there. The shuttle rocked but it is time to move on. Why haven't we? If NASA had a budget that was maybe, at the least, equal to the increase in defense spending for 2003 we might be able to do this.

We are not. Maybe we just haven't found the reason to really want to go to space. I dunno. it is frustrating.

My graditude to everyone that has ever dared to travel to space. My thanks to those that have lost their lives in the endeavour.

brilliant way to disagree...

[Goose Bump]

Physicist James Hallock, another board member, said he does not believe a missing seal alone could have created a big enough hole for the kind of heat damage experienced by Columbia. As the plumes of hot gas entered the long, narrow gap, it probably chipped or broke away at the adjoining wing panels and created an even bigger breach -- enough to lead to the ship's destruction, he said.

Isn't this kind of like saying the bullet isn't what killed him, it was the hole it left behind?

Re:A chunk of foam?!

[MentlFlos]

Yes, but make that foam the size of a basketball, soak it in water and freeze it solid. Then drop it many stories onto said kid and see how the flinch goes.

Re:Confidence Level

[GuyMannDude]

So, if it's not 100%, they just give it another arbitrary number to feed to the media?

Yeah, that was my reaction on reading the summary as well (god forbid I read the article). Just for once I'd love to see some members of the media really hold NASA's feet to the fire and ask some really tough questions in the press conference. Like "How did you come at that confidence value?" And if the NASA spokesperson hims and haws and doesn't give a solid reason, then the reporter ought to point out that if there is so much uncertainty in the accuracy of the confidence, maybe the answer itself isn't really 70-80% accurate.

The problem is that the media has settled in to a nice, comfortable role of transcribing press conferences mindlessly and reporting them verbatim to an equally mindless public. Where the hell has investigative reporting gone? Surely the cause of the disaster is beyond the ability of most news outlets to investigate for themselves but they should certainly be able to ask some tough questions and pass NASA's explanation through a sanity check.

I realize I'm going a bit off topic here, but I'm really getting sick of the crap in the media. The 'authorities' are just throwing out random numbers knowing that no one is going to bother to question them. The sad thing is that once those numbers are 'out there', they become accepted simply due to their familiarity.

GMD

Re:obvious?

[Mononoke]

Once again, something even CNN knew BEFORE RE-ENTRY! I want to be a NASA expert and get paid to twiddle my thumbs.

Yes, but then you'll be the one called upon to give the astronauts their final choices:

1. Risk dying upon reentry if the calculated damage figures are correct.
2. Meet the certain fate of freezing to death staying out in space while committees decide if they can bring you home.

I don't want any warning before I die. My affairs are in order. So were the affairs of the astronauts.

Re:Safety Record

[Waffle Iron]

Actually, it depends on how you measure it. If you go on a 10-day shuttle mission, you orbits traverse somewhere around 6.4 million miles. Driving a car that far would certainly carry a greater than 1% risk of a fatality.

But you have to ask: is it worth taking on the risk of traveling around the earth 160 times just so that you can tend to a zero-g ant farm?

Re:seals considered harmful

[seanmeister]

Where did you read that?? Last time I was in a naval reactor plant (1991, USS Theodore Roosevelt), the reactors heated water that was then circulated through a steam generator which created steam that was then carried outside of the reactor compartment to (among other things) turn a steam turbine that turned a main engine that moved the ship. That's pretty much how naval reactors work.

Re:next problem

[FTL]

> Remember how quickly and how harshly politicians jump on Thiokol after Challenger? They wanted to move all shuttle work to a different company. Now that some of the big boys might be at fault with Columbia nobody is up in arms. Why do you think that is?

Challenger was a disaster waiting to happen. There were engineers at Thiokol who knew the shuttle was probably going to blow up (though they thought it would happen before it cleared the tower). There was clear blame in Challenger's case: management wouldn't listen.

Contrast with Columbia. It's been two months and we've finally figured out the sequence of what happened, but to date we still haven't figured out why it happened. We don't know yet whom to blame: the manufacturers of the external tank, the manufacturers of the heat shield, the original designers of the shuttle, the people who drew up mission contingency rules, the managers who signed off on some key decisions. Only once we know why Columbia was lost can we start thinking about blame.

I commend the media and the politicians for not scape-goating someone for this. Instead they've let the investigators methodically get to the bottom of things. It is an unexpected level of maturity I respect.

Re:seals considered harmful

[colonwq]

A really amazing story. The last time I was on a nuclar boat was in '94. The reactor was in the reactor compartment. It made steam that left the RC in big pipe and turned the tubins in the engin room.
The shaft going out the back of the boat did not use a magnetic seal of any kind but use a mechnical seal.

Rickover was nothing but consertive in a lot of the designs.

Maybe you should look at a Jane's Fighting Ships instead of a Jane's Comic Book. :wq

Why did it stay on during launch

[HermanZA]

and come off in space? There is a lot of shear forces and vibration during launch and almost nothing of that in space, so why did it come off when it did?

Did anyone read that

[Loosewire]

And think "Winged seals - i didnt know there were any species of flying seals" ;-)

Re:The same way every statistic is created at NASA

[Dastardly]

The MTBF for a component would be listed at 300 flight hours, and when he asked how they arrived at such a nice round figure, managers would retroactively come up with a listing where each sub-component had MTBFs listed to decimal places, 34.8712 hours, 29.1109 hours, ... and they all conveniently added up to exactly 300 hours.

Is this as bad as looks with lower MTBF numbers adding up to a higher MTBF number?

Dastardly

Re:next problem

[Ryan Amos]

We Americans are too quick to assign blame. Hell, we didn't even know anything was wrong, so how can it be anyone's fault? Yes, some horrible consequences can result even if everyone involves carries the very noblest intentions and has no real hand in the matter. So the most we can really do from them is learn from them so they don't happen again. There is nowhere to blame here, which seems to be scaring some people. Get over it, it was an accident. More people die in car accidents in a day, and probably suffer a lot more than these people, whose bodies were incinerated in about .5 seconds anyway, but they were already dead because the rapid depressurization of the cabin caused their blood to look like a can of Coke. Death really doesn't come more instant and painless than that. Blame nobody and look to the future.

Math and science education

[Anonymous Coward]

Math and science education to all is meant to prevent such bogus "statistics" from being taken at a face value. These subjects are not taught because someone say so; math and science have values such that people can think and evaluate what he/she is heard and form one's own conclusion.

We forgot that simple point. Now math and science are merely the subjects you just have to pass to graduate schools. Few really cares (even some so-called scientists are that way).

So ask yourself a question: are we any smarter than people were in 16th century?

We may be not.