Atlantis probably just lucky
by
TheRoachMan
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The article states that ground control ordered the Atlantis (which survived a breached wing and landed safely in 2000) to do a cooling-manoeuver, because they suspected the ceramic tiles to be damaged by a chunk of ice. If it hadn't been for ground control's suspicions about this damage, Atlantis would've probably shattered too. Columbia just went all-out during re-entry, because ground control was worried about tires not warming up enough to guarantee a safe landing. Talk about irony. This brings a question to my mind: Instead of using the cooling-manoeuver as a sort of 'last-resort', why not make it a standard modus operandi to do the cooling-manoeuver, unless of course there are serious reasons not to? Might save some lives and money.
Changes needed
by
gizmo_mathboy
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
From what I've read concerning about what the review board has found this is exactly what they want to change.
It is one thing in a test/development/research environment to have something unexpected to happen, that's why you are doing testing/development/research. However, once the project goes live anything unexpected that does happen should be examined thoroughly. Like in Challenger, when the O-rings were being eroded that wasn't expected behaviour. Yes, O-rings are there to seal joints and they did their job but no one expected them to be eroded.
With Columbia there were 2 events: surface roughness and foam chunks. Hard to say which was more deadly, I'll start with the chunks. I would have thought that when things start falling off of the vehicle that NASA/Boeing/whomever would have done better testing and research into what was going on. A first guess would be that no harm would come of it, it's foam. However, it was moving at several hundred miles per hour and it wasn't something that was expected.
There was also a large amount of surface roughness on the wings. This leads to an early transition to turbulence which leads to increased heating earlier in the descent. Combine that with a foam chunk tearing a whole in the wing and you get 7 more dead astronauts.
Both these things were not part of the expected behaviour of the shuttle. Folks at NASA didn't think they were particularly harmful or didn't appear to cause any harm. So they let them go because they rationalized it away without understanding why they were occurring and what effects they may have.
Slashdot Mirror
The article states that ground control ordered the Atlantis (which survived a breached wing and landed safely in 2000) to do a cooling-manoeuver, because they suspected the ceramic tiles to be damaged by a chunk of ice. If it hadn't been for ground control's suspicions about this damage, Atlantis would've probably shattered too. Columbia just went all-out during re-entry, because ground control was worried about tires not warming up enough to guarantee a safe landing. Talk about irony. This brings a question to my mind: Instead of using the cooling-manoeuver as a sort of 'last-resort', why not make it a standard modus operandi to do the cooling-manoeuver, unless of course there are serious reasons not to? Might save some lives and money.
From what I've read concerning about what the review board has found this is exactly what they want to change.
It is one thing in a test/development/research environment to have something unexpected to happen, that's why you are doing testing/development/research. However, once the project goes live anything unexpected that does happen should be examined thoroughly. Like in Challenger, when the O-rings were being eroded that wasn't expected behaviour. Yes, O-rings are there to seal joints and they did their job but no one expected them to be eroded.
With Columbia there were 2 events: surface roughness and foam chunks. Hard to say which was more deadly, I'll start with the chunks. I would have thought that when things start falling off of the vehicle that NASA/Boeing/whomever would have done better testing and research into what was going on. A first guess would be that no harm would come of it, it's foam. However, it was moving at several hundred miles per hour and it wasn't something that was expected.
There was also a large amount of surface roughness on the wings. This leads to an early transition to turbulence which leads to increased heating earlier in the descent. Combine that with a foam chunk tearing a whole in the wing and you get 7 more dead astronauts.
Both these things were not part of the expected behaviour of the shuttle. Folks at NASA didn't think they were particularly harmful or didn't appear to cause any harm. So they let them go because they rationalized it away without understanding why they were occurring and what effects they may have.