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Columbia's Final Minutes in Detail
grub writes "This article on Newsday has an excerpt from 'Comm Check... The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia,' by Michael Cabbage and William Harwood describing the last minutes of Columbia's final flight in detail."
While original reports used the term "plasma", there's a good explanation at space.com's Columbia FAQ that explains that the hot gas that entered the shuttle's wing was *not* "plasma", as defined by science:Not to be a science nazi, but there's an important distinction between sci-fi-sounding "plasma" and the mundane -- but still deadly -- "very hot gas".
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
To kindred spirits and absent friends.
...of the shuttle is just fascinating. Call me naive, but it truly is amazing that aeronautical/space engineering has progressed as far as it has. Not to revel in Columbia's destruction, but I'm suprised that we haven't had more accidents since Challenger.
Nothing but the finest in meaningless drivel
There's a memorial at Cape Canaveral with the names of ALL of the people who have died in our pursuit of outer space.
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
Above and beyond this article, if you can get your hands on the article on the Colombia tragedy which was published in Atlantic Monthly, do it. As always for Atlantic Monthly, easily the most intelligent commentary I've seen about the event, and a couple of closing sentences that will stay with me forever.
But this is a classic lack of communication problem, people voiced there concerns but they where shooshed away because of the "nah that won't happen" syndrom.. lets hope we all learn from this lesson.
moo
One of the crew members came to rest beside a country road near Hemphill. The remains were found by a 59-year-old chemical engineer and Vietnam veteran named Roger Coday, who called the sheriff and then watched from the porch of his mobile home as a funeral director drove by to collect them.
IIRC (if I read correctly) they were about 19 miles up when the fuselage broke apart... So this astronaut had about that far to fall before coming to rest on the ground.
I saw it over and over again on TV and thought, well, at least it was instant and there's nothing left... I was wrong and I now have deep sorrow for these individuals.
...it's an incredible piece, and very well written. One never understands such things until it is succinctly written out, and these authors did an amazing job.
libertarianswag.com
From the article: The survivability study concluded relatively modest design changes might enable future crews to survive long enough to bail out.
I'm not sure how the crew can survive by "bailing out" of a doomed orbiter during re-entry (take-off is another matter entirely). Once the orbiter drops below a certain speed, a return to orbit is impossible anda very hot descent is inevitable. This "bail out" logic sounds like surviving an elevator crash by stepping out at the first floor to me.
Unless the crew module can gracefully decelerate to less than hypersonic speeds, exiting the compartment is instant death.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
It did say that once the astronauts hit the hypersonic air flow, they would have died instantly.
:-(
It doesn't make things any better to know that though.
Steve
IIRC (if I read correctly) they were about 19 miles up when the fuselage broke apart... So this astronaut had about that far to fall before coming to rest on the ground.
Karma me down, but I'm just amazed how quickly information about Columbia's last moments is filtering to the media (and the lack of relative umbrage from family and pundits).
In contrast, it took years for NASA to admit that, yes, the astronauts aboard Challenger were most likely aware during their final descent, but that information was quickly coupled with admonishment not to dwell on it, out of respect for the families of the astronauts.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
Well given this was slashdot and you posted a link I thinks its fair to say that there *was* a memorial.. In any case thanks for sharing the link with us..
This article is kind of an intense read... I think it's important to remember these fallen heros, who gave their lives for the purpose of furthering our understanding of science.
Hats off to those brave souls.
According to the article, they would have died instantaneously at that point 19 miles up due to blunt trauma, lack of oxygen, etc. So, while it is still sad and horrible, it isn't like he fell 19 miles still alive.
//FIXME: Bad
There are none so blind as those who refuse to see. The folks at NASA could have seen this coming by listening to the engineers who wanted to get a closer look at the spots hit by the foam. The folks at NASA should have been watching for this type of situation if any attention had been paid to the follow up of the Challenger explosion.
It is simply not true that this tragedy was unavoidable and that there was no way to see this coming. The most complicated machine ever built was not knocked out of the sky by a pound and a half of foam. This was murder by management.
More than 25,000 searchers, who scoured a debris "footprint" that was 645 miles long, found 84,900 individual pieces, about 38 percent of the space shuttle.
Does this not make one wonder how much of the shuttle might still be "out there" waiting to be found, or perhaps sitting on display in someone's house? Granted, much of it would have been literally vaporized, however I think that would amount to far less than the remaining 62% of Columbia.
I heard on CNN that pages of Ilan Ramon's journal were found recently in Texas. A quick google news turned up this article on the Post.
It has also been stated that remains from all seven astronauts were recovered, and that some of the organisms on the shuttle actually survived.
This all points to the possibility that there is still more shuttle out there, and that perhaps we could be finding Columbia piece by precious piece for years to come...
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
There's a memorial at Cape Canaveral with the names of ALL of the people who have died in our pursuit of outer space.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
well, they were already moving at a faster than terminal velocity so when the atmosphere thickened, they body slowed, depending on the substrate of the ground, the damage to the body (after the burning it took) would be minimal.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Sorry, I have to disagree. Those atronauts were furthering mankind and died in the pursuit. Most of the starvation could be solved if (not to make fun) we sent them luggage instead of food. They live in a desert with no food or water.. That's not a tragedy, that's natural selection.
How can a hole being ripped in the wing, or any other part of the shuttle not be picked up by some sensor?
though, what could be done 81 seconds after beginning re-entry? anything besides acknowledge that you're going to die? if you level your course, instead of going down into the atmosphere will you just gradually burn up? I'm thinking, skim the outter atmosphere, since the air is thin it isn't having a drastic effect on the structure (compared with a few minutes later the change in atmosphere rips into the shuttle a lot more). skip out of the atmosphere and resume some sort of drift through space. try to control the drift so you're not hurtling into nothingness, although if your travelling at 1,568 mph maybe that is a little far fetched. then, assess the damage, and deal with it somehow (emergency rescue mission, repairs if at all possible?).
i am not a rocket scientist. but at what point of re-entry is it too late to do any sort of constructive abort?
The shuttle astronauts are true heroes -- think of the bravery it takes to fly one of those things. And let's not forget the Challenger mission which failed on January 28, 1986, seventeen years ago tomorrow.
I'll be outside at about 1130am tomorrow, looking up at the skies as I do every year, thanking that shuttle crew for their sacrifice.
Tragedy isn't just measured in terms of the number of people killed. Though most of us spend our entire lives seeking our own comfort and profit, there are some who are willing to risk their lives to advance the entire enterprise known as science, enriching all of our lives. More perished in that accident than flesh and bone...they were carrying with us our very hopes and dreams. You may look at it as a loss for the shuttle's crew and their families, but I see it as a loss for everyone who's ever looked at the stars and imagined touching the sky's blue roof. The death of a starving boy is pitiable beyond description, but the death of our dreams is truly tragic.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
At the end of the day they knew the risks, and they took them, hell I'm not an American, but I respect them, and know they served humanity with all they had to give, shame we all are not like that, could be a nice place otherwise, this world that is.
moo
Like Challenger's crew, the Columbia astronauts met their fates alone and the details will never be known.
The initial government line is always that that people die instantly. After the Challenger crew compartment was recovered, it surfaced that some of crew's PEAPs (Personal Egress Air Packs) had been activated. This lead to the debate on whether anyone was conscious prior to impact with the ocean, and if there was any improvements that could be made to escape such a fate.
It may seem morbid as first but spacecraft, unlike automobiles, aren't as easy to crash-test. This promotes learning as much as you can from the mistakes.
Unfortunately, its unlikely more meaningful debris will be recovered from the Columbia.
Right, but I believe the article said it was 38 seconds before the cabin seperated, and another 24 before it broke apart, resulting in instant death. Those poor men and women knew what was happening for the last 62 seconds.
A very sobering thought.
--Insert catchy
I remember when the Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed, and I really never imagined that another space shuttle would be destroyed in my lifetime.
I've heard complaints about feeding starving people instead of exploring space, and that does sound compelling in light of the fact that there is so much human suffering, but I believe (as do many) that space exploration represents a greater destiny for mankind.
Maybe that destiny could be put off a few decades while we solve all the world's problems, but I don't want that long.
It's like that t-shirt my one trekkie buddy used to wear, "The meek shall inherit the Earth... the rest of us shall go to the stars."
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
"Hey, I don't remember this button. I wonder what it does? [click]...."
That's a really kind, articulate thing to say. If you actually read the article, you'd realize the intensity and horror of the event. I'm glad that your life has been so blessed that you haven't experienced anything so terrible in it, but please be sensitive to the fact that people lost their lives. Maybe next time you should think about being more courteous about tragedies such as this?
A million starving children is a Bad Thing, but it is not tragedy
Seven (14) astronauts and a $3B spacecraft (oops, two of 'em), dying because of fucking powerpoint slides written in bureaucratese, however, is about as tragic as it gets.
That applies double when it's the second time this has happened.
And finally, if - after riding a million pounds of explosives into orbit, phoning home about a foam strike once you get there, being told "Naw, our experts told us it weren't nuthin' to worry yer pretty little heads about", and then seeing the diagnostic panel light up like a Christmas tree as your wing collapses and your ship yaws hard, and your last thoughts probably including "Oh shit, I wonder if we've lost a wing?" doesn't qualify as a "moment of discovery in which the hero realizes what has happened to him", I don't know what does.
I'm getting the same feeling in the pit of gut when I was reading final accounts of the World Trade Center collapse. If this was some unmanned satellite the same detailed account would have no impact. In the end, our fascination with the shuttle was not about the technology, but the fact that humans were involved.
We all die alone and nothing can change this fact. How our own lives will end is the ultimate question. Why wouldn't we all be interested in the minutia of how other lives ended. I put myself into their seats and feel the fear and guess at the oblivion that followed. It is natural and I refuse to apologize for these supposedly sick feelings.
This is an opportunity to reflect on the sacrifices of these astronauts, people who knew horrors like this were possible and faced them anyway.
We can do the same.
For me, this was definitely a "Do you remember where you were when this happened?" moment. It comes as a punch in stomach.
May God rest their brave souls in peace.
Free XBox, PS2
Most of the starvation could be solved if (not to make fun) we sent them luggage instead of food. They live in a desert with no food or water.. That's not a tragedy, that's natural selection.
At least credit Sam Kinison. (Not like he's gonna do anything about it.)
Not exactly. Bear in mind that after 1989, Americans are allowed to consider Russians as people too.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
Although they've apparently already redesigned the way the foam is applied (or how it works... I forget) so this won't happen again, this and the description of the Challenger breakup both have that one point in common, as noted in the article: The survivability study concluded relatively modest design changes might enable future crews to survive long enough to bail out.
Am I the only one that finds those words hauntingly familiar? I could have sworn the very same thing was said when they finally puzzled out Challenger. I hope they actually figure out a way to do it this time.
Could it really have stopped it happening? Once the foam punched a hole in the craft, the Columbia was incapable of reentry. We were told back then (and I have heard nothing since which contradicts this) that the crew had no way of fixing that problem.
What I have always wondered is: if they had known, could they have hung out at the ISS and waited for NASA to send up a rescue craft? The Columbia will not have had enough food or oxygen for any extended period of time, but the ISS should have had. A rescue craft coming up a couple of weeks later could have replaced both and taken the crew home.
No idea if this was feasable.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
I, for one, find myself wondering what happened in the final seconds, both from a personal perspective (how long did they know, how long did they survive, etc.) and a scientific one (what, exactly, happens to a shuttle wing when there's a hole in it during re-entry, etc.).
Every time I get more information, I can put some of those thoughts away. Eventually, maybe we can all put enough of our thoughts away so that we can move on.
The openning quote really infuriates me.
It takes s special breed of bureaucratic self serving bozo to describe this accident in the most bizzarre terms possible then say something like "I don't know how anyone could have seen that coming" when the truth is people DID see it coming and tried their darndest to stop it happening and long before this NASA had been running foam inmapct studies due to earlier strikes.
Whenever I read these sorts of narratives about Columbia, I'm always sitting there unconsiously thinking "Come on, a few more minutes. Hold together just a bit longer." Even when I know the exact times of breakup, it doesn't matter, I still think it.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
There's also a Columbia crew memorial on Mars now.
Having just read that piece I found myself totally absorbed by the technical description and blow by blow events of the last minutes of the shuttle.
However, the final paragraphs describing the last minutes of the crew is quite touching. One can't imagine the horror of the last moments of the crew. Mercifully though, it seems that the end was swift.
We see here how the astronauts lives depended critically on technology performing flawless during a complex series of steps, and begs us to wonder how many times in our own life we also depend on technology performing a flawless series of steps. This doesn't just have to be your car your job, but perhaps you live close to a nuclear power plant. One could easily imagine a series of assumptions in this environment leading to even more tragic consequences.
I will not go into my job description, and this is little in my everyday performance of it to remind me that at times peoples'
lives might depend on me having done it correctly and not having cut corners. We are all part of very complex web of interactions both personal and technological. Poignant descriptions of events likes these are a wake up call and a reminder we all have responsibilities to those around us to do our best everyday.
Letter To Iran
It still seems like a monumental task to design an ejection system that humans can survive at 15-22 MACH.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
"For the astronauts, the final sequence was mercifully brief, but no doubt terrifying."
IT was 2 minutes from the time all hell broke loos until the died! 2 freaking minutes!
Ever hold your breath for two minutes? While somebody you don't know is forceably holding your head under water?
Most roller coster last about 40 seconds.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So every fatal car accident caused by untimely mechanical failure is "murder by manufacturer"?
There's a decent-sized step from "In this case NASA didn't exercise the proper degree of caution, and its culture seems to have quashed the concerns of engineers who were worried about this happening" and "Every untimely mechanical failure resulting in death is murder."
Early Chrysler minivan hatch failures resulted in a number of unintended deaths due to failures in rear-end collisions. Not astonishing news, nor did it necessarily imply culpable behavior on Chrysler's part. However, when the company tried to suppress crash test reporting that showed how bad the problem was -- and particularly when an internal memo showed up that said they could improve the latches for 25 to 50 cents apiece, but that doing so would seem to concede that the earlier ones had a problem -- then you got a very bad picture of how the company's management had dealt with a safety hazard. Having a problem is one thing; compromising your attempt to fix the problem for reasons to do with bureaucratic self-protection, that's filth. (Scarier example: Bush administration opposing the investigation of 9/11 in every way it can.)
NASA's people did know this foam could be a problem, they'd kept track of the patterns of tile damage for that reason. During Columbia's last flight there were engineers on the ground who were incredulous: those above them were taking the position that the risk of foam damage wasn't worth doing anything about.
Yes, it was an unintended mechanical failure -- but management had something to do with how it went down. Management had to do with the lessons of Challenger not being learned. "Murder" isn't the word, okay, but "shit happens" doesn't keep it from happening again.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I don't get why having the misfortune to be on a shuttle that came apart on re-entry makes the crew heroes. It doesn't require any heroism to get killed, you just have to be in the wrong place at the wrong time; physics will take care of the rest.
To me, what makes them heroes, and the other shuttle crews just as heroic, is knowing that they could die a spectacular flaming death, but getting on the shuttle anyhow.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
From launch, there was no way of the Columbia to reach the ISS. Different orbits and speeds, no fuel and the laws of physics. Look here.
:wq
-- Phase 1: Collect under pants Phase 2: ? Phase 3: Profit
Unfortuantely, there was no way for Columbia to get tot the ISS even if they had known about the problem. The Columbia was the heaviest shuttle in the fleet and was incapable of getting to the orbit that ISS is at even if a mission called for it.
Also, when a shuttle mission is sent to the ISS they have to carry special equipment in the cargo area to actually connect the shuttle to ISS and transfer crew members. The Columbia obviously didn't have that kind of equipment along.
From what I understand, about the only thing they could have done had they known was a) try and launch another shuttle to evacuate the crew, or b) bring them down in Columbia and hope that the shuttle would hold together long enough for the crew to be able to use an escape hatch and parachute to the ground. The likelihood of getting another shuttle prepped in time was almost nill so it's quite possible that even if they did know they didn't really have an alternative anyway.
-Brian
To be a plasma, the gas should have many free electrons (or ions) in each Debye length. There could be many more neutrals, just along for the ride, in the same space.
Most molecular gases become more or less fully ionized at around 10,000 degrees Kelvin (give or take a factor of four or so, depending on composition) since that's the temperature at which the collision energy becomes significant compared to valence electron binding energies, so most collisions can make new ions. So anything hotter than that is definitely plasma.
But even a fraction of a percent ionization is often enough to give you the nice bulk behavior of a plasma, because the ionized particles do their thing and drag along the neutral ones by collision. Depending on the density, it's probably reasonable to call the 8,000F (3800K) gases "plasma".
Parent poster is operating under a series of faulty assumptions and applying some bad reasoning.
When you've got an object traveling very vast what happens? What happens when you move your feet across the carpet? Static electricity. What is static? Electrons stripped from one object to another.
Static charge accumulates when loosely-held valance electrons transfer from less to more electonegative atoms. (Electronegativity is a measure of an atom's tendency to attract electrons.) It is analagous but not identical to dissociation, which occurs in plasma formation. Dissociation is the complete stripping of electrons from the nucleus, even the tightly-held inner shell electrons, which do not transfer when you shock someone by scuffing your feet on the rug. Dissociation, especially of diatomic gases such as O2 and N2, the major components of the atmosphere, requires immense amounts of energy. N2, for example, dissociates around 9000K (~16,000 deg F). For comparison, graphite vaporizes at about 6000K (~10,000 deg F).
Static can be a huge problem in pipes that move large amounts of non-polar fluids. Guess what most gasses in the upper atmosphere are? Non-polar fluids. So, there is your ionized high velocity, high temperature gas. Plasma.
I don't know alot about the shuttle's design, but I'd guess that if you talked with some NASA aerospace engineers they'd confirm this phenomenon. It's got to be a factor with all very fast aircraft.
Static charge is not plasma. Plasma requires complete ionization, and static doesn't even come close.
Static is not a problem insofar as flight mechanics are concerned. It may be a factor for avionics, as much as it is for any electrical system, but that is outside my area of experience.
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
The likelihood of getting another shuttle prepped in time was almost nill
Actually the shuttle for the next mission was already at the pad and mostly prepped, the launch date was about a month away.
Step up the prep rate for that launch and put Columbia into survival mode (minimal power use, ration the consumables, etc) and they might have done it -- assuming they'd realized the problem right after launch rather than after a week in orbit squandering supplies.
-- Alastair
It's true, exploring space is dangerous and lives will be lost.
The real tragedy is using this as an excuse to keep flying the shuttle and killing more astronauts. The US needs to develop a new vehicle ASAP. NASA needs to step up to the plate, admit that the shuttle is too unsafe to fly as is and too old to reengineer, and get the money to develop its replacement on a fast track. A number of opportunities to develop a replacement and retire the shuttle were wasted before the loss of Columbia. NASA is unwilling to risk ending the shuttle program, their most prominent icon, and their fixation on it blinds them to other possibilities. There are ways to keep the ISS operating and astronauts flying without ever launching another shuttle. NASA just doesn't have the political will to pursue them.
The "studies" of in-flight repair are hideous examples of a cheap hack gone too far. It should be a joke. Who would ever voluntarily go through re-entry in a shuttle with a hand-patched wing?
Why won't NASA just admit that the shuttle is a first-generation vehicle and cannot be "fixed"? Why doesn't NASA recognize that Soyuz, and Apollo for that matter, prove that space flight can be much safer than the shuttle? When was the American way ever to throw people's lives away when there was an alternative?
The shuttle is just a piece of hardware. It has killed fourteen people. Walk away from it. Put the remaining three orbiters in museums. Move on.
1. Of the two, only Marie Curie died from causes of radiation exposure. Pierre got run over by a vehicle, but would have probably met the same fate.
2. Clarence Dally was Thomas Edison's assistance with Xrays. Here's a link.
This is not my sig.
For a system designed with virtually no abort capability it is interesting that that the crew compartment survived intact immediately after both shuttle disasters. Perhaps if the compartment designed to be detached in the extreme aerodynamic and thermal environment it could have slowed to subsonic speed and have been recoverable by parachute. B-1B bombers have a similar recovery system, though they do not fly in as extreme an environment.
an ill wind that blows no good
Keep in mind that the shuttle designs are pushing 30 years old.
The thing that amazes me is the 1969 moon mission. Ever see the kind of equipment those guys had back then? Think about what kinds of computing power they had with them. Your car has more computing power than the Apollo mission modules.
Ask yourself this: Would you volunteer for a moon mission using the same equipment as they did in '69? From today's perspective, it'd be suicide! And yet, back then, that was the state of the art, and people did it. Amazing.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Right, which means you need two rockets. One facing forward slowing you down, they already have that (for re-entry, though I'm not sure if it is good enough for this task). It just needs more fuel than they currently carry with them. I doupt it is significant alone, but still quite a bit more, which means loss of payload capacity.
The second rocket is very tricky though. It needs to be powerful enough to keep them above the atmosphere, and slowly get more powerful as forward speed (orbit) slowed. This will need a lot of fuel, more than they carry with them.
As a kid I played several different "lunar landers", and they all had one thing in common: either you wouldn't use your rocket enough, and crash going too fast; or you would use it too much and crash because you ran out of fuel before you hit the ground. It takes a lot of fuel to power a rocket. I don't know if they can get that much fuel in space. Must less do useful science once they arrive. It would for sure cut down the payload of the shuttle. I suspect it could be done for a 2 person crew shuttle with no science mission.
At the end of the day they knew the risks, and they took them...
Indeed, and I respect them as well. Screw Star Trek, these are the true explorers, and I hope their curiosity and wonderment lives on as an example for the rest of humanity.
But, with that being said, why don't we care about the soldiers, peace keepers, missionaries, etc. that die every day, in countries all over the world, trying to help? Just because they're not going on a relatively routine mission into a place with no atmosphere doesn't make their jobs any less important, nor does this mean they don't deserve our respect for their sacrifice.
Not to take anything away from the crew of the Columbia, but I don't agree with ignoring the less "interesting" (in the scientific research sense of the word) sacrifices.
But those that do amazing things tend to be more focused on people than those that do more mundane, or in some cases, less enviable tasks.
One of the astronauts, Dr. Kalpana Chawla, was an alum of my school. Chawla Hall is a $20 million dorm on campus that is nearing completion. I remember a story in the school newspaper that her husband was not happy with the dedication service when construction began. Everyone tried to make it out to be a deep, spiritual event and that is not how she would have wanted it. She was not a religious person at all, and her husband felt that the religious subversion was completely inappropriate. He even said she would have walked away from the service had she been there.
I have found there are just two ways to go.
It all comes down to livin' fast or dyin' slow. -REK, Jr.
Yes but you forget that the Russians have a pile of those ole good disposable and automated Progress resuply ships for the ISS in the pipeline and could have kicked some of those the way of the shuttle floating in wait of rescue since the shuttle would be easier to reach then the ISS those ships are meant for. Hell, they might even have some of those Soyuz ships that could have been launched since they are made on an assembly line and there are always some in varying stages of completion around. Speaking of which there is a 3-seater Soyuz parked at the ISS that might have been capable of allowing 3 people from the shuttle to board it and land in it since it is probably capable of dis-engaging and lowering its orbit to match the shuttle which also had some amount of fuel to manouver and was fully operational. Granted, all very complicated/risky manouvers and all that jazz but it beats what happened. If there is a will there is a way. Manageriots not listening to engineers who knew this shit would happen is what killed those astronauts. Not to mention manageriots with a chip on their shoulder and their "pride" to protect.
I know much of it is copyrighted by various parties but an event like this deserves to be properly documented online.
Bleh!
Essentially this is a myth circulated by some NASA management apologists.
The term ``plasma'' is often stretched and abused by the low-temperature community. It is sometimes used to refer to a gas that consists only of ions, or only of electrons, even though the term was originally meant to describe charge-neutral clouds. Some Bose-Einstein condensates consist mainly of ions, since the electromagnetic field can then be used to confine them (so they don't hit the floor of the vacuum chamber that holds them). Colloquially, these clouds of cool ions are often referred to as plasma even though free electrons would rapidly neutralize the ions. Likewise, other physicists have captured clouds of electrons (which are fermions and hence can't directly form a bose-einstein condensate, absent some sort of pairing mechanism) and referred to them as a "pure-electron plasma" despite the fact that the cloud is clearly not charge-neutral.
...could they have hung out at the ISS and waited for NASA to send up a rescue craft?
No. Columbia was the oldest orbiter, and even though it had been refit and upgraded in many ways, it still had it's original airframe. Columbia was the heaviest of the orbiters, and unable to achieve the high orbit of the ISS. It was the only shuttle unable to make flights to the space station.
Even IF Columbia were able to achieve the altitude needed for docking, it was in an orbit that would take it nowhere near ISS. And IF it had been able to make it to ISS, Columbia did not have the docking module needed to dock to ISS. Without the docking module, the crew would need to EVA to get to ISS. Columbia did not have the spacesuits needed for this.
Columbia's ONLY option would be to wait for Atlantis, and Atlantis would have to be preped for launch in such a hurry that it's crew would be at extreme risk.
Columbia should have been retired a long time ago. We should have been using a 2nd gen shuttle by now. It may be sad to think that the shuttle fleet is to be retired with NASA's Mars goals, but in truth it was time.
I'm a big fan of the Space program, but NASA's claims that the shuttle fleet was designed to fly for 50 years should fail anybody's smell test. We don't use school buses for 50 years. Are we supposed to believe that they accounted for 50 years of metal fatigue when designing the shuttle fleet?
After Challenger NASA placed the odds for loss of a shuttle at 1 in 100. Those are risky odds. You wouldn't fly on an airplane with those odds.
The Shuttles never made the price of lauching satelites cheaper (it's primary goal) and it never made the turnaround cycle shorter than disposable launch systems.
It's time for NASA to get out of the trucking business and back to science.
I spent a few hours pouring over the CAIB report which contains a lot of very clear and sound details about how they found out what went wrong.
It's worth taking a look at, as it gave a lot of insight into how they used the recovered parts to determine exactly what happened. The graphs that show where each tile fell on the ground makes it very clear where the problem started. The sensor timelines also give clues about how the fire spread inside the wing. Internal emails are included to show how the problem was acknowledged but played down, and how many missed opportunities there were to have discovered the problem while still in space.
It's definitely worth downloading and at browsing through if you have any interest at all in the space program.
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What you are describing is a supercritical fluid (A fluid or gas beyond the critical point pressure on its phase diagram). While superciritcal fluids have funky properties that don't seem to match gases or liquids, they are not plasmas. They are something else entriely. Google for it and you may be able to find some extra info
- Sig
Test it with this sim to see if you can do it, or how much fuel it takes and if you can survive.
i t. html
http://www.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/~martins/orbit/orb
You can make your own space ships etc..
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
(You may argue against that, but have *you* worked out a way to end hunger, to end want, to wave back the forces of nature? No, you haven't. And nor has anyone else. But people *have* worked out how to send people into space - to other worlds, even - and bring them back safely. But yet...)
People dying in the most complex piece of technology ever created, exploring the most dangerous environment known, when they have the backing of the greatest concentration of human brainpower on the planet, and it *could* have been prevented if the bureaucrats hadn't ignored the engineers and scientists... that depresses me. That tells me everything I don't want to hear about humanity. That tells me the Dream - of accomplishing the impossible, of pushing the boundaries, of going beyond mundane everyday existance and achieving what conventional wisdom believes cannot be done - is dead. After reading the Atlantic article, to find that fucking PowerPoint slides helped contribute to the destruction of the Columbia and the death of the astonauts when there was a chance they could have been saved... Jesus Christ!
It's not like I don't feel sorry if I hear that people have died somewhere. It's just that I feel more sorry if they die in space. I can't explain it, but the idea of space travel has always stirred powerful feelings in me... and to have them shattered by what after investigation turn out to be the most stupid of reasons (metric/imperial confusion, slightly too low temperatures at launch, a piece of foam I could hold in my hands) really hits me hard.
Hell, I was depressed all Christmas Day after learning that Beagle 2 had basically cratered. Maybe you might think my priorities are wrong if I care about the fate of a machine, but it's not just the hardware - it's the hopes of all the people who worked to create it, and hoped to discover something new about the universe, being shattered.
(Plus I want to get on good terms early on with our new robot overlords...)
You must think in Russian.
...but, honestly, if there's a cooler way to die than at 200,000 feet above the surface of the planet, going 18 times the speed of sound in the world's most expensive and high-tech airplane, wearing a day-glow orange jumpsuit that says McCool on it, I'd really like to know.
"We never lost a Saturn V, but it was only used for 13 launches," Your point is right on; the shuttle's safety record is spectacular, but didn't NASA lose the crew of a Saturn V when they were doing a "plugs out" test during Apollo 1 testing? They filled the crew compartment with pure oxygen and the astronauts were incinerated on the pad. If you take that data into account, the shuttle's record looks even better (1:13 v. 2:113)
10 Bits= $.25
100 Bits= $.50
110 Bits= $.75
1000 Bits= 1 byte
Then why not compare with Soyuz? Or Gemini/Apollo/Soyuz combined? The last fatal Soyuz accident happened in 1971. More than a hundred launches since, no fatalities or injuries. There *were* two accidents in which the escape system saved the crew: Soyuz 18-1 (1975 -- in-flight failure) und Soyuz T-8 (1983 -- rocket exploded on the pad). Both these accidents would have been pretty much "unsurvivable" had they happened with the Shuttle.
The Shuttle is inherently less safe than Soyuz/Apollo designs. You have lots of completely useless structures like wings which only add complexity. You only have a few airports to land on in case of emergency, instead of, say, the whole ocean. There is no escape system like Soyuz's or Apollo's. The crew compartment is not mounted on top of the rocket, but strapped to the side of it, which means that in case of any serious failure of the rocket, you're pretty much doomed, where on Soyuz or Apollo you would have activated the escape system. And remember -- with the capsule mounted on top, foam can fall off the rocket all it wants -- it can't do any harm.
Columbia was capable of making ISS orbit. However to do so it had to tbe the goal from launch. And more importantly in the case of sts-107 the payload would have to have been severly lessend. In the configuration for 107 Columbia was incapable of making ISS orbit.
Even had it been launched as light as possible it could not have altered its orbit enough from shuttles nominal orbit to match ISS orbit & altitude. The OMS system simply does not have enough delta V capacity for such drastic changes in orbit. thus such plans suggested by some like jettisoning the space hab and thus the large protion of its payload weight on orbit would have been of no avail. However the lower weight upon re-entry may or may not have made a difference in the ability of the damaged wing to survive re-entry.. the question is would such a difference have been significant enough.
The two most promissing prospects for resuce of Columbia where
1) Going to minimum survival rations and atmosphere management. Launch Atlantis on an accelerated time scale. It was already slated for launch in about a month, Figure with around the clock work the time to launch could have been brought to a third with no loss of man hours ( assuming its prep work was only taking one shift of work a day ). That in addition to cutting some checks like its current payload complement being pulled for rescue gear and it could likely have been ready to launch in relatively short order. Easily withen the range of a stretched life support regimen aboard Columbia.
Concerns. Rushing a launch prep process that just put a critically wounded bird in orbit. The foam strikes were known and now that you decide to rush Atlantis launch you also know it could cause critical damage. Thus in deciding the situation is grave enough to launch Atlantis for rescue you know the threat of foam debris has been under estimated to date and Atlantis faces the exact same elevated risk.
Assumptions. You have managed to determine beyond a doubt Columbia cannot survive re-entry and that a rescue is the ONLY option. Again this assumption goes hand in hand with understanding the go to launch Atlantis will incur the same as yet under estimated risk of crippling Atlantis and thus stranding to birds in orbit with Two crews.
2) Repair. Ideas ranged from palcing all excess metal tools and bric a brac scavanged from the Mid deck and space hab into the breach in hopes of delaying the inevitable burn through presented by a carbon carbon panel breach. Second filling the breach with water which freezes into ice for similar purpose or some combination of the two posibilities.. IE all the metal then frozen into place by water.
Concerns. Requires EVA to the very un EVA friedly underwing area of the shuttle without the use of the 'Jet Pack' or Canada arm. If a sufficient teather was available the threat of a EVA floating away would have been minimal but such reveory would be exhausting and time consuming.
Secondly there was some debate over whether placing material in the breach would make it more survivable or less surviveable during re-entry... IE may have just created molten slag that led to a quicker decintigration of the wing.
Assumptions. Again you have to determin beyond doubt the orbiter is breached to a sufficient degree to warrent a very dangerous EVA. Granted its a given if you know the danger exists. Hindsight tells us it did but that does not change the fact it was not known at the time. Perhaps Military assets could have sufficiently resolved the wing to determin the leading edge was breached.. perhaps not. We will not know until the military releases the resolving capability of its assests in regards to objects in LEO or when Atlantis Returns to flight and such capabilities are put to the test. Off hand I have heard rumors and old hands tales that the capacity would have been more than capable.
Personal Conclusions.
I would have sent Atlantis. The foam strike was almost literally a 1-100 crap shoot. Perhaps you draw the same c
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
I'm acquainted with plasma, the ionized(electrically conductive) gas, and I've always wondered why they don't use magnetic fields to help steer the plasma away from the critical areas, ie. leading edge of the wings and nose. What would it take to generate such a field?
I can understand if there is a lot of power required, but couldn't some of it be taken from the supersonic plasma/airstream in some way, perhaps through MHD(MagnetoHydroDynamically)? In this way you would have a self balancing system, as the ship goes deeper into the atmosphere, where it's hotter, more power would be generated, and thus the field strength could increase?
I'm not a plasma physicist, but there would seem to be some merit in such an idea for re-entry craft such as the shuttle. Anybody of the appropriate technical persuasion have any comments about such an idea?
In memorium.
The scariest scenario was to use another shuttle without proper preparation. Such a mission would have a significant chance of failure, and such a failure would involve the loss of additional life. Probably any crew would have willing to take that risk, but would NASA allow such a mission?
In the end, there is no way to know if anything would have been different. Would we have risked another set of lives on the off chance we can save everyone? If we managed to get the Columbia crew to a capsule and the capsule failed, wouldn't we still be having this second guessing conversation?
As has been pointed out, exploration is risky. If we are going into space more lives will be lost, perhaps without the neat resolutions we have been blessed with thus far.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Yep, you're exactly right on how to change inclination. If you imagine your orbit as a plane, an out-of-plane burn causes your inclination to change. However, these burns are not efficient since you're also fighting angular momentum. Getting a little bit back on topic, in order to reduce heating loads and/or move the center of mass for re-entry, the space shuttle often will dump extra propellant. The best way to do this with minimum effect on the orbit geometry: you guessed it - an out-of-plane burn.
Soyuz rescue isn't a bad idea, but you'd be better off launching a fresh one as opposed to trying to undock from the station (which, on top of the propellant problem, you're also violating a flight rule for the station by leaving that crew without an escape vehicle). But the problem with launching a fresh Soyuz, assuming one could be scrambled quick enough, is that the Cosmodrome is at 51.6 deg N latitude. Due to that physical location, your orbital inclinations are restricted to 51.6 deg or higher (unless you waste fuel flying to 39 deg N then east) -- so you can't reach the 39 deg orbit that the shuttle is currently parked in. Did that make sense?
Is the unmaned probes they had back then. The viking landers used a more accident prone method of landing than did the most recent rovers. More over they were bigger and heavier. On top of that, they landed using ancient computers with miniscule amounts of power. It's a maricle they landed at all.
I understand. But I think people in general have been lulled into thinking that space flight is routine. We are just now developing a method for an on-orbit tile repair, so even that wasn't really possible at the time.
In my opinion, best case scenario, you use spy satellites to take images of the left wing leading edge and belly on flight day 2. Upon finding damage, you decide the next day to attempt to scramble a shuttle with a crew of 2 (we can bring 9 back). I believe the estimation was that we could get a shuttle up in 10 days, but you're running a huge risk by forgoing the normal safety checks required before flight. Mission control would have the extra stress of flying simultaneous shuttle missions - never been done before. You have the added risk of multiple space walks required to transfer crews (don't be lead to believe that these are a walk in the park either). And to top it all off, you run the risk of losing your rescue vehicle to boot. Would it be the right thing to do? Probably. Gotta wonder what the outcry would be if you lost 2 vehicles and 9 people!!
You mention that Soyuz was at a higher orbit, which means more energy. But that doesn't mean we can "coast" to a lower orbit at a different inclination - any change in your orbital geometry would have to come from a burn of some sort.
Future shuttle flights will probably be restricted to ISS inclinations, even if it's strictly a science mission as opposed to an ISS assembly mission, to save the possibility to dock and hang out if an emergency is encountered.
I believe the article contains a slight inaccuracy in that the RCC panels were actually made to take the heat and force of a turbulent flow.
Remember, back in the 1970's when the shuttles were designed, Computational Fluid Dynamics didn't really exist and they didn't have the techniques or the brute force computational power to solve the Navier-Stokes equations to see if it was going to be a turbulent flow or a laminar flow. So as a result the RCC panels are actually about two times as thick as they need to be.
So, basically the other panels were handling the temperature and aerodynamic loads just fine, it was the stream of super heated gas that got inside the wing that did all the damage. In fact if you read the CAIB report it says that the shuttle could have survived if the RCC panels had not been breached and instead had only been damaged. It was the breach that caused all the problems, not the rough surface nor the turbulent flow.
I know this because when the Columbia accident occurred my incompressible aerodynamics professor pulled out copies of some of the actual analysis of the shuttle from back in the '70's. They were pretty cool to look at and were using some of the same techniques we were learning.
Anyway, thats just my slight nit pick. On the whole it was a very moving article.
"We Don't Need No Truthless Heros!" - Project 86
In a heartbeat, no hesitation whatsoever. To be that significant a part of the greatest endeavor mankind has ever achieved was what kept me going through my aerospace degree. The short time I spent at NASA (before budget cutbacks caused the first NASA layoffs ever) is still the most memorable and amazing part of my life. I am saddened by the bean-counters and professional managers that seem to have sucked the life and spirit of adventure out of the NASA culture that I knew. While I was there the feeling that everyone was on the edge (or sometimes in the middle of) the most amazing discoveries was palpable. The conversations overheard or participated in in the lunchroom were so far outside of "normal" life that sometimes I had trouble re-adjusting to dealing with "normal" people and conversation.
After all this time I still miss it.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
The fact is that a moon mission today is impossible despite the rantings of the non-elected, intellectually challenged, presidential impostor, because the software and other complexity issues would make it cost far too much, take far too long, and probably suffer a BSOD.....
Another factor to consider is that in those days the semiconductor industry did support aerospace, which basically they do not nowadays, (it would be less than 0.2% of the total industry output) there are hardly any components fully screened as part of the manufacturing process for example. The surface mount packaging we have to use today has many reliability problems in adverse environments, particularly in coping with temperature cycling, and the packages are not even moisture-proof (not that it matters in space, but it does on the ground!). It would be impossible today to duplicate the reliability of an Apollo computer. BTW I currently work as a Reliability Analyst in a safety-critical industry, so I might know a little bit about the subject.
I have an article in front of me which suggests that the failure rate of the Apollo Guidance Computer was less than 10 in a billion hours, that equates to about the same as one small to medium chip or 5 to 10 best-quality transistors nowadays.
Why? Blame the consumer industry, PCs and mobile phones, areas where solid-state electronics is of no vital importance, but which dominate the semiconductor market. In all fairness, it is true to say that the quality of a normal commercial quality components has improved greatly over the years, but this can rarely be proved, and there is simply no way of getting the extreme reliability rtequired for manned missions, unless by using a much greater degree of redundancy, and therefore more complexity, than used to be the case.
Not only that, but with the increase in bloat in complex systems, overall software reliability is declining, hastened by "unsafe" languages like C++, and the tendency to use "junk" operating systems (we all know which, it has been debated here many times...) in critical applications.
This generation is making backward progress, and with the rise in the use of cannabis and other mind-damaging drugs as a direct result of corrupt government policy, it will soon be impossible to get sufficient fully sane people to undertake a major project anyway.