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Columbia Disaster Anniversary
Jorkapp writes "One year ago today, seven astronauts perished in a horrible silver-white comet over Texas skies. Since then, life at the Johnson Space Center seems to have returned to normal. Still, memories of the doomed STS-107 mission can be found throughout the center. Space.com has a rather interesting editorial about NASA's past, present, and future with the Space Shuttle program. In the immediate future, returning the Shuttle fleet to flight is a key first step. Eventually, NASA plans to launch Constellation, a new Crew Exploration Vehicle designed to replace the shuttles." Jim Lovell has a few words to say.
They didn't. If the ET insulation had impacted the tiles, there would have been only minor damage (a weeks worth of repair time before the next flight was estimated).
The insulation didn't hit the tiles, it hit the RCC panels at the front of the wing. These are entirely different. They are big, tough, heavy elements which turn out to be unexpectedly brittle.
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Online at Space.Com
The Online Columbia Loss Faq, compiled through March 2003 much of which might be outdated, but good for lots of small details, and a sense of the history as it happened.
The Columbia Accident Investigation Board Website, due to become inactive on February 1st, 2004 (!)
People might want to download the final report while they can, dated October 2003, although It is also available on the Nasa Website here
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
sPh
It was both (not proving their case and not speaking up), but you're right that the blame lies not with the techies but with management. The engineers that did speak up were slapped down, which convinced the others that they should not speak up. (a lovely example of a "Chilling effect") A good summary of this all (which was posted in a response to the story on this a few days ago):
w ie sche.htm
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/11/lange
A friend of mine worked for a company that is a major subcontractor for NASA. Before he was laid off he had worked on the landers that just hit Mars.
One of his biggest complaints was that for every hour of actual engineering and fabrication he did, there was about TWO hours of procedure documentation he was forced to write before anythig he built was used. Yes, this makes sense for major components, but he had to document EVERYTHING he did, including the most minor one-shot test rig.
Just suporting the point.
s'wut i sed.
New Voyages has fan-created Star Trek episodes with all donations going to The Space Shuttle Children's Trust Fund
Please tell me you're not really that stupid.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
1. Not tiles. It was the RCC panel.
2. The flight crew was trained astronauts. The science crew were highly trained as well.
Nice troll, though, you got +1 Insightful.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
The reason that I suspected the foam was not just the relative velocity, it was how much ice would be around the foam. I don't know if all the ice would have been shed immediately, but foam plus ice would be a lot more damaging.
I remember getting up at oh-dark-thirty and driving out of town a ways to get past the excessive light pollution here in Las Vegas, to see my first shuttle reentry.. Recently I read where it looks like the shuttle was starting to break up as it passed over Nevada.. I remember watching it and thinking to myself.. 'gee! that sure looks like sparks coming off of it..' and having never seen a reentry before, I assumed all was well.. Which lasted until I got home, and heard the news... God bless the Columbia astronauts...
Few things can stand up to the umpteen-bumtillion degree heat and pressures of reentry. Even the RCC leading edges are only good for 2000 degrees C or so, its the fact that you have a cushion of relatively cool air separating them from the superheated plasma that makes it all work.
The NASA guys had a hard engineering problem to solve, with many physical and financial restraints. I'm suprised they managed to get the damn shuttles to do any serious work at all.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
It flabbergasts me when people insist that ISS is a failure because it hasn't accomplished anything when it isn't even finished being built!
If we were to compare ISS to Skylab, I'd say we were about 10 days into the Skylab II mission, and they hadn't accomplished much by then, too busy making repairs. But even on the original timeline, they'd have spent almost three weeks setting up and bringing the station online.
I apologize for the delay. The URL is http://www.initialized.org/etc/slashdot/. Cheers. :)
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And many others have heard that also, so many in fact that it qualifies as an urband legend.
It's not true however. They're still there. The problem is that you couldn't get the parts (sixties vintage) today, and the launch pads have been rebuilt. We've also learnt a thing or two since the sixties. Once you've resourced the parts and rebuilt the launch pads you might as well have started from scratch and gotten a better vehicle for it.
Stefan Axelsson