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Foam Gluing Flaw Killed Columbia Astronauts
Freshly Exhumed writes "Now it can be told: NASA's Columbia Accident Investigation Board has blamed the faulty application of insulating foam for the loss of the Columbia orbiter. From the chief engineer for the external tanks project: '...NASA concluded after extensive testing that the process of applying some sections of foam by hand with spray guns was at fault.' And further: 'It was not the fault of the guys on the floor; they were just doing the process we gave them'."
Actually, I took that as the guys who designed the process actually taking responsibility, rather than shifting it to the poor techs who were doing the gluing. I agree that PC sucks, but this didn't look like an example of it.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Let's remember the heroes who died that day. I think it's very sad something like a little glue can cost lives in the blink of an eye. What a horrible mistake. There is an interesting article on the safety upgrades for the spring 2005 launch.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
No... if I give you instructions on how to build a house and you build it EXACTLY to my specifications, following my instructions perfectly, who's to blame if it sucks? Me or you? Me. They're saying that it's not the fault of the guys who work on the floor, as they were just doing what they were told to do. Unfortunately, the method that they were told to use has now been discovered to be faulty.
I'm of so many minds about this. Yes, we needed to know in order to fix this process. I'm glad no one tried to pass the buck. I'm disappointed that it took so long to figure this out.
I hope that we can use this as evidence the next time someone says, "Oh please, somebody thinkg of the children.. ehrm.. astronauts!" We know know what caused the problem, and we can avoid it in the future.
On the other hand, I'm already looking forward to the privatization os space, because I think the days of NASA are declining. For as great an agency as it is, it's got a terrible public opinionation...
Sixty percent of the time? I don't pretend to be an expert, but that number seems a bit high, especially when this can cause such damage. Can anyone shed some more light on the situation here?
Luck basically. 60% of launches lost foam, and the foam has a miniscule chance of causing damage
It might hit at an acute angle and bounce off easily. the foam might not hit the orbiter at all. The foam might be tiny tiny pieces.
It's because of this experience of the foam falling off so often and not causing damage that the idea foam could be to blame was originally discounted. It was just too outrageous - but when foam was actually tested on the most dangerous possibly spot, the leading edge of a wing or right into the flat of the nose, then the damage became obvious.
It's like the experience of riding a bicycle, and saying being hit by bugs isn't dangerous - and 99% of the time it's not, until you happen to get a rather sharp angry beetle right in your eye. Blinded and in pain riding along at 30kph and you're suddenly on the pavement.
They will just launch another investigation into how this procedure was come up with to glue these tiles on.
They will find out that some budgetary advisory panel recommended these procedures against the wishes of some NASA engineer in order to save a buck.
Eventually this will fall out of the public eye (as most things usually do). In the end, no action will be taken against the people responsible for this horrible tradgedy. In fact, the same contractor will probably be hired again to advise them for the next-gen shuttles or whatever they come up with.
Wash, Rinse, Repeat is not the standard I want when the lives of some of the best and brightest people this world has to offer is hanging in the balance.
[/rant]
The preceding message was based on actual events. Only the names, locations and events have been changed.
The Apollo heatshield was entierly different stuff. And accident on reentrance is far more likely to be fatal than something like an airleak in a spaceship with multiple compartiments.
Murderers? schoolyard bullys? I hate PC too, but I don't see how your example applies here.
If you have a job at NASA, I would guess that the procedurs put in place to perform a task such as gluing foam to the shuttle are followed exactly how you were trained to do it.
I think the engineer(s) that developed the process of sticking foam to the shuttle should be looked at before those that do what they were instructed to do by the engineers..
Perhaps budget constraints didn't allow them to thoroughly test their design is to blame.
I think it is a horrible accident, a very hard lesson learned. This is rocket science, it is not easy and accidents do happen. The most important thing to get out of these accidents is, did we learn our lesson? And have all measures been taken to prevent it from ever happening again?
This is not to say that investigations looking for negligence are unwarrented. If true negligence is discovered then I will give the murderer analogy you posted a lot more consideration.
It is a terrible tragedy, yes. They're not heroes. Enough of calling anyone who dies in a well publicized disaster a hero.
liquid hydrogen gets everywhere. It's molecules are really small and seep through almost everything (and can diffuse readily through "solids" like sheet steel)
"It was not the fault of the guys on the floor; they were just doing the process we gave them," Otte said. "I agree with the (accident investigation board) that we did not have a real understanding of the process. Our process for putting foam on was giving us a product different than what we certified."
Kudos to Neil Otte for coming up like this.
It's amazing how something like the method of gluing on insulation tiles can cause a shuttle to blow up, yet for all the serious damage done to Apollo 13 they still managed to get back alive.
The shuttle managed to do its whole program, until it went back into the atmosphere, as if there was nothing wrong.
The Apollo 13 managed to fly to the moon and back, with a lot of luck and despite all the odds.
The shuttle was damaged into the heatshield.
The Apollo 13 was not damaged in the re-entry capsule.
Draw your own conclusions about who was successful and who was lucky.
bash$
Actually, I believe there was some damage to the heat shield... The difference is it was more nearly an ideal shape (Raindrop) and so therefore had less stress on it. It was also a bonded epoxy-like ceramic material, so it was less prone to seperation.
I understand that people want a reusable craft, but the bottom line is, until truly decent materials are invented that do not wear under re-entry, a disposable capsule is a better design... NASA keeps trying to rehash airflight-style vehicles, but that's like using steam engines to create personal transportation...
It's funny how NASA views disposable rockets as archaic, when, physics clearly favors a rocket design, and the versitillity of a rocket design is by far better than the shuttle... For instance, a man-rated rocket can also do double duty as an unmanned high tonnage paload rocket (Skylab).
The only practical thing the shuttle can do that no other craft can currently do is rescue damaged satelites and return them to earth safely... But with cheaper rockets, why bother... A 600 million dollar shuttle launch to save a 150 million satelite (then sell it to the Chineese) seems impractical. Sure, there's landing on a runway, but it puts the whole nation under its flightpath, and its too much risk... people on the ground are no less important than the ones flying space vehicles, and there are a whole lot more of them down here than up there... Just think if the shuttle had crashed into a strip mall instead of a field...
The shuttle can scarcely be called reusable, with that big tank burning up each time either, so I say stop trying to make a prop plane when the jet engine has arrived! Build a rocket for now, pump ten percent of the yearly budget (not to mention savings) into materials design, and when decent materials come out, then one can decide whether its worth challenging nature again.
AAnyways... My 2 bits.
Apollo 13 had one advantage: it may have been severely damaged, but IIRC none of the damage was to the reentry vehicle.
True. The Command Module wasn't damaged. However, the loss of electricity and oxygen in the Service Module following the explosion did deplete the batteries and reserve oxygen tank in the CM, and these supplies had to be replenished from the Lunar Module. What saved the Apollo 13 crew was the fact that they had an second independent spaceship. Had the SM oxygen tank explosion occurred on Apollo 8, where there was no LM, the astronauts wouldn't have survived.
*rotten and corrupt it certainly is, but (I think) it's still better than the rest -- we'll see in November if we can change course or remain headed for the pit.
And those shuttle crews always knew that. The shuttle couldn't somehow 'magicly' be safer to launch and use than unmanned spacecrafts.
Now wait just a minute. Is spaceflight dangerous? Yes, of course. But did it have to be THAT dangerous? NO!
We're not talking magic, just some basic common sense. NASA, before the time of the accident, was an even more bureaucratic mess than it is now. Thousands of safety waivers were signed off nearly every mission. Engineers were "pressured" not to talk to management about safety concerns, and to top it all off, the one SURE thing that could have prevented the accident (satellite photos from the DoD), were cancelled at the last minute because some douche bag in management though it might "appear like" incompetence.
I mean, it's nice to know the TECHNICAL reasons for what caused the shuttle failure, but let's not lose sight of the unforgivable bureaucratic confusion that allowed an understandable mistake to go unnoticed and uncorrected. How many more lives and billions of dollars do we have to waste before we stop blaming "foam gluing" or English standard units and address the real root of the problem?
-Grym
The thing that doomed the shuttle was not the glue process. It was the way the organisation reacted to the clue that something was wrong. There were many people pushing for a pro-active inpsection of the shuttle, either by camera or EVA and the "suits" obstructed it.
Let's suppose it wasn't a chunk of foam that hit the wing but some unlucky bird. Nothing would have changed - the film would show "something" hitting the wing and all the decisions form that point would be made the same way. Would we then be having an inquiry that decided the bird scaring process was flawed?
The issue is that something unexpected happened and the process for dealing with that went wrong. That needs fixing, not the glue..
YMMV
I know that, in hindsight, it is easy to find flaws.
Which I guess is the point. The design of these systems are intended to minimize the possibility of failure. It is easy for us to armchair analyze the decisions involved and say that someone didn't do their homework, and ignore the thousands of anticipated disasters that were accounted for and prevented.
Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to belittle the Russian space effort, they are without a doubt the leaders in the areas of heavy lift and long duration manned space flight - but predicting a crash and abandoning a space vehicle as too expensive are not the best examples of Russian space dominance.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
The Russians still have the best technology in space.
...their [space] tech to the Chinese, then Americans will come out screaming
That is a broad statement, Russian and U.S. spacecraft where designed for different purposes. Each type of spacecraft has it's own advantages/disadvantages. For example, the shuttle can release, dock, and bring back satellites in it's docking bay. Also, what about GPS, US Satellite imaging, Mars rovers, etc?
Can't disagree with you there. We are not on the greatest terms with China, but the US governent would probably complain about any country selling significant technology to China.
heaviest and biggest flying aircraft in the world. Please google for the Antonov-225
The U.S. has found that using several smaller cargo aircraft such as the C-130 Herc is typically more efficient for military use. The Herc uses a smaller runway, requires less maintenance, and is a smaller target for those nasty SAMs. In this case, bigger does not mean better. Don't get me wrong, a big aircraft is cool, but how practical is it?
The individuals on board Flight 93 who counter-attacked to try and regain control of the plane are heros. They knew they were going to die regardless, yet they had the self control and motivation to act.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
> Is it not the case that they changed the formulation of the foam in an attempt to be "environmentally friendly"?
Could be...
> And that the foam did not have these problems when they used the original, non-green formula?
All that means is that they didn't test the new foam correctly.
> Political correctness is going to kill this country. It already killed those astronauts.
No, people not doing their job properly can be blamed for both.
> If it is not necessary, you are not even allowed to point at a rocket, let alone touch it. When I went to Russia for my first Russian training, I saw engineers hammering away at their rockets and boosters.
You are actually pointing out at the very core of what makes the Russian space project better than the Western (Yes, NASA as well as ESA): Russian equipment is made with and also using, the lowest technology that gets the job done. Thus it is so simple that it can hardly fail, and if there is a problem you can fix it yourself with a hammer and a spanner.
In the West there has been a plague of techno fetishism that adds more and more tech for very little gain. Tried fixing a modern car yourself? See what I mean?
> They're heroes because, like all astronauts, they put their lives on the line for the betterment of mankind.
No. They did their duty. A hero, on the other hand, is someone who rises to the occation, steps forward at the time of crisis and serves above and beyond the call of duty.
Please do not dilute the concept of heroism.
...with the people who made the decision that they didn't need to inspect the orbiter using satellites before having it return. If the extent of the damage had been properly evaluated, perhaps we'd still have seven brave talanted people and one very expensive piece of equipment.
It's good to know what caused the problems with the insulation in the first place, but unless there are procedures in place that insure that the orbiter is properly inspected if there are problems during launch we'll see this happen again. The shuttles are incredibly complicated machines that are quickly reaching the end of their design life because of procrastination on designing replacements. We need to make sure that we take that into consideration when evaluating problems in the future.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
Good post, AC. The Russians also accepted long ago that space is dangerous and people are going to die. Of course they prefer to minimize the number of deaths and the loss of expensive equipment, but they don't make an impossible level of safety the primary principle behind their space program. (Especially when it really doesn't end up being all that much safer.)
Which is why NASA is paralyzed for ridiculous lengths of time when anything goes wrong, and why private space programs are likely to make much faster progress. Private companies do all sorts of dangerous stuff all the time, people sometimes die, equipment is lost, and life goes on. It's as safe as it can afford to be given the mission at hand and the demands of competition, and that's usually Good Enough. If you're willing to spend the money from public coffers a millitary space program (as the Soviet-era space program essentially was) would also be pretty efficient.
Lack of money:
I'm 100% with you.
Lack of facilities:
Maybe. After all they have a big money problem. They used to have some damn good facilities, they just have little money for maintenance.
Lack of know how:
Are you smoking crack?
It's the RUSSIANS we're talking about. They've had space stations in orbit since the seventies.
MIR itself was the best until ISS was orbited. And they sure had a lot of influence designing ISS.
Those guys run progress unmanned craft to ISS, as they have been doing for years. Have most endurance records and even the shuttle docking system was designed by russians(NASA bought it in the ninetees).
I
GPG 0x1B479C78
Correct. When they fly the shuttle back from its alternate landing location they have to avoid rain clouds because raindrop impacts really screw up the tiles. The heat resistent tiles are designed to withstand high temperatures, not impacts.
I think it addresses the point very well, which is that you don't know what you are talking about but do like to spout off on
Did you just learn that word or something? You seem to really like saying "sheer forces". It's still unclear why you think the forces of a wing moving through air are the same as those involved in an impact.
Yeah, they should have made use of the knowledge gained from all their other space shuttles. You are obviously a looney or a troll.
It couldn't possibly be because all the existing wings would melt during reentry, could it? No, of course not--it must be because they just didn't think of that. It's too bad they didn't solicit your input.