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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.
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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.
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.
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.
I think part of the problem is the expectation of people that space travel is more science than art, when this is not true. It requires more than crunching numbers, it requires a lot of guess work and estimation, as well as intuitive individuals to impliment the science in the safest way they know how.
Yes, the science makes it possible but there is no way to fully test theories until you put them into practice, thus there will always be significant risks with space travel. I think most people know this, and the crews that actually take the risks certainly do.
Space travel is similar to travel by submarine, being submersed in an atmosphere that is hostile and will kill you if you are exposed to it, where you are totally dependent on what you have on board to deal with any situation. With all the experience and science we have regarding submarines, we still have accidents and should expect no less with space travel, where you can't simply surface. There simply is not, and never will be, a 100% solution to guarantee total safety for either.
This is part of the reason I still awestruck by those who are willing to take this extreme risk.
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It is a terrible tragedy, yes. They're not heroes. Enough of calling anyone who dies in a well publicized disaster a hero.
"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.
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.
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
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?
> 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?
...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
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