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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'."
How about.....no.
It's like saying the guy knocking nails into the wood is at fault when they give him a badly designed nail. The DESIGN people are taking the blame. The guys on the floor don't do design.
Birds generally stick around pretty close to the ground. The overwhelming vast majority never venture more than 3000' AGL. The highest flying birds in North America are generally the migratory geese at around 10K feet, which is very impressive considering how lower the oxygen is up there and how much muscle power and metabolism the geese must burn to keep flying that high for long distances, and they're always flying in formation, the tremendous noise of the shuttle's engines will undoubtedly encourage them to fly away from the ship as fast as they can, and they'll have ample warning to make course corrections. The shuttle simply isn't yet going fast enough for a bird strike to do much damage at those very low altitudes where most birds are found near the ground, plus the sound at launch has got to be a huge deterrent to any birds in the immediate airspace above the launch site, the tremendous SPL has got to be extremely bad for their health and even their ability to fly too.
The sad part about this post is that it might inspire yet another conspiracy theorist, when the real question is how did NASA get put in this position in the first place.