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Images of Endeavour's Damaged Tiles
Roland Piquepaille writes "Neptec Design Group, a Canadian company and a NASA prime contractor for 25 space missions, was kind enough to send me exclusive images of Endeavour's damaged tiles during its last take-off. So here are some of these pictures" The pictures are pretty amazing and make the urgency of this whole thing much more amazing.
On NPR this morning, I heard that NASA was actually debating whether or not to even address this, as they did not want to go to all the trouble and spoil the shuttle's schedule.
This sounded especially insane to me...if NASA loses another shuttle because of this same tile-damage problem, and because they couldn't be bothered to take the time to fix the problem when they could have, it will be the end of NASA.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Very good point. I remember back in the early 80's news reports of the shuttle coming back with 1/3rd of the tiles being gone due to faulty glue. Even when they didn't need to repalce the tiles so much, I'm sure they HAD to go over every inch with a fine tooth comb, and I'm sure that more than once they found some with holes from damage, either ice or micrometers. This whole "omg teh tiles have holes in them' thing is a reaction to the columbia disaster, and a way to show the media that 'yes, we are aware of the issue'.
I like the fact that our society is open enough that this information and this debate is public. There are many governments in this world today who would not allow this information to be released and would make the decision based on cloaked objectives and goals. The USA has its problems (e.g. the stupidity of Iraq) but it sets us apart that this is happening in the open. Nobody is going to get arrested for debating or questioning this intense and sensitive topic.
If they're typical tiles and they haven't drastically changed things from the demo they have down in Florida that I looked at 10 years ago, they're 3 or 4 inches on a side. The NPR story this morning said the gouge was 3" long.
It looks borderline to me. I think they've successfully landed with much bigger gouges or missing tiles in the past, but it probably depends on WHERE the gouge is. If it's in a flat part of the belly, it's probably not a problem. If it's near a leading edge, more of a problem.
Astronauts have balls of steel to begin with. Two sets. You're sitting, surrounded by just how much in explosive fuel? Blasted into one of the most uninhabitable climates for human survival. (Ranks up there with volcano caldera and bottom of ocean...) Then set on a 100 mile free fall course to the Earth, the same trip many meteors take, and burn up well before hitting the ground most of the time.
And yet I so want to do it for myself...
Blimey, he's done well for himself. All those /. links to his blog did some good.
... he'd be standing on top of a table right now screaming about something, NASA shuttle in space or not. He was a pretty intense kind of guy who could get away with standing on tables, soap boxes, and other tall things.
True. He was a passionate guy who cared about things like that. He also had startling insight and an annoying habit of being right most of the time.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
Did you even read what you linked to?
Limbaugh says "there's a theory going around" and after explaining it says "a lot of people are beginning to think that the banning of Freon actually caused the shuttle accident, the Columbia shuttle accident, two flights ago. And I'm inclined to believe it when I hear this." This was on August 3rd, according to media matters. At this point the NASA report had not been released yet--it wouldn't be fully released for months! There was nothing to lie about!
Can someone really "lie" when they say "there's a theory I'm inclined to believe" ?
But I suppose it's just much easier to hysterically claim that Rush Limbaugh both originated the theory AND lied about it that to actually read your own link though!
Don't try to explain physics to these dorks, they won't get it. Most of them consider /. the intellectual part of their day, right between belittling users and arguing if Batman could REALLY beat up Superman.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's more like the engineers got hamstrung by the Air Force and the beancounters. Original shuttle plans called for a fully-reuseable vehicle with a more robust thermal protection system. The beancounters promoted the half-disposable design we have now, claiming it would reduce costs, and contrived studies to show that it would be much more reliable than it actually turned out to be. They also screwed around with the budgeting, eventually causing even more cost overruns, delaying the development, and forcing compromises that made the vehicle less safe.
The Air Force wanted manned space capability, and offered to help pay for the development if they got some say in the design and were allowed use of the shuttles when built. The USAF insisted on a larger payload bay (60ft long, as opposed to NASA's 40ft plan), which obviously made the vehicle larger. They also wanted the ability to land at the launch site after a single polar orbit, requiring 1000+ miles of crossrange. This led to the heavier delta wing and higher reentry heating loads.
We wound up with a vehicle that was larger, more expensive, and less safe than we should have. The engineers did the best they could under the political mandates they were given.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
The problem with the shuttle is not any specific design decision it's the overall design goals which the "top-end engineers at NASA" had little to do with.
"The crucial factor in the size and shape of the Shuttle Orbiter was the requirement that it be able to accommodate the largest planned spy satellites, and have the cross-range recovery range to meet classified USAF mission's requirement for a one-around abort for a polar launch." The most obvious bad design decision was to send cargo up in a manned mission. Manned vehicles cost a lot more per pound sent to space than unmanned so mixing the two increases the cost of sending stuff to orbit with zero real gain. The other issue is the requirement for a polar orbit. (Think Russia) Getting people to space is hard but doable getting people to space and a polar orbit is a much harder task that is a waste of resources 99% of the time.
Second "Each Shuttle was designed for a projected lifespan of 100 launches or 10 years' operational life." However, Discovery was built in 1985 its last flight is scheduled for 2010.
If you want a cheep reusable rocket rebuild the shuttle with 5% its cargo capacity, a slow reentry, and skip the polar orbit concept and you get a much larger safety margin and a much less extreme operating environment and a lower cost per person to orbit.
Both of the deadly shuttle accidents are directly attributable to the side-by-side nature of the orbiter and the fuel tanks and SRB's. This design should have been discarded. If the shuttle were stacked vertically, these particular failures would have been impossible.
No weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men.-Ronald Reagan
Somehow I feel that NASA's (wo)manned missions are long dead. Nowadays they spend more money and time examining their own machinery than examining the space.
f-ed fo'sho!