Posted on 02/04/2003 1:34:19 AM PST by bonesmccoy
In recent days the popular media has been focusing their attention on an impact event during the launch of STS-107. The impact of External Tank insulation and/or ice with the Orbiter during ascent was initially judged by NASA to be unlikely to cause loss of the vehicle. Obviously, loss of the integrity of the orbiter Thermal Protection System occured in some manner. When Freepers posted the reports of these impacts on the site, I initially discounted the hypothesis. Orbiters had sustained multiple impacts in the past. However, the size of the plume in the last photo gives me pause.
I'd like to offer to FR a few observations on the photos.
1. In this image an object approximately 2-3 feet appears to be between the orbiter and the ET.
2. In this image the object appears to have rotated relative to both the camera and the orbiter. The change in image luminosity could also be due to a change in reflected light from the object. Nevertheless, it suggests that the object is tumbling and nearing the orbiter's leading edge.
It occurs to me that one may be able to estimate the size of the object and make an educated guess regarding the possible mass of the object. Using the data in the video, one can calculate the relative velocity of the object to the orbiter wing. Creating a test scenario is then possible. One can manufacture a test article and fire ET insulation at the right velocity to evaluate impact damage on the test article.
OV-101's port wing could be used as a test stand with RCC and tile attached to mimic the OV-102 design.
The color of the object seems inconsistent with ET insulation. One can judge the ET color by looking at the ET in the still frame. The color of the object seems more consistent with ice or ice covered ET insulation. Even when accounting for variant color hue/saturation in the video, the object clearly has a different color characteristic from ET insulation. If it is ice laden insulation, the mass of the object would be significantly different from ET insulation alone. Since the velocity of the object is constant in a comparison equation, estimating the mass of the object becomes paramount to understanding the kinetic energy involved in the impact with the TPS.
3. In this image the debris impact creates a plume. My observation is that if the plume was composed primarily of ET insulation, the plume should have the color characteristics of ET insulation. This plume has a white color.
Unfortunately, ET insulation is orange/brown in color.
In addition, if the relative density of the ET insulation is known, one can quantify the colorimetric properties of the plume to disintegrating ET insulation upon impact.
Using the test article experiment model, engineers should fire at the same velocity an estimated mass of ET insulation (similar to the object seen in the still frame) at the test article. The plume should be measured colorimetrically. By comparing this experimental plume to the photographic evidence from the launch, one may be able to quantify the amount of ET insulation in the photograph above.
4. In this photo, the plume spreads from the aft of the orbiter's port wing. This plume does not appear to be the color of ET insulation. It appears to be white.
This white color could be the color of ice particles at high altitude.
On the other hand, the composition of TPS tiles under the orbiter wings is primarily a low-density silica.
In the photo above, you can see a cross section of orbiter TPS tile. The black color of the tile is merely a coating. The interior of the tile is a white, low-density, silica ceramic.
HOUSTON - The NASA official who ran shuttle management meetings during the fatal Columbia mission said Tuesday that she did not hear about the continuing worries of engineers concerning debris that had struck the shuttle.
In her first public statement, Linda Ham, chairwoman of the mission management team, defended NASA and its people with passion, and when she described her own experience, she became tearful. But her account also depicted a space agency in which internal communications broke down, whether because of failure of process or of courage.
``I was never alerted to the concerns that were expressed by the engineers working the issue, neither the severity, the potential severity some of them felt about the damage, nor the fact that they wanted the on-orbit image,'' she told reporters at a briefing in Houston.
She insisted that throughout the mission, managers ``were basing our decisions on the best information that we had at the time.'' Ultimately, she said, ``I don't believe anyone is at fault for this.''
NASA held the briefing on the same day that it released transcripts from the management team's meetings during Columbia's last flight. Those transcripts show that managers quickly embraced an optimistic analysis that suggested the foam insulation could not seriously damage the spacecraft and dismissed the issue.
In a crucial Jan. 24 meeting, Ham cut off a NASA engineering manager, Don McCormack, while he was presenting uncertainties and unknown risks from the piece of foam that struck the shuttle about 80 seconds into the launch. Ham repeatedly emphasized in the following discussion that the foam posed ``no safety of flight'' concern and ``no issue for this mission.''
``Nobody on this team believed that foam could hurt the orbiter, could hurt the RCC at all,'' said a person who has worked with the investigation, referring to the leading-edge panels of the wing which are made of a brittle composite, reinforced carbon-carbon, also known as RCC. ``They had one fundamentally flawed understanding: that foam couldn't harm RCC, and that colored everything else.''
Because of the conclusion that the foam posed no safety threat to the shuttle, officials decided not to pursue requests to have outside agencies try to get pictures of the shuttle using spy satellites or powerful ground-based telescopes -- which might have helped find the damage to the wing during the mission.
But Ham, despite being head of the mission management team, said she was never officially notified of these requests. In the briefing Tuesday, Ham said she had ``absolutely no reluctance to ask for outside assistance.''
She said she had heard informally about a request for getting images of the shuttle from other agencies, but when she spent the better part of a day asking within NASA and at the chief shuttle contractor, United Space Alliance, trying to discover who made the request, she found no one.
``It never came up again. Never. Not in a hallway, not in the mission management team,'' she said.
In fact, previously released NASA documents show that other agency officials canceled at least two requests for outside photography during the mission.
The new transcripts show a team that was not fully on guard: Despite NASA rules that the management team meet on a daily basis during missions, the group held only five meetings during the 16-day mission, taking off for the long weekend of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
The transcripts also show the shedding of the foam came up in meetings as an item of far lower priority than water leaks and temperature fluctuations aboard the shuttle. The subject does not come up at all on the first meeting the day after the launch, Jan. 17, which took place just before the foam strike had been observed on launch films.
At the next meeting, on Jan. 21, McCormack described the incident, saying, ``as everyone knows, we took a hit . . . somewhere on the left wing leading edge,'' and he said the impact was being studied for possible damage.
Ham then discussed the fact that a similar incident of foam shedding had occurred on a recent launch of the shuttle Atlantis and that no harm had resulted; ``the material properties and density of the foam wouldn't do any damage,'' she said.
In the briefing Tuesday, Ham said top managers had to rely on the assessments of others. ``I don't have the engineering expertise, nor do I have the tools, to do that kind of analysis,'' she said.
But to a NASA engineer who works closely with the mission management team, Ham's arguments sounded like an attempt to plead ignorance as a defense, which he called ``unbelievable.'' He said, ``It's your job to know the people to ask the questions. Part of it is recognizing your limitations,'' and ``to push hard for detailed answers to critical questions,'' he said.
I was hoping some of the geniuses here would step up to the plate, but I guess this ole' country boy trailer trash redneck will have to bail y'all out.
Geometrically speaking, it's a fairly simple problem. Imagine that you are projecting an image of the elevon (with the corner pointing up) from behind onto a frosted piece of glass. As you rotate the top of the elevon toward the glass screen, vertical lines on the elevon become foreshortened by the cosine of the rotation angle. Rotated 30 degrees for example, the length of a vertical line appears only 86% as long as it's real length. But horizontal lines appear the same.
Using my grandfather's nickel-plated brass pocket protractor (Johnson's No. 46), I come up with angle "A" being real close to 135 degrees (measuring it on my monitor).
In order for me to solve this approximately (I'm only a dumb redneck from KSC), I'll have to split the angle into two right triangles of 67.5 degrees each. The projection of a vertical line appears to be 41.4% as long as it really is. (1 divided by the tangent of 67.5 degrees)
So how much would a plane have to be rotated to foreshorten vertical lines 41.4%?
The arc-cos of .414 is 65.5 degrees, according to my $4 Chinese calculator.
DISCLAIMER: This analysis does not take camera angle into account. I'd need a LOT more beer for that!
Shuttle Board (CAIB) Says NASA Needs Photos of Fuel Tank
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
NASA (news - web sites) needs high-resolution pictures of the external fuel tanks that boost shuttles into orbit, and these images should be taken during any future launch and ascent, investigators probing the Columbia disaster said Wednesday.
The Columbia Accident Investigation Board said these sharp images, made available to ground controllers soon after the external tank separates from the orbiter after launch, would help engineers troubleshoot any problems during shuttle missions.
"Imaging the space shuttle system during launch and ascent provides necessary engineering data including the ability to examine the space shuttle system for any unexpected debris or other anomalies during ascent," the board said on its Web site, www.caib.us.
The board has said previously that debris falling from the external tank during Columbia's launch damaged the leading edge of the spacecraft's left wing. This allowed superheated gas to penetrate the ship when it re-entered the atmosphere and ultimately caused its breakup over Texas on Feb. 1. All seven astronauts were killed.
The three other space shuttles have been grounded since then, while the investigators put together a final report on the accident. This report is expected at the end of August.
ON-BOARD CAMERAS
All shuttles have two on-board cameras that can take pictures of the external tank, but images made by these cameras can only be seen on the ground after the shuttles land. That would be useless in detecting and fixing any problems caused by falling debris while the shuttles are in flight.
The board recommended that one of the existing on-board cameras could be modified to take sharp pictures that could be beamed to engineers soon after the images were made.
Investigators also recommended that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration get high-resolution images of the underside of the shuttle, especially the heat-shielding materials installed along the leading edges of the wings and elsewhere.
The debris from Columbia's external tank struck the leading edge of the left wing, which was made of material known as reinforced carbon-carbon. This material was severely damaged.
Wednesday's set of recommendations are the fifth in a series released by the board as they have studied the accident. They have also said NASA needs to determine the structural integrity of reinforced carbon-carbon before the shuttles fly again and should always get in-flight images of the shuttles from spy satellites and other assets.
Beyond that, the board has recommended using the International Space Station (news - web sites) as an orbiting repair shop for damaged shuttles, and said NASA needs to upgrade its imaging system to get at least three "useful views" of the shuttle starting at liftoff and continuing at least until the solid rocket boosters separate during ascent.
NASA makes such a big deal of installing technology that NASCAR has had for ten years. It's so sad to see that once proud agency turn into a bunch of aging bureaucrats, afraid of their own shadows.
If the ISS is to be an orbiting garage, then I guess that means no more Spacelab/Spacehab missions.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - A Nobel Prize-winning member of the board investigating the space shuttle Columbia disaster says he fears NASA may be doomed to suffer more tragedies unless it changes the culture that has led to flawed decision-making.
The "same faulty reasoning" that led to the 1986 Challenger accident also led to Columbia, said Douglas Osheroff, one of the 13 board members wrapping up the report on the Columbia accident.
"No matter how good the report looks, if we don't do something to change the way NASA makes its decisions, I would say that we will have been whistling in the wind," Osheroff told The Associated Press in a telephone interview this week.
"At the moment, I'm in a state of depression," he said from his office at Stanford University.
Several Columbia board members have said the space agency needs dramatic change, but Osheroff is pessimistic that can be accomplished.
"Look, I think it's been clear for a long time that what has to change is not NASA's policies and procedures or management structure. I suppose they have to change as well, but it's culture," he said. "Culture is a very funny thing, of course. It is the way people intuitively behave to a situation."
Board members and former NASA employees have pointed to attitudes of superiority, fear of retribution by lower-level employees, communications problems and strained relationships between key divisions of NASA as part of its difficult culture. Osheroff is also troubled that some managers who made crucial decisions during Columbia's flight seem unwilling to accept individual blame.
NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe has promised things will change. Just last week, he said he was committed to "creating an atmosphere in which we're all encouraged to raise our hand" and speak out" when there are life-threatening hazards.
But Osheroff's own experience tells him how hard it will be to accomplish that.
"I was at Bell Laboratories at the time of the breakup of the Bell system, and they had industrial psychologists come in trying to change the culture," he said. "I don't think it was at all successful, at least certainly not in the research area where I was."
In NASA's case, Osheroff and other board members have noted the similarities between February's Columbia accident, in which seven astronauts died on their way home, and the Challenger tragedy, which killed seven on their way to space.
Challenger's loss also led to a hard-hitting report on NASA.
Yet, Osheroff notes, "the same faulty reasoning led to both accidents, right? I mean, in both cases, it was a failure to recognize the potential hazards posed by an in-flight anomaly."
With Challenger, faulty O-ring seals in the solid-fuel rocket boosters were to blame. With Columbia, it was foam insulation that broke off the fuel tank and gouged a hole in the shuttle's left wing, letting in the searing gases of re-entry.
In both cases, worried engineers were not heard - or were ignored.
Foam repeatedly broke off shuttles during launch, but the problem was never fixed. With Columbia's final launch on Jan. 16 the biggest foam chunk ever struck with deadly force.
Boston College sociology professor Diane Vaughan, author of "The Challenger Launch Decision," sympathizes with the worried Osheroff.
"Challenger, like Columbia, was an institutional failure. That is, it wasn't just a matter of the decision-making structure. It had to do with the entire organization and its culture, and the critical parts of that really didn't get changed," Vaughan said Thursday night.
She suggested NASA's leaders "may not understand how their organization works and therefore may not know how to fix it, and it's up to the board in its report to point them in the right direction."
From the start, NASA head O'Keefe has promised to carry out all of the accident board's recommendations. Already, he has begun setting up an engineering and safety center in Virginia to take an independent look at a wide range of problems and trends.
But Osheroff calls it "easy to be receptive six months after a major accident. The question is whether it's going to last."
The physicist, who won the Nobel in 1996, was named late to the Columbia board after the chairman decided he wanted some heavyweight scientists. Osheroff was a student of the late Richard Feynman, another Nobel-winning physicist who was an outspoken NASA critic when he served on the Challenger commission.
Columbia's accident board chairman, retired Navy Adm. Harold Gehman Jr., declined to respond to Osheroff's remarks, and attempts to reach other board members were unsuccessful. (Members have been urged to keep a low profile until the report is out.)
NASA's chief is bracing for harsh criticism and has been warning employees it will be "really ugly."
"I'm trying to find the Kevlar suit that I had somewhere," O'Keefe told Kennedy Space Center workers earlier this summer.
Key members of Congress have asked Gehman to reconvene his panel in a year to see if NASA is heeding its advice, a suggestion the members embrace given NASA's tendency to shelve shuttle program reports.
"NASA takes it and says, 'Thanks for your input into manned spaceflight,' and then nothing happens," Air Force Brig. Gen. Duane Deal, a board member, observed at a news conference in mid-July.
Osheroff worries that NASA's new task force that will assess when shuttles can return to space may feel pressure to hurry because of the needs of the international space station. That's why it's vital to reconvene the board as often as necessary, he said.
ON THE WEB:
Columbia Accident Investigation Board: www.caib.us
These changes were all intended to imply that somehow, changes were needed at KSC to prevent another "Challenger".
I expect that the same will happen this time. The innocent will be blamed, and the guilty will pat each other on the back for an inquiry well done.
NASA managers' actions criminal
By Ed Reinhardt, RockledgeI read the recent comments about the Columbia disaster from Linda Ham, former leader of NASA's Mission Management Team, with great interest. I have wondered for a long time what she would have to say.
Unfortunately, instead of taking responsibility for decisions made by her team, she points her finger to lower-level engineers as the real culprits. She says it was just a communication breakdown and the seriousness of the concern of the these engineers never reached her.
But according to prior reports, she personally quashed debate on the severity of the damage that might have occurred and refused the use of satellite photos to evaluate the damage. Instead of erring on the side of safety, she chose to rely on past statistics, and by doing so put the Columbia crew on the path to disaster.
Ham and the other members of her team consistently used poor judgment throughout the mission, which resulted in the deaths of the astronauts. The astronauts relied an all the engineers to make the mission as safe as possible. They were betrayed.
The commission investigating the disaster has provided enough information to place the fault at the feet of Ham and her colleagues. Their actions border on criminal. I think they need to be held accountable.
They should not only lose their jobs, they should be arrested and tried for their actions.
Let debris be public reminder
By Robert Pearlman, Arlington, Va.The idea of displaying debris from the shuttle Columbia should not be summarily dismissed, as suggested in the July 23 editorial headlined "Respecting Columbia."
A generation of engineers are alive today without having lived through the Apollo 1 fire. The next generation is growing up without having seen Challenger lost. Their exposure to the effects of "Go fever," as it has been described, is limited to the loss of Columbia and what they see in pictures and read in history books.
Future generations should not need a disaster to awaken them to the dangers of space flight.
Physical access to well-crafted, educational displays of debris will not only serve as a powerful and constant reminder to the future space program workforce, but also to the public, which often dismisses space flight missions as routine until a disaster occurs.
It is important that those who will inherit leadership of our nation's space program keep the realities of our space exploration history foremost in their thoughts. Perhaps the answer is not to follow precedent, as suggested, and instead call for display of artifacts not just from Columbia, but from Apollo 1 and Challenger as well.
This exhibit will not be a morbid tourist attraction, as described, but a completion of the story currently told by the Smithsonian and our nation's museums.
Our three manned spaceflight disasters were as pivotal to our exploration efforts as were the successes of Alan Shepard's first flight, John Glenn's orbital flight and Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon.
We find it important to give the crafts that made these victories possible center stage in our public centers. We should do the same for Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia.
Fuel tank specs are the key
By John T. Turner, MelbourneI do not believe it is fair to cite NASA's Mission Management Team for contributing to the Columbia disaster until those directly responsible for preventing the accident are cited.
Both Florida Today and the investigation board cited previous flights where the external fuel tank shed insulation.
I believe the tank contractor, in fulfillment of its responsibility to deliver quality products, should have noted the potential hazards of allowing this problem to persist.
At a minimum, the contractor should have conducted tests similar to those the board ran, establishing velocity and size of insulation necessary to produce damage. The Johnson Space Center could have incorporated these limits in their requirements and specification document.
This information should have triggered an investigation into the root cause of the problem, leaving no stones unturned.
The tank contractor and the NASA center responsible for their contract should accept their share of the blame for allowing this accident.
It is significant to note the similarity in what happened to Columbia and Challenger. Each tragedy was caused by a critical nonredundant component failure. Each was related to environmental conditions. Neither component had its appropriate requirements and specifications stated in the Johnson Space Center's documentation, which is essential to avoiding these catastrophes.
Purge NASA's management
By Dian Hardison, CocoaA recent article announced: "Ralph Roe, manager of vehicle engineering at the Johnson Space Center, has been relieved, and given the newly created job of heading an independent safety and engineering division at Langley."
Say what? And this move came as a result of his incompetence and malfeasance in the Columbia disaster.
One of the managers who was directly responsible for the deaths of seven astronauts and the destruction of an irreplaceable, $2 billion shuttle, is being promoted and given a "newly created" job in safety?
Did someone slip LSD in our water system?
How is NASA management ever going to be held accountable for their screw-ups when they get promoted for their failures?
Instead of being shuffled around to an "unnamed position" like a child-molesting priest, every NASA manager who was drawing a salary when Columbia was launched should be fired.
That includes the managers on the space station side. The major problems of the station have been kept from the public, but any cursory investigation down on the floor, instead of just reading the handouts from management, will reveal that it's a matter of shovelling water against the tide.
Yes, accidents happen. Yes, space is dangerous.
But what happened to Columbia, Challenger and Apollo 1 were not accidents. It was deliberate neglect and dereliction of management duty from beginning to end.
You know, that really is what it boils down to, isn't it?
This one really hits home!
Purge NASA's management
By Dian Hardison, Cocoa
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