Posted on 02/01/2011 5:31:51 AM PST by joeclarke
February 1, 2003 - Explosion of the Space Shuttle Columbia.
As memorable as the 9/11 tragedy, so was the explosion and destruction of the Space Shuttle Columbia over Louisiana, February 1st, 2003. History has given special notice to Space Shuttle Challenger's destruction 25 years ago, but why hasn't the disintegration of Columbia been as noteworthy? Maybe, it has something to do with Political Correctness and the EPA, proving again how our daily lives are excessively affected by by Political Correctness and the EPA.
We have seen the deadly effects of the enviromentally obsessed: The banning of DDT which has promoted the killing of literally millions of people by Malaria which would otherwise not be a problem; the lack of refrigeration available to Africans because of the banning of higher performance freon, because of freon's threat of eliminating the Ozone Hole, which for some reason is not a topic, or a concern, just the same as Global Warming (renamed Climate Change) has disappeared from our vocabulary.
How many people have died around the world, even in Europe, because of environmentally mandated reduction of all forms of energy - except wind and solar which can only help to aid humankind in negligible ways?
No doubt, many humans will die because of our government's devotion to the very inefficient cornahol, the use of which drives up the price of corn, making it less abundant and more costly for starving people in poorer countries around the world.
This can all be explained by such seemingly innocuous orgs as the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society which have been some the biggest proponents of population decimation. There is no end to the craziness of the Climate Change environmentalists, very much at home in the Democrat Party. The environmentally ill have recently sought to treat cow milk spillage as the BP Gulf oil spill. There is no end to the federal government funding any sort of study which implicates The Enviroment as a topic. I wonder who funded the study that applauds Genghis Khan for killing so many people, thus saving the earth from millions of tons of carbon use - since living people deplete carbon absorbing earth to produce food. See eco-warior greeney Genghis Khan was good for planet. The Carnegie Institute funded it.
NASA associated James Hansen, who has been crying out in recent years for polluters (people who use fossil fuels) to be tried and executed, has now demanded that the earth "needs a green dictator" in order to be saved.
Since NASA has been relegated as "Lost In Space," in that future space exploration is not such a priority, the once formidable organization has had to climb onto the Climate Change (ne Global Warming) bandwagon for funding and self respect. Earlier in the last century, NASA was showing proof by satellite and hundreds of robot subs that the earth was not at all warming contrary to Al Gore's "expertise." Once the money started to flow from the fedgov to the pseudo National Academy of Science, univeristies, federal government bureacracies, etc., only if they supported the unestablished, vague science that the earth was going to die from excess carbon, it was game on for NASA to all of a sudden discover that earth was warming - by less than 1 degree in a relatively short amount of time - 150 years, or so. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon in Davos has just denounced Western capitalism, "in light in what it has done to promote global warming." Needless to say, Banki is Bonkers.
The Space Shuttle Columbia was disallowed from using a type of freon (technical explanation here) that was very effective in insulating its fuel tank, but it was not the most environmentally friendly foam. So, the EPA in one of its big-headed, bureaucratic, tyrannical rants demanded that the less environmentally friendly foam application be used, thus, allowing for a section of foam to fall away from a fuel tank, and into the shuttle, dislodging the shuttle's protective tiles. Columbia, without the protective shielding quickly burned up and exploded -all before our eyes. It was even more tragic than the Challenger explosion since there was much more mass media and television coverage.
Remembering the names of those heroes who died in service of our country: From Wikipedia:
Commander: Rick D. Husband, a U.S. Air Force colonel and mechanical engineer, who piloted a previous shuttle during the first docking with the International Space Station (STS-96). Pilot: William C. McCool, a U.S. Navy commander Payload Commander: Michael P. Anderson, a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and physicist who was in charge of the science mission. Payload Specialist: Ilan Ramon, a colonel in the Israeli Air Force and the first Israeli astronaut. Mission Specialist: Kalpana Chawla, an Indian-born aerospace engineer on her second space mission. Mission Specialist: David M. Brown, a U.S. Navy captain trained as an aviator and flight surgeon. Brown worked on a number of scientific experiments. Mission Specialist: Laurel Clark, a U.S. Navy captain and flight surgeon. Clark worked on a number of biological experiments.
I can remember a time when NASA was a highly scientific and innovative instrument of the Federal Government, known for its discoveries and "going where no man has ever gone," but after other failed ventures, and developing a bad track record in other launches, it could be found that bureaucracy, as well as the EPA provided the death knell for a once formidable American organization. How proud we were as Americans when astronaut Frank Borman read a prayer from his antique nose-cone spacecraft as he passed around the moon, way out there, about 290,000 miles away in cold, frozen, desolate space.
I can even remember when NASA's Houston Ground Control was actually praying - without intervention from the ACLU or even Democrats at the time - that the first moon landing and walk be blessed by God. Not so much anymore.
The only thing that NASA has been praying, as of late, is that it may continue to ride the magic Global Warming carpet ride.
Never forget, this day, February 1, 2003, when the EPA caused the destruction of human life. Much more destruction by the hand of environmentalists has been planned.
Video of Space Shuttle Columbia..
Interesting pic. The shuttle exploded after re-entry into the atmosphere, iirc, not in space as the photo depicts.
Yep. That is a picture from a SciFi movie. I think it was from Armageddon.
The problem with this argument is that the section of foam that struck the shuttle and caused this disaster was BX-250, which is the "type of freon" that the author claims was not allowed on the Columbia tank.
You can blame this tragedy on a number of things. You can blame the EPA for a number of things. I don't, however, think that it is fair to blame the EPA for this tragedy.
Technically, I don’t believe it exploded at all. Did it not merely burn up and disintegrate upon reentry?
cheers
Jim
Technically, I think you’re correct.
I was a Shuttle engineer up until 1999. IIRC, the problem was not just with the “green” foam, the adhesive had been changed out as well. The “green” adhesive just did not perform as well.
BTW, I still have my meeting notes and report from 1995 when I went to JSC with some other engineers to brief NASA on the problems with the RCC (Reinforced Carbon-Carbon) leading edge on Columbia. The shock wave from the nose impinged on the RCC with very high heating rates. The hot O2 was penetrating the glass on the RCC and forming CO which outgassed. In other words, the RCC was losing carbon atoms. It looked normal, but our CAT scan showed it was losing structural integrity. The RCC was becoming “de-densified” to the point where you could poke your finger through it.
This was the exact spot on the leading edge where the foam struck it. I don’t know if NASA replaced the RCC later, but in 1995 they told us there was no money in the budget to fix it.
As usual, there may be much more to the story that you will never read in Aviation Secrets Weekly.
I have always supported our space exploration programs, and I think they are incredibly important. NASA has a lot of dedicated civil servants and honest people. However, I have learned to NEVER trust the government, the media, or official accounts. Bureaucracies just have a instinct to cover up their mistakes for the good of the Agency.
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