Posted on 02/09/2003 4:43:51 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
Unfathomable shuttle puzzle
Be undaunted, past investigators say; key clue might be waiting
02/09/2003
Clues to the mystery could be anywhere, from the depths of the Pacific Ocean to the bayous of Louisiana, stuck in trees, hidden on mountaintops or drowned in murky water.
More than a week after the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas, investigators are piecing together what could be the biggest and most complicated puzzle in aviation and aeronautics history.
No recovery effort has been spread over so many square miles or so much varied terrain. No search has been done for a vehicle worth $2 billion with about 2 million parts and 3,500 critical systems - that fell from about 40 miles above the Earth.
Officials who worked on other high-profile air accidents, such as the Challenger disaster, the TWA Flight 800 crash over Long Island Sound and the bombing of the Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, say searchers must remain undaunted.
Their advice: Don't get overwhelmed by what first appears to be an unmanageable task.
"There could be a tiny piece out there that holds the answer, but at this point no one knows," said retired Air Force Gen. Donald Kutyna, a member of the presidential commission appointed to examine the Challenger crash 17 years ago. "It's going to be difficult to find the answer unless they find that magical piece."
To most people, the wreckage looks like muddy roof tiles, pipes and crushed barrels. But aviation experts who reviewed field debris photos for The Dallas Morning News identified some shuttle parts, including payload bay doors, fuel tanks, tires and portions of the orbiter's wings.
A cluster of federal, state and local agencies continues to search a debris field of more than 28,000 square miles - an area larger than West Virginia.
"The whole thing is like one big crime scene," said John Purvis, former director of air safety investigation for commercial aircraft at Boeing.
But the Columbia inquiry is even more difficult because most crash sites are relatively contained. Commercial aircraft cruise at about 40,000 feet, and go about 560 mph. Columbia, one of the most complex and delicate pieces of machinery in the world, was flying at 200,000 feet, going 12,500 mph.
At that height and speed, crucial evidence might have fallen off Columbia in bits and pieces, and they could have landed in far-off places.
Though more than 12,000 pieces of debris have been found, shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore has deemed none the "missing link" that would reveal why Columbia broke apart.
With TWA Flight 800, most of the debris was taken to an airplane hangar where most of the plane was painstakingly rebuilt piece by piece to reveal that a fuel tank exploded.
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The Pan Am airliner in Scotland also was rebuilt. Investigators learned that a bomb had destroyed it.
Pieces of Challenger were laid out on a grid and examined before faulty O-rings on the external fuel tanks were found to be the culprit.
The Columbia inquiry will move forward the same way. Investigators will lay the debris on a grid at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But how many pieces will they have?
Recovery teams are using global-positioning system satellites to record the location of each piece of wreckage and map the debris field.
NASA hopes to use that information to develop computer simulations of the flight, which would chronicle each piece of debris coming off the orbiter and reveal the sequence of events.
"The Challenger was easier because it had a million some cameras on it and we saw a photo of the burning O-ring at the instant of lift-off," Gen. Kutyna said. "The investigation was a hard job, but it won't come close to this one."
What went first?
One of the biggest goals now is to find out which pieces flew off the shuttle first.
Unlike with Challenger, there weren't a million cameras on Columbia as it flew above California and Arizona, where investigators say the problems might have begun.
It was traveling too high for people to capture much detail on film.
So the initial stages of failure are unknown, as are the locations of the initial pieces of debris.
NASA has received many calls about potential debris west of Fort Worth, but it hasn't confirmed any of that to be a veritable shuttle part. Even so, that hasn't stopped overzealous civilians from saying they've found the real thing.
In Texas, a boy led authorities to what turned out to be a Chevrolet alternator. In Arizona, someone called in to report what was actually burned toast. Truck mud flaps. Bathroom tile. Burned rocks. Even egg yolk splattered on a front porch. Everyone seems to think he has found part of the shuttle.
Late last week, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano issued an advisory to her constituents: "Every piece of burned medal or ash that is found in Arizona over the next two weeks is not necessarily from the shuttle."
NASA spaceflight office deputy Michael Kostelnik said it's easy to be confused. "There is a lot of things laying around the country," he said.
But investigators at the National Transportation Safety Board, who have been called in on Columbia, know the difference between everyday junk and remnants of an aircraft. They're experts in dissecting an aviation crash site and analyzing wreckage, a process that is being used this time.
Each piece of debris is photographed, labeled, catalogued and placed in a bag or a box. It is taken to a central facility where experts examine each part. Sometimes, identification is simple because there will be a serial number that reveals where that piece came from. Other times, engineers can see where the piece belongs.
Then the tough scrutiny begins. Metal is analyzed for evidence of stresses, burns or explosions. Engine parts are checked for breaks. Even small things, such as wires, are inspected for failures.
And when the missing link hasn't been found or confirmed beyond doubt, investigators rebuild the plane.
During the investigation of the Pan Am crash in 1988 above Scotland, investigators did just that. Though they didn't find all of the plane's remains in the 10-mile radius of the debris field, they did have enough to determine a cause.
"Every piece could be the potential answer," said Kevin Darcy, former chief investigator of Boeing's air safety investigation group and one of the investigators in Scotland. "Even stuff that's no bigger than the palm of your hand."
Mr. Darcy said that the recovery team found a piece of wreckage - the "missing link" - with explosive residue on it. After finding that clue, Mr. Darcy said, investigators reassembled the part of the plane where the piece came from, then a metallurgist examined the area and found signs of rupture in the metal, which pointed to a bomb.
"The hardest thing is going into an investigation with an open mind," Mr. Darcy said. "It always seems that everyone's first guess as to what happened is never right. It's something you really have to guard for."
In Columbia's case, teams of experts will be looking at every possible scenario of failure, even beyond the possible problems with the left wing and the protective heat tiles beneath it. They'll also look into every cranny of the shuttle program.
From NASA engineers and metallurgists to the mechanics who built the shuttle to the scientists who designed and tested the orbiter, every task will be checked - even the smallest of jobs, such as gluing the heat-protecting tiles to the orbiter's belly.
Investigators also will study videotapes of the launch and the flight path. They'll watch simulations and evaluate data from satellites, radar and internal computers.
So, even if the key pieces of wreckage aren't found, there might just be enough information to come to a valid conclusion.
"We found 98 percent of the debris from TWA 800 [in about 11 square miles], and it's unrealistic to think that NASA can come anywhere near that," said Robert Francis, former NTSB vice chairman who led the TWA 800 investigation.
"For us, it was pretty easy because it was on a sandy bottom about 130 feet down [below water], and we just trolled for things with oyster boats. But with the shuttle? They're just going to need good luck and hope that some farmer finds the important pieces in a field."
'The biggest black box'
Unlike in an airline crash, there will be no "black box" among the shuttle debris. Columbia had no cockpit or flight data recorders to document its last moments. Instead, the shuttle was broadcasting a stream of information to NASA ground crews that were monitoring its every move.
Minutes before the precipitous fall, gauges monitoring the hydraulic lines around the left wheel well showed a substantial increase in temperature. Then the temperature gauges on the skin of the left wing rose. Soon after, the shuttle's autopilot system began struggling to right itself as something was causing drag on the left wing.
"Houston probably represents the biggest black box in the world that you don't have to look for," said Eugene Covert, aerospace expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was a key member in the presidential commission that investigated the Challenger accident.
"They are very fortunate to have all the information that was telemetered from Columbia to Houston because it's hard to tell what pieces [of debris] survived the fall and what pieces didn't."
As the days pass, NASA will gather more and more experts to join the investigation. An independent review board, led by retired Adm. Harold W. Gehman Jr., will oversee the project, determine the final cause of the disaster and make recommendations on how to prevent a similar one from happening again.
The goal: Find out how the Columbia ended up in pieces on the ground and why a billion-dollar machine burst apart just minutes from home.
"It's doable, said Bill Waldock, who teaches accident investigation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University's Arizona campus. "The amount of effort and the amount of talent they're throwing at it, if they can't solve it, nobody can."
Staff writer Terri Langford contributed to this report.
E-mail jmacur@dallasnews.com
Rest in peace, shuttle heroes...
"We found 98 percent of the debris from TWA 800 [in about 11 square miles], and it's unrealistic to think that NASA can come anywhere near that," said Robert Francis, former NTSB vice chairman who led the TWA 800 investigation.
"For us, it was pretty easy because it was on a sandy bottom about 130 feet down [below water], and we just trolled for things with oyster boats. But with the shuttle? They're just going to need good luck and hope that some farmer finds the important pieces in a field."
'The biggest black box'
Unlike in an airline crash, there will be no "black box" among the shuttle debris. Columbia had no cockpit or flight data recorders to document its last moments. Instead, the shuttle was broadcasting a stream of information to NASA ground crews that were monitoring its every move.
Minutes before the precipitous fall, gauges monitoring the hydraulic lines around the left wheel well showed a substantial increase in temperature. Then the temperature gauges on the skin of the left wing rose. Soon after, the shuttle's autopilot system began struggling to right itself as something was causing drag on the left wing.
"Houston probably represents the biggest black box in the world that you don't have to look for," said Eugene Covert, aerospace expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was a key member in the presidential commission that investigated the Challenger accident.
"They are very fortunate to have all the information that was telemetered from Columbia to Houston because it's hard to tell what pieces [of debris] survived the fall and what pieces didn't."
http://www.wfaa.com/watchvideo/index.jsp?SID=3683978
Requires RealPlayer
Video shows shuttle may have shed debris over Arizona -
check out this video taken by amateurs
Video link: Shuttle over D/FW, Texas
Very close-up, slo-mo of the Columbia launch debris
See Columbia Loss FAQ for the most complete technical coverage of the loss of Columbia I have found on the net.
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