Shuttle Testing Suggested Wings Were Vulnerable

nytimes ^ | 2/9/2003 | DAVID E. SANGER

[fooman]

As a result, said one engineer familiar with the discussions that took place at NASA in mid-January, the engineers who saw little risk from the debris that hit the Columbia's left wing had scant information to back up their assertion.

"People came to the conclusion that whatever damage happened was tolerable, but it's not clear that was based on any solid data," said the engineer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because NASA had not allowed them to speak to reporters without prior authorization. "The testing data just wasn't there."

Troubling....

[fooman]

Mega ping

[TLBSHOW]

At NASA, a Retreat From Initial Openness

But as the week progressed, officials advanced a theory of the cause of the disaster (damage from the impact of a piece of insulation that fell off at launch), then undercut it, then declared it back on the table. The news media's probing at NASA briefings became more pointed and questions began to be raised about the credibility and independence of the investigation.


snip

"I've been a little less confident since they started weaseling on the possible cause, going back and forth on this matter of the damaged tile," he said. "My first newsman's hunch was that they decided they'd been so candid that they were beginning to look culpable and started climbing back on their story."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/10/national/nationalspecial/10IMAG.html

[fooman]

Over the weekend, NASA officials declined to say if a section of leading-edge material found west of Fort Worth late last week had come from the same left wing. That mystery should not be difficult for NASA to decipher: the leading-edge material was still attached to tiles that are identified with unique serial numbers that indicate their precise position on the orbiter.

[TLBSHOW]

Florida Today, a newspaper that serves the region around Cape Canaveral, quoted Boeing executives in August 2000 as saying that they had found more than 3,500 problems in the Columbia's wiring, several times that of the other orbiters, which were inspected at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/10/national/nationalspecial/10REPA.html

[fooman]

The spokesman, David Drachlis, said that no water dumps were planned for that day and that there was no record of any other object being discarded by the shuttle. He said the object entered the earth's atmosphere two days later and disintegrated.

[SteveH]

Another engineer familiar with the study, however, said he was mystified about how engineers from Boeing, one of the lead contractors for the shuttle, could conclude after the Columbia was launched last month that the large piece of foam had done no damage to the leading edge.

That has a very familiar ring to it... perhaps they were told to take off their engineer hats and put on their management hats... :-(

[TLBSHOW]

btt

[fooman]

Its getting bad when the old gray lady gets more down and dirty than debka.

[TLBSHOW]

They are all about saving their jobs now!

[AFPhys]

Studies conducted by NASA over the last four years concluded that damage to the brittle, heat-shedding material on the leading edge of the space shuttle Columbia's wings posed one of the highest risks of a catastrophic accident.

Duuuuh.... somehow this makes sense...

My mantra to everybody I have spoken to over the past week has been "The heat shielding tiles have always been the weakest link of the whole Shuttle project." Not a brilliant statement, I know, but sometimes the most obvious things go unnoticed. The leading edge RCC is part of that system. I, for one, have been amazed that they can work at all, but they have. If this accident is not traced to some failure of the shielding, I'll eat my hat. They are simply too critical a component, and many ways they can fail.

That being said, I am not aware of a better system. Perhaps we simply have to accept that there will be occasional failures.

[fooman]

Or improve what we have, including in flight inspections and escape capsules already in orbit...

[Moonman62]

That being said, I am not aware of a better system. Perhaps we simply have to accept that there will be occasional failures.

NASA has worked on a rescue craft that looks like a smaller version of the shuttle that uses something other than tiles I believe. Work on the project was dropped before a real reentry test could be done.

[Moonman62]

Reached at his home in Houston on Saturday, Donald M. Curry, an engineer who worked on the study, declined to comment without NASA's approval

I guess he doesn't want to be interviewed without one of his minders present.

[Moonman62]

The spokesman, David Drachlis, said that no water dumps were planned for that day and that there was no record of any other object being discarded by the shuttle.

Since that was the first day of flight, I doubt that Columbia had done any water dumps at all. If that's true the object was unlikely to be ice. I also wonder if ice could have survived two days in orbit without shielding.

[AFPhys]

I am all for checking out a concept of launching a few prepositioned ... lessee... emergency reentry vehicles ...

As an engineer and taxpayer, (and pilot) I would fight strongly against any attempt to "bulk up" the Shuttle itself and reduce the payload ability in an attempt to provide an integral escape system.

Any "rescue craft" could certainly use a less robust method to dissipate the heat of reentry. In fact, I believe that would be a piece of cake with materials available now. One of the big problems NASA has is that the Shuttle is a huge vehicle and has an enormous amount of energy that has to be dissipated on reentry. An escape vehicle could be much lighter and would provide less of a challenge.

This does not in any way mean I believe we have an easy method in sight of providing reentry for a follow-on to the Shuttle, as we still have the same problems, and NASA is using (as far as I can determine) the best method yet known to solve the energy dissipation problem.

[TLBSHOW]

Interesting information here on this thread.

[fooman]

Yes he did not clear it with Saddam

[fooman]

Right. Bulking up would create a payload penalty.