Columbia Reentry Observations

http://home.earthlink.net/~kd6nrp ^ | 2003 February 12 (Wednesday) 20:00 PST | Brian Webb, KD6NRP

[Fester Chugabrew]

I'd be curious to know how these observations synchronize with the exact moment we lost contact with the shuttle. Have you heard anything?

[WSGilcrest]

I have read on several other posts here that NASA is indeed correlating their computer data with eyewittness accounts and pictures.

[NormsRevenge]

Bump..Thanks.They're rerunning the NASCAR races on FX.

[snopercod]

Good stuff here.

[snopercod]

The NASA sequence of events slideshow is [here]

Slide 10 was at 53:36, and slide 11 was at 54:13.

[leadpenny]

bump

[Fester Chugabrew]

Thanks. Would be interesting to see how things looked on the other side of the shuttle at the same time, i.e. other off nominal or offline sensors. Also, I'm curious at what point in this scenario we lost voice contact.

[snopercod]

anymouse: I asked the A-M to remove your post with the sensor diagrams since it took almost 30 minutes for all those graphics to load up on my dial-up connection. They are great graphics, but I was probably the only one in the whole world that had the patience to wait to see them.

In their place, I put the following thumbnails. Click on them to see the full-sized graphic. Thanks A_M for taking care of this.

Slide 1	Slide 2	Slide 3	Slide 4
Slide 5	Slide 6	Slide 7	Slide 8
Slide 9	Slide 10	Slide 11	Slide 12
Slide 13	Slide 14	Slide 15	Slide 16
Slide 17	Slide 18	Slide 19	Slide 20
Slide 21	Slide 22	Slide 23	Slide 24
Slide 25

[anymouse]

Sorry about that. I didn't realize that they would take so long to download. Thanks for showing the clickable thumbnails instead.

I was trying to make it easier to see the progression of sensor failures with time. If NASA converted the slides into a movie then it would help understand that the flow of distruction tends to rule out certain failure scenarios like the exploding tire theory. It is suprising that the temperature rises were so small.

With all of the hydrolic pressure sensors failing at different locations, it does lend credibility to the theory that a APU-driven hydrolic pump high-pressure hose burst. If that happened a lot could go badly quickly in numerous criticial places.

[snopercod]

I hadn't heard about the hydraulic pressure measurements, only the temperatures. There is a really good integrated timeline of MCC communications and sensor failures over on another thread.

Stand by for a ping.

[anymouse]

Clarification: I meant the loss of temperature data from sensors on the hydrolic actuators. That seems to be the common thread of these sensor failures.

A fellow NASA type theorized that a broken high pressure hydrolic line could have cut through the aluminum structure quite easily and then the hydrolic fluid hitting the ceramic tiles would have loosened the epoxy enough with the pressure to pop at least a few tiles off. He said that he didn't have any analysis to back up his theory, but it is a plausible scenario.

[snopercod]

...a broken high pressure hydraulic line could have cut through the aluminum structure quite easily and then the hydraulic fluid hitting the ceramic tiles would have loosened the epoxy enough with the pressure to pop at least a few tiles off.

Exactly the kind of "out of the box" thinking that needs to be going on right now. It's too bad that many FReepers have blamed the ET TPS before all the evidence is in.

I recall that in the aftermath of the Challenger loss, I was convinced that the range safety system certainly had failed.

[bonesmccoy]

out of the box thinking is good.

Re: 51L, I never suspected range safety. The range safety explosives clearly were not implicated by watching the NASA TV video of the launch. SRM's were a known issue, regardless of what Jesse Moore confiscated in the first 24 hours after launch.

Don't you agree?

[snopercod]

I don't know who Jesse Moore is, or what he confiscated. I was on the C-9 console as the CISL for launch (my first), and knew absolutely nothing until after I got back to my motel and turned on CNN.

Then I cried.

[snopercod]

...and another thing.

I The range safety explosives clearly were not implicated by watching the NASA TV video of the launch.

I WAS watching NASA TV from the C-9 Console, and saw the boosters "separate" from the orbiter, and downlink from the shuttle go stale.

At that point, I had no idea what had happened. Neither did the entire firing room. We on the console were preparing for RTLS until the OTC [Roberta Wyrick] advised us otherwise.

If you are implying that the explanation of what had happened was obvious to those involved in the launch, you are ignorant of the history of that event.

[bonesmccoy]

Dear SnoperCod,
Speaking as someone who (like many in the NASA-Contractor "family") was personally familiar with the people aboard 51-L, I cried too. In fact, I still feel some emotional pain when the idiots at the media houses replay that launch.

I may not have been in the LCC on that morning, but I was watching live.

It was immediately apparent that it was NOT the range safety, regardless of how idiotic the analysis of Dan Rather was. Rather kept saying that a detonation by RSO was thought to be initiating the accident, as evidenced by visible ignition/explosion at the orbiter fwd attach point in a single frame of video.

You don't know who Jesse Moore is?

Hmmm... interesting...

Quoting http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/nasa_open_030206.html
Re: Comparison of 51-L response to STS-107 and Dittemore.

"Nearly seven hours later the space agency trotted out Jesse Moore, then NASA's spaceflight associate administrator, for the first press conference. He confirmed the shuttle and crew were lost but offered no discussion about what might have happened, even though history has since proved the evidence of a leaking solid rocket booster already was available.

During the coming months it was still difficult to get information. Media had to file lawsuits to gain certain types of information, officials were unavailable for interviews, no discussion of the recovered debris was allowed and talk of the status of any crew remains by any NASA public affairs was career limiting.

To get a decent story it took every news media tactic in the book, from hanging out at bars to ambushing people at their homes to even trying to sneak into people's offices.

NASA's image suffered, not only from the incident itself, but because it was perceived as a federal agency on the run, a true and fully developed government bureaucracy that couldn't be trusted."

[snopercod]

Well it appears that the difference between you and me is that I was in the trenches doing the actual work of processing and launching shuttles, and you were somewhere in the management stucture, isolated from reality, and congratulating yourself every time what we did went well, and pointing fingers at us every time things went wrong.

Maybe I'm wrong, but that's how it seems to me from reading your posts.

I have already publicly stated that I was a CISL, a TBC, and an OTC. What were you?

BTW, I'm pretty convinced that XBob was what we "hands-on workers" referred to as a "bean counter". My guess is QC.

[bonesmccoy]

Incorrect.

And, I might add, arrogant presumption.

Still trying to cover for Jesse Moore?