A meteorite or space junk may have struck Space Shuttle Atlantis' left wing, according to NBC News space correspondent Jay Barbree.Thanks KevinDavis.
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Posted on 06/12/2007 4:48:53 PM PDT by XBob
Space Shuttle's Left Wing May Be Damaged Meteorite, Space Junk May Have Struck Panels
POSTED: 5:13 pm EDT June 12, 2007 UPDATED: 7:00 pm EDT June 12, 2007 Email This Story | Print This Story Sign Up for Breaking News Alerts WASHINGTON -- A meteorite or space junk may have struck Space Shuttle Atlantis' left wing, according to NBC News space correspondent Jay Barbree.
NASA recorded a hit on reinforced carbon panels 7 and 8 on the left wing. The panels keep heat from re-entry from burning the spacecraft.
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This is the same area where foam damaged Columbia's left wing and caused it to break up, killing its crew on Feb. 1, 2003.
There are certainly worse ways to go. The only thing that really irritated me about the Challenger was that Christa McAullife isn’t listed as an astronaut. The ship wasn’t high enough for her to qualify.
I think they already have the capability to land it without the pilot on board..
“The weak and timid stay behind. Pioneers go forward — and damn the risks. “Expensive, worthless and most of all, dangerous” is the American Way.”
Well Said! In the 1870’s or so, someone said of the American West, “The cowards stayed home, and the fools, the weak, and the unlucky died on the way...”
From a space development aspect it cannot compete with robotics. From a scientific standpoint it also loses badly due to cost and enough science has been done in space already. But if we are to eventually inhabit outer space, we have to actually go into outer space. That would mean manned spaceflight is necessary at some point.
Sadly, for some, the truth is more like:
Space the final fatal frontier.
I'll say a prayer that these brave astronauts make it home safely.
"A condensation cloud forms around an interstage as the Apollo 11 Saturn V encounters max Q, at about 1 minute 20 seconds into the flight (altitude 12.5 km, 4 km downrange, velocity 440 m/s)."
As the Saturn is probably about 15km from the flag (slant range plus the distance from the pad to the flag), I don't see how it can be that big relative to the flag.
I do know there are some techniques to do photos like this, but I am not a photographer.
Regardless, the picture is posted to several NASA web sites, so it was probably done by a NASA photographer.
A long string of successes made manned spaceflight seem so safe and commonplace that we got bored with it and stopped watching altogether. Since the founding days of the Mercury program, we'd never lost a man in flight, only on the pad, so if we made it past liftoff, we felt our boys were safe.
Challenger was IIRC the first time we'd ever lost an astronaut after takeoff, and look how many years (and missions) passed between it and Columbia. The problem we have IMO is that we're still flying the same fleet of craft, which are now 20 years older, and sooner or later the odds will catch up with us again.
If you look closely at the image file, there are scratches on the negative that extend through the flag. Looks to me like it was created with an in-camera double exposure. Been a LONG time since I did anything like that. I’ve only got one working film SLR now, and it’s only had about 6 rolls of film through it since I got it, nearly 3 years ago...
And by the way, take away all women's rights and keep them barefoot and pregnant!
Did I miss any other absurd, Luddite positions?
/s
It definitely looks like it came off of one negative. What was done in camera was a first-class job, and I think most people would accept it as a legit shot. I just cant reconcile the angle on the flag and the angle of the Saturn as being shot from the same location, or at the same zoom factor.
Thanks for the link and the additional info.
I agree - it was done the old-fashioned way. I used to play with that technique on my Olympus OM-2. It's definitely a pre-Photoshop image; I saw a framed 11 x 14 copy of the print hanging on a wall at the Stennis Space Center in south Mississippi. That was on the occasion of a public tour of the Army ammo plant which is (was?) also on the grounds, so I'd say it was 1984 or thereabouts. The condensation boiling out of the air caught my eye; I'd seen it before in pics of airplanes but never one of the Saturn launches.
It's a convincing double-exposure, for certain. Look at how the corner of the flag appears to be illuminated by the rocket plume (it's probably the sun hitting that edge). A great image for wallpaper - pity it's not a sharper pic.
“I just cant reconcile the angle on the flag and the angle of the Saturn as being shot from the same location, or at the same zoom factor.”
Wouldn’t need to be. If I were planning on doing some such thing, first thing I’d do is shoot a roll or two of each element intended to combine, or possibly just the hard one, like the rocket, if the flag was nearby and handy.
For that matter, grainy as the pic is, it could easily have been produced with a slide copying attachement. I used to have one, but I didn’t have the projector needed to make it work, but I was aware of the theory, at least. It would have cost a few rolls and some processing to figure out how to do it, but would have been worth while. As I said, it’s been a long time since I did that sort of work.
You’re alive :-)
According the the photograph and its published data,
I deduce that the centerline of the view is upwards at about 18 degrees.
One can also see that the lengthwise dimension of the flag subtends an angle of about 1.5 times that of the Saturn/Apollo rocket.
These data constrain the relationship of the height of the flag to its length.
I calculate that the flag’s height in the air must be about 25.6 times its length. Thus if the flag were, say, six feet long, it would have to be 154 or so feet in the air.
If it were not that high, it would have to be closer and proportionally smaller; for instance, a two-foot flag 51 feet in the air.
A little odd, but not impossible. Perhaps less odd if my estimates of distances and angles are off, in the right directions.
A meteorite or space junk may have struck Space Shuttle Atlantis' left wing, according to NBC News space correspondent Jay Barbree.Thanks KevinDavis.
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Whoops! Thanks tricky_k...
The procedure is for three to ride it down...Two candidates (CDR and PLT) are obvious, and the third is the jumpseat (MS1)...
Everyone else gets in line for a Russian vehicle, which would be two flights...A russian always drives those busses...
The increment crews would still have their own way to get off the ISS if they had to...
More than likely, they are going to take a good long hard look at this...They got the time, its not like they’ll run out of air...
I’m not sure if they can deploy that inspection boom with the cameras and other instruments to take a look at this while they are docked with the ISS...
We’ll just have to wait and see...
So if the flag were on top of a 12-story building (or thereabouts) taken at a great distance, on might get that view... if one knew exactly what they were looking for.
“Now with your basic thermonuclear rocket,”
Bring back KIWI! Demothball NERVA!
To the stars...
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