Columbia's Problems Began on Left Wing

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- Investigators trying to figure out what destroyed space shuttle Columbia immediately focused on the left wing and the possibility that its thermal tiles were damaged far more seriously than NASA realized by a piece of debris during liftoff.

Just a little over a minute into Columbia's launch Jan. 16, a chunk of insulating foam peeled away from the external fuel tank and smacked into the ship's left wing.

On Saturday, that same wing started exhibiting sensor failures and other problems 23 minutes before Columbia was scheduled to touch down. With just 16 minutes remaining before landing, the shuttle disintegrated over Texas.

Just a day earlier, on Friday, NASA's lead flight director, Leroy Cain, had declared the launch-day incident to be absolutely no reason for concern. An extensive engineering analysis had concluded that any damage to Columbia's thermal tiles would be minor.

``As we look at that now in hindsight ... we can't discount that there might be a connection,'' shuttle manager Ron Dittemore said on Saturday, hours after the tragedy. ``But we have to caution you and ourselves that we can't rush to judgment on it because there are a lot of things in this business that look like the smoking gun but turn out not even to be close.''

The shuttle has more than 20,000 thermal tiles to protect it from the extreme heat of re-entry into the atmosphere. The black, white or gray tiles are made of a carbon composite or silica-glass fibers and are attached to the shuttle with silicone adhesive.

If a spaceship has loose, damaged or missing tiles, that can change the aerodynamics of the ship and warp or melt the underlying aluminum airframe, causing nearby tiles to peel off in a chain reaction.

If the tiles start stripping off in large numbers or in crucial spots, a spacecraft can overheat, break up and plunge to Earth in a shower of hot metal, much like Russia's Mir space station did in 2001.

Dittemore said that the disaster could have been caused instead by a structural failure of some sort. He did not elaborate.

As for other possibilities, however, NASA said that until the problems with the wing were noticed, everything else appeared to be performing fine.

NASA officials said, for example, that the shuttle was in the proper position when it re-entered the atmosphere on autopilot. Re-entry at too steep an angle can cause a spaceship to burn up.

Law enforcement authorities said was no indication of terrorism; at an altitude of 39 miles, the shuttle was out of range of any surface-to-air missile, one senior government official said.

If the liftoff damage was to blame, the shuttle and its crew of seven may well have been doomed from the very start of the mission.

Dittemore said there was nothing that the astronauts could have done in orbit to fix damaged thermal tiles and nothing that flight controllers could have done to safely bring home a severely scarred shuttle, given the extreme temperatures of re-entry.

The shuttle broke apart while being exposed to the peak temperature of 3,000 degrees on the leading edge of the wings, while traveling at 12,500 mph, or 18 times the speed of sound.

A California Institute of Technology astronomer Anthony Beasley, reported seeing a trail of fiery debris behind the shuttle over California, with one piece clearly backing away and giving off its own light before slowly fading and falling. Dittemore was unaware of the sighting and did not want to speculate on it.

If thermal tiles were being ripped off the wing, that would have created drag and the shuttle would have started tilting from the ideal angle of attack. That could have caused the ship to overheat and disintegrate.

Dittemore said that even if the astronauts had gone out on an emergency spacewalk, there was no way a spacewalker could have safely checked under the wings, which bear the brunt of heat re-entry and have reinforced protection.

Even if they did find damage, there was nothing the crew could have done to fix it, he said.

``There's nothing that we can do about tile damage once we get to orbit,'' Dittemore said. ``We can't minimize the heating to the point that it would somehow not require a tile. So once you get to orbit, you're there and you have your tile insulation and that's all you have for protection on the way home from the extreme thermal heating during re-entry.''

The shuttle was not equipped with its 50-foot robot arm because it was not needed during this laboratory research mission, and so the astronauts did not have the option of using the arm's cameras to get a look at the damage.

NASA did not request help in trying to observe the damaged area with ground telescopes or satellites, in part because it did not believe the pictures would be useful, Dittemore.

Long-distance pictures did not help flight controllers when they wanted to see the tail of space shuttle Discovery during John Glenn's flight in 1998; the door for the drag-chute compartment had fallen off seconds after liftoff.

It was the second time in just four months that a piece of fuel-tank foam came off during a shuttle liftoff. In October, Atlantis lost a piece of foam that ended up striking the aft skirt of one of its solid-fuel booster rockets. At the time, the damage was thought to be superficial.

Dittemore said this second occurrence ``is certainly a signal to our team that something has changed.''

If you don't believe much of what I say, then why ask?

You will find that what I have posted is the unvarnished truth.

Your idea of a consuables launch may be a good one... but it is not just the consumables. Remember the problem with the Apollo 13 CO2 scrubbers? The same thing applies with the shuttle. There are a host of systems that are not designed to work for more than a few days longer than the planned mission.

As to an ICBM launch, none of them are designed to enter orbit... they reach sub-orbital velocities, travel a distance outside the atmosphere and then re-enter. In addition, if an ICBM could go into orbit, I don't know if any ICBM is positioned in the right launch locale to reach the orbit that was occupied by the shuttle. Most of them are located in the Northern part of our country and targeted to go over the pole in a great circle route. Moving one and setting it up to launch toward the east would be a big problem. Modifying an ICBM to carry cargo is not easy either. A cargo module cannot be just cobbled together in a few days.

Could we design something that could accomplish this for the future? Probably yes? Could we do it re-actively in a crisis? No.

Why do you disbelieve what I have posted?

Are you privy to some laws of physics or NASA's capabilities that I am not? If so, please let me know.

Not all opinions are equal. I have provided facts and reasons for what I post based on the existing systems, their capabilities, and the laws of physics. Those who challenge my information and conclusions post "what-ifs" based on wishful thinking and offer no reasons why their "what-ifs" would work.

John Jamieson, a poster who says he worked for 27 years at the Kennedy Space Center, has not challenged me on my assertions and has answered questions I posed. He provided similar information and has been challenged by the same wishful thinkers who have no knowledge in the field at all.

Those who want to "lighten" the shutle load (ignoring the inconvenient fact that the Columbia cannot reach the ISS) have yet to tell me how they plan on doing it. The same goes for those who wish for an EVA inspection without the proper equipment as though a walk in space is the same as a stroll in the park.

All of these wishful thinkers' proposed "rescue" plans are predicated on the idea that NASA KNEW there was a problem. I don't think they did.

Let us do a "what if" hypothetical.

Let us suppose NASA did suspect a problem with the left wing tiles. They knew they did not have the equipment on STS-107 to do an inspection, either remotely or personally. In addition, the information would be of little use in landing the Shuttle. One way or the other the tiles are either OK or they are not. Knowing which cannot change the re-entry methodology because flying the Shuttle is "like flying a gliding brick" as one early shuttle pilot put it. Because of the volatile supersonic flight characteristics of the Shuttle, it can only safely be handled by a pre-programed computer auto-pilot until the final landing stages. Therefore no "seat of the pants" flight manuevers would or could keep stress off of the left wing and prevent the disaster.

Now, assuming this suspicion that the wing tiles are damaged, NASA's managers are faced with a decision: either they leave the shuttle and crew in orbit or they bring them home.

If they leave it in orbit the astronauts have only a few more days of life left. It is inevetible that they will die from asphixiation or CO2 poisoning when either system runs out or fails. Meanwhile, down on Earth NASA is faced with a public relations nightmare. Citizens, nations, families, and not least, politicians demand that SOMETHING BE DONE! But NASA knows they have no assets that can reach the doomed astronauts in time. Sad and pitiful pleadings from loved ones and stoic, resigned brave astronauts are contrasted with "do nothing" NASA administrators. In the end, the nation has a derelict space craft and seven dead astronauts in orbit and NASA has received a blackeye for inaction and mismanagement that may not be recoverable. This scenario is a LOSE-LOSE situation.

Altermately, they bring the shuttle home with two possible outcomes:

1: If the tiles are only minimally damaged, the shuttle lands, NASA managers quietly solve the falling insulation problem and everything is great. NASA WINS!

22: If the tiles are NG, the shuttle disintegrates on re-entry, the Astronauts are killed instantly with no suffering, no drawn out PR nightmare, and no accusations of NASA inaction in efforts to save them. The nation mourns its dead heroes, NASA mounts an investigation, finds the problem and fixes it to the acclaim of Congress who rewards them with added funding for shuttle maintanence. NASA DOESN'T LOSE... and in some ways NASA WINS.

Given this hypothetical, that NASA and the astronauts knew there was a potential problem, there is only one logical choice: Bring the astronauts and shuttle home, at least there is a 50-50 chance of the astronauts surviving. The option of leaving them in orbit is a guaranteed loser... the result is seven dead astronauts. The astronauts ONLY CHANCE was to de-orbit and risk re-entry. They took the only chance they had... and, sadly, they lost.

Bringing them home was a WIN-WIN for NASA in this cynical hypothetical case. Thank God, I am not cynical.

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