NASA: Shuttle Temperature Rose Suddenly

Yahoo News ^ | 2/2/03 | Paul Recer - AP

[Focault's Pendulum]

I can only post on Geocities and have little bandwidth to post, so perhaps someone can post it for me. I inverted the photo on my computer and the writing reads: V070-1911 -076 (or G)

Here ya go.

[Cboldt]

Thanks. Very good explanations of various shuttle systems.
http://www.spaceref.com/shuttle/newsref/sts_asm.html#tps_mods

[_Jim]

It's not really the most economical or the most efficient way to boost large payloads into orbit.

Ah - ha!

That's not the lone, sole selling point is it now!?

What was the largest payload ever brought *back* from space before the shuttle? (This would include all experiment materials, notes and tapes made by the experimenter.)

[VRWC For Truth]

Time to chuck this p.o.s. and go back to the drawing board.

I agree. One UNMANNED vehicle to launch the payload. One smaller vehicle to launch the astronauts.

[UnChained]

Unfortunately, there are a lot of Monday morning QB's around here who REFUSE to believe there was nothing that could be done. As if NASA was just being 'lazy' and not even thought about these things.

In the wake of Challenger, when NASA officials were fielding questions about various emergency procedures and abort scenarios, one reporter asked:

"In this accident, we saw a failure of a solid rocket booster. What is the contingency if say, one SRB fails to ignite?"

Answer:

"All of our abort scenarios assume that we have two good SRBs"

In other words: They die!

The Shuttle design exposes the astronauts to mortality without recourse more than earlier launch systems. The Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space capsules all had escape rockets that were designed to pull the capsule away from an exploding booster. The G forces might seriously injure the astronauts but at least there was a hope of survival. Some anonomous group in NASA decided that a similar approch wasn't worth the trouble with the shuttle.

The Challenger commission turned up many examples of single point of failure vulnerabilities in the shuttle. Engineering studies show that the all the main gear tires could fail catastrophically if the shuttle ever had to land with something as big as a TDRSS satellite that had failed to deploy. Again someone in NASA made these engineering decisions and they are anonymous. The folks who signed off on the clevis joint design of the SRBs were as guilty as the officials who pressed for launch in spite of warnings from lower level engineers. The SRBs that were recovered post launch often had evidence of blowby and sometimes there was extensive erosion of the secondary O rings. Challenger like events almost happened earlier and people ignored the warnings.

Fact: The tiles are delicate. Fact: Huge chunks of ice slough off the external tank during each launch.

What's wrong with this picture? If this isn't the cause of this calamity. It could easily be a cause in the future.

Even if the most recent loss has nothing to do with the tiles. It gives me pause to learn that there are no contingencies to deal with tile damage. It's been known for a long time that damage to certain tiles can lead to loss of the vehicle.

There is a betrayal of the public trust here even if Columbia was struck by a meteor during re-entry.

[ScottinSacto]

On any other subject than this sad one, the San Jose Mercury News headline would be a welcom admission we've all been waiting for:

Left wing problem is prime suspect

http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/shuttle/5087890.htm

[VRWC For Truth]

When I'm talking payload I mean satellites, not experiments.

[_Jim]

What is the contingency if say, one SRB fails to ignite?"

I think that these are probably the most reliable component of the entire shuttle ... these are ridiculously simple in construction and once lit - stay lit.

[Ole Okie]

...Whoraldo is really over the top. He just started his show asking why they didn't have time to inspect the tiles during the two week they were docked at ISS! Does this guy even bother trying to learn the facts?

The SOB gets paid without having to learn the facts.

So why should he confuse himself with facts, or waste the time to learn them?

Typical media reporting.

[Jhensy]

Now hold on a minute here...

I'm watching Whoraldo, and he's showing a close up from one of yesterday's videos, and am I seeing what I think I'm seeing?

It's a seemingly clear shape, and it sure looks to me like the shuttle is completely sideways in it's trajectory, viewed from the back. The left wing/side is the leading edge. The camera zooms back, the image becomes fuzzy, and then it looks like the other videos as the glow breaks up.

Am I (and Whoraldo) seeing things? Has anyone else seen this? I've got to be wrong...it seems so obvious. Is the shuttle completely sideways? Is it a trick of the video, or what?

[No Truce With Kings]

"Here you go:

RTLS: Return to Launch Site

An engine fails within the first few minutes of flight, or a systems problem (cabin leak, loss of cooling, etc.) occurs which requires the shuttle to come home early. In this case, the shuttle will fly downrange a bit, and then do a flip: it's originally travelling east, with the ET on "top" (away from the earth). During this flip maneuver, the shuttle will rotate so that its nose and tail swap places, and at the end the shuttle is flying backwards into is own exhaust, with the tank on the bottom. Eventually this will negate all of its forward momentum, and start to move back towards KSC. Then it's just a matter of dropping the ET and gliding back to the Cape. The whole thing takes about 25 minutes.

TAL: Transoceanic Abort Landing

If a problem occurs after the last RTLS capability, then the shuttle will have to land on the other side of the Atlantic. Depending on inclination, this will be either in Africa (Ben Guerir, Morocco) or Spain (Zaragoza or Moron). A TAL takes about 35 minutes."

OK, Captain Science, explain -- using one and two syllable words, because I must be slow -- how we do a RTLS or a TAL after Main Engine Cut Off.

Or are you saying that we should always opt for an abort scenario if anything, even slightly off-nominal occurs during ascent? Remember, this incident occurred 80 seconds into the flight. That gave the launch team a whole 280 seconds to recognize (a) that something had happened, (b) that it was serious enough to jeprodize crew safety, especially since (as I understand at this point) the event was picked up on a camera that was only analyzed after the launch phase was over.

Further, these types of incidents had happened before. I remember on STS-1 watching the first shots of the camera from the cargo bay and seeing tiles missing from the OMS pods. Other missions had returned safely with tiles missing or -- as on the Glenn flight -- the parachute door missing. And insulation chunks had hit the Orbiter before. (I think that was one reason they were going to the new tank design.)

I suspect that when we are done, the tiles are going to be found to have been just one of the factors involved. That three or four otherwise innocuous problems -- including with tiles -- combined to cause a catastrophic failure. Remember Challenger? On that flight the SRB leak just happened to be over the strut holding the SRB to the ET. The leak melted the strut, allowing the SRB to swing in, hit the tank and rupture it. If the leak had been on the other side of the SRB, it would have been just a minor anomaly -- noticable as a pressure drop in the left SRB, but otherwise not noteworthy.

[_Jim]

When I'm talking payload I mean satellites, not experiments.

I thought it was rather near sighted to put all eggs in the one space shuttle basket a few years ago when almost all sat launches were scheduled exclusively for the shuttle ... we damn near ran out of fully operational NWS GOES birds at the equator for that decision too ...

[TheDon]

Well said, and I don't think it is hindsight to say that they have no business launching shuttles with no means of landing if the tiles are damaged on launch.

Dittemore's comments were very surprising, unexpected and disturbing.

[_Jim]

Am I (and Whoraldo) seeing things? Has anyone else seen this? I've got to be wrong...it seems so obvious. Is the shuttle completely sideways? Is it a trick of the video, or what?

Geez!

This has already been discredited here on FR!

THIS is a lens anomoly!

We saw this on Dallas televsion stations ALL DAY YESTERDAY!

Fer cryin out loud!

[One Sided Media]

The foam was not the precipitating cause of this disaster. To effectively rotate the shuttle off of its normal descent axis takes more then a few tiles falling off and would have been noticed at the launch.

Something internal to the shuttle failed, at a minimum in the elevon structure.

[VRWC For Truth]

Dittemore's comments were very surprising, unexpected and disturbing.

Especially since debris from the shuttle tank have been hitting the tiles routinely on previous flights.

[Ronaldus Magnus]

Thank you for bringing up the Return to Launch Site and Transoceanic Abort Landing contingencies. I had been wondering about them myself. I would wager these will become standard operating procedure anytime ANYTHING even LOOKS wrong on any future shuttle launch.

[TheDon]

Actually, I thought they only mentioned one previous flight where it hit a solid rocket nozzle.

[_Jim]

Something internal to the shuttle failed, at a minimum in the elevon structure.

What leads you to believe 'something internal to the shuttle' failed first?

[_Jim]

I would wager these will become standard operating procedure anytime ANYTHING even LOOKS wrong on any future shuttle launch.

And I'll TAKE that wager. I wager they won't.