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Posted on 02/02/2003 2:54:30 PM PST by NormsRevenge
NASA: Shuttle Temperature Rose Suddenly
By PAUL RECER, AP Science Writer
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -
NASA (news - web sites) officials said Sunday that space shuttle Columbia experienced a sudden and extreme rise in temperature on the fuselage moments before the craft broke apart.
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NASA space shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore said the temperature rise — 60 degrees over five minutes in the mid-fuselage — was followed by an increased sign of drag that caused the shuttle's computerized flight control system to try to make an adjustment to the flight pattern.
Dittemore cautioned that the evidence was still preliminary, but that one of the possibilities was that there been damage or a loss of thermal tiles that protect the shuttle from burning up during re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere.
"We are making progress," Dittemore said, adding that the combination of new engineering data and an observer who reported seeing debris from the shuttle while it was still passing over California may create "a path that may lead us to the cause."
The shuttle broke up shortly before landing Saturday, killing all seven astronauts. Most of its debris landed in eastern Texas and Louisiana.
Earlier Sunday, NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe named a former Navy admiral to oversee an independent review of the accident, and said investigators initially would focus on whether a broken-off piece of insulation from the big external fuel tank caused damage to the shuttle during liftoff Jan. 16 that ultimately doomed the flight 16 days later.
"It's one of the areas we're looking at first, early, to make sure that the investigative team is concentrating on that theory," O'Keefe said.
The insulation is believed to have struck a section of the shuttle's left side.
Dittemore said the engineering data showed a temperature rise in the left wheel well of the shuttle about seven minutes before communication was lost with the spacecraft. One minute later, there was an even more significant temperature rise in the middle to left side of the fuselage.
The drag on the left wing began a short while later, causing the shuttle's automated flight system to start to make adjustments.
"There may be some significance to the wheel well. We've got some more detective work," Dittemore said.
The manufacturer of the fuel tank disclosed Sunday that NASA used an older version of the tank, which the space agency began phasing out in 2000. NASA's preflight press information stated the shuttle was using one of the newer super-lightweight fuel tanks.
Harry Wadsworth, a spokesman for Lockheed, the tank maker, said most shuttle launches use the "super-lightweight" tank and the older version is no longer made. Wadsworth said he did not know if there was a difference in how insulation was installed on the two types of tanks.
Wadsworth said the tank used aboard the Columbia mission was manufactured in November 2000 and delivered to NASA the next month. Only one more of the older tanks is left, he said.
O'Keefe emphasized that the space agency was being careful not to lock onto any one theory too soon. He vowed to "leave absolutely no stone unturned."
For a second day, searchers scoured forests and rural areas over 500 square miles of East Texas and western Louisiana for bits of metal, ceramic tile, computer chips and insulation from the shattered spacecraft.
State and federal officials, treating the investigation like a multi-county crime scene, were protecting the debris until it can be catalogued, carefully collected and then trucked to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.
The effort to reconstruct what is left of Columbia into a rough outline of the shuttle will be tedious and painstaking.
When a shuttle piece was located this weekend, searchers left it in place until a precise global position satellite reading could be taken. Each shuttle part is numbered; NASA officials say experts hope to trace the falling path of each recovered piece.
The goal is to establish a sequence of how parts were ripped off Columbia as it endured the intense heat and pressure of the high-speed re-entry into the atmosphere.
At least 20 engineers from United Space Alliance, a key NASA contractor for the shuttle program, were dispatched to Barksdale for what is expected to be a round-the-clock investigation.
Other experts, including metallurgists and forensic medicine specialists, are expected to join the investigation. Their focus will be on a microscopic examination of debris and remains that could elicit clues such as how hot the metal became, how it twisted and which parts flew off first.
In addition to NASA's investigation, O'Keefe named an independent panel to be headed by retired Navy admiral Harold W. Gehman Jr., who previously helped investigate the 2000 terrorist attack on the USS Cole (news - web sites).
Gehman's panel will also examine the Columbia wreckage, and come to its own conclusions about what happened. O'Keefe described Gehman as "well-versed in understanding exactly how to look about the forensics in these cases and coming up with the causal effects of what could occur."
Joining Gehman on the commission are four other military officers and two federal aviation safety officials.
Officials used horses and four-wheel-drive vehicles to find and recover the shuttle pieces. Divers were being called in to search the floor of Toledo Bend Reservoir, on the Texas-Louisiana line, for a car-sized piece seen slamming into the water.
Some body parts from the seven-member astronaut crew have been recovered and are being sent to a military morgue in Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
Columbia came apart 200,000 feet over Texas while it was streaking at more than 12,000 miles an hour toward the Kennedy Space Center (news - web sites). A long vapor trail across the sky marked the rain of debris.
One pilot plus emergency provisions, take two(+?) back down.
And you have to know you have a serious problem in the first place. It may well be that missing tiles weren't the primary cause anyway.
Just "SHOW ME THE MONEY"
Yes I do. I know no other way ...
My question for you, the ALMIGHTY EXPERT, is this:
Is this honestly the best we can do? If you, in your expert opinion say yes, well then fine with me. I'll just get used to the pictures eventually. Soon, the funerals will seem almost routine, and you won't be bothered with our questions.
Being a naive simpleton, I always thought NASA and the space program was about improving, testing, and stretching out limits. Making it Better, and achieving great things.
Do I think this is the best we can do?
I believe in the process of "continual refinement" - build on the success and learn from the failures of the past ...
To that end - I would fund a "new approach" program staffed with new people and take the design of the current shuttle and work to massively improve that design. We know it works- and we now have a better idea where the weak areas are (as if we didn't before?) ...
The 'givens' of this problem still exist: payloads and people into space and back again ... only this go-round we have a little better understanding of the 'risks', as we've had twenty plus (is it already) years under our belts.
I would rate this likelyhood as zero.
I agree. When I worked at the Cape, EVERYTHING was on camera and video taped.
Can the Soyuz and shuttle dock? I've not heard of that. There is a docking adaptor for the ISS and they had one for the Mir, but not the Soyuz. In any case, the shuttle didn't have a docking device for anything on this mission. That means an open space transfer unless the Soyuz could be rigged with a docking device on short notice. They had no EVA suits, and, as far as I know, no tethers. The Soyuz would have to bring the EVA gear and teathers, otherwise you're talking about jury-rigging an open space transfer in flight suits. Could they even re-pressurize the cabin after the transfer? You can do that if you plan for EVA and have an airlock and reserve atmosphere that you can afford to vent and purge.
And you have to know you have a serious problem in the first place. It may well be that missing tiles weren't the primary cause anyway.
When this happened my initial thought was a control system problem. But you wouldn't know that until you did the de-orbit burn and got down into the maneuvering at re-entry, and by then you're comitted to landing. Not much could be done then except work the problem as best you could, and if you get out of trim at Mach 18 or so its going to be hard to avoid going into a tumble.
When I was young I was sure I would see the first man on Mars, having missed the moon landings. Well, over twenty years have passed, and we are no closer. I don't doubt the scientist ability, I tend to doubt the nations will on this matter. I no longer believe I will see the Mars landing, but I hope my children will.
This whole thing sickens me. In my life, my most lasting memories of the space program are watching two shuttles explode. Once in school, and now on an otherwise dull saturday morning. I don't want to get used to this, but, and please forgive me for this, this time doesn't have the impact the first one did. I pray I am not getting numb to such things.
While watching the debris, I kept asking myslef "Why? What could have happened?" But I suspect this question was asked much more deeply, and with greater sadness, in mission control.
So you can stop posting, at least to me.
Your "facts" cannot be trusted. Truce, you shoot from the hip, and supply absolutely wrong information. You even asked (in post 111) "...how we do a RTLS or a TAL after Main Engine Cut Off". Well Truce, you can't, as I pointed out so clearly in the NASA press package post, the Main Engines are required to be operational to do either abort option.
Sure would be nice to be able to send up a rescue ship if the one up there has a problem such that it is expected it can't land, but what would having two ships ready simultaneously do to the budget? We would need two of the support items we currently only need one of. Also how would we be able to get the rescue ship to connect with the other one that's in trouble, so the occupants from the one can transfer to the other without going adrift in space? There's nothing to hook.
No, you did not. The only one blindly ranting is you.
I pose the same question to you that I have to _Jim:
Kindly present the technical degree that Mr. Dittemore has.
No, it certainly isn't now. It probably wasn't the best we could do in 1975, either. What it was, was the best we could do with the money Congress would appropriate to the project in 1975.
Engineering projects almost never do "the best we can do". Why? Because the best we can do is spectacularly expensive in every category: time, money, resources, etc. The idea in engineering is to do the best you can do to meet the requirements in the time, and with the resources, that you have available.
If you have a spare $40 billion burning a hole in your pocket, and 10-15 years, I guarantee that America can build something that will make the shuttle look like an ugly piece of playground equipment. We might be able to do it for much less than $40 billion.
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