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.
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.
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?
That is largely due to the politics surrounding its design. NASA's first approach probably would have been much more resiliant, but congress deemed it too expensive. As it exists today, the shuttle is not what anyone would wish for, it is what could be built given the political climate.
While it may have been possible to avert this disaster (but probably not), it would have required a certain amount of paranoia that would otherwise be paralyzing.
It is important to remember that shuttles aren't the only things that go down in flames. This sort of thing is just going to happen. In this case, NASA does not appear to have been negligent as they were preceding the Challenger incident.