Posted on 02/02/2003 6:35:58 PM PST by TLBSHOW
Astronauts doomed from the start
THE seven astronauts on space shuttle Columbia may have been doomed in the first moments after they were shot into space 16 days ago.
NASA officials are investigating whether loose foam from an external tank that struck Columbia's left wing during takeoff contributed to its disintegration under the stress of re-entering the Earth's atmosphere – one of the most dangerous parts of any shuttle mission. The last words between mission control at Houston and shuttle commander Rick Husband gave no clue of impending disaster:
Mission control: "Columbia, Houston, we see your tyre pressure messages and we did not copy your last."
Cdr Husband: "Roger, but . . ." No more was heard.
The homeward-bound space shuttle broke up in flames and trails of smoke and vapour over Texas yesterday, killing all seven astronauts aboard.
The disaster struck 16 minutes before Columbia, the oldest in the shuttle fleet at 22 years, was due to land at Cape Canaveral in Florida. Echoing the tragedy of space shuttle Challenger, which stunned the world 17 years last week, Columbia exploded at an altitude of about 63km as it was travelling 18 times the speed of sound.
The explosion scattered debris and human remains across hundreds of square kilometres in Texas and Louisiana and shook houses in the area around Nacogdoches, Texas.
Police in Hemphill, eastern Texas, said human remains believed to be from the crew of Columbia had been recovered.
"I can confirm human remains from the space shuttle Columbia have been found in the debris," Hemphill police spokeswoman Karen Steele said, declining to elaborate.
A burnt torso and thigh bone were found on a Texan country road while elsewhere a scorched helmet and arm patch from one of the space suits were discovered.
In a televised address to the nation, an emotional President George W. Bush paid homage to the astronauts, saying, "The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to earth but we can pray that they are safely home".
The sparse information NASA had yesterday seemed to point to failures on the craft's left side.
Sensors on the shuttle's left wing and in the left wheel gear detected a sudden temperature increase or failure minutes before the vehicle exploded 63km over Texas as it flew at more than 20,000km/h.
NASA had concluded only two days ago there was no serious damage to the tiles, but was uncertain last night.
"As we look at that now in hindsight we cannot discount that there might be a connection," stunned shuttle manager Ron Dittemore said.
Investigators have all but ruled out terrorism as a cause because the shuttle's high altitude and extreme speed effectively put it out of range of an attack from the ground.
Officials are focusing on the extent of damage sustained during take-off.
Experts said many other malfunctions could have destroyed the shuttle during re-entry, when a cocoon of hot plasma envelops the spacecraft.
Columbia's underside and the leading edges of its wings would have been subjected to some of the highest temperatures during re-entry – up to 1650C – as friction from air rushing by heated its surface, experts said.
During this critical period, computers control the shuttle's angle of descent as it flies with its nose pointed about 40 degrees upward; the slightest deviation from the ideal orientation can expose underprotected parts of the vessel, causing it to burn up.
The shuttle's chief defences against an inferno are about 28,000 heat-resistant tiles attached to its vulnerable aluminium exterior. Experts have worried about the tiles' tendency to break off during flights since the earliest days of experimental test flights.
Relatives of the astronauts – six Americans and an Israeli – watched in horror while waiting at Cape Canaveral's VIP area to welcome their loved ones.
Residents in Texas, Louisiana and Alabama reported hearing the explosion as the shuttle fell apart at more than 18 times the speed of sound.
Bob Molter from Palestine, Texas, said he had seen the shuttle break up in the sky.
"There was a big boom that shook the house for more than a minute, and I went outside because I thought there had been a train accident," he said.
"I looked up and saw the trails of smoke zig-zagging, going across the sky."
Thousand of pieces of debris landed over vast areas of Texas and Louisiana which experts said may take years to find. People were warned not to touch any wreckage because it might be contaminated with toxic propellants.
President George W. Bush rushed to the White House from where he described the disaster in a televised address as a national tragedy.
"The Columbia is lost. There are no survivors," he said, before later ordering all flags be flown at half-mast.
The crew, six of whom were married and five of whom had children, were relatively inexperienced. Only three had flown in space before.
NASA has ruled out human error.
Again, your repeated ridicule (of myself and others) is unnecessary and getting old. Please refrain from including such comments in future posts. Thanks.
Yes, there IS such a capability, they just didn't have it with them at the time. In fact, a simple repair kit would be easy to assemble.
You'd need several sheets of tile material, enough to make many tiles if need be. You'd need a bonding agent that will cure in a vacuum, perhaps a 2-stager like epoxy. And you'd need to know the exact shape and dimensions of each tile, info that could easily be stored in .pdf files on a CD. And you'd need a tool to cut the tile.
And you'd need a simple tether system which could easily be put together at Home Depot. That would allow trained cew to inspect/repair enough tile damage to provide a better safety margin than returning with no repairs. Remember, we aren't talking a Perfect Tile Job here...we're talking a tile job that's better than raw aluminum shuttle skin.
Each mission would carry the kits and the tether, and each mission would do an immediate inspection upon achieving orbit - so that there would be plenty of time to effect repairs. Rudimentary, Watson.
To me it's obvious. And I'm an engineer.
Michael
GREYWOLF ADDED: "It would not have been inconceivable that plastik explosives could have been sealed into one of these "black boxes" and not be examined before the unit was installed."
GREYWOLF ADDED: "The other possibility is a software bomb (software is also developed in many places) triggered to disrupt computers at a vulnerable period in the flight i.e re-entry or takeoff. Like all viruses, it could sit dormant until the need to run the re-entry code and then rear its ugly head and do its terrible deed."
GREYWOLF ADDED: "I am not saying that the event WAS terrorism. All I am doing is pointing out the possibilities..."
Good points. NASA has not mentioned ANY of them as possibilities, although I lean toward it having been an accident (but one which there should be SOME contemporary remedies for, e.g. EMERGENCY SPACE WALK CAPABILITY).
Of course not. They should carry several sheets of the 2"-thick stuff and a CDROM with the templates for each of the 26,000 tiles. Or however many CD's it takes to hold them all. And a master file that would show which tile is in which location. Even a tyro web designer could come up with the point-and-click to do this.
And they should carry some kind of bonding agent that will cure in a vacuum, like epoxy. And a tile-cutter.
This is a ridiculously-simple kit to put together.
Michael
"High norm" is not the same as maximum acceptable limit.
Your hysterical reposting of the same information doesn't change that.
I think you're missing the point. ON THE GROUND, it's a multi-step procedure. In space, on an emergency basis, ANY tile repair is going to be better than bare shuttle aluminum skin. And it could easily be cut-n-paste. Anything to improve the chances of getting home.
Michael
Yes, they were ENTIRELY too quick to rule out the possibility that Columbia carried its own demise with it. All they basically said was, "it couldn't be a Stinger, it couldn't have been a 767 with an Atta flying it, it couldn't have been a rogue F-16, it couldn't have been anything on the ground, so - voila'! - it couldn't have been terrorism/enemy of the US." In other words, since it couldn't have been anything that has happened before, terrorism is ruled out.
Frankly, my first inclination was to suspect that the shuttle might have been carrying a piece of gear with either a programmed and induced failure built into it OR a piece of gear with some non-standard, explosive parts sealed inside. The perfect plan would include execution of the device upon reentry, when 16 days worth of complacency would have taken off any edge the crew might have had that could have overcome the failure.
If someone WAS paid off somewhere along the line and such a device included in the shuttle, we may never know absent some really astonishing disclosures. Right now, it's looking more and more of a TILE problem, and I firmly believe that the crew should be equippped and trained to inspect and repair the tiles, at least to the degree that "SOME repair is better than none."
Michael
Somewhere, I had heard/read/understood that it was an unmanned Soyuz that was bringing the supplies. Maybe it was that a Soyuz would be going up soon and bringing a crew. I haven't had a lot of sleep this past week (being in the multi-alarms/night hospital situation) so I'm not remembering the specifics.
KOZAK WROTE: "The Columbia is (WAS) the only shuttle that couldn't make the orbit of the ISS. But my understanding is only Atlantis has the proper docking equipment.
Interesting. I guess because it was so heavy. I still think they should all have EMERGENCY TETHERING CAPABILITY---whether they have "proper" docking equipment or not.
KOZAK WROTE: "Repairing the tiles is not as simple as cut and paste. The process in which the tiles are mounted is a multistep process and not something that can be done. If it were that simple don't you think NASA would have thought of it? Or do you think they don't give a rats ass about the crew and 2 billion in space assets??????"
I think they are not thinking with an Apollo 13 EMERGENCY-RECOVERY "thinking-out-of-the-box" mentality. I realize it is a multi-step process---the styrofoam has a black heat-shield coating attached.
Although the coating actually goes partially around each tile, they could PRE-APPLY the coating to SHEETS of styrofoam to enable them to be CUT TO SHAPE (without the side coating) and glued in space. It would not be AS GOOD as installing the regular tiles, but it sure beats RAW ALUMINUM in 3000 degree heat!
KOZAK WROTE: "IN aviation as in other areas of life some events ARE NOT SALVAGABLE."
Understood, but some ARE salvagable with an Apollo 13 EMERGENCY-RECOVERY "thinking-out-of-the-box" mentality. Check out #343---Wright is right!
WRIGHT IS RIGHT! RESPONDED TO KOZAK: "I think you're missing the point. ON THE GROUND, it's a multi-step procedure. In space, on an emergency basis, ANY tile repair is going to be better than bare shuttle aluminum skin. And it could easily be cut-n-paste. Anything to improve the chances of getting home."
BINGO! It's what I am calling the Apollo 13 EMERGENCY-RECOVERY "thinking-out-of-the-box" mentality. Thanks for your input, WRIGHT IS RIGHT!
I'll count that the same way as some of those bewilderingly weird suppositions that assumed I was a "bushbot".
No.
Seems the most logical. :^)
We'll have to see what it's properties were.
That's some tough foam. But then it's hard to imagine foam impacting something at mach 2 or more (I'm assuming the atmosphere would've decelerated the foam so that the difference in speed between the orbiter and the dislodged foam by the time it hit the orbiter was mach 2 or more).
I've always suspected this about you.
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