From NASA engineering film: Sequential pix of debris hitting Columbia's wing

NASA via CNN Online & Yahoo News ^ | 2/3/03 | Wolfstar

[Wolfstar]

Released Monday morning, a high-speed NASA engineering film shows a piece of debris falling from the large external tank on the space shuttle Columbia's liftoff and hitting the orbiter's left wing. Bear in mind that these are extreme close-ups of a high-speed event. In the top couple of photos, you see only the top of the broken-off piece. Most of it is in the shadows. Depending on which clip you see and how slowly it is run, to the uninitiated person's eye, it can look either like the debris strikes the wing hard enough to pulverize the debris, or the debris strikes a glancing blow and bounces off in the direction of the main and booster engine exhaust.

[SarahW]

Huh. Have you called NASA with YOUR solution then?

Howlin, that's just silly. How could I know NASA had a problem when they decided there was no problem and nothing they could do if there were, and left me out of the loop.

BTW, if you had watched the press conference today you'd know that after all their testing and brainstorming, they decided it was NOTHING that was detrimental to the shuttle.

And they were a:wrong, and b:unwilling to look for a nail when they had no hammer.

How dare you insinuate that the people at NASA didn't care enough about their own astronauts. Because that IS what you're doing.

I am insinuating that they didn't try hard enough, from both micro and macro and fore and hind evaluation.

If there was no way in hell to bring an astronaut back if a crucial tile or set of tiles were dinged, I submit that spiders in space could have waited until they figured out a contingency plan.

[meyer]

They found the nose cone tonight, including the section where the pilot sits. Hemphill, Texas.

Thanks for the news, though it is sad.

I hope that at a minimum, this provides a great amount of information as to what happened. I suspect, though, that the best information will come from Houston.

[PatriotGames]

Do you think NASA knew this was going to happen and decided to keep the crew in the dark?

When John Glenn made his historic 3 orbits of the Earth there was an indication that his heat shield was compromised.

They told him not to eject the service module of his capsule so that it would absorb heat and burn away instead of his heat shield.

They did NOT tell him that his heat shield was compromised.

Let me be very specific.

They DELIBERATELY decided NOT to tell him and kept him in the dark about the potential consequences.

They let him reenter and kept their fingers crossed because they knew that there was nothing else they could do. They also realized that telling him would cause him undue and unneeded stress as his stress levels at that point in time were maxed out anyway.

[Howlin]

meyer

Go here

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/835347/posts

[Howlin]

My response

Huh. Have you called NASA with YOUR solution then?

was in reply to your remark

I won't accept there was nothing they could or would have tried, either.

Well, did you call them and tell them how you would have done it?

[El Gato]

Your analysis assumes that the piece of ice didn't have a rapid change in drag coefficient (i.e changed orientation),

Would it not tend to orient itself such as to minimize it's drag coeficient. That is, wouldn't it tend to weathervane? Of course that would mean it would it more or less edge on, thus concentrating the force into a fairly small area. My intitial analyis ignored the atmospheric effects altogether. (BTW it also "said" the time to "drop" that 10 meters would be 1.414 seconds, which seems to jive pretty well with the full speed video.)

[glock rocks]

or an APU spun apart. fini.

could have been one of thousands of things. it's too early to know.

[OldFriend]

Golden's motto was designed to have money diverted to Russia to please albore and his buddy boris. We paid Russia's part of the bill for the space station.

[DugwayDuke]

"The cracks are very apparent. There was obviously a view from the under carriage--a view the astronauts had as well as the camera."

So you believe that an entire crew of astronauts saw these "cracks" and did not once ask what they were or what risk they posed? This crew included several experienced astronauts and this was not their first trip. This and this alone should be sufficient to convince anyone that this picture is as credible as that of "tourist guy" at the WTC.

Nor can you saw that these cracks were observed but discussed only in some super secret manner. Remember these "pictures" were transmitted to earth over an open channel. It would make no sense to transmitt them openly and discuss them secretly.

[Bronco_Buster_FweetHyagh]

"By then, even if they determined that the incident was a threat to the shuttle, THERE WAS NOTHING THEY COULD DO. "


Nothing?
How about
1) Let the crew know they may die
2) Give the crew chance to record their goodbyes
3) Extend orbit as long as possible while thinking of solutions
4) Download results of all scientific experiments
5) on and on and on


People who are using the "nothing we could have done anyways" excuse are completely insane.

[OldFriend]

If I may enlighten you for the zillionth time. The shuttle was oriented to present the minimum surface to the heat.

THERE WAS NOTHING THEY COULD DO...............

[DoughtyOne]

Do you remember how the TWA Flight 800 investigation started.  It started with Jim Kahlstrom and others stating that a bomb or missile had to have been involved.  I've seen him say as much in interviews.  But somewhere along the way, the mood changed.  The center fuel-tank theory was hatched and here we are.

NASA has decided it will make a show of investigating the debris.  Then it will explain it away.  Some center fuel-tank theory will surface and we'll be expected to buy off on it.

The debris hit under the left wing.  I don't know exactly what angle it came out at, but I do know it didn't just glance off.  I have no vested interest in finding NASA at fault here.  My hackles were raised when it was said that this debris was a minor incident of no significance.  That sounded for all the world to me like, "Yeah we've checked into that and dismissed it."  Hog wash.  I wasn't going to buy off on that.

Look folks, we have debris falling away and hitting the wing.  At least some of the initial information doesn't hold water.  This debris is no 12" or 20" in size.  It's bigger.  It is described as being hard as a brick when it dries.  It feel a good distance before it hit and bounced off hard.

You can dismiss it all you like.  The empirical evidence so far states that the shuttle experienced failures in the direct vicinity of the debris strike.  Now we can ask questions or we can watch as NASA explains away anything that make sense and goes for the center fuel tank theory.  I'll be damned if I'll sit by and watch that, but you folks are welcome to if you like.

[Jhoffa_]

PS: I honestly think a PIC Microcontroller and < a thousand bucks would do such a thing..

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

Please tell me how NASA could assume a 5 to 10' brick hitting the shuttle moving in excess of 1000 mph would do no damage. I'd like to hear the parse on that.

Probably a case of "whistling past the graveyard". Previous incidents have not resulted in tragedy -- bringing creeping confidence/laxity? I am curious about one thing: exactly how fragile are these tiles? Surely they are not as strong as ceramic, which wold be very heavy. But they can't be soft-structurted, like foam. Are they fibrous, like aspestos? Do you have any idea?

[Action-America]

I hope everyone can see past the talking heads and the finger pointers out there and realize that despite all of the technology involved, there are still accidents that can and do happen.

ABSOLUTELY!  If, as it is beginning to appear, the cause was launch damage, then there was nothing that they could do.  After all is said and done, the only thing that might change, is that the may do something like require that every future shuttle mission include enough additional air and supplies to allow them to stay up long enough to effect a rescue, if necessary.  The important thing isn't to find someone to blame, but to determine procedures that will prevent it from happening again - and do it in a timely manner.

 

[TaRaRaBoomDeAyGoreLostToday!]

I saw this as well, but folks here think they are experts and know it all. When half of em probably had no clue about this mission until this tragedy and film was publicized on the web, leaving amateurs to speculate everything about which experts, prior astronauts, rocket scientists, were not sure of.

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

I have just one question for Dan Goldin: Now that 7 of your astronauts are dead and you're ass is in the hotseat, do you think it was a good idea to fire 5 of your 9 safety board members (and 2 consultants) that had the guts and integrity to voice grave concerns over safety problems?

Guess they were politically and economically inconvenient.

[TheBattman]

The exact same thoughts have gone through my mind over the years (exept the Air Force bit).

There is no way NASA can charge enought $$ to even partially recoup mission costs when they do any sort of experiment/launch a satelite/etc. It's so much cheaper to launch satelites with a "standard" rocket, either domestic or foreign.

Without a clear-cut mission or goal to achieve, why are we still launching these multi-billion dollar machines to do piddly experiments? I can sort of see the missions a few years back to repair/maintain the Hubble telescope.

Maybe I am missing something here...but I can think of a lot more urgent uses for our tax dollars (including lower taxes). Someone here have a more insightful view on the subject?

[DoughtyOne]

Those are good question and certainly as viable as anything I'm considering. My consern is that observers in California seem to have seen debris departing the shuttle much earlier than the sensors indicate. Unless we have been led to believe something that is erronius, the shuttle was breaking up while the crew was talking to NASA as if nothing were wrong.

Could things have progressed to the point that the shuttle finally broke up suddenly, without warning? I don't know. I would find it hard to believe that sensors wouldn't make this almost impossible.

Nothing that I have seen makes me think the wing would have just fallen off without some prior warning, shaking etc. The computer may have compensated the drag and made things seem smooth. It seems the crew would hear something, but then don't they have their suits on? Perhaps they couldn't hear.

[First_Salute]

Bump.