NASA: DEBRIS NOT TO BLAME

New York Post ^ | 2/06/03 | ANDY GELLER and FRANCI RICHARDSON

[kattracks]

February 6, 2003 -- NASA yesterday all but ruled out the possibility that the shuttle Columbia disaster was caused by a chunk of foam insulation that struck the left wing during liftoff.

Agency experts are now focusing on other theories - including the possibility the wing's heat-protecting tiles were damaged by orbiting space junk.

[Fitzcarraldo]

The elephant in this case is a NASA issue. Finding a space junk cause would be pure accident - creating plausible deniability.

I thought NORAD tracked everything down to wingnut-sized pieces (or smaller)?

[IamConservative]

Yes, I believe they do. In fact I have read in the past few days:

- NASA flies the shuttle backwards in orbit to protect the crew from a debirs strike.

- They have done delta V burns to slightly change the shuttle orbit to avoid junk.

- Columbia herself was once struck with a chip of paint and left a pock mark in the windshield.

Which leaves you to wonder how long it will even be safe to orbit the earth. This makes it sound like my neighbors yard. It is so messy, people are alwasy stopping because they think they are having a yard sale.. :)

[dtel]

The first thing I would do is
"QUIT LAUNCHING THE POS IN THE WINTER".
Second, the fixed camera makes sense.
Of course, the horse is already running down the road and the barn door is wide open.

[Revolting cat!]

So my great-great-grandkids can go on vacation on the Moon or on Mars, dummy!

Good one! Sarcasm, I presume?! Imagine: DisneyWorld, shopping malls, souvenir shops selling T-shirts, rollerskating rinks, why, a football stadium!

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

Lies? I read the article. The opening line says they have all but ruled out the foam as a cause. I question such assertions early in the process. NASA is a typical federal bureacracy in self-defense mode. You called me a tin-foiler for quoting the article and questioning the early conclusion by NASA. I am entitled to my opinion and you are entitled to call me any name in the book to stand higher in your self-esteem.

By the way, since you called me a liar, would you like to do so to my face? I'll provide you my physical address and make myself fully and completely available for the opportunity.

[brityank]

Not totally sarcasm. I was privileged to watch the first Moon landing on a B&W TV with my ex-wife's great grandfather and experience the wonderment he felt at just how far society had come since his birth 93 years prior. Even a supermarket was amazing to him; how could they coordinate getting all of those items every day that he used to get in a dozen different stores that often ran out when he was a kid.

It will take more than a couple of generations, but if we can get government out of the way I am certain those will come to pass.

[motor_racer]

Just a bit of irony to offer here. Last Saturday morning I was watching Fox News. At about 8:50 they did an alert that they would be covering the Columbia's landing. Utterly uneventful. So I surfed over to my favorite geek channel, Discovery Science, to watch a program about junk floating in orbit, where it came from, the risks to spacecraft it poses, and about other junk falling out of orbit.

25 minutes later I was in my car and heard the news flash.

[_Jim]

those OMS pod tiles look awful beat up.

Fortunately the majority of that area (tile-pitting?) is in a relatively cool area (white tile), although you can see where they used the black tile nearby wich indicates an area where engineering prudence dictated a higher-temp tile ... some of that black in between tiles might also have been tile-repair attempts and whatever they did makes it look worse than it really might be - these 'attempts' at stuffing the gaps between tiles is only conjecture on my part at this point given some of the write-ups I have read on tile repair techniques ...

[_Jim]

They knew that ...

... that one day meteoroid damage could bring 'down' a shuttle, and it could *just* be coincidence that a piece of foam also came loose during launch (as the foam has for awhile now).

Travel beyond our protective atmosphere is *fraught* with such peril from meteorords (man-made or natural) - the size of which peril man is only beginning to get a 'handle' on ...

[_Jim]

Lies? I read the article. The opening line says

You are reading material once removed - perhaps even twice or thrice - from the source when you read a news account on something as mult-faceted and technical as this.

Please consider this article more a reflection on the NYPost than NASA and all the engineering crews who work there ...

[_Jim]

A question:

And a very good question it was - about the DynaSoar's "skip/glide" re-entry versus the rather quick approach the shuttle takes -

- I'm sure there are good reasons to take a quicker route in, one of which would be a more deterministic atmospheric scenario that isn't so dependant on the consistancy of the atmosphere -

- it's 'height' changes with weather - high and low pressure systems -

- such that craft capable of 'flying' at those heights would have to have intimate knowlege of the 'light air' it was trying to fly through -

- flight at 200,000 feet not really being 'flight' as we know it to be at the lower altitudes to begin with ...

[Fitzcarraldo]

Still these tiles look pretty bad - if they started out
in pristine condition they have suffered. On the starboard
side there are some pits that appear to have yellow chunks
(insulation foam?) buried in them. What if this damage
is secondary, spillover from whatever piece of
foam that hit the wing. I'd hate to see what the
primary damage is like. What would happen if the leading
edge of the wing were damaged? Would small pieces break
off and generate the black streaks you see on the port
OMS pod? I understand the leading edges are graphite composite.

[dasboot]

Roger that, about the debris: I've seen some micography of
high-velocity particles (dust-sized) found lodged in the headgear of spacewalkers. Ruin yer day to have a grain of sand pass through your head at 50,000mph. One of the known risks about which, yet, little can be done: but very much unlike the risk of going orbital with a bad bottom when it can be, at least to this laymen's mind, so easily mitigated.

[dasboot]

micrography I, ediot!