Latest Columbia News 624
Russia is suspending its space tourist program, for fairly obvious reasons. An NYT story notes that the obsolete but reliable computers driving the shuttle are to be examined as part of the inquiry. But most interestingly, a story in Aviation Week claims that a tracking camera trained on the shuttle detected damage to the wing prior to the breakup.
Expect fianl report in 6 months (Score:5, Insightful)
Troll? (Score:1, Insightful)
I mean seriously...if the computing system is going to come under scrutiny, how is that trolling?
There comes a point where you have to step back and ask yourself what the best way to go about a problem is. Unix is old. I know, Linux is not Unix, but still...depending on who's calling the shots there, they could very well decide that a 20+ year old OS is too archain to be used on the shuttle.
Then again, the shuttle itself is pressing that age.
Who knows.
This has to be tough for familes to hear... (Score:5, Insightful)
They died advancing science so we could all live better lives. Let's keep this in mind...
In Orbit Inspections? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder how long it would take an astronaut to correctly inspect a shuttle in orbit.
Fairly Obvious Reasons? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not really obvious why they're doing it. The article implies, but doesn't state, that it's because they now need to put cargo where the third, "passenger" seat would go on a Soyuz capsule.
Some people have suggested they're doing it because "space is now unsafe", which makes absolutely no sense.
Probably about time (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems unlikely that computers were to blame for this, but the kit in the shuttle is pretty old - if we're going to ask people to risk their lives like this we must give them the best kit we can.
I know I was shocked at the loss of the shuttle, and it should remind us of how brave these people are.
Not obvious (Score:0, Insightful)
The Columbia wasn't a Soyuz.
Re:Probably about time (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fairly Obvious Reasons? (Score:3, Insightful)
sPh
Re:Troll? (Score:4, Insightful)
And that would be a damn shame if they decide to switch so another OS Just Because The Current One Is Old. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" keeps echoing in my head.
Re:Probably about time (Score:5, Insightful)
that would be suicide... The older computers running in the shuttles are rock solid, space proven, and reliable. which are very different from anything that intel or AMD makes. the older and slower computers are doing the job fine without baing overloaded or needing to read sensors any faster. Remember, this is flight control computers... I'd rather have a known 99.999999999% uptime processor that was designed in the 80's running my spacecraft or aircraft than any of this unstable junk we use today.
outdated in the articles terms means it's nothing but a comment by an uneducated person trying to get their 15 seconds of fame.
The Software would have a larger potential for blame... I.E. the programmer did not make klaxons go off when sensors give bad readings, or there was any instance of throwing out data.
Until I see a report that states that the current computers on board are running at > 50% capacity and are getting near the overtaxed point then I'll believe it. until then it's fake news.
Re:In Orbit Inspections? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, there are no handles or other surfaces to which the astronauts could use to manuver efficient on the underside of the shuttle. For inspects to take place these would need to be added.
Adding these handles, requiring astronauts to handle and inspect these tiles may actually introduce more variables and increase the chances of failure upon re-entry. What if a tile is damaged DUE to the inspection?
Space Walks also take a long time, the shuttle may not be that large but to inspect it thuroughly before re-entry would add considerable resource requirements to every launch. They would either have to prepare for more time in space or cut back on the tasks to be performed for each mission. That would get costly no matter which way they go.
I read somewhere that they use ground telescopes to inspect the shuttle as well. But that these inspections are not very good due to poor resolution, shuttle orientation and timing issues.
This has certainly been a tragic loss. We lost 7 great people. We lost a remarkable piece of engineering. And the space agency has suffered a setback none shall forget for some time. But we must remember we call them 'heros' for a reason. These things do happen and are part of the job.
Re:Software problems (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Shuttle software coders (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate it when clueless journalists say "the computers are old" So what? It's the software that's important and the software is top notch. They seem to imply that a pentium IV would have magically saved Columbia. That just isn't true. It's like saying improved metal detectors would have prevented 9/11.
Unless there is some added function that they could only implement only on newer hardware, I don't see why the shuttles need new computers. Naturally, these jouranlists will never ask "what additional functionality does the shuttle need that the current computers don't provide?" they aren't trying to get at the truth of an issue. they're trying to get people to watch - and the best way to do that is by stirring controversy. All it takes to do that is to say "Look! the comptuers are so old!"
Yes, but is one of them Richard Feynman? (Score:5, Insightful)
He had a great deal of trouble, as an official investigator, just being *allowed* to investigate, and of course to release his findings he had to engage in what amounted to guerilla tactics.
The end fate of the Morton-Thiokol engineers who "blew the whistle" must stand as some sort of object lesson in this case as well.
One would hope that steps are being taken to prenvent another go 'round of this shabby and shameful incident in American space history.
KFG
Re:Expect fianl report in 6 months (Score:5, Insightful)
When you have something flying at Mach 2 after a vertical ascent of only 60-some seconds, no blackbox we can make would survive any longer than radio transmissions captured by warehouse-sized surveilance systems on the ground can. Then, there's all the other surveilance on the ground and in the air by astronomers (pros and amateur) and USAF.
NASA, the same day of the disaster, explained all that in the Q&A session.
The current shuttle design would gain little from a blackbox-like device.
Re:In Orbit Inspections? (Score:3, Insightful)
old computers (Score:3, Insightful)
1) They would weigh less. That is probably the most important advantage.
2) They could do more calculations. When trying to compensate for failing parts without going off course, spinning out of control, or overstressing the failing part, additional computation power might be helpful. (I'm guessing that the software may have failed to consider that a part that is not performing upto specifications is likely to have reduced structural integrity.)
Re:No Rescue? (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that with Apollo 13 they were never looking at sending another Saturn V up to rescue the crew. The things done to save Apollo 13 were done from inside Apollo 13 - this would not have been possible with Columbia if the damage was external as is being speculated since they had no way of getting outside the shuttle.
Re:No Rescue? (Score:1, Insightful)
I've heard the whole "we wouldn't be able to rescue them anyway" deal, but I don't understand why.
Nor do I (but for other reasons)
Look. I understand the "you will either succeed or die" attitude in the Mercury days, but there is no reason to operate under those conditions today.
I realize that there was no way for this crew to get to the ISS (Or for the folks at the ISS to come and get them) I also realize that "rushing" the next launch to rescue them would have been an even greater danger than risking reentry (at best) or impossible (at worst)
My question isn't why didn't we save them using duct tape and left over Apollo 13 gumption, but why we would send a manned mission up in this day and age without contigency plans in case reentry is determined to be too great a risk.
Maybe the ISS needs to have an orbit only vehicle that could go and meet the shuttle in an emergency. Maybe we need to put a second shuttle on the pad and ready to go before we send up any mission. (sort of like reserve divers who just sit around, ready to go, whenever high risk diving is attempted) Maybe we need to send every shuttle up with an ISS docking ring, whether it intends to dock or not, and don't send them so far from the ISS that they couldn't reach it in a pinch.
The point is, there are lots of solutions that probably would have saved this crew if they had been put in place before the launch, and NASA lost the "no point in looking for trouble we can't fix" attitude
Re:In Orbit Inspections? (Score:5, Insightful)
Doubtful. The shuttle is not designed for this, nor are the astronauts equipped to do so.
EVAs are limited to 8-9 hours due to oxygen issues. And it takes a long time to move around safely up there... even if you could get to the wing, you'd probably have to turn back around before looking at anything.
Additionally, there are no repair tools available - while some caulk was designed to do tile repair early in the shuttle program, it was determined that it just didn't work well, and there was no reasonable way to apply it anyway.
Just going to take a look could do more damage than good -- knocking a tile off during EVA would be bad. And you can't just add handholds to the exterior since they would impede reentry.
Ground based observatories don't have a very good view - especially since the bottom of the shuttle is oriented away from the surface. There are points where it's not, obviously, and they could certainly roll during orbit to allow observation, but even then ground based observatories don't do a great job of resolving "near" objects, plus the level of detail required is inherently obscured by the atmosphere.
Spaced based observation platforms (spy sats) could be used, but it was ineffective when they tried in 1999 with Discovery. Dunno why.
To be coldly realistic, the cost of the inspections would likely be far greater than the return... something has gone wrong once out of over 100 flights. Add in the pre-Shuttle flights and I believe it goes up to three times out of several hundred, with only one time (Columbia) resulting in loss of life (this is in-space problems relating to reentry only - both Apollo 1 and Challenger were pre-launch issues). It's a horrible tragedy whenever something goes wrong, and we should mourn the loss of the people who died, but throwing in a bunch of regulations and pointless inspections isn't really going to help.
We certainly need to find out what went wrong and try to prevent it in the future though -- I just don't think that orbital inspections will do any good toward this end, at least not until we have a LOT more infrastructure in orbit to deal with the eventuality.
PDP's don't suck for this application (Score:1, Insightful)
Moreover, the I/O bus interface to the various sensors in the shuttle critical. This is the kind of thing PDP's are good at. Hell there are PDP's still running parts of assembly lines around the world
Re:Expect fianl report in 6 months (Score:3, Insightful)
Much more valuable is the data about what led to the incident - and that data had been collected normally. So I must concur that in this case a "black box" would be of no use.
Some people don't get SW Engineering, do they? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just throwing in a "realtime version of Unix" because it is a "reliable and robust OS" will NOT mean the program running on it is reliable Or robust.
When I was doing my CompSci degree 12 years ago the SW Eng Prof was on sobatical to NASA to write some new code for the attitude jets so it could dock with Russian equipment. There were about 2 or 3 PAGES of code. It took them almost a YEAR to write it and verify that it was error free. And then, when he came back he said they estimated there was still one error for every 10,000 lines of code in the space shuttle program. Not only that, it was the MOST ERROR FREE CODE ON THE PLANET. Translation: More error free than any Unix/Linux OS or program.
And now people want to just throw in a newer chip with a newer OS?! WTF are they thinking? There isn't even any evidence that would make anyone think that the computers were to blame for the accident in the first place! Fix what isn't broken or even related to the accident... Briliant, only a clueless legislator could come up with something that stupid!
As the parent to this post said, the chips are working fine, they are not overloaded, and the program is tried, true and tested. Don't fix what ain't broke!
I concur. (Score:5, Insightful)
Spaceflight tends to reward simple and time-tested designs over new and complex. I have read at least one account suggesting that NASA resurrect the Gemini spacecraft for crew transfer to and from the ISS, since it was one of the most reliable spacecraft the US has ever flown.
Re:old computers (Score:2, Insightful)
- They will fail more often (faster/smaller chips are more likely to accept interference from radiation as they push the limits)
- They don't have a history of not failing (old computer were well tested in real life and have a strong history of not failling, if they did failled, then the problem was fixed.)
Re:old computers (Score:3, Insightful)
Obsolete computers (Score:2, Insightful)
Even though there are faster processors available, the entire system must be considered. The software, hardware and system has been through extensive design, development and debug. Resistance to vibration and radiation and accelleration has been tested and was designed in.
Slapping in the latest gajillion Hz processor would not have provented the recent tragedy, it likely would have created more dangers. Certainly if designing a shuttle today, we'd use a processor with more horsepower, but by the time it got off the launch pad, it would look ancient by the standard of what's sitting on your desk.
For mission critical applications, I would take old slow reliable over new fast unproven any day.
No need for heroes (Score:5, Insightful)
But then, whether you call it cynicism or realism, we accept a level of failure in all transport systems which is capable of killing people. We allow people to ride bicycles in motorised traffic. We allow manufacturers to build cars that are capable of traveling fast enough that a brake or steering failure can kill not only the occupants but anyone who gets in the way. We allow the construction of ships that break up in heavy seas, of railways where trains can pass red lights and crash. There is no public contract about this: we never actually get a chance to vote on the level of risk we want in our transport systems. What we do is react to disasters, and politicians have to decide based on that reaction whether to take some kind of action.
Sometimes they do, and as a result we have anti-lock brakes, double-hulled ships, crash barriers on freeways and autoroutes, airbags, automatic train protection systems, and a host of other technologies.
The Shuttle crews are unusual, superior human beings. But they should not need to be heroes, any more than someone who gets on a plane in LA to fly to a meeting in Tokyo is a hero.
Because if the exploration of space is ever to become commonplace, we have to get rid of the idea that this is a dangerous enterprise for heroes. We need to follow the same rules that apply to everything else. We need to ask nasty questions like "Why can't tiles be replaced in orbit, since we have had 18 years to think about things like this?" .
A WW1 biplane could keep flying after it had been shot full of holes, yet the Shuttle seems to have a number of extremely fragile technologies failure of any one of which could destroy it on re-entry. If that's so, why haven't we developed a better technology? Is it the mindset that needs to change as much as the design?
Re: They can't do it (Score:2, Insightful)
> Thirdly each area of tile on the shuttle is made of a different combination of material according to the heat environment it is expected to be in, each tile is near enough individual in its shape and size, each tile is shaved to fit the craft at that point, and the tile system as a whole is designed so that minor damage to the surface does not result in the loss of the whole tile, neither does the loss of a single tile result in a loss of vehicle scenario - just localised structural damage. Replaceing the tiles is not possible due to thier uniqueness - and the likely hood of repair is poor as the repair material coming loose may damage further tiles.
I'd bet they could do it with some kind of pookey that they would squish in the hole for a temporary patch. Remember, the tiles are designed for unbounded reuse, but a repair just has to get them home once. The patch might not even have to last the whole re-entry; just plug the hole long enough to prevent the zipper effect.
More to the point, I'd rather re-enter with a patch that "might" work than orbit until my air ran out. Yes, there are formidable challenges, but "impossible" is not an acceptable engineering solution for survivability issues.
For that matter, it might be possible to build the cabin where a subsection of it worked as an old-fashioned capsule-style re-entry pod that they could eject from orbit ("Don't push that red button, 007!"), allowing them to ditch the "reusable" concept when lives were at stake.
Re:Soyuz safety record (Score:2, Insightful)
service people were affected by the blast.
No passengers of Souz died.
Re:old computers (Score:1, Insightful)
It's not Cargo room, and Soyuz flights aren't .. (Score:3, Insightful)
Unmanned Progress Tugs fly resupply missions to ISS, they can carry 2.5 tons of supplies (food, clothes, fuel, water, oxygen, etc).
Soyuz flights were "Taxi Flights" Soyuz capsules have an on-orbit rating of six months. So that means that the Russians need to rotate the Soyuz "Life Boat" at the ISS every six months.
What they do is fly a fresh Soyuz capsule up. Two cosmonauts are necessary for the Taxi Flight, and then that Taxi Crew comes back down on the old Soyuz capsule. They used to fill that third seat through agreements they had with other nations space agencies, and have only recently begun selling them to space tourists.
They're going to kill the Taxi Flights while the Space Shuttle is grounded, and devote them to ISS Crew Rotation.
That means that the next Long-Term ISS Crew will fly up to the station on a Soyuz, and the current crew will return to earth aboard the Soyuz currently docked to the station, and due to be rotated out.
They will continue that pattern until the Shuttle's start flying again, at which point they will resume Crew Rotation duties, and the Soyuz flights will go back to being simple Taxi Flights again, at which point the russians will start selling the third seat again.
Re:Russian Space Tourism (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:old computers (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not flaming you here Crow, but I don't think you have any idea what you're talking about.
1) They would weigh less. That is probably the most important advantage.
how much less would they weigh and how much additional load would it allow the shuttle to carry? I think you'll find that upgrading the computers would let each astronaut take 1 extra pair of socks into orbit. So what?
2) They could do more calculations.
More calculation on what? Once the software has looked at all the data and made a decision, what is there left for it to do with all that processing power?
I'm guessing that the software may have failed to consider that a part that is not performing upto specifications is likely to have reduced structural integrity.)
Let's assume you're correct. Would a more powerful computer magically become sentient and figure that out? No. Using the same software a more powerful computer would make the same wrong decision - it would just make it a lot faster.
Even if the software was upgraded to take into account the structural integrity of the ship, that doesn't necessarily mean a more powerful computer is required. In fact, I'm sure that one of the results of the Columbia investigation will be such changes to the software, and I'm sure that the new software will still run just fine on the current computers.
In short, you haven't made your case.
Re:This has to be tough for familes to hear... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No Rescue? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In Orbit Inspections? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Because it happens so often (Score:2, Insightful)
>move on.
That approach works for the layman. It does not work for the engineers and the physicists who need to do the moving on -- they still need to design and fly spaceships. Don't expect the space program to simply "move on" and accept that one launch out of 50 is going to be a catastrophe.
If we must accept that, it's the end of the program.
Re:Because they didn't plan for it (Score:5, Insightful)
From Nasa's Human Space Flight [nasa.gov] pages:
The nominal maximum crew size is seven. The middeck can be reconfigured by adding three rescue seats in place of the modular stowage and sleeping provisions. The seating capacity will then accommodate the rescue flight crew of three and a maximum rescued crew of seven.
Make sure one other shuttle is always ready to go within a week like Atlantis was
Atlantis wasn't ready to go. It could be pressed into service, but only by eliminating all pre-launch testing. You know, the testing that routinely finds problems in the months prior to launch that have to be fixed and occasionally cause launch delays?
You want a shuttle ready to go everytime? Ok. You just doubled the cost for every launch. Because keeping a shuttle ready is a huge expense. The environment, even inside a building, is not friendly to the components and continual inspection is necessary for some areas... like the tiles.
It seems like a simple thing to rig up some camera or whatever to look around the corners.
It's not a simple thing. They've been trying to design one for ISS and it's problematic. And that's a vehicle that's not designed for reentry.
As long as you have water, and you can recirculate that pretty low tech, if they don't do that already.
Oddly enough, Columbia would have been in good shape here... They were actually testing systems to recycle water from waste. See here [nasa.gov].
I expect something like this to be in place before the shuttles are taken in use again
I don't. Doing so at this stage would kill manned space flight. It's akin to eliminating seafaring exploring from Europe in the 1400s - 1600s because too many people died in the process, and so we won't do any more exploration until the infrastructure is in place to keep them safe. Except that until the exploration has been done it's impossible to put the infrastructure in place.
I'm not saying that a rescue couldn't have occurred - in fact I posited ways it could have been done (based off statements from NASA no less), but also stated the issues that would have been encountered. Nor am I saying that a rescue shouldn't be attempted in a future case.
But, realistically, we don't have the infrastructure yet. If we want to be able to prevent this kind of disaster in the future, then we have to do more missions, build more flight systems (hopefully more cost effective to run than the shuttle fleet), and put more permanent installations into space. But all of this is decades down the road... and trying to fix it the other way around is a nearly certain way to kill manned spaceflight all together.
Re:Expect fianl report in 6 months (Score:3, Insightful)
To amplify on the irony, these are the same media who said Reagan was dead and that Al Gore won the presidential election.
After a national disaster, I avoid the news media, thus saving myself from the constant "we don't know anything yet, but here are a long line of pundits who are happy to guess with abandon."
Re:This has to be tough for familes to hear... (Score:4, Insightful)
This was the last scientific Shuttle mission scheduled until 2008.
Every other scheduled Shuttle flight was dedicated to building the ISS.
The ISS cannot be used for science, because it holds three people, two-and-a-half of whom work full-time to keep the lights on.
The ISS holds can only hold three people because its escape/rescue pod only holds three people.
The ISS escape/rescue mechanism holds three people because NASA cancelled the higher-capacity crew return vehicle it had scheduled.
NASA cancelled this vehicle programme because... (ta-dah!) ...it might replace the Shuttle. And heaven knows, with $500M of pork at stake per launch we can't get rid of the Shuttle! We need the shuttle to build... the ISS!
You want "fantastic PR for science?" For every $500M Shuttle/ISS launch you cancel, fund three $150M Pathfinder-class missions to Mars, the asteroid belt, or nearby comets.
Scrapping the Shuttle/ISS project for scientific missions would result in not just better PR for science ("Look! Pictures from another world that nobody's ever seen before!" versus "Look, another guy in a spacesuit with the Shuttle's rear engines in the background"), but better science, too .
Re:Expect fianl report in 6 months (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:two step rescue? (Score:2, Insightful)
One should not limit the aquisition of important safety data based on this type of thinking. You don't try to phone someone who lives in a burning building just because you are, at that time, unable to come up with a response to that situation.
As somone who went through a life-threatening situation (a fire), I can affirm that the mind can get pretty creative when it has to.
For example, the Progress vehicle could have been sent to Columbia while a rescue shuttle was prepared.
With only two EVA-certified individuals on board, and no docking clamps, moving supplies from the Progress vehicle to Columbia would not have been a trivial endeavor. And transferring untrained (for EVA) people between shuttles would have been difficult, at best.
Yet no one would have argued before a rescue attempt that the seven astronauts would have been better off if we had not known that the left wing was damaged.
Re:No Rescue? (Score:3, Insightful)
Over on the sci.space.shuttle newsgroup there's been a flood of posts from space newbies asking what are considered "ridiculous" questions like "why didn't they take a spacewalk to survey the damage" and "why didn't they go to the space station for repairs?" At first glance, these questions are uninformed, but in the larger sense if you consider the vision that was presented to us (I was around then, albeit as a child) the reality we finally got didn't even come close to the grand scope of it all. Basically there were some mighty big plans afoot after Apollo, but they got squashed pretty fast when Nixon taught NASA a significant lesson: Just because one president wants to do something doesn't mean the next president has to sign up for it. Sad, really, but that's the way it goes.
Re:In Orbit Inspections? (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, the problem is not so much the altitude of the orbit, but its inclination. Columbia probably had enough OMS fuel to get to ISS's orbital altitude, as certainly does the Soyuz (to get "down" to the shuttle) currently docked there. Changing orbital inclination is roughly analogous to spinning up a gyroscope, and then rotating it against the gyroscopic resistance. Making a 20 or 30 degree inclination change at LEO is about as expensive in terms of energy as is the liftoff. Neither STS nor Soyuz has anywhere near the order of magnitude of orbital maneuverability to attempt this.
Of course, there's all the other problems, such as no docking interface, whether both ships could have been configured for EVAs for an external evacuation, and that fact that the Soyuz can only seat two of the shuttle astronauts after the pilot from the ISS.
The long and short of it is that the tolerance for fatal failure in spaceflight is razor thin, and the technical complexities involved would have prevented Bruce Willis, nay, even Tommy Lee Jones [warnerbros.com] from doing anything to save Columbia.
Can we admit the shuttle is a piece of junk yet? (Score:3, Insightful)
The SR-71 could do mach3.3 (2200mph), and it's titanium skin temp routinely got up to 1000F, well above the melting point of the shuttles aluminum skin. (melting point aluminum 600F, titanium 3000F).
The exhaust outlet temp of the SR71 engines is around 3400F, so we know there are materials available for aircraft manufacture that can take some pretty high heat even when they are taking a pounding.
The SR71 was designed long before the shuttle and flew routinely up until the 1990s without incident.
How about the MIG-25. It can do Mach 3.3 or so also, and its airframe can withstand 25G! I don't know what the design specs were on the shuttle, but I know it never experienced more than 3 G, and I would guess that 10G would rip it apart.
If I were going to slap a spacecraft together, I'd give it the airframe specs of a MIG-25, make it out of titanium, and instead of tiles just bolt on a piece of disposable titanium covered with teflon for a heat shield. It could probably be used a bunch of times too before it had to have a new coating put on it if the teflon coating were thick enough. Heck, there's so many new frying pan materials out there that would probably do 10 times better than teflon too.
Such a spaceship would have weathered what destroyed the shuttle with little more than a tiny dent.
You mean to tell me that with $500 million per FLIGHT (!) that piece of junk was all they could come up with? It was half disintegrated before it ever left the ground. Tiles so delicate you could not touch them? WTF? That's like some kind of sick joke. It's almost like they're making it up. They designed a winged aircraft that is supposed to use aerobraking for reentry and made it out of aluminum instead of titanium?
Hell, I have a whole set of frying pans that are more advanced.
Lots of folks are getting screwed here people: Astronauts and taxpayers to name a few.
Why not telescopes? (Score:3, Insightful)
With only the launch video for information the analysis was 90% WAG (wild ass guess). At best the analysis would have consisted of: "We think the foam is this big, and since we assume the foam is this big we assume it weighs this much, and since it weighed this much, and it looks like it hit around here, so it shouldn't have caused any serious damage. And plus, it was okay the last few times this happened." If I were in charge of a no fail safe system (the exterior hull of the Shuttle) and I hear that kind of bullshit, the first words out of my mouth would be, "Clean out your desk, you're fired for incompetence." What about possible ice? Why did the foam fall off? Could it have been wet? Did they analyze the retrieved tank's foam? Did they measure the missing foam? What was the weather before launch? There were too many unknowns and more information was needed before a proper analysis could have been done. And ANY pictures would have added a whole dimension to the data available for analysis.
Face it, they bet the shuttle on that WAG. And they lost big. This is an exact repeat of the complacency and lack of paranoia that led to the Challenger disaster. People in charge of spacecraft should be paranoid assholes who insist on things being done as perfectly as humanly possible. And "It was okay the last few times" is not a statement that people like that make.
Blame USAF - they compromised the shuttle design (Score:3, Insightful)
The original design that NASA were gunning for was for a vehicle that would come in steeper and then glide over a limited range to its target with two real wings. The advantage being that the vehicle would only be exposed for a short period of time to the heating effect. The shuttle would also land a lot slower with this design.
The USAF needed a longer glide range to operate from Vandenburg, so they could always get back to land, even after a single orbit. They pressed for a delta wing which allowed them to glive for about 2,500 miles. This disadvantge is that the shuttle must fly through reentry (rather than a controlled stall, that NASA wanted). This meant that reentry took a lot longer, with much greater exposure to heat.
Re:No Rescue? (Score:3, Insightful)
It takes a great many people, including the astronauts, to launch a shuttle. I know I personally would not want to work launch crew, mission control etc etc if I thought there was a 99% chance that the people in the ship would be incinerated on the launch pad.
Just as you would hold someone in street clothes back from running into a burnng building so you would not launch a shuttle on a moments notice.
Hmm. (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, did the guy forget his medication or does stuff like that exist?
Probably both.
According to several sources I consider fairly reliable, humans currently have technology capable of shattering the Earth. I'm not 100% about that; our technology, while enormously more advanced than the current public perception would allow, we're nowhere nearly as advanced as some previous incarntions of humanity, (Atlatian, Lemurian, etc.), and frankly, even to me, shattering the Earth seems like a fairly inconceivable affair.
Mind you, early work by Tesla demonstrated that knowing the correct frequency of an object gave one the power to make it vibrate using sympathetic resonance from a distance, (the basics of radio), and that if you continually pumped energy into that object in a certain way, you could literally shake the object apart. And as one great mind once said. . , "With a lever big enough. .
Though, screwing up in such a way is supposedly what destroyed the planet which we now know of as the Asteroid belt. And that's not from Lee & Kirby.
This stuff only seems far-out to people because everybody has been led to believe in an excruciatingly simple description of reality. When you start to think and look and overcome your programming. .
-Fantastic Lad --None Rival DOOM!