Columbia Accident Board Preliminary Recommendations 170
fwc writes "The Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) has released some preliminary recommendations to NASA - To do a better job at inspecting the leading edge of the shuttle's wings, and also to ensure that pictures of the orbiter are taken while in orbit. More recommendations are to follow in the full report which is expected in June. More detailed information on the recommendations are at space.com and spaceflightnow.com. NASA Administrator O'Keefe seems optimistic that they will be able to return the shuttle fleet to flight by the end of the year since there has been no show-stopping problems which have been discovered during the investigation."
In a nutshell... (Score:1, Interesting)
Why is there not 2 pre-flight checks? (Score:4, Interesting)
How come they don't have some tethered drone camera dingus that does an inch-by-inch surveilance of the important bits while they're still in orbit? Why bother with all the "well, if we use a 3-foot-long-telephoto-spy-lens..." crap?
Heck, here's another opportunity for Canada to come to the rescue, just add another attachment on to the big shuttle bay crane arm.
Re:Wait a sec... (Score:3, Interesting)
Well no, other than the strong suspicion that a chunk of the craft can fall off during lift-off and fatally damage the vehicle...
That and the rather conspicuous lack of (1) shuttle. Are they planning to build another, or just spread out launches for the reduced rotation?
Maybe Richard [thisisbristol.com] Branson [guardian.co.uk] can dig one up...
obvious... (Score:4, Interesting)
Appropriate Larry Niven quote (Score:5, Interesting)
-Larry Niven
What a great use of tax dollars. (Score:4, Interesting)
Band-aid (Score:3, Interesting)
Errmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
The space shuttles are man made vehicles designed to take people into space! There are going to be inherent risks with such undertakings, but this is the nature of space exploration. Time will provide safer alternatives, but for now 1/50 isn't bad.
The astronauts know these risks too, and they willingly assume them.
PS: The Internet Explorer comment is unnecessary.
There is one big "show stopping" problem... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:show-stopping problems (Score:5, Interesting)
And it's made much greater by operating a vehicle with razor-thin margins. Take a look at this amazing story [jamesoberg.com] about the reentry of Soyuz 5. One of the things that struck me was how robust soviet space hardware is. The shuttle, by comparison, is extremely fragile. It couldn't possibly take one percent of the punishment that Volynov's capsule took.
And yet Boris Volynov is alive to tell the story.
Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Blair and Ilan Ramon are not.
The Russian space program had its share of lethal accidents - but it also had several major accidents where the crew survived. With the shuttle the abort modes are mostly theoretical. In practice any serious accident means loss of the entire crew.
Re:Safer space flight (Score:4, Interesting)
No, it's not a separate topic, especially since you use the lack of cameras as a "cause" of the accident. People need to use their heads before making statements like this. What, exactly, would have taking pictures of the shuttle actually accomplished in this case? How was not taking pictures in any way contributory to the accident? The recommendation is for *future* space flights - pictures of Columbia while in space would have accomplished nothing but satisfying the morbid curiosity of people like you after the fact.
If there was damage to the leading edge of the wing from launch, Columbia was doomed, plain and simple. I don't see how having pictures confirming that ahead of time is going to make anybody feel any better about it. Great, so now the astronauts know they're going to die. How fun for them and for us. It would have been like Apollo 13 all over again, only this time without the happy ending.
It's been firmly established that there was no way to save these astronauts once they were up there. They did not have enough fuel to reach the ISS. There was not enough time to rush another shuttle up to rescue them before their food and water ran out - not even ignoring all safety rules and risking two accidents for the price of one.
Cameras may help troubleshoot and solve problems on future shuttle flights. Eventually, it will likely seem ridiculous that we don't now have exterior cameras covering all surfaces of our spacecraft, and the ability to film them from satellites as well. But on this particular flight, there is nothing anybody could have done to save these astronauts once they were up there, camera or no camera. The only helpful thing having pictures would have done would be in helping determine the cause of the accident afterwards - but we know there was a breach in the wing without them, so even that point is moot.
Re:Safer space flight (Score:3, Interesting)
Safer space flight IS possible (remember when flying was dangerous?). Yes, the challenges are greater, but none of them are beyond our knowledge of physics or engineering. Building robust, safe, efficient spacecraft has been possible 20+ years ago. Building robust, safe, efficient reuseable spacecraft wasn't 20 years ago, but we may be getting close now.
EnkiduEOT
Re:If you need a space-monkey... (Score:5, Interesting)
I strongly dis-agree. the SPACE program is still vital and needs to continue but the horribly outdated Shuttle program needs to be given an end of life that is in the near future and rapidly design a new more capable and efficient system to replace it with.
I dont know about you but the space programs in both major countries is pretty much a joke. We are flying in a 1982 Reliant K car while the russians ar still flying in their 1957 studebaker.
we have the technology right now for several updated and higher performance launch systems that will be a good basis for getting to Mars and the rest of the inner solar system... a place where we should have been over 10 years ago. Its the idiots and morons we keep voting into office that can't pull their heads out of their arses or the major corperations arses long enough to act like the leaders they are supposed to be.
Dont get me wrong, the shuttle engineers are an amazing crew to keep that old thing flying and somewhat updated, and the same goes for the Soyuz engineers... amazing men doing fricking amazing things with a ball of twine and a roll of duct-tape.
As those are the only approved materials that congress let's nasa use anymore.
Maybe in my children's lifetime we will get a government here in the US that has enough leadership and balls to actually get us there... but I highly doubt it. The chineese will get there first.
Re:Safer space flight (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:obvious... (Score:4, Interesting)
The test-flight community is awash with stories of pilots who through skill and ingenuity (and luck) managed to recover airplanes with catastrophic damage. There's nothing like impending death to focus one's mind -- and in the case of the shuttle there might be millions of engineers around the world thinking of creative solutions if the problems are known.
In the Apollo 13 near-disaster, a failure of the magnitude that occured was not planned for, because it was assumed that something like that would lead to the prompt and certain death of the crew and loss of the ship. But, due to extremely insightful prompt action on the part of the crew, and the dedicated work of tens of thousands of engineers within NASA, the crew just barely survived.
The case mentioned above of describing the futility of noticing that the welds had failed on a 747's wing spars is incorrect, and demonstrated by a classic case. A test pilot was flying a n early Czech aerobatic monoplane, and the right wing started to fold up because the main wing spar had failed. Now, there was no checklist item for 'spar failure recovery', it is assumed that that is one of those things that cause planes to invariably crash.
What the pilot did was immediately roll the plane inverted. With the loads in the other direction, the spar held. Obviously you can't land the plane inverted, so he held it inverted until he was just over the runway, then rolled the plane upright, and landed just as the wing was folding up.
Inspect! Information is almost always better than no information. It's really important.
thad
Re:Not very encouraging... (Score:2, Interesting)
The real idea is, that if you find something bad enough that you doubt the craft would make it back safely, send up another spaceshuttle to dock with it, or have the space shuttle dock at the space station and unload it's crew, or have a Soyuz or two pick up the crew. There are options to get the crew home safely even if we think the craft won't make it. But repairing a space craft with billions of highly specialized parts in space? Not any time soon...
Re:If you need a space-monkey... (Score:3, Interesting)
And China is starting a program based on the Mexican version of the 1975 SuperBeetle.
If anyone is concerned that this represents an apparent Devolution of humanity's capacity to invent, and innovate -
Why not read a classic science fiction book by Issac Asimov, called Foundation. It's actually a trilogy, but it's about this very subject.
The people who are in power today have command of JUST the technology they need in order to maintain their hegemony. Any more is superfluous. The only thing that matters is political power. The technology that created this power has served it's purpose, and now the only technology necessary is that which maintains that power.
Anyone who tells you any different is trying to sell you something.
Notice how the development of new technology which might "shake the tree" is gradually becoming legally and economically prohibited. . .