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Space Science

Shuttle Wing Has Been Breached Before 42

Posted by michael from the hindsight-is-20-20 dept.
Marc writes "AP is reporting that the shuttle's wing has been breached before on reentry. (Story on Yahoo!)"
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Shuttle Wing Has Been Breached Before More

Shuttle Wing Has Been Breached Before

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  • So it's possible that the breach is not the cause of the crash?

  • Atlantis probably just lucky (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TheRoachMan ( 677330 ) on Tuesday July 08, 2003 @07:25PM (#6396407) Journal
    The article states that ground control ordered the Atlantis (which survived a breached wing and landed safely in 2000) to do a cooling-manoeuver, because they suspected the ceramic tiles to be damaged by a chunk of ice. If it hadn't been for ground control's suspicions about this damage, Atlantis would've probably shattered too. Columbia just went all-out during re-entry, because ground control was worried about tires not warming up enough to guarantee a safe landing. Talk about irony. This brings a question to my mind: Instead of using the cooling-manoeuver as a sort of 'last-resort', why not make it a standard modus operandi to do the cooling-manoeuver, unless of course there are serious reasons not to? Might save some lives and money.
    • I certainly don't mean to trivialize your argument, but I tend to think the kind folks at NASA have at least one reason for not requiring a cooling maneuver upon reentry. I understand that you may believe it could save some lives and money in this instance, but overall, it might have done the opposite. The only people that can answer your proposal would be the Rocket Scientists at NASA, or someone who's a home-study Rocket Scientist, although I doubt it.
    • "This brings a question to my mind: Instead of using the cooling-manoeuver as a sort of 'last-resort', why not make it a standard modus operandi to do the cooling-manoeuver(?)"

      Because the shuttle orbiter has the aerodynamic properties of your average cement block and needs all the speed it can get to maintain lift and control. The "cooling manuever" trades the orbiter's speed for extra cooling, but that drop in speed makes it more difficult to control. It's kinda tough to pull out of a stall situation w
  • Right, foam has hit the wing before, the wings have been breached before. It was mentioned several times after the Columbia disaster. I remember listening to an 'expert' on NPR (Can't remember his name) saying the previous occurances happened without insident, and was why NASA wasn't pursuing the foam theory. Pursue the more likely scenarios first.

    The Associated Press is pushing this news as if it was a big revelation, but there doesn't seem to be anything new in this report.

    Am I missing something?
    • 'expert'

      To clarify: I don't remember if he worked for NASA or what. My point is that this sort of news has been mentioned before.

    • Re:I thought this was well known? (Score:5, Informative)

      by rjh ( 40933 ) <rjh@sixdemonbag.org> on Tuesday July 08, 2003 @08:45PM (#6396834)
      While it's true that there have been several foam impacts before, NASA never (to the best of my knowledge) said wings had been breached before. Breaches are amazingly lethal conditions, and NASA takes them very seriously; when any tile gets deteriorated by more than 0.04 inches, it gets completely replaced.

      NASA's line about why they didn't throw a fit over the foam has always been "well, it never caused any problems before..."

      Now it turns out it did cause problems before and came within a whisker of losing Atlantis. In a fair world, it would mean the jobs of several NASA bureaucrats--not just for not paying attention to foam-strike problems, but for lying to Lehman's committee, to Congress, and to the American people about how there had never before been any foam-strike problems.

      From this AP story you can read that one of the astronauts on board the Atlantis when it had the wing-breach found out about the wing-breach when she was contacted by the AP for a comment. Not only had NASA covered up the wing-breach--they weren't even informing astronauts of the risks.

      • Re:I thought this was well known? (Score:4, Informative)

        by teridon ( 139550 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @07:41AM (#6399182) Homepage
        Now it turns out it did cause problems before and came within a whisker of losing Atlantis.

        No, it did not cause problems before. Here are the relevant parts of the article:
        During liftoff, a 6-inch chunk of ice had smashed against the back edge of the right wing; so experts deemed it prudent to adjust Atlantis' flight to rapidly cool its wings ...NASA blamed the Atlantis damage on improper installation of a seal between two protective panels on the shuttle's left wing[emphasis mine]

        So ice had struck the right wing; the cooling maneuver was done to protect it. The defect (and subsequent breach) in the left wing wasn't known until after the landing.

        Nowhere in the article does it say that foam caused damage to Atlantis. Even the ice strike was not the cause of the breach.

      • In a fair world, it would mean the jobs of several NASA bureaucrats--not just for not paying attention to foam-strike problems, but for lying to Lehman's committee, to Congress, and to the American people about how there had never before been any foam-strike problems.

        What are you talking about? Since when is "lying to...the American people" grounds for dismissal? I thought that only happened if there was some intern and a blue dress involved...

        • Since when is "lying to...the American people" grounds for dismissal? I thought that only happened if there was some intern and a blue dress involved...

          To be fair, the intern and the dress weren't the grounds for dismissal. It was the perjury that was the problem. I don't care who sleeps with who, or what an intern puts into her own mouth, as long as the person in question can still do their job... but when that person gets in the witness chair and lies under oath, I have a problem with it.
          • ...but when that person gets in the witness chair and lies under oath, I have a problem with it.

            We should rightly be concerned when a president mis-represents the truth to avoid political scandal. We should be even more concerned when it is done for the purpose of taking the country into War.

            Should we place the President under oath before things like press conferences and the State Of The Union address, or should the Oath Of Office be enough?

            • We should rightly be concerned when a president mis-represents the truth to avoid political scandal.

              I'm not going to get into a political argument here, but Clinton lied under oath, after swearing to tell "nothing but the truth" so help him God. That's not a political scandal, that's perjury, which is a felony, punishable by prison time.

              We should be even more concerned when it is done for the purpose of taking the country into War.

              What did Bush lie about exactly? Even Saddam admitted he had WMD's. F
              • Thus spoke Matrix272, immediately before launching into a political argument:

                What did Bush lie about exactly? Even Saddam admitted he had WMD's.

                So, under your reasoning, if I "admit" black is white, it's not considered lying for you to agree that black is white where it suits your own purposes, even though you know (or should have known) it's not true?

                France, Germany, Russia, the UN, etc. all agreed on it. This is all common knowledge to those who are open-minded enough to look at the facts.

                You're c

                • So, under your reasoning, if I "admit" black is white, it's not considered lying for you to agree that black is white where it suits your own purposes, even though you know (or should have known) it's not true?

                  If you admit that black is white, and I agree that black is white, and the rest of the civilized world agrees that black is white, then yes, black would be white, and you wouldn't have lied.

                  You're confusing common knowledge with the facts.

                  So you're saying that Saddam was mistaken when he said

                  • ...and the rest of the civilized world agrees...

                    But the rest of the civilized world is not in agreement on this. Or are we defining those who do not agree as uncivilized, in a Bushesque "you're either with us or your against us" kinda way?

                    ...then yes, black would be white...

                    You're trolling, aren't you?i Maybe it depends on what your definition of is is?

                    So you're saying that Saddam was mistaken when he said he had WMD's?

                    That would be one way to characterize it. Mistaken, incompetent, deliberatel

                    • I just simply don't have time to respond to all your rantings, but quite clearly, you're going to see Bush as being an evil man, no matter what evidence or proof is shown to you. So, it's a complete waste of my time and energy to try to convince you otherwise. To me, the fact that Saddam had the weapons, used them against his own people, then couldn't and wouldn't prove that he had gotten rid of them is evidence enough to convict. If I'm a convicted murder, and I get married, and my wife appears dead in my
            • > Should we place the President under oath before > things like press conferences and the State Of > The Union address, or should the Oath Of Office > be enough? I don't see why not. Why not make it clear that the President - elected or appointed, Southern Democrat or Texas Robber Baron, I don't care - is *always* under oath, and that *any* lie is grounds for impeachment?

    • Changes needed (Score:4, Interesting)

      by gizmo_mathboy ( 43426 ) on Tuesday July 08, 2003 @11:43PM (#6397747)
      From what I've read concerning about what the review board has found this is exactly what they want to change.

      It is one thing in a test/development/research environment to have something unexpected to happen, that's why you are doing testing/development/research. However, once the project goes live anything unexpected that does happen should be examined thoroughly. Like in Challenger, when the O-rings were being eroded that wasn't expected behaviour. Yes, O-rings are there to seal joints and they did their job but no one expected them to be eroded.

      With Columbia there were 2 events: surface roughness and foam chunks. Hard to say which was more deadly, I'll start with the chunks. I would have thought that when things start falling off of the vehicle that NASA/Boeing/whomever would have done better testing and research into what was going on. A first guess would be that no harm would come of it, it's foam. However, it was moving at several hundred miles per hour and it wasn't something that was expected.

      There was also a large amount of surface roughness on the wings. This leads to an early transition to turbulence which leads to increased heating earlier in the descent. Combine that with a foam chunk tearing a whole in the wing and you get 7 more dead astronauts.

      Both these things were not part of the expected behaviour of the shuttle. Folks at NASA didn't think they were particularly harmful or didn't appear to cause any harm. So they let them go because they rationalized it away without understanding why they were occurring and what effects they may have.
  • I thought this came out yesterday when ABC did a news special on NASA and the failure to listen to a guy?

  • Dodged a bullet, but by accident (Score:5, Informative)

    by jwriney ( 16598 ) on Tuesday July 08, 2003 @08:46PM (#6396841) Homepage
    The AP article mentions that ice impacted Atlantis' *right* wing. This motivated ground teams to perform the cold soaking procedure. But the actual damage was on the *left* wing, and was caused by improper installation of some sort of seal thingy. So Atlantis may have been saved by the cold soak, but the truly dangerous condition that could have cost them the orbiter and crew wasn't the one they prescribed the cold soak for!

    Disturbing.

    --riney
  • The older, more effective insulation foam, which was CFC based, was replaced with a much less effective foam that was more 'environmentally friendly' that was susceptible to breaking off in ways that the old foam was not:

    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,77832,00.ht m l
    http://education.atu.edu/people/sadams/blogger2 /20 03/02/01.html
    http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/ DailyNews/shutt le_ross_safetyproblems030204.html
    http://www.baya rea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/510079 4.htm
  • IANARS, and I'm way to late to reply to this thread, but why can't aerogel be used to fill any damage on shuttles' tiles?

    When it first appeared in science rags and TV, it was promoted to be an easy and simple insulator of heat, showing blow torches applied opposite a piece of ice for emphasis. NASA's own website includes the pictures "1,400 degrees C" on one side, room temperature on the other.

    John Glenn's flight, STS-95 included experiments on making the stuff in space.

    Is anyone working with aerogel tod

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