Challenger Tragedy - In Depth, and Deeply Felt

Patchw0rk F0g writes "On this, the anniversary of the Challenger disaster, Jay Barbree has a moving and in-depth piece on this international disaster." From the article: "During several earlier shuttle missions, disaster did everything it could to crawl into the shuttle launch system and turn it into tumbling flaming wreckage. The primary O-rings on those flights suffered severe erosion from superheated gases, sometimes accompanied by lesser erosion. And the erosion had occurred after launch temperatures much higher than on this freezing Florida day -- 53 degrees was the lowest launch-time temperature up to that time. The booster engineers felt helpless. For months, they had been studying the O-ring seal problem. They knew a disaster was coming, but no one stepped forward and said, 'Stop this train until it's fixed.'"

20 years later

[saskboy]

It's 20 years later, and the first Shuttle disaster is still making it into pop culture. There's a country song from just last year with the line, "The Space Shuttle fell out of the sky, and the whole world cried" - 19 Something.

I remember that someone made a movie a few years after called Challenger I think, and I begged my parents to let me stay up to watch it. It turned out to be a really lame movie though, I thought it would have stuff on what happened after the disaster, but the whole movie led up to the explosion and nothing after.

Re:"international disaster"

[WIAKywbfatw]

How? Because she was a civilian? Sorry, but you need to look up the definition of "international".

An American space shuttle, with an all-American crew, including an American civilian blowing up is a tragedy, but it's not an "international" tragedy.

Just because something is a first, that doesn't make it international in its scope.

Feynman's account

[acidblood]

An excellent account (and really, one should expect no less from Richard Feynman) of the Challenger disaster was given in the book `What do you care what other people think?' It highlights the political and managerial problems at NASA. If you enjoy this book, I highly recommend grabbing the rest of Feynman's books as well, such as `Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman' and of course the Feynman Lectures on Physics.

Feynman was by far one of the greatest minds of our time. Too bad he died fairly young (70 years), he still had a good 10 or 20 years of time to contribute to human knowledge.

The Launch Escape System.

[reality-bytes]

A fact often missed by the popular media when dealing with the Challenger accident is emergency egress provision.

The 'big step' taken moving from the Saturn V launcher to the Shuttle for manned flight was not just moving from expendable to [partially] re-usable vehicles but the total reliance in the new vehicle for launch safety.

If practically *anything* were to go wrong during the launch of a Shuttle, it would be curtains for the vehicle and crew whereas the Saturn V had the 'option' of the Launch Escape Tower [wikipedia.org] which could (in theory) give the crew one last chance of getting clear of the failed vehicle using it's relatively small solid rockets.

I've often imagined what could go wrong with a shuttle launch, there are possibilities such as:

*Catastrophic multiple SME failure just after SRB ignition leading to an over-rotation heads-down
*A Mis-light of an SRB on the pad (prior to launch) - Apparently NASA takes huge precautions with their SRBs due to volatility of the solid fuel.
*A Mis-light of an SRB on launch causing over-rotation of the vehicle away from the lit SRB(NASA *says* this is of infinitely small chance tho)
*Failure of the SRB release system on the pad (the tie-downs which hold the vehicle in place prior to launch)
*A simple bird-strike causing damage to the orbiter's pressure hull.

And of course, there is the failure of components leading to rapid combustion of the LOX/Hydrogen fuels.

Perhaps none of the above could realistically happen, perhaps some could. (I'm no expert, just a fan of manned spaceflight).

What I do know is that I'll be happier about people sitting on top of massive potential energies when they give them a Launch Escape System again. It's not a certainty but it's nice to know that the Astronauts get one last chance if the rest of the vehicle falls to bits.


Disclaimer: I am not one of these people who thinks that spaceflight is, should be, or can be as safe as say civillian aviation.

Re:Motivation

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you forgetting that NASA, and Morton Thiokol management is solely responsible for the disaster, the engineers protested [onlineethics.org] the launch.

Re:Motivation

[pallmall1]

Obviously this wasn't a big enough motivation and it should be a wake up call for anyone who trusts that a contractor or engineer will tell you that there is something wrong with a product on their own.

Spoken like a true non-engineer. It was at the urging of Nasa officials that the launch was approved to take place. Here's a quote [nasa.gov] from the Nasa website relating the facts that you have conveniently overlooked in your rush to condemn engineers and manufacturers:

However, in a closed meeting at the Kennedy Space Center on February 14, Commission members were "visibly disturbed" to learn that engineers from the firm that manufactured the SRM, Morton Thiokol Inc., had the night before recommended against launching Challenger in the cold temperatures predicted for the next morning; that their managers, at the apparent urging of NASA officials from the Marshall Space Flight Center, had overruled their recommendation; and that more senior NASA managers responsible for the launch commit decision were unaware of this contentious interaction. --bold added

There's nothing insightful about the parent post, except for the insight gained into the readiness of some to unfairly accuse an entire profession they know nothing about of what basically amounts to murder. I'd like to know what the parent poster's motivations are, other than to try to sound cool on slashdot.

Feynman

[Errandboy of Doom]

The Challenger disaster sparked a lot of insightful commentary [fotuva.org] about the shuttle program from Richard Feynman [wikipedia.org].

The Rogers Commission [wikipedia.org] relegated the bulk of his thoughts to an "Appendix" because no one wanted to release a report that was too critical of the space program (even though that's exactly what they were appointed to do). It almost wasn't included at all, but for Feynman's dogged insistence.

He deals with his role in the Rogers commission in No Ordinary Genius [google.com] (that's a link to the beginning of the Chapter from Google Print).

That chapter is filled with funny anecdotes, and enraging stories about the bullheadedness of beaurocracy, told by one of the most charismatic geniuses of our time about one of the most important events from my childhood.

Highly recommended.

Re:Wow

[ip_fired]

The temperature was actually in the low 20's (-6.67 degrees celsius) that morning. I think they let it warm up a bit before the launch, but it was still much colder than any of the other launches. From what I remember, no testing had really been done at that temperature.

Re:Did it explode or didn't it?

[eclectro]

Generally large fireballs are associated with explosions, which this seemed to be. More specifically, the shuttle was wrenched off course suddenly by the disintegrating and burning fuel tank (i.e. the exploding (or as others will be sure to point out to me-rapidly burning) part). While the crew cabin survived and plummeted to the ocean at more than 200 mph. It has been heavily rumored that buried in a secret safe in NASA is a tape recording from one of the astronauts (who had a recorder running during takeoff in his pocket) muttering the Lord's prayer during the descent.

There is sufficent evidence that the bodies of the astronauts were put in barrels on the back of a flatbed when brought ashore as to not raise any suspicion

Pieces of Challenger still occasionally wash up on the beach, with a large wing portion showing up on the beach in the late nineties. Pieces of the wreckage of the shuttle are "entombed" in a missile silo on Cape Canaveral.

There is this very prescient article [washingtonmonthly.com] written while the shuttles were being built. He also wrote an excellent followup [earthisland.org] after Columbia. Personally, I thought Challenger was a "one-off" and that things had been fixed, but I lost all faith in the space agency (and its subsequent funding for the expensive shuttles).

There never been an exact cost released by NASA for what it takes to launch a shuttle, but I'm quite sure that it is very much more than the 500 million they said before the Columbia disaster. Some say more than a billion dollars.

Which I believe would be the cost to build a decent Hubble replacement and launch on an unmanned rocket. Food for thought.

some of the SRB/SME issues are now fixed

[Trepidity]

First, multiple SME failure just after SRB ignition was problematic, but it has never been problematic due to over-rotation---there is sufficient steering ability even with just the SRBs. The problem is that multiple SME failure causes too much of a difference in thrust between the shuttle and the boosters, which would overstress the struts attaching the SRBs to the shuttle. In addition, a failure of two or more (of the three) SMEs would result in insufficient power to attain orbit.

Since Challenger, the struts were strengthened, so they can now survive even a three-out situation. A two-out failure can now be dealt with without loss of life throughout the launch (although it would require a ditch and loss of the vehicle through some portions). A three-out failure is still problematic, but should be survivable for the crew after 90 seconds, and might be survivable just after launch.

Re:Did it explode or didn't it?

[MurphyZero]

The Shuttle is expensive to launch. When we lost the Titan IV in 1998, the rocket itself was valued at 400 million (by far the most expensive expendable rocket) and the satellite was estimated at around 800 million. Shuttle costs probably would exceed 1 billion per ignoring all the return to flight issues.

This is why whenever I hear space advocates and astronomers whining about trying to get the Hubble fixed using the shuttle, I want to grab them by the throat and throttle them. It would be much cheaper and would stop diverting valuable resources to focus their energies on getting the next generation Hubble replacement into space on an expendable rocket. With the savings they could get ITS replacement into space. An expendable launch on an Atlas V or Delta IV would run less than 200 million, possibly less than 100. Plus, now they would have a presumably better satellite in space. Also, the satellite would not have to be designed so that an astronaut could fix it.

Re:What a bunch of....

[MoeDrippins]

Boisjoly was not told this; it was told to his manager, Lund, in the emergency meeting at Morton Thiokol the night before. Boisjoly, and his peers, were overruled by Lund and HIS management.

But your point that no one said "stop" being a falacy is correct; quite a few people did, and were simply overruled. To everyone's detriment.

Re:Did it explode or didn't it?

[Deadstick]

Hot gas from the leaking O-ring burned through a structural member,which caused a partial structural collapse, which caused the spacecraft to yaw violently, which caused it to disintegrate under aerodynamic loads. The main fuel tank ruptured and the contents burned, while the solid rocket boosters continued to climb by themselves. The orbiter, with crew inside, fell to the surface mostly in one piece.

It was not an explosion in the literal sense of the word...it would have been merciful for the crew if it were.

rj

Dictionary:

[JetScootr]

Sorry to be a grammar Nazi on this. The media uses such hyperbole that words change meanings based on the emotional cliches spewed by the plastic hairdos on the news networks. Remember when there were no bad connotations to the word "hacker"? I do.

From: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=disaster [reference.com]

disaster n.

1. An occurrence causing widespread destruction and distress; a catastrophe.

Challenger accident was not a disaster. To say that money makes the difference between a tragic accident and a disaster is to devalue the real disasters - such as tsunamis.

I was working in the astronaut training facility in 1986 when Challenger blew up. Like many others that day, I didn't see it live, but I did see it on the first replay. My desk didn't have a line-of-site to the office TV and I was plinking away at some code on a 8088 PC.
The sound of a dozen coworkers watching friends die got me up and to the TV.

To those of us at NASA who worked with the crew, it is and will always be an accident.

Because accidents can be prevented, but disasters can't.

Re:Am I callous?

[Detritus]

Spaceship One never enters orbit. That makes a huge difference in the amount of kinetic energy that must be dissipated as heat during reentry.

Re:Someone did step forward

[jnik]

I just finished watching an interview with Roger Beausolai (sp?).

I checked my Challenger file; the spelling is Boisjoly. Unfortunately I don't have a citation written on my photocopy of the interview with him: "Some of the things NASA booster manager Larry Mulloy said ... went beyond probing; it was the start of intimidation. But even with that, our chief engineer said he would not recommend launching."

I was just flipping through a 1990 Miami Herald article on Bill McInnis, who made repeated claims of a hydrogen fuel line leak with the shuttle (visible, he said, with Challenger). NASA grounded the fleet for a fuel line leak about two weeks after he committed suicide. The chilling part of this article: "He talked, too, of failures in the thermal protection tiles that keep the shuttle from burning up on re-entry, and of what he believed to have been a lack of proper testing..." The reason I was flipping through the article was to get Mike Clemens' name right. He was a Cape engineer who warned his boss about the O-rings; his boss didn't pass it up. Mike committed suicide after Challenger, feeling responsible for not successfully persuading his boss. I had a list somewhere--I think it had three names on it--of people who warned about the O-rings and killed themselves out of a feeling of responsibility later.

To claim "They knew a disaster was coming, but no one stepped forward" is inaccurate, irresponsible, and horribly unfair to people who lost their jobs over this. Furthermore, it continues to obscure the root cause of the accident. Of course, MSNBC doesn't have a link for feedback about the article.