Challenger Tragedy - In Depth, and Deeply Felt 351
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.'"
Re:I remember exactly where I was... (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0688158927/sr=1-
Am I callous? (Score:5, Interesting)
But when I think of the disaster now, I have the somewhat odd reaction that I don't really feel that the real tragedy was the loss of Challenger and its crew.
When I think about the 20th anniversiary of Challenger, the tragedy I feel is that it seems like NASA has done almost nothing of note since then.
It seems like somewhere around the Challenger disaster, the pioneering attitude of NASA that had been its hallmark up until then took something of a backseat. Somewhere around 20 years ago, probably not at Challenger or because of it but certainly sometime around then, NASA changed from being a truly important thing of importance to the public to just being something the government does. 20 years later, the manned space program has not progressed one single step beyond where it was when Challenger blew up; we're still stuck using the exact same shuttle fleet, and the manned program has been entirely preoccupied with the maintenence of a couple of space stations that aren't really that far beyond SkyLab and whose crews are preoccupied just keeping the things in the sky. NASA has had a small handful of true triumphs with its unmanned probes since that time, but the successes have been far between and have tended to receive only a fraction of the attention given in the public eye to NASA's failures.
And when I think about this, and realize that it represents, essentially, the loss of the nation's manned space program sometime about 20 years ago, it tends to overshadow entirely in my mind the tragedy of the loss of Challenger's intrepid crew sometime about 20 years ago.
Is this a callous response, or a reasonable one?
Re:Feynman's account (Score:2, Interesting)
Another great account of Feynman's involvement in the post-Challenger investigation is in James Gleick's biography of Feynman, Genius, which is a great book otherwise. Incredible mind, awesome person, that Feynman was, I wish I could have met him...
Boy, the timing is perfect for me (Score:5, Interesting)
It seemed that, almost as soon as the camera crew realized what had happened, they zeroed in on McCauliff's family. It took a while for the cameraman to get his payoff though, she didn't really react for quite some time. No doubt not fully able to comprehend what just happened.
When I got to my class that morning (psychology), I found the professor had also just seen the footage, he cancelled the class. None of us were really into it at that point.
The local news was all over the propulsion professor asking him for theories/insight. At that point though, nobody really knew what had happened and speculation is foolish.
By the end of that day, I was hearing "Need Another Seven Astronauts". In contrast, I've yet to hear any such wise-assed remarks about the Columbia reentry disaster.
===
It's easy to second guess NASA's decision making but, when you are in that moment, it's a hard trigger to pull. I've no doubt that engineers were concerned about the integrity of the O-ring seal. However, when they launched, they were within published spec. Sadly, the spec was wrong. In that situation, it becomes your (expert) opinion vs. established data. You might be right, but it's hard to push through.
I say all of this because I'm right in the middle of something similar. I see a situation that management characterizes as "agressive" and I would call "reckless" - but it's just my opinion. I can't go to the appropriate regulating agencies with anything that would stick. All I can really do is what I've done, I resigned. On paper, I said the recent benefits change was not meeting my needs. Behind close doors, however, I went into very frank detail about how I felt their current philosophies could put people at risk, and how I could no longer represent them in good faith.
I looked for a way to compel the needed changes from my position, but was unsuccessful. I was well respected there, perhaps by resigning and making sure they understood why, they will be motivated to re-evalute. I don't really know.
Re:"tragedy" (Score:2, Interesting)
According to Aristotle, who may or may not have known what he was talking about, the "most tragic" stories are those that involve morally average people (not especially good or bad, morally), who are of great stature or who have enjoyed great fortune, who fall from a state of happiness to a low state due to some "mistake made in ignorance".
Note: this has nothing to do with hubris, which does not mean "pride" anyway..
So we have our social studies teacher, a woman of national stature, enjoying great good fortune (the one selected out of 1100), who is presumably neither extraordinarily virtuous nor vicious, who died as the result of a hamartia (to use Aristotle's term).
What was her hamartia, her "mistake made in ignorance"? It was boarding a vehicle, assuming that the guys responsible for the "go/no-go" decision were paying attention to the guys who actually built the vehicle.
The crew of STS-51L are tragic figures by any definition--the fact that there are countless millions of other such figures notwithstanding--but if you are going to be pedantic about "tragedy", you will find that they fit Aristotle's bill especially well.
forgot one important point (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Feynman's account (Score:2, Interesting)
"For the Generation X'ers this was our 9/11" (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The Launch Escape System. (Score:3, Interesting)
Volatile? While the fuel is a bit more volatile than tire rubber, it isn't a great deal more so. The fuel itself resembles a soft rubber. The one issue is that once the fuel ignites, it doesn't stop burning until all of the fuel is consumed.
OTOH, jst before the first flight of Columbia, NASA and Rockwell engineers discovered a trick circuit that could lead to simultaneous SRB ignition and separation. THAT would ae left one hell of a mess on the area around the launch pad.
Warnings (Score:3, Interesting)
Challenger, Nasa, and support (Score:2, Interesting)
I've been watching a history channel show on NASA and the missions from the early 60's through today. It's interesting how deep the emotions are but one thing that's obvious is that the people in mission control have had to make some very intense decisons over the last 4 and a half decades. It's easy to blame engineers who did not yell loud enough or management that did not listen or political administrations that were pushing for success, but the truth is while there have been a handful (3) of tragedies resulting in some devastating accidents, there have also been some tremendous successes.
I've watched a lot of the films and read alot the news reports of the various NASA missions and it seems to me that the engineers and managers in the control room and the astronauts in the vehicles during the good times and the devastating times are some very dedicated people who know the risks and try to make the best decisions they can at the time. Remember folks alot of these earlier missions were run with slide rules or calculators and a hell of lot of gut and intuition.
I know we need to learn from mistakes and it's healthy to critically look at any error or tragedy, but let's be honest, the people in NASA are some pretty tremendous scientists, engineers, and managers and as far as I can see they are doing a pretty damn good job.
csh
Tufte (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Feynman's account (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Am I callous? (Score:3, Interesting)
You don't really have the point of reference based on your age (technically, neither do I, since I'm only a couple years older than you), but that "pioneering attitude" had taken a backseat long before the shuttle program had even started.
The "Failure is not an Option" program that ran on the History Channel this evening (in the US, just so I don't piss off those reading overseas) Glossed over it, but at least made mention. There were grand plans for NASA that reached beyond Apollo and the Moon. Lunar Bases, Manned Missions to Mars, Space Stations, Reuseable Shuttles, the whole shebang. Unfortunatly at the same time, we were stuck at a horrible point in our history. Nixon was taking a savage (and deserved) beating over Vietnam. The country had little faith in its government, and just a few years later we were hit with an Oil Embargo that did a nice job of slamming our economy.
Congress started looking for places to cut the budget and, just like in Civ 3, Science took the hit. NASA's budget took a massive beating over the next few Fiscal years. They were thrown a bone and allowed to put together Skylab on a shoestring budget, then (late 70's early 80's) were saddled with the proverbial "good idea at the time" of the Shuttle program. The momentum NASA had during the late 60's was long gone by the time the shuttles starting futzing around in the upper atmosphere in the early 80's. Sad really. In the late 60's, NASA was a point of national pride. In fifteen years they had fallen to fodder for Johnny Carson & David Letterman's B-material.
Someone upstream made a joke comparing NASA to Amtrak, and it's a really close analogy. Could the private sector do a better job running either field? Probably. But there are a lot of good things going on that if fed a little bit of money and support, and not killed by the 1200 pound gorilla that is government management, could go a long way towards reforming both the organization and the public's perception of both groups do business.
Re:Wow (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I remember exactly where I was... (Score:4, Interesting)
Challenger didn't even phase me... it was just a rather spectacular traffic accident. Not on the radar, sorry.
You can't really say something affect 'an entire generation' without interviewing *everyone* from that generation (or at least a reasonably representative sample).
Re:"international disaster" (Score:2, Interesting)
Speaking as a non-American, I can agree with the use of "international" here.
Re:I remember exactly where I was... (Score:5, Interesting)
When the shuttle came apart the first words that my father said were "It was too cold, the rings didn't seal right."
It was a haunting utterance, sort of under his breath as if he were talking to himself.
Dad's an Aero Engineer with a company that makes some of the analysis software that NASA and the manufacturers of the shuttle parts use to determine what happens to various objects under various stresses. He said rubber couldn't be properly analyzed as there are too many different variables going on with it at any given time. And as it chills all of it's properties change from fluid to solid or somewhere in between.
For my generation (I'm 34), I won't say this was our 9/11, but that this was our Kennedy.
9/11 belongs to my childrens generation.
Re:"international disaster" (Score:3, Interesting)
I worked for Martin Marietta and was put to work on analysis of the onboard fuel tanks for the Reaction Control System (RCS). The fuel tanks had to go through a process where they were welded together and could not be heat treated to relieve residual stresses after welding because of temperature sensative devices inside the tank. Analytically the residual stresses were beyond what was permissible for a pressure vessel and the life of the vessel was in question. Rather than resolve the questions that were raised, the management of the company fought with me about my conclusions and analysis. It turns out in the end that what I had predicted was true and the tanks were dangerous to pressurize. The reason that there was never a disaster was because the tanks were tested at cryogenic temperatures and went through a stress relief because of the testing.
There was more effort put into hiding previous analysis and predictions than there was on trying to understand what really happened. I believe that the Thiokol and NASA officials are responsible for the Challenger accident in whole.
Re:This is one of the problems..... (Score:4, Interesting)
Which is a rip-off/homage of a joke I heard from Charlie Duke (don't know if it was his originally) about the Saturn V--something to the effect of "Then you realize you're sitting on top of something with the explosive potential of a small atomic bomb, that has hundreds of thousands of parts that all need to work perfectly--and it's all been built by the lowest bidder."
Re:I remember exactly where I was... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Maybe (Score:1, Interesting)
For hs heroism, he and his family are now bankrupt, and he is facing jail in Austria
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/01/1
News Media Reports At
www.joe-mangan.com
Evidence at:
www.eaawatch.net
Wrong lessons learned? (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/006406.h
It's twenty years today since Challenger was lost with all aboard. It was the first real blow to NASA's confidence in its ability to advance us in space, or that our space policy was sound. It finally shattered illusions about twenty-four flights a year, to which the agency had been clinging up until that event, but it wasn't severe enough to really make a major change in direction. That took the loss of Columbia, three years ago this coming Tuesday.
Unfortunately, while that resulted finally in a policy decision to retire the ill-fated Shuttle program, the agency seems to have learned the wrong lessons from it--they should have come to realize that we need more diversity in space transport, and it cannot be a purely government endeavor. Instead, harkening back to their glory days of the sixties, the conclusion seems to be that, somehow (and inexplicably) the way to affordability and sustainability is exactly the approach that was unaffordable and unsustainable the last time we did it.
But one has to grant that Apollo was safe, and probably the new system will be more so than the Shuttle was. But safety shouldn't be the highest goal of the program. Opening frontiers has always been dangerous, and it's childish to think that this new one should be any different. The tragedy of Challenger and Columbia wasn't that we lost astronauts. The tragedy was that we lost them at such high cost, and for missions of such trivial value.
This is the other false lesson learned from Challenger (and Columbia)--that the American people won't accept the loss of astronauts. But we've shown throughout our history that we're willing to accept the loss of brave men and women (even in recent history) as long as it is in a worthy cause. But NASA's goal seems to be to create yet another appallingly expensive infrastructure whose focus is on recapitulating the achievements of four decades (five decades, by the time they eventually manage it, assuming they keep to their stated schedule) ago.
Will the American people be inspired by that? I can't say--I only know that I am not.
Would they be inspired by a more ambitious program, a riskier program that involved many more people going into space at more affordable costs, even if (or perhaps because) it is a greater hazard to the lives of the explorers? I surely would. But it seems unlikely that we're going to get that from the current plan, or planners.