SpaceShipOne Flight Not as Perfect as it Seemed 609
ArbiterOne writes "SpaceShipOne's flight wasn't as perfect as it seemed, according to Burt Rutan and New Scientist. Apparently, at one point in the descent, the pilot completely lost attitude control. According to him, "If that had happened earlier, I would never have made it and you all would be looking sad right now." Could this pose some problems for the X-Prize contender?"
Still a great flight (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Still a great flight (Score:5, Funny)
Besides, isn't that usually a "nut behind the wheel" or PEBKAC kinda issue?
Dictionnary to the rescue (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dictionnary to the rescue (Score:5, Funny)
Dictionary missed yaw. (Score:4, Informative)
Nose-uppy/nose-downy (ptich), wingtip-uppy/wingtip-downy (roll).
But (unless I misunderstand the term and it's specificially excluded) the dictionary missed yaw: Nose-righty/nose-lefty.
An aircraft's position at any instant has six degrees of freedom: Three of attitude (roll, pitch, and yaw), three of location.
Additionally there are the deriviatives of each of those (i.e. position gives three each of velocity, accelleration, jerk, snap, etc., attitude gives roll/pitch/yaw rates, etc.)
Re:Still a great flight (Score:5, Funny)
Apparently, at one point in the descent, the pilot completely lost attitude control.
Hey, losing control of one's attitude in such a situation isn't such a suprise. At least he didn't lose bowel control or bladder control. Of course, maybe he did. Something like that wouldn't typically be reported. I know I would have in such a situation.
and yes, I know that the attitude control they're talking about is the orientation of the craft in flight
Re:Still a great flight (Score:5, Funny)
Oh wait. Nevermind.
Re:Still a great flight (Score:3, Insightful)
They'll do far better next time. For the purpose of learning more about their craft and what it will take to acomplish their goal, these (small) failures did far more to advance them than a "perfect" flight ever would have. A report of a "perfect" flight would have me worried. This report has me cheering.
Re:Still a great flight (Score:5, Informative)
One might also offer that certain Apollo (1) folks might have not wanted their TEST FLIGHT to go deeply wrong.
Rockets are dangerous. Space flight is dangerous. This isn't a run to the 7-11. So far, NASA and the US have been excessively successful in space flight.
It's perfectly normal (Score:5, Insightful)
It's how aeronautical design's been done for decades. I very much doubt this'll be a major setback for them.
It should have been expected (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It should have been expected (Score:5, Informative)
SpaceShipOne does indeed have cold gas attitude thrusters. You can see a photo of one firing during a test flight here [scaled.com].
Yeager (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yeager (Score:4, Informative)
And Gus didn't just have a problem with Liberty Bell 7's hatch, if memory serves he had a big problem with the one on Apollo 1 as well.
Re:Yeager (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It should have been expected (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It should have been expected (Score:5, Informative)
Once you are in space your inertia will carry you along what ever path you started. So if you start in the proper attitude, and under control, you'll return to the atmosphere in much the same condition. If you leave the atmosphere tumbling out of control, you'll hit it out of control and you'll be far less likely to ever regain it. Indeed, at that air speed, as you drop you into thicker air out of control you are far more likely to suffer complete structural failure. That's bad.
Re:It should have been expected (Score:5, Insightful)
The Bell X-1 used a similar electric trim for pitch, to overcome instabilities going through Mach 1.
Because the elevons on SpaceShipOne control both pitch and roll, Melville was left with no control on two out of three axes at the end of his climb. I cannot imagine how this must have felt, but he recovered with astonishing speed -- and was playing around with floating M&M's a few seconds later. It's unclear to me just what kind of "backup system" he used to control the ship after the trim motor failure, perhaps it was the cold-gas thrusters.
SpaceShipOne depends on still being within the vestiges of the atmosphere for control while the rocket is firing, although the parent poster is correct, control will get sloppy toward the end of the burn as they get above 150,000 ft. The ship has the advantage that it is going very fast indeed at that point, so while there is not a lot of air up there, the forces is generates is more than you would expect.
I was surprised watching the launch that the exhaust plume did not change much during the flight from 50,000 ft to burnout -- I would have expected to see far more expansion as it left the atmosphere -- as you see during a MinuteMan launch, for example. This again points to the ship still being atmosphere of some significant (while small!) density at burnout.
That Mike Melville is one hell of a pilot, his skill and Burt Rutan's innovative feather recovery saved the day. Every previous manned exoatmospheric craft depended on flying an extremely precise attitude before and during re-entry. Failure to maintain this attitude led to the loss of an X-15 and the NF-104 as dramatically recounted in The Right Stuff. SpaceShipOne has no effective attitude control during re-entry, but feathering the wing put the ship into an extremely stable high-drag configuration. Once the ship was subsonic and the wing was folded back into its normal position, the manual control of the elevons was used to fly the ship to a perfect landing.
If you look at SpaceShipOne as it flew yesterday, there was significant work done in the tail booms after the previous flight and prior to this one -- the most obvious change is the installation of a few more camera portholes (presumably with cameras behind them). That's the first place I'd look for the cause of the trim failure.
The launch yesterday was great fun to attend, and I really do think that it will mark a profound change in our access to space.
Thad Beier
Re:It's perfectly normal (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, developing spacecraft is a lengthy process, just look at NASA. But they'll get it right. I mean, it's not rocket science.
Re:It's perfectly normal (Score:5, Funny)
This says quite a bit about... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This says quite a bit about... (Score:5, Insightful)
It does. Though I'm not sure what it says about his judgement. I certainly have the highest respect for Melville as a pilot - he's been testing for Burt for decades. However, when you look at the flight - he noticed control anomalies immediately after separating from White Knight, but chose to continue the flight - maybe he did indeed get very lucky. What caused the bang? What caused the control problems both early and late in the flight?
In flight training, my instructor called it 'get home-itis'. When you're close to home you're a lot more likely to press on in deteriorating circumstances than if you're still far from home. With the public & press invited to this launch, was there too much pressure on Melville to make the flight despite early signs of possible problems? I hate to second guess a professional of his caliber, but it feels like there was a lot of luck involved in this flight.
Re:This says quite a bit about... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm glad there are people out there doing that kind of thing. I'm also glad I'm not one of them.
Re:This says quite a bit about... (Score:3)
This also says a lot about Rutan and his team. They came right out with the problems. Most companies aren't like that, just imagine Ford discussing problems with an Explorer prototype.
I think these guys really are headed for the history books.
This is why more people didnt go (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly why, it was a test run, things can, and did (though fortunatly not bad enough to have resulted in loss of life) go wrong.
I think this was exactly the right way for them to have approached this, go up with as little extra as possible, see what goes well and what doesn't, and make revisions based on that. Though an extra 300lbs might not have mattered much with this particular problem, in other cases it could have turned a small problem into a disaster.
Re:This is why more people didnt go (Score:3, Interesting)
My clearest moment of "damn, did these guys do ANY research before showing up??" came when SpaceShipOne was on descent, followed by two chase planes, and the CNN cameraman got confused as to which one was SpaceShipOne, and zoomed in on one of the chase planes for about ten second, before finally panning over to SSO for the rest of the shot. Uh, wrong plane, buck
Re:This is why more people didnt go (Score:5, Insightful)
100km is defined as space... and its not a big deal that its being done, the big deal is that he did it for cheap.
If I get my wife Barely pregnant, barring complications she will nevertheless have a baby
if I barely hit you with a hand grenade, you will be just as dead.
if I barely hit your house with a nuclear weapon, you will still be dead.
the wright brothers barely went 100 meters, but it was powered flight.
Barely is the difference between hitting and missing.
Re:This is why more people didnt go (Score:5, Funny)
Why on earth did you marry someone called Barely?
Re:This is why more people didnt go (Score:5, Funny)
Reminds me of the old joke... (Score:5, Interesting)
On time.
Still 62% willing to fly? (Score:5, Interesting)
And despite this: it *is* rocket science, and an experimental vehicle to boot. It isn't surprising there are some problems. Let's all be happy the pilot actually survived.
Re:Still 62% willing to fly? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Still 62% willing to fly? (Score:3, Funny)
The poll indicates 62% of the /. crowd would happily fly in that ship on monday. It would be interesting to repeat the poll now and see if it is still this high.
Perhaps some would change, but I'd still have been willing. Admittedly, that's more emotion than anything else, since I don't have any skills that would have been useful in such a flight, but damn, given a chance to go into space, even on an experimental craft . . .
Speaking of which, where are they holding the signups for being ballast on the
Still 62% willing to fly!! (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd vote yes again
Could this pose problems? (Score:5, Funny)
Of course it could, bubblehead. Getting into space is HARD.
For all the Attitude Jokes.... (Score:3, Informative)
"The position in space of a spacecraft or aircraft. A satellite's attitude can be measured by the angle the satellite makes with the object it is orbiting, usually the Earth. Attitude determines the direction a satellite's instruments face. The attitude of a satellite must be constantly maintained; this is known as attitude control."
You're welcome.
Re:For all the Attitude Jokes.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:For all the Attitude Jokes.... (Score:5, Informative)
Attitude control? (Score:3, Funny)
Nice to see them so honest (Score:5, Interesting)
He could have just as easily hid the issues and blamed the time to fix the problem on the FAA or a vendor (like the rocket motor supplier).
The attitude changes on motor light are significant problems that will have to be addressed although I wonder if it is due to center of gravity changes caused by the fully fueled motor. The big bang and deformed panel is a potentially bigger problem and may require significant changes to the structure.
myke
Re:Nice to see them so honest (Score:5, Funny)
If he did that, his name would not be 'Bert Rutan'. it would be 'NASA'.
Minor Issue + Space = Scary, but keep trying! (Score:5, Insightful)
The flight was a success, the pilot survived, and the ship wasn't damaged? Good job guys! Don't get lazy!
Accept the risk (Score:5, Insightful)
There's been quite enough of that already, thank you very much. Get ready for it, it's going to happen. Every pioneering effort accumulates causualties.
Re:Accept the risk (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't be too harsh (Score:4, Insightful)
Space flight is dangerous. What amazes me is that even big problems don't result in fatalities whereas, in the case of Challenger(maybe Columbia), a minor problem resulted in the death of the crew.
Re:Don't be too harsh (Score:4, Insightful)
I also don't call a big hole in the heat resistant paneling when you plan to endure metal melting temperatures a small problem either.
In contrast getting your ship pointed in the wrong direction for a while is smaller in that at least you get a chance to correct the problem (and in fact he had already corrected some issues in control moments after he fired the rockets proving he is an excellent pilot, damn lucky, or both).
All in all this flight was probably as perfect as any adventure into space can hope to be.
True, but more important (Score:3, Insightful)
The space disasters where everyone dies are ones where the pilots have no idea there is a problem, and the computers can't fix it.
Challenger had an o-ring problem that was wilfully ignored by engineers, and hidden from the pilots. Had the pilot been told that a catastrophic breach been possible with a forzen ring, the flight would have never left, and 7 people would stil
Amateurs (Score:5, Interesting)
On the top of the hatch that led into the interior of the ship was stenciled the words: "Experimental Space Rocket -- Dangerous As Hell"
[1] Probably one of the funnier points in the story is during a radio exchange between the pilot of the Dervish Also and the ground, where the pilot requested clearance to take his "Learjet" to a flight level of 600. *grin*
Re:Amateurs (Score:3, Informative)
You appear to think that the X Prize has been put up by the government.
This is not correct.
The X Prize is completely private. Peter Diamantes has raised several million dollars from private donations. This has then been used to pay the premium on an insurance policy, with the insurance com
Re:Amateurs (Score:3, Informative)
You don't perhaps think that FL 600 means 600,000 feet (or meters, or whatever), do you? It is 60,000 feet.
Ascent phase, not descent (Score:4, Informative)
Class act (Score:5, Insightful)
Credit Mike Melville and Burt Rutan for being so open about the problems they experienced. Remember, this is 1 day after the flight! Compare that with how NASA closed ranks and divulged Columbia information with an eye dropper for weeks after the disaster. The only statements made by the mission controllers were through their lawyers. The Russians and Chinese would never admit to problems at all. Burt Rutan is a genious, he puts his work on the line for all the world to see. Space Ship 1 is a class act all the way around.
Re:Class act (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait a sec. If congress and the press started accusing Rutan of being negligent, you can bet your ass his coworkers would close ranks.
And if something really complicated and non-obvious has occured, they will release the information they learn as they learn it. Today they tell us there was a problem with attitude thrusters. Maybe tomorrow they will learn that the problem was with the main engine gymbal. If that happens, are you going to say they are divulging info with an eye dropper?
Re:Class act (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think that's fair or even justified. NASA is (primarily) a government organization. They have contractors to pay, politicians to appease, etc. Every flight is a multimilion dollar undertaking, and consider the vast majority for them have gone well, they must be doing something right.
Yesterday's flight, while incredible, was done with a very low budget (and in some ways, seat of the pants). Not that that's inherently "wrong", but they'd have a lot less people to answer to if something catastrophic happened. They'd probably have some investors to explain to, but NASA had over 300 million with Columbia. Would you rather the answers come out quickly or correctly?
Rrecorded video of interior SpaceShipOne in space? (Score:3, Interesting)
Thank you in advance.
they will win (Score:5, Insightful)
we will win (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:they will win (Score:4, Informative)
Not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
minor setbacks and some carmack links :P (Score:5, Insightful)
According to one article they had to run on backup systems [bbc.co.uk], another said the pilot heard a loud BANG at one point (lost that link). Not happy stuff, clearly they moved too soon.
For me, i'm not all that interested in the higher cost version of scaled composites, Rutan IS a pioneer, but previous work has also been government related. Which is why I laugh at the whole notion of public/private. Don't get me wrong, govt funding/projects are a good thing. But im sick of the BS pretending that there's the government and there's private industry. They are interelated, and we would do well to discuss, and plan, that relationship and public funding of r&d. And dont get me started on healthcare.
Re:minor setbacks and some carmack links :P (Score:5, Insightful)
Commie.
The fact is, in a capitalist society (or at least one that's MOSTLY capitalist), spending tax dollars and non-tax dollars are different things. If tax dollars are spent, you get a $900 toilet seat, $5 million in wireless equipment that never leaves the loading dock, etc. It's impossible for government to be efficient, because there's no incentive for efficiency. On the other hand, if private dollars are spent, there's a very big incentive to be efficient: They get to keep the money they don't spend! (or at least whoever is funding them gets to).
That is the very reason SpaceShipOne cost $20 million instead of $2 billion. If we ever want space flight to be within the reach of the average person, NASA is NOT going to get us there. It's private programs like this that will make the cost reasonable.
Re:minor setbacks and some carmack links :P (Score:5, Interesting)
To expand on your point, that is the way it should be. Governments should not be spending tax dollars on building amusment rides for the public. How much did whats-his-name (tito?) spend to ride on Soyuz up to the space station? Not enough, if you ask me, the the Russians apparently disagree. If the common man is going to space, it is private enterprise that should get him there.
Re:minor setbacks and some carmack links :P (Score:3, Insightful)
It also doesn't have the contractual and budgetary quirks that give you a $900 toilet seat or $2000+ hammer. The main problem is that the government has no idea what a certain item will cost for R&D and construction and budgets a certain amount to a con
Meanwhile, at the BBC (Score:5, Interesting)
T
"The fact that our back-up system worked and we made a beautiful landing makes me feel very good."
I find it quite insightful of Rutan to have designed a backup system into his space-plane. And it did work as designed... a clear demonstration that should win even more future safety-weary customers/passengers.
Chicken Little (Score:5, Insightful)
C'mon. What are you a Mac user?
The Right Stuff (Score:5, Informative)
And yes, Chuck Yeager (IMHO) was the greatest. The book reminds us of the distinction between real pilots and astronauts (mostly passengers). The guy who piloted Richard Noble's Thrust (supersonic on land) and the guy who piloted the Rutan craft are pilots.
test flight (Score:3, Insightful)
Who's cleaning up the M&Ms? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Who's cleaning up the M&Ms? (Score:3, Informative)
Challenger reference? (Score:3, Insightful)
But it was the sublime view that affected him the most. "The sky was jet black, with light blue along the horizon - it was really an awesome sight," he said. "You really do get the feeling that you've touched the face of God."
That just brought me back to 1986 when the Challenger exploded during ascent and Ronald Reagan's address to the nation that night...
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/speeches/
Say what you will about Reagan, regardless of how you felt about his policies (many were quite controversial), he sure could deliver great speeches.
Re:Challenger reference? (Score:5, Informative)
Say what you will about Reagan, regardless of how you felt about his policies (many were quite controversial), he sure could deliver great speeches.
The best lines in it, however, were paraphrased from John Gillespie McGee's famous poem "High Flight" [af.mil], which is also what Melvill was most likely thinking of. It's a standard reading at the funerals of pilots, and I personally feel that Reagan's speech would have been better, and perhaps more fitting, had he finished with the entire poem. It sums up the main reason why astronauts - military, governmental or private - will always want to strap themselves into something that will never be 100% safe and fly.
Fixing tumbling not as easy as it seems... (Score:5, Informative)
wrong.
Most objects do not spin cleanly about most axes. Rigid bodies (such as books, spaceships, rocks, lollipops, and bullets) have three "principal axes" that pass through the center of gravity and are determined by the mass distribution in the object. There's a "minimum" axis that minimizes the kinetic energy for a given angular momentum -- that's the axis around which the thing is the most clustered. For a screwdriver, the minimum axis generally points down the length of the scredriver shaft. There's also a "maximum" axis around which the thing is the most spread out of any direction. For a flat object like a book or a pancake, the maximum axis points directly out of the flat face. Those are the only two axes around which you can spin the object and have it stay stable.
Any other direction will give rise to precession and tumbling, even in vacuum! You can try it with a book -- most closed hardback books have the minimum axis pointing up through the top of the middle pages, and the maximum axis pointing out through the front of the cover. The third dimension -- pointing out through the spine -- is not stable. Tape a book shut and flip it in the air: if you flip it around the maximum or minimum moment axis it will do what you think -- just flip over before you catch it again. If you flip it around the intermediate axis (by, say, starting with the book facing you right-side up with the spine on the left, and pulling the bottom edge toward you as you throw it up in the air) then you might expect the spine to stay on your left side -- but it will flip back and forth, often ending up on your right side, as the book tumbles in the air. (Remember to tape the book closed before tossing it!).
Anyhow, that's a problem for stopping spin and tumbling, because it's not always obvious which way to fire the cold-gas jets to slow down your rotation: by the time you actually fire them you might have tumbled around so that they are speeding you up instead of slowing you down.
I guess that's why "carefree re-entry" is such a great feature of SpaceShipOne -- it's remarkable that they were able to land safely even without good attitude control at apogee.
This isn't really news if you RTFAd yesterday. (Score:5, Informative)
There was a show recently on PBS about the Joint Strike Fighter selection competition. The first flights of the aircraft were done with the landing gear down because with all the other uncertainties they didn't want to take the chance that the gear would fail to lower. They had glitches with hydraulic leaks, landing gear brakes, the VTOL systems, and refueling equipment. In any kind of new aircraft, you expect there to be lots of little problems, more than a few of which are capable of killing the test pilots.
Rutan doesn't seem to be taking any unnecessary chances; he's taking this step by step. If he was just rushing break-neck to win, he'd be going for the prize today. We don't know at this point how much of a setback these glitches were, but I'm reasonably sure he has time for dealing with them charted out in the project.
The question arises again... (Score:3, Funny)
But it was the sublime view that affected him the most. "The sky was jet black, with light blue along the horizon - it was really an awesome sight," he said. "You really do get the feeling that you've touched the face of God."
What does God need with a starship?
Any landing you can walk away from... (Score:3, Interesting)
"Any landing that you can walk away from is a good landing."
So What? (Score:4, Insightful)
Look at it this way, the last time NASA screwed up people died. Scaled Composites screwed up and a craft buckled slightly but returned home safely. I think they are doing alright.
Weightless.... (Score:3, Informative)
He became "weightless" the instant he cut the thrust, because then the only acceleration acting on the aircraft was gravity. I.e., he still had weight, but he was unable to feel it, because he was coasting freely along with it.
Not an insurmountable problem (Score:3, Insightful)
yada yada (Score:5, Insightful)
(1) The ship was successfully launched
(2) The ship achieved it's goal
(3) Both ship and pilot returned safely to the ground
I would call this a success, wouldn't you?
I'd also point out that the pilot - who, I'd wager, has more experience testing experimental craft than all of Slashdot put together - was so concerned over the irregularities of the flight that he...played with M&M's while weightless.
Yep, ol' Mike was riddled with doubt and fear over the safety of his ship, he was.
Hand-wringers, space never was, and never will be, for you.
Max
Re:Attitude? (Score:5, Interesting)
You CAN do it in the atmosphere, of course... (Score:5, Interesting)
You can do that in the atmosphere, too.
It's just that some attitudes have consequences, and (at flight speeds) sometimes the consequences involve sudden disassembly of the airframe, so you can't maintain certain attitudes for very long. B-)
Of course if your airframe is strong enough, some of these unusual attitudes can be useful. For instance: In WWII it was a real bitch if you got an enemy on your tail. If his craft was roughly as manouverable as yours he could just follow you through all your manouvers and keep shooting at you, while you mostly got to run. (I never DID figure out why they didn't mout a rear-pointing machinegun on fighters.) That's why fighter craft worked in pairs and the pairs worked in groups (so you had a spare "buddy" if yours got shot down.
Nowadays fighter jocks can just nose-up suddenly and fly belly first for a couple seconds. It's like hitting a wall of pillows in the air: Airspeed drops abruptly, and now YOU'RE the guy at the rear of the parade. (But try that in a WWII craft and you're likely to find it only worked for the wings...)
I hear one of the common models of the learjet gets significantly better mileage flying upside down.
Story goes this was discovered by a three-man consulting firm of autopilot-programmers, who bought one that had had a fire wreck the cabin furnishings at scrap prices, had it redone by a van conversion outfit, and used it for recreational cross-country flying. Of course it costs a LOT to do that, and this was limiting their recreation. So they tried different things to reduce fuel consumption.
After discovering they saved about 10% flying upside down, they rehacked their autopilot to fly it that way if desired, and played cards sitting on the ceiling.
Well one day they were flying near a military base and NORAD got a bit concerned: Seems the radar signature of a lear flying upside-down wasn't in the database. Oops: UFO. Did the Soviets come up with something new ala the U2? Up go a couple fighters to check it out.
They look out the window and see a fighter pacing them. Fighter jock points up. ("Are you aware you're flying upside down?") They nod and point up, too. ("Yes, we are. This is intentional.") (Sometimes pilots get disoriented and fly upside down. This can lead to crashes if he doesn't get it figured out in time.)
So fighter pilot flips over so HE's upside-down, too, paces them a moment more, then flys away, still upside-down.
Re:Attitude? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Attitude? (Score:5, Informative)
Uh... I would hope they have control over the plane's attitude.
Main Entry: at-ti-tude
5 : the position of an aircraft or spacecraft determined by the relationship between its axes and a reference datum (as the horizon or a particular star)
Re:attitude control (Score:3, Informative)
Re:attitude control (Score:4, Insightful)
The word comes from Latin aptus, meaning fastened or fitted. Actually, the aeronautic meaning is the primary one - originally the word was used to describe a position of an object related to some framework, backdrop or just the horizon, only in the modern times it attained the new meaning, a position of human being versus the society.
Indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed! NASA never has accidents that kill people. Through the mass application of science and billions of taxpayer dollars, all risk has been eliminated from space travel. Carry on, sir.
Re:Indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
SpaceShipOne and Scaled Composites are very good, but they are like the japanese entering the car market. Also, they are designing to a much smaller scope than the space shuttle.
Re:Indeed (Score:3, Interesting)
You mean, they're producing a better solution for less money on an otherwise level playing field -- and making it look shiny too?
Actually, although I'm not sure you could declare SS1 'better' than the shuttle, it's a pretty interesting analogy, with NASA in the role of Detroit.
Re:Indeed (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes.
Thiokol engineers specifically warned against operating the O-rings that caused the Challenger mishap in very cold weather (i.e. weather with temperatures that exceeded the design values for the shuttle). They gave these warnings because they did not have sufficient data to be confident that the O-rings would work at those low temperatures, and (IIRC) even had some data that tentatively indicated that the O-rings would fail at low temps. NASA ignored these warnings, and chose to operate the shuttle in a flight regime outside of the specified design envelope.
The fragility of the RCC tiles that led to the Columbia mishap was well known. Several studies pointed out that allowing impacts to these tiles was dangerous. In fact, I have heard from a friend who works with some of the original shuttle design engineers that the shuttle external tank was specifically designed to prevent the chunks of falling ice that caused the Columbia mishap precisely because they knew that the RCC was fragile. NASA later chose to change the tank design to one that was much more susceptible to creating ice fragments. Again causing a situation in which the original design assumptions were violated, and failure resulted.
Bottom line: neither Columbia or Challenger were caused by a lack of knowledge when it came to material properties, but rather an active decision to violate the known design envelope. This kind of action might be excusable in a test flight program that is truly "pushing the envelope" (and even then, I'd expect to see much more in the way of ground testing first), but is certainly not acceptable in an operational program (which is how NASA portrayed the shuttle after the first few flights).
Re:This isn't what I expected (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This isn't what I expected (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? It seems to me that Scaled Composites have redefined "enough money" to be a hell of a lot lower than it used to be. So far they've spent about $20 million, which sounds like a lot, but let's put that into some perspective: That's less than the cost of a brand new 747. It's about 5% of the cost of a single shuttle launch. It's less than a 5th of what the Canadian government recently pissed away on cronyism in the recent sponsorship scandal. It's the amount of cash Peter Jackson is getting paid to direct King Kong. On the scale that these guys are operating $20 million is a piss in the bucket. It's more than you or I might happen to have lying around in spare change, but compared to the costs for standard everyday (non space going)performance aircraft it is unbelievably cheap.
Jedidiah.
Re:This isn't what I expected (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/prices/
Re:This isn't what I expected (Score:3, Insightful)
Then comparisons with the space shuttle will be somewhat more valid.
Re:This isn't what I expected (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This isn't what I expected (Score:4, Informative)
This is about what it costs to fly a 747 across the country.
thad
Re:This isn't what I expected (Score:4, Insightful)
When was the last time you saw any innovation in commercial aviation?
September 11, 2001
Sure, mod me down, troll and all. It's an honest answer, at least.
No, no, no! (Score:5, Funny)
"Any landing which you can walk away from is a good landing.
Any landing after which you can use the plane again is a great landing."
Or, if you work for American Airlines:
"Any landing after which our customers, or their surviving kin, don't sue us is a good landing."
Re:right angle turns at 62 miles... (Score:4, Insightful)
if he had done a 90 deg turn at that speed he would not be talking about it.
Re:This is sad (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:As they say... (Score:4, Funny)