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Space Science

Debris Seen Falling Off Shuttle During Launch 396

Posted by timothy from the debris-and-decrackers dept.
kushboy writes "According to an article on CNN.com, there is video of debris falling off Discovery during its launch earlier today. While the debris does not appear to hit the shuttle, extra precaution and more video will be analyzed due to the Columbia mission of 2003. 'NASA has taken steps to minimize the amount and size of debris falling off the shuttle's exterior tank during its ascent. But the space agency has said it's impossible to eliminate falling launch debris.'"
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Debris Seen Falling Off Shuttle During Launch More

Debris Seen Falling Off Shuttle During Launch

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  • They're Doomed!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @08:40PM (#13172519)
    debris falling off the shuttle's exterior tank
    OMG! I saw two long white cylindrical things attached to the tank fall off too!

    • Re:They're Doomed!!! (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      OMG! I saw two long white cylindrical things attached to the tank fall off too!

      You must have excellent eyesight!

    • Re:They're Doomed!!! (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @11:25PM (#13173540)
      Come to think of it, the fuel tank fell off too. How are they ever going to get home?

  • Nice misleading story, guys... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TripMaster Monkey ( 862126 ) * on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @08:40PM (#13172520)

    From the Story summary:
    Debris Seen Hitting Shuttle During Launch

    From TFA:
    The NASA video showed the unidentified debris falling and
    not appearing to hit Discovery.

    Honestly, guys....do you even read submissions anymore?

    Anyway, given the current technology, it's pretty much impossible to eliminate falling launch debris. We should know more about any possible damage by tomorrow, after the Discovery crew finish their VSE via boom-mounted camera.

    • Re:Nice misleading story, guys... (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Honestly, guys....do you even read submissions anymore?

      Did they ever?

    • Re:Nice misleading story, guys... (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The NASA video showed the unidentified debris falling and not appearing to hit ME either. Did it appear to not hit anyone else?

    • Re:Nice misleading story, guys... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Fjornir ( 516960 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @08:44PM (#13172557)
      Honestly, guys....do you even read submissions anymore?

      ...well, obviously they don't need to. You're still paying for it, right?

      • Well, if they want to keep their traffic up and keep people from moving over to Digg [digg.com] maybe they should think about actually doing their damned jobs sometime. If this was a non-profit site or something I could understand the slack, but they're making money here and they need to step things up.

        Honestly, I'm getting pretty sick of slashdot lately. I'm finding a lot more interesting articles over at digg. The only thing missing is the witty satire of the slashdot crowd.

    • Re:Nice misleading story, guys... (Score:5, Informative)

      by prof_peabody ( 741865 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @08:46PM (#13172581)
      Well, there is photographic evidence of one tile fracturing and breaking off. So aybe debris did infact hit the shuttle.

      Images here:
      http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts114/05072 6images/ [spaceflightnow.com]
      • I could be wrong but as i remember from space camp the shuttle regularly loses a couple of these tiles. Granted, I am going off an 8 year old memory so someone please correct me if i'm smoking crack.

      • So what? Tiles fall off all the time. (Score:5, Informative)

        by daveschroeder ( 516195 ) * on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @10:04PM (#13173114)
        The shuttle program has lived with damage from debris from the very first flight, in 1981; in 113 missions the orbiters have been hit by debris some 15,000 times, mostly on liftoff. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration replaces about 100 insulating tiles after every flight and repairs many more than that, Stephanie S. Stilson, the vehicle manager for Discovery, said Monday.

        In fact, the rest of this article [nytimes.com] sums up the situation quite nicely:

        July 27, 2005
        Intense Hunt for Signs of Damage Could Raise Problems of Its Own

        By JOHN SCHWARTZ
        CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., July 26 - Now that the Discovery is in orbit, the examination begins. Its 12½-day mission will be the most photographed in the history of the shuttle program, with all eyes on the craft to see if it suffered the kind of damage from blastoff debris that brought down the Columbia in February 2003.

        There were cameras on the launching pad, cameras aloft on planes monitoring the ascent, cameras on the shuttle checking for missing foam on the external fuel tank, and a camera on the tank itself. One camera caught a mysterious object falling from the shuttle at liftoff; radar detected another, about two minutes into the flight. Cameras aboard the shuttle and the International Space Station will monitor the Discovery until the end of its mission.

        But all this inspection may be a mixed blessing. The more NASA looks for damage, engineers and other experts say, the more it will find. And the risks of overreaction to signs of damage while the shuttle is in orbit may be just as great as the risks of playing them down.

        "How do you distinguish - discriminate - between damage which is critical and damage which is inconsequential?" asked Dr. David Wolf, an astronaut who spent four months aboard the Russian space station Mir. "We could be faced with very difficult decisions, in part because of all this additional information that we will be presented with."

        The shuttle program has lived with damage from debris from the very first flight, in 1981; in 113 missions the orbiters have been hit by debris some 15,000 times, mostly on liftoff. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration replaces about 100 insulating tiles after every flight and repairs many more than that, Stephanie S. Stilson, the vehicle manager for Discovery, said Monday.

        Now, though, it will be far easier to spot such damage while the shuttle is still in orbit. Thanks to a $15 million laser camera system developed by a Canadian company, Neptec, for example, NASA can detect a crack of just two-hundredths of an inch, the width of two business cards pressed together. On the leading edge of the orbiter's wing, such a crack could admit dangerous amounts of superheated gas during re-entry. A similar crack elsewhere might not.

        It was a large hole in the left wing's leading edge, caused by impact with a 1.67-pound piece of insulating foam during the launching, that led to the Columbia disaster.

        But if a crack is detected, said Iain Christie, director of research and development for Neptec, "how is NASA supposed to explain that this is not a problem?"

        Nor is it clear how it could be fixed. NASA's efforts to create a repair kit for tile and leading-edge panels, a recommendation of the board that investigated the Columbia accident, have not been successful. Techniques will be tested during a spacewalk in coming days, but they are not ready for an actual repair, and the Discovery astronauts have said they would not want to trust any patchwork on a return to Earth.

        Another option, the "safe haven" plan, would involve abandoning the $2 billion shuttle and having the astronauts wait in the space station for a rescue mission. For that to work, another shuttle would have to be launched within a few weeks.

        That is theoretically possible but carries risks of its own: the chance, for example, that the orbiting astronauts would run o
    • Although I heard on the news this morning (Australian EST) that NASA had announced there was damage to tiles on the nose of the shuttle - apparently unrelated to the falling debris.

      That, I would have thought, would be more newsworthy for Slashdot - assuming I could actually find a reference to it on the web.
    • You're new here right? The editors stopped reading the submissions when they were all replaced by cyborg monkeys to cut costs. The old addage states that an infinite amount of monkeys at an infinite amount of typewriters can compose the complete works of Shakespere, so of course 6 or 7 cyborg monkeys can do the same, right?

      The proof is slashdot. You be the judge.
    • The debris was from the heat shielding in the right side of the front landing gear assembly. Photographs show that the area has sustained surface damage (the black surface is missing) and potential heat shield tile shear. The "not hitting" the shuttle bit is merely that the debris didn't cause additional damage elsewhere.

      The damage is close to the upper limit of what they could repair in space, if it does prove to be tile shear. This may force a rescue mission.

      Furthermore, we won't know until at least

      • Your powers of observation need sharpening.

        Pot, kettle, etc. You completely missed the point. Let me spell it out for you. We have two statements:

        1. Debris Seen Hitting Shuttle During Launch
        2. The NASA video showed the unidentified debris falling and not appearing to hit Discovery.

        Clearly these statements are contradictory. Either the debris was seen to hit or it was seen to miss. Yet the story was published with that contradiction. So what, exactly, do the "editors" do?

      • Photographs show that the area has sustained surface damage (the black surface is missing) and potential heat shield tile shear. The "not hitting" the shuttle bit is merely that the debris didn't cause additional damage elsewhere.

        You have obviously completely missed the point.

        It's common for shuttles to lose a few sections of tile during missions - it has happened many times before (once, a shuttle came back with a pretty large section of its nose tiles missing - perhaps as many as 20. I don't remember the mission, but I saw the photos afterwards). This does not necessarily mean anything, and could in fact be completely normal. The fact is tile damage of one sort or another happens on every single mission.

        Debris hitting the shuttle is a different story altogether, because it was conclusively proven that Columbia was brought down by a piece of foam impacting the reinforced carbon carbon leading edge of one of the wings at more than 500mph. The headline here suggests something similar happened on this launch, which it clearly did not, and nobody has suggested as much except whoever submitted this article. That is sensationalist, not to mention basically an outright lie.

        It is worth mentioning and remembering that Columbia's disintegration had nothing to do with tiles. The reinforced carbon carbon on the leading edge of the wings is a completely different material than the tiles are made of and in fact it is structural material, not simply a cover on top of structural material (as the tiles are). The hole in Columbia's wing was blown through the leading edge of the wing - this would be equivalent to blowing a hole through the fuselage in the area we're talking about now. That did not happen.

        The damage is close to the upper limit of what they could repair in space, if it does prove to be tile shear. This may force a rescue mission.

        Yeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt. I mean I have about as much evidence for that as you do for a rescue mission. Nobody has said any such thing either at NASA or in the press. Hell, not even Drudge has suggested as much - that oughta show you how far out the statements you're making are.

        Debris is inevitable, this is perfectly true. This is why such systems SHOULD have the best monitoring that money can buy, including internal sensors that can detect anomolous conditions.

        So your solution is to put a sensor under every single tile on the shuttle? Or maybe more than one under each tile, to check for temperature anomalies under tiles that are partially broken? That's what it would take to do what you're suggesting.

        There is a point at which more data is just more data. It doesn't tell anybody anything; in fact it is more likely to result in an error because the humans that are required to interpret such data can only process so much. (And as we all know, trying to program computers to interpret such data is even less reliable.) And it really doesn't make a difference is the temperature is 2 degrees higher in one spot than it is a millimeter and a half away.

        In the case of Columbia, the damaged sections would have cooled faster than normal, due to being open to space,

        News flash: the entire shuttle is in open space. The wings are not pressurized, nor are they heated. In the vacuum of space, the interior of the wings would have cooled at the same rate regardless of whether there was a hole there or not (and the hole only exposed metal structure until plasma melted it on re-entry, so the rest of the wing was still as shielded as it was going to be from temperature changes on launch).

        You're so far off in your analysis here I really am not sure why I'm even bothering to argue the point, except for the fact that you write in a style that suggests more knowledge than you possess, and I do worry that some people may actually take you at your word. But rest assured, everything you have said

        • I'll feed the troll. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by jd ( 1658 ) <imipakNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @11:27PM (#13173550) Homepage Journal
          The wings are not pressurized, but will leak at a fairly constant rate. Let's call it R. Now, a wing with a bloody great hole in it will also leak at a constant, but different, rate. Let's call it R'. It does not matter what R' is, only that it is strictly greater than R.


          So, you have a simple pressure guague and measure the difference between observed pressure drop and your expected value of R. If the total discrepency exceeds some critical threshold, then there is a problem with the wing that would create a serious problem.


          Now, measuring the temperature. There's this thing called a thermocouple. Dunno if you've come across these. It requires a couple of strands of wire, which you can run down the length of the wing quite easily. Alternatively, find a piece of metal in the wing that joins to a piece of metal that runs into the cockpit. Two types of metal, a temperature gradient, sounds like a cheapskate peltier device to me. Check the potential difference and you can detect unusual gradients with minimal effort.


          Rescue mission: Uh, NASA themselves said that if there was a problem with launch that they would have Atlantis on standby for a rescue mission. Drudge might not have said it, but I don't give a damn about Drudge. I do give a damn about NASA's own statements.


          The fact is, I've worked there and know how NASA operates. I know several of the contractors who build components for the shuttle. I've seen round their workshops, I've talked with their engineers. This doesn't sound like a lack of knowledge to me.


          I don't need to defend myself in the face of those who really do know less than me, or even less than those who merely read the newspapers and bother to remember what was said by the people involved.


          I don't need to defend how much I know. Repeatedly, as none of this is unique to this posting, I've said all of this in prior Shuttle and/or NASA debates when people have asked for my sources. Why should I keep telling people stuff that they could have looked up for themselves? All my postings are searchable on Google, same as everyone else's. If you wanted to know the extent of my knowledge, you wouldn't need to troll for it.


          Can I prove I worked at NASA? Sure. You'll find my old NASA e-mail address on a number of Open Source projects I helped out with at the time. You don't know what those are? Seek and ye shall find. It's not hard to figure out.


          Let's see. So, I have inside knowledge of the engineers, inside knowledge of the construction of the Shuttles, and inside knowledge of the political machinations of NASA. And I am the one with the faulty assumptions, working from knowledge I don't have?

          • Re:I'll feed the troll. (Score:5, Interesting)

            by georgewilliamherbert ( 211790 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @02:02AM (#13174154)
            The wings are not pressurized, but will leak at a fairly constant rate. Let's call it R. Now, a wing with a bloody great hole in it will also leak at a constant, but different, rate. Let's call it R'. It does not matter what R' is, only that it is strictly greater than R.

            So, you have a simple pressure guague and measure the difference between observed pressure drop and your expected value of R. If the total discrepency exceeds some critical threshold, then there is a problem with the wing that would create a serious problem.

            Maybe you should have studied harder when you were with the NASA people you worked with.

            The Shuttle wing sections are unpressurized (true) and are faced with solid metal sheets that form the wing structural skin. The thermal protection system goes over those metal sheets. You can completely remove all the tiles and not change the structural integrity of the underlying metal skin.

            None of the prior damage in tiled areas punctured the skins.

            The leading edge areas with the reinforced carbon-carbon segments are outside the main wing skin. They aren't sealed either, and generally retain very little pressure differential with the outside. It's possible that you'd have seen an abnormally fast equalization of pressure in the Columbia leading edge. But all that tells you is if you have a hole so bad that you're going to lose the shuttle, with no chance of repair.

            Most damage will be less severe than that, and such a pressure test won't catch that more minor damage. To find that you have to look at the surface up close to check for dings and cracks.

            If you have to visually inspect to check for the more minor but still potentially lethal damage, why even bother with the huge hole pressure check? It's not like the visual inspection can possibly miss an 8" hole in the leading edge with a camera two meters away.

          • Sorry, but after some investigation, I think you are the troll here. Hell, you tell us to search for your email address in NASA projects and you don't even post your email address, not even in your profile!

            As it may be, I happen to have a few friends at NASA as well, as my engineering school tends to send them down on co-op at a frequent rate of about one or two per year (I'm at a small engineering school, University of Louisville's Speed program). So, knowing the same things you know, I can honestly tel
    • It's worse than that - the TITLE says "Debirs seen hitting shuttle" and the summary (yeah, the one right below the title) say "While the debirs didn't hit the shuttle..."

    • Re:Nice misleading story, guys... (Score:5, Funny)

      by vought ( 160908 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @10:43PM (#13173338)
      Honestly, guys....do you even read submissions anymore?


      No.


      Sincerely,

      The Guys.

    • They'll fix the summary on the dupe. Give them a break, this is only the first submission.

  • Does anyone see anything wrong here? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Council ( 514577 ) <rmunroe AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @08:43PM (#13172546) Homepage
    Article title:

    Debris Seen Hitting Shuttle During Launch

    Article summary:

    While the debris does not appear to hit the shuttle . . .

    Seriously. I feel stupid complaining about the editors; I don't often. But this is ridiculous.

  • NASA Says Thermal Tile (Score:4, Informative)

    by Saeed al-Sahaf ( 665390 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @08:44PM (#13172562) Homepage
    From Foxnews:

    NASA officials said an object that may have been a 1 1/2-inch piece of thermal tile appeared to break off from the Discovery's belly during liftoff. It came off from around a particularly vulnerable spot, near the doors to the compartment containing the nose landing gear.

    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,163629,00.html [foxnews.com]

    • Re:NASA Says Thermal Tile (Score:3, Informative)

      by Peyna ( 14792 )
      Leave it to Fox to take something and word it just the right way to make it sound like an imminent disaster.

      To put this in perspective a little more, the tiles are 8"x8". Also, they tend to get damaged quite frequently, with 15 flights prior to Columbia suffering from extensive tile damage. The very first shuttle suffered from 250 debris hits to its tiles on the way up and back.
    • They are supposed to be doing experiments with Emittance Wash and Noax [bbc.co.uk] for tile repair, so I guess they've got their chance now. Not that they necessarily wanted it to go down like this. The Beeb has a good guide on changes made to the shuttle.

  • Must've been (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nxtr ( 813179 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @08:46PM (#13172573)
    Must've been all that crack [slashdot.org]...

  • Should this be a big deal yet? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by zebadee ( 551743 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @08:46PM (#13172583) Homepage
    If it is impossible to stop debris from hitting the shuttle, should everyone be so worried? Yes, there was the Columbia disaster, but doesn't the fact with all the new precautions in place debris still strike the shuttle suggest debris probably hit the shuttle on every previous launch, and with with no major problems.

  • Endless bug fixes don't fix bad design (Score:3, Funny)

    by skeptictank ( 841287 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @08:47PM (#13172587)
    What is there to say really. Design by committee.

  • Hmmm.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by typical ( 886006 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @08:48PM (#13172598) Journal
    But the space agency has said it's impossible to eliminate falling launch debris.

    "T-5 and holding due to pigeon..."

    • Re:Hmmm.... (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "T-5 and holding due to pigeon..."

      That explains the plan to glue plastic owls to the space shuttle.

      • Re:Hmmm.... (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Yes, and then we get "T minus 3 and holding due to blackbird," followed by plastic owls glued to the shuttle interspersed with scarecrows. But the Avian Interference Reduction And/Or Prevention Shuttle Safety Devices, or A.I.R.A.O.P.S.S.D. for short, are not heat resistant despite their $4 billion cost, and the melted owl and flaming scarecrow heads flying across the window scare the astronauts to death upon re-entry just before the shuttle hits a sparrow, which knocks off 37 heat tiles and causes Discover

  • well.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by slorge ( 722786 ) <slorge@gRABBITmail.com minus herbivore> on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @08:49PM (#13172607) Homepage
    anyone old enough to remember the apollo launches? Granted, anything that returned to earth was covered during launch, but there was stuff flyng off left and right (hoses, debris, small animals, pizza boxes, etc.)

    I think we're getting a little paranoid because of one incident. But that's just me....


    • The Apollo craft were not reusable. The Shuttle tiles are remarkably fragile compared to the Apollo craft reentry capsule's heat shield.

      In fact, the remarkable thing is not that the tiles were damaged by falling launch debris, but that it hadn't happened sooner.

    • Re:well.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by toddbu ( 748790 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @08:59PM (#13172690)
      In the early design phases of the shuttle, the designers decided to go with solid fuel rather than liquid fuel to help keep the costs down. It seems to me in retrospect that if we'd launched both Challenger and Columbia on top of their boosters rather than strapped to the side then we'd still have a full complement of shuttles, saved a whole ton of money, and been four years further down the road than we are today. The Saturn/Apollo stack was exceptionally robust, and its a shame we abandoned them so quickly.

      • Re:well.. (Score:2, Informative)

        by henryweimd ( 516249 )
        You mean like the alternate design with stages that used the Saturn F-1 engine? http://www.nasm.si.edu/exhibitions/gal114/SpaceRac e/sec500/sec542.htm [si.edu] has photos and descriptions of the preliminary designs. Seems like the CEV will likely be top-mounted rather than side-mounted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_Exploration_Vehi cle [wikipedia.org] (Please, no side-talking jokes.)

      • Re:well.. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by dmadole ( 528015 )

        In the early design phases of the shuttle, the designers decided to go with solid fuel rather than liquid fuel to help keep the costs down. It seems to me in retrospect that if we'd launched both Challenger and Columbia on top of their boosters rather than strapped to the side then we'd still have a full complement of shuttles, saved a whole ton of money, and been four years further down the road than we are today.

        I love these armchair rocket scientists that know more than the guys that actually built t

        • Re:well.. (Score:3, Insightful)

          by rebelcool ( 247749 )
          Theres a science to predicting failures (mainly by analyzing known failure rates of components of components, with enough work, you can determine the failure of the system as a whole).

          Anyway, the Saturn's predicted failure rate wasnt all that great. I think there was something like a 1 in 3 chance (read this long ago) something would go catastrophically wrong with them.

          Yeah yeah, people wax poetic about them, but the saturn boosters were a generation older than the shuttles, and much less reliable. They

        • Re:well.. (Score:3, Insightful)

          by DerekLyons ( 302214 )

          The Saturn/Apollo stack was exceptionally robust, and its a shame we abandoned them so quickly.

          What makes you think it was so robust?

          Probably the propoganda/worship that has passed for space history/journalism for forty years now. Especially in the case of Apollo, the 'real facts' have only recently come out - and in dense thick books to boot. (Which removes them from the universe of the average space fanboi - who gets his 'history' from the Discovery Channel.)

          There were 12 manned Apollo missio

    • The Apollo design was different. The important part was at the top and the sides of the vehicle was mostly smooth, except for relatively small fins. The capsule could hit a bird, but that was about it. The shuttle is at the bottom of the assembly and it has large areas sticking out, so it gets hit by falling hoses, tiles, foam, various pieces of hard stuff. In hidsight - a really schtooooopidddttttt design.
  • Does anyone have the whole external tank video? I mean from the launch to the { NO CARRIER } point. I know it exists since it's on the subscriber-only section of spaceflightnow, but I haven't found it anywhere else yet.

  • Unsurprising (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Robotron23 ( 832528 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @08:51PM (#13172627)
    This sort of thing is fairly common for shuttle launches in general, in a process which requires many component parts falling debris is inevitable. Of course, the close scrutiny of this launch will have made this coverage equally as inevitable. It appears to be some of the black undercovering of the shuttle just peeled away and fell to Earth. But NASA, ever cautious, says its might be the orbiters tiles themselves that are damage...needless to say its wise to take NASA's comments with a pinch of salt.

    For those interested, heres the BBC article;

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4719847.stm/ [bbc.co.uk]

  • It's Not the Tiles We Worry About (Score:5, Informative)

    by Spencerian ( 465343 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @09:01PM (#13172712) Homepage Journal
    The hottest parts of the Orbiter on reentry are the leadng edges and the nose, with the underside cooler as you work aft.

    That's why Columbia was doomed when the Reinforced Carbon-Carbon leading edge was damaged and the hottest gases that could enter the Orbiter melted the wing supports.

    Columbia and every single Orbiter after her has lost tiles or had mild to signficant damage on every single flight. This is not inherently serious. Losing a lot of tiles in hotter areas or significant damage in one crucial area is cause for worry.

    Nowandays Orbiters don't use much in the way of tiles at the top of the vehicle, preferring to use thermal blankets. Only a serious breech of the nose or wing edge RCC is dangerous in the extreme. Tile damage elsewhere is nothing to sneeze at, but generally the underside tile loss is not as bad because the heating and the air movement is less direct.
    • ...tile loss around the landing gear is worrisome to a degree. Heating from re-entry would only need to blow out the tires or fuse any moving part, it would not need to destroy the shuttle itself.

      There is also the possibility that something came loose on the inside of the shuttle. An internal impact would cause a tile to fall off, just as easily as any other cause. Depending on exactly what that could be, there is a risk that the front landing gear may not be operable.

      These are slight risks, and I won'

  • it's a bird (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @09:02PM (#13172717)
    My thoughts and prayers go out the the family of the bird that hit the external tank. An autopsy will be performed tomorrow to find official cause of death--most likely "hit by shuttle".

  • it's impossible .. (Score:5, Funny)

    by (H)elix1 ( 231155 ) <slashdot.helix@nOSPaM.gmail.com> on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @09:05PM (#13172739) Homepage Journal
    it's impossible to eliminate falling launch debris

    Impossible? Typical engineer thinking... of course there is a way. Thought these guys were about to take a page from the manual of some people I work with - just keep delaying the next flight until they EOL the shuttle. W00t! 100% no impacts. Bonuses all around...

  • Tyvek coverings were SUPPOSED to fall off (Score:5, Informative)

    by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @09:20PM (#13172848)
    We're talking about several things here. First, the bird that was hit by the EFT (oh well). Second (and is this what everyone's fussing about?) two vent covers on the dorsal section of the shuttle were covered with pieces of Tyvek material (same people that make the waterproofing wrap for houses). Those fabric covers were designed to fall off as soon as the craft started moving. During today's briefing, NASA indicated, IIRC, that the two covers even had small parachutes to let them down slowly. The briefer said that these two bright-colored objects were clearly seen doing just what they were supposed to do: sliding down during the first moment of the launch.

    Completely unrelated would be the hunk of whatever it was that sloughed off of the EFT just before separation, but which would have not struck the orbiter. Also unrelated was the apparent sheering off of a small, perhaps 2-3 inch chunk of a tile near the nose gear cover (just aft). They may deploy the arm to check that one out, but the tiles get pitted all the time.

  • So... (Score:4, Funny)

    by JanneM ( 7445 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @09:47PM (#13173029) Homepage
    So the shuttle has a shedding problem. How about a huge, form-fitting hairnet for the entire craft?

  • Shuttle Time Line (Score:5, Informative)

    by sinth ( 830539 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @09:50PM (#13173049)
    There may certainly have been "Debris Seen Hitting Shuttle During Launch".. But this should be no surprise since NASA scientists and engineers have stated that debris always falls, and it is 'impossible' to prevent. That's why, should you look at the shuttle time line, you will see that they are taking many more preventative measures than have ever been taken in the past. However, this begs the question.. Why weren't these steps taken before?

    26 Jul - Takeoff - Wednesday - A large amount of camera and recording equipment are used to monitor the body of the aircraft during liftoff.

    27 Jul - A 100 Foot Robotic Arm will inspect the shuttle's shield areas.

    28 Jul - The shuttle will backflip approx 600 feet from the space station, allowing it's underside to be photographed with high-resolution cameras on the space station.

    29 Jul - 3 Aug - Three 6.5 hour spacewalks have been scheduled to test and repair any heat shield damage.

    Source: http://www.nasa.gov/ [nasa.gov]

  • Come on, you all know what this really is... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    IT'S ALL ABOUT GOOD OL AMERICAN LIABILITY. If there is ONE thing that was preventable (a tile that was loose, a sensor in a tank, whatever...) the lawyers start sharpening their pencils and trying totake money away from NASA.

    Go back to the old days....we're talking THE RIGHT STUFF days...these guys really weren't sure if they were coming back. That was part of what being an astronaut was! Yes, I made it to space, and I made it back, YIPPIE-KA-YAY MF!

    I'm sure that NO astronaut WANTS to die, but I'm sure

  • Can we all just be honest for a minute? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CPNABEND ( 742114 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @10:46PM (#13173351) Homepage
    Ever since the Apolloe disaster, I have been convinced that you cannot walk up to a 30 or so story stack, hear the moaning and groaning of the equipment loaded with cryogenical propellants, and look up and say to yourself "Sure this is safe!". This fixation on "this fell off", etc. is a problem that will degrade what is left of the shuttle program. It doesn't matter what the safety is... Does anyone think there is a lack of folks applying to fly?

  • Summary and topic (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ultranova ( 717540 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @02:06AM (#13174171)

    Topic title: "Debris Seen Hitting Shuttle During Launch".

    Summary: "While the debris does not appear to hit the shuttle"

    While I understand that finding dupes and checking for facts or reading the article are hard work, would you please at least check that the title and summary do not state exactly opposite things ?

  • Replace the shuttle? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by frostilicus2 ( 889524 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @06:37AM (#13174931)
    Perhaps this is naive, but I really can't help but think that it's about time to replace the shuttle. (I'll list my reasons below)

    1. Each shuttle was designed to have an operational life of 10 years, all have surpassed this age.

    2. The shuttle has not had an admirable safety record - It was expected that 1 in each 100 flights would be unsuccessful and end in total failure (like Columbia) however 2 in 113 have ended in failure. I'm not sure what statistical distribution this was modelled on, but surely the number of failures are significantly larger than initially postulated.

    3. The shuttle has intrinsic design flaws due to the politics of the cold war - it was hoped that the shuttle could be used for launching reconnaissance satellites and consequently the shuttle had to be fitted with a much larger cargo bay and develop vastly more thrust to deliver the large (approx. 18 tonnes) payloads to polar orbits. It was also hoped by the airforce (who demanded these changes) that after a single orbit the shuttle could land (should the mission be aborted), (against the wishes of NASA who preferred a "splash down") and so the shuttle was fitted with delta shaped wings that are prone to being stuck by debris due to their large size. As a result of all of this additional weight the shuttle had to be fitted with high thrust SRB's which are completely uncontrollable (unlike cryogenic propellants used by Apollo et al).

    4. The shuttle sits on the side of its fuel tanks making a detachment impractical should an abort be called at lift off.

    If safety concerns were paramount, the shuttle really should have been much smaller, with little wings sitting on top of a rocket propelled by cryogenic fuels.

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