7 Myths About The Challenger Disaster 629
Lester67 writes "James Oberg at MSNBC has put together an excellent recap of the 7 myths surrounding the Challenger shuttle disaster. I remember that day clearly, but as the author points out, I didn't see it live, nor did a large chunk of the people said they did (Myth #1). Although there are no surprises on the list, regression may have caused you to forget a few of them (#3)."
Live at school (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Live at school (Score:2, Interesting)
-J-
Re:Live at school (Score:3, Interesting)
Traumatic, yes. But I think it was equally important that we understood that exploration involve
In the words of Memento's Leonard Shelby.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In the words of Memento's Leonard Shelby.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In the words of Memento's Leonard Shelby.. (Score:3, Interesting)
True. Memories can also be completely fabricated.
I saw a documentary (probably on BBC2) a few years ago, where people were shown (faked) old photographs of them in a hot air balloon. Most of the subjects said that they couldn't remember the occasion.
However, seven days later, when the same subjects were shown the photographs again, almost every one of them said that they could remember it a bit bet
Yes but... (Score:3, Informative)
So maybe it wasn't millions of Americans but it was a healthy percentage of American school kids that got to see the launch live.
Re:Live at school (Score:2, Interesting)
One of the more interesting aspects of this that interest me regarding the incident is the folkloric need to make sense of the tragedy as it specifically relates ot this event. Retelling this story in humor, in fear. Shock permeated throughout the school and, as this article implies, the culture following. Being ten at the time, I remember being told seve
Re:Live at school (Score:3, Interesting)
The girl was definitely Kate, and I remember looking down while in line, at the green painted wooden bleachers below, and the smell of sweat in the gym. Funny what you remember.
Re:Live at school (Score:5, Interesting)
That morning we watched in launch on TV, then ran outside. It seemed to take a little bit longer than normal, and just as it cleared the trees is when it exploded.
Even though I was in elementary school, it was stil confusing, but I had a good idea what had just gone on.
I saw it live at school also (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Live at school (Score:5, Insightful)
The secretary was sitting at her desk with a odd, hollow expression in her eyes.
"Is anything wrong?" I asked.
"It blew up," she responded.
"What? What are you talking about?"
"The space shuttle. It exploded." (I know this is not technically correct)
There was no TV in the office, and graphical terminals/workstations for offices were still five years away from being common, the Internet probably fifteen years away. If it werent' for the fact she liked to listen to music while she filed, we probably wouldn't have heard about it until we went out for lunch. But I remember the moment clearly.
It's odd that it was such an impressive event, especially for the non-geeks among us who probably couldn't name the first American in space, much less debate the wisdom of the Shuttle's redundant computer architecture as some of us did. Yet I think nearly every American felt the loss in a personal way -- not like losing a friend exactly, more like the feeling of vertigo you'd have if you were standing in the middle of a big bridge and suddenly saw one of the girders underneath you fall into the water.
I think that for many Americans, the instant of learning the disaster was the exact moment the myth of American invicincibilty died. We may have left Vietnam with our tails between our legs, but damn it nobody else put a man on the Moon.
I think the country has never been the same since that day. Before Challenger, optimism was an American character trait. Afterwards it became an ideology. I think that ironically collapse of the Soviet Union dealt the national psyche a second blow. Challenger destroyed our sense of competence, and the end of the Communist Menace destroyed our sense of shared purpose. I think we got a sense of what we lost on 9/11, which is the closest recent experience to the Challenger disaster. 9/11 was a moment of agony, but although few have dared to admit it, it was also curiously bracing. For a brief time, we knew what we had to do: we were going to kick somebody's ass.
Re:Live at school (Score:5, Interesting)
Some people may be forgetting that Columbia broke up on re-entry 3 years ago just a few days from now. That was far more devastating to me personally because it symbolized the end of the shuttle program. Discovery was a nice "pick me back up and dust myself off" attempt, but with so many people nitpicking the mission and the delays because of more foam falling off the external fuel tank I don't know if we'll ever launch another shuttle. It's sad really since there's nothing really as exhilarating as watching a shuttle power its way into space. Ah well, I guess we'll just have to wait 10 years for the CEV missions.
Re:Live at school (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't the exact photo, but this photo [metrowestdailynews.com] is pretty close. But in my newspaper next to the "Y" shaped smoke plume that is burned into my memories was another photo of Christie Mcauliffe's family in the VIP viewing stands crying and hugging. My uncle was a television news photographer from Boston and was sent to cover the home-town school teacher. He was at the VIP stands and knows that the famous photo was actually taken before the accident. Those were tears of joy. He remembers NASA representatives escorting the family out of the stands, away from the media before anyone else figured what happened. No one in the VIP stands knew what happened until several minutes later.
Re:Live at school (Score:3, Interesting)
What kind of car do you drive?! (Score:5, Informative)
I think you are talking out of your ass. You have a point about saftey, but don't lie to get your point accross.
Re:The power of suggestion (Score:3, Informative)
They found that indeed, the crash position helped dissapate g forces and helped you survive a crash. The bad news was that almost certainly you'd end up with broken legs and would end up dieing be
Re:Live at school (Score:4, Insightful)
All the rest of what I learned about the challanger D, I learned from Richard Freynman "What do you care what other people think.".
Great book too. Really nails home the issues about the challanger, top down engineering, and oversights. I think back to his analysis very often.
It couples with his comment "the eaisiest person to fool is your self" and together they are a vital cornerstone of my safety preparadness.
People should not have died because of a oring desingned for compression being used in expansion. People should not have died because someone did not properly use a temperature sensor. People should not have died because a practice for ensuring roundness of the SRB's involved comparing three diamaters.
There! Its off my chest. Now I can go to work.
Mythbusters (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Mythbusters (Score:3, Funny)
Refutation of myth #1 is wrong (Score:4, Informative)
I was six at the time. It was clearly visible from Central Florida, even though that's not where it happened. It was a BIG explosion.
So "everyone saw it" may be wrong, but "millions of people saw it" is certainly correct, and probably "almost everyone in Florida" saw it" is not necessarily wrong.
And it was obvious what happened. The small flame thing in the sky (which is all we actually see during shuttle launches) turned into much larger cloud of something.
The refutation of myth #2 is a bit questionable. Pieces went everywhere. They were found all over the place. And the size of the thing in the sky was big enough to be visible all over the state. Sure, there was no "bang," but it did explode.
How widespread are these myths? (Score:3, Interesting)
As to whether it was "live" when I watched it - I have never claimed this - but I was a young schoolkid at the time, so I wouldn't have really been aware if it was or not. I also don't know of people going around claiming they saw it live as some sort of badge of honour. As for "exploded" - that's fairly semantic. For example, you have "exploded" views in technical illustration - that doesn't mean that the object was actually detonated to make the drawing. "Explosion" often refers to any rapid break-up, whether a "traditional explosion" or not.
Re:How widespread are these myths? (Score:5, Interesting)
Regarding exploded, I have to disagree. Cars don't explode in accidents, though they often get pretty badly mangled and have pieces break off. It's reasonable to say that a lot of things which aren't detonations are explosions... a pressurized cannister of gas say, if it has a structural failure... or a boiler. But Challenger wasn't pushed apart by any sort of internal force. It pitched up rapidly at twice the speed of sound, and like any airplane suddenly tragically flown out to several times its structural design margins, broke into pieces.
It's particularly hard to make this point as what people saw as an explosion... the fireball... in fact had minimal overpressure and thermal density, and essentially didn't damage either the pieces of the Shuttle (which had already broken up) or the solid boosters. People always think that the fireball caused, or somehow was related to, the deaths. It was completely unrelated. If the external tank had been filled with perfectly inert water, and the shuttle came up off the stack as it did, the breakup of Challenger and eventual deaths of the astronauts would have been exactly the same.
You may think it's nitpicking, but it often matters for people to understand exactly which part of something caused deaths or destruction. Katrina didn't devastate New Orleans because it was a Cat 5 storm; Katrina pulled in a water surge which damaged levees which flooded the city. If there had been no Katrina, and random liquefaction caused a levee failure on a clear day without a storm in sight, New Orleans would have been just as badly damaged. That's not true for a lot of surrounding areas though, where Katrina floodwaters from the storm surge did directly cause the damage, and the New Orleans levee breaks later were irellevant.
I'm designing manned spacecraft now, and the details of what can go wrong during launch, in space, and during reentry matter. There are a lot of things which can go wrong and may look spectacularly bad, but shouldn't kill the crew. I am more concerned about the ones which could kill the crew, some of which don't look all that dangerous to the naked eye. Soyuz 10's crew died because one small valve failed and let all the air out as the capsule was coming down. Columbia's crew died because small pieces of foam falling off tanks got to be routine, and eventually after 100 missions a big one fell off and hit probably the single worst place on the whole Orbiter.
composite aging? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, I've always wondered what part composite aging might have played. Materials scientists tend to know little about how composite materials like the RCC panels age, especially in the harsh environment they had to endure -- radiation, violent temperature swings, et cetera -- and especially over the 20 years or so between Columbia's fabrication and the accident. Plus, unlike metals, composites are a bit notorious for showing no outward signs at all that they are about to fail, for looking perfectly sound even when they are so rotten that they'll suddenly and catastrophically fail under stresses they easily stood before.
Here [afa.org] for example is a story about some of the problems the USAF is running into now with the F-15 wing, which is composite and approaching 20 years old in many aircraft, e.g. the linked article notes an F-15 coming apart midflight in 2003 because of a sudden failure of the wing, and yet routine inspections every 200 hours had shown no signs of incipient failure.
If Columbia's accident was the result of this kind of failure, it's a lot harder to blame the designers, engineers, and even management for failing to prevent it -- because it involved the emergence without any warning of a completely unforeseeable materials failure mode. Essentially, the impact of the foam was a trivial hazard, easily withstood by the airframe for almost all of the 20 years Columbia flew. And then, by incredibly bad luck, the aging of the RCC material made the stuff just suddenly become ridiculously fragile, to the point where an oversize bird turd could crack it. And it did so with no outward signs of weakness at all.
That would make Columbia's accident pretty much a pure act of God, beyond the ability of mortal men to foresee and prevent. Indeed, I think one of the lessons of Columbia should probably be that these things still happen, that materials and systems can fail in totally unforeseen ways, even with the best engineering talent and the best management will in the world.
Re:composite aging? (Score:5, Informative)
Two points of information: The failure was not part of the wing, but part of the vertical stablizer (the fins). And, secondly, the failure was part of the load-bearing honeycomb, which is not "composite" but mainly aluminum. The 'skin' of the aircraft is composite, and not load-bearing. F15s are all getting structural upgrades (as is noted in the article) to correct this problem, and the air-force has removed the "profile" used that day (which, as i understand, was pretty extreme).
I worked at Eglin shortly after this happened, and worked with many people involved with that aircraft.
Re:Explosion (Score:5, Interesting)
There always seems to be a russian woman walking past a huge poster of Putin, an iraqi woman walking past a huge poster of Saddam, a venezuelan woman walking past a huge picture of Chavez. And a picture of a white dove with a palestinian demonstration in the background. They are both in focus... how did the photographer get them to stand still? And I don't think you can trust that demonstrators really held up the posters they did. Far too often, it seems that the most prominent poster is held by someone who is not in the image. Remember the affair when a parody image of "Evil Ernie" appeared in an image of bin Laden? It was claimed that the demonstrator had done an image search on the net and accidentaly downloaded the parody image, but if he made that sign, wouldn't he have noticed that bizarre puppet in the backgound?! I think it more likely that someone at reuters or AP decided that the image wasn't illustrative enough, and did the negligent image search
So now I see a major news outlet claiming that such "illustrative" manipulation occurs, perhaps I'm not paranoid, after all.
Re:Explosion (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Explosion (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How widespread are these myths? (Score:2)
Re:How widespread are these myths? (Score:3, Interesting)
The notion that the crew died immediately was "common wisdom" following the disaster. It's what everybody said to comfort each other: "At least they didn't suffer" "It was
I guess I was one of the few, and Canadian no less (Score:5, Interesting)
The librarian had rolled out one of the ubiquitous "TV + giant VCR" stands and parked it in the middle of the reading area. For a librarian that typically insisted on a completely quiet room, this was unusual. I suppose the novelty of the teacher going into space prompted her decision.
Anyway, that unusual situation was enough for me to watch the launch, motivated by the taboo feeling of watching TV in the otherwise serenely quiet library and being a bit of a space nut. Despite that and to corroborate the claim in the article, I was probably one of only a few people actually paying attention to it, as most other students were taking the situation as a license to talk to eachother.
I clearly remember watching it desintergate, fanning out into a cloud -- and my mind not being able to fully comprehend what was happening. I might have even vocalized, but I can only remember the visuals. It seemed to take forever for other people to catch on to what had happened.
Re:Bassett (Score:3, Informative)
----------
Sent: Tue 1/24/2006 3:24 PM
Subject: Faculty Member Dave Bassett Passes - STA Community Grieves
The flag in front of Saint Thomas Academy is flying at half staff
in honor of Professor David M. Bassett, longtime Saint Thomas
Academy faculty member, who passed away from cancer today.
A 1962 graduate of Saint Th
Myth about the myth (Score:5, Interesting)
I admit I wasn't watching (I was off at school), but my mom was watching the Today show (Pacific Timezone) when it happened, and that's not consistent with how she told it. She said that it was a reasonably routine "let's cut away to Florida, where the first teacher in space is about to launch". She saw the "explosion" (or whatever actually happened), totally sans commentary. Then things went black, and eventually, some stunned newscasters came on.
Now, it may be that other timezones weren't running news shows, and so they didn't break coverage, but at least on the PST feed of Today, they showed it live.
Re:Myth about the myth (Score:2)
I guess that does put me in a minority, and as those of you who also wat
Re:Myth about the myth (Score:2)
I was eight and, not to be callous, but it didn't mean that much to me.
The 1984 Olympics were a big deal to me.
A space shuttle? 'Fine, we've had those since before I can remember...'
It's exploded? 'That's a shame, but there are far fewer people than just died on that aeroplane [wikipedia.org].'
Not that I'm saying I actually said this (or consciously made such a connection), but that was pretty much my attitude (and, I'm sorry, still is).
Re:Myth about the myth (Score:2)
Boy, you said it. Second grade? Sheesh, I'd just advanced to candidacy for my Ph.D. when Challenger came to pieces...
I remember being stunned, however. Shuttle launches had certainly come to seem utterly routine. And besides, it had also come to seem that when there were troubles in space, some ingenious team always came through and jury-rigged a solution, a la Apollo 13.
Maybe it's a generational thing? Maybe it's just hard to
Few people? (Score:2, Interesting)
Feynman's report (Score:5, Informative)
The Challenger disaster was quite shocking, even more so when I realised that the crew were probably alive (if not conscious) all the way until their capsule hit the ground. It's incredible that something could survive that disintegration but very sad that there was no way to get the capsule safely back to earth.
Richard Feynman's report is a fantastically clear and lucid account of his opinions. The man was one of the greatest communicators of science, and after reading this, you will see why. The most astonishing bit is that he discusses some less than simple things in such a way as to make them easily understood. It's a model of clarity, and I recommend it.
Most interesting report (Score:5, Informative)
No explosion? (Score:4, Insightful)
the shuttle's fuel tank tore apart, spilling liquid oxygen and hydrogen which formed a huge fireball at an altitude of 46,000 ft.
That kind of sounds like an explosion to me. Maybe to a demolitions expert it doesn't meet some specialized technical definition of "explosion", but I don't see how that's really relavent. Talking about how the actual orbiter didn't explode is really starting to split hairs here.
Re:No explosion? (Score:5, Interesting)
2) The fireball had minimal pressure and a low enough temperature that it did not significantly damage either the already broken up pieces of the orbiter (no burn damage or crush damage from the fireball) or the solid rocket boosters.
If someone waved an industrial sized propane torch at you for one second, the kind they use to dry paint rapidly, you'd get mildly burned but it wouldn't kill you. If you were sitting inside your car when it was waved at you from outside, you wouldn't notice, unless it bubbled the paint a bit.
Not everything that looks big and bright and explosion-like kills and destroys everything inside it. I personally survived a small gas vapor fire where my body was essentially entirely inside the fireball, with only a few burnt hairs and what was functionally no worse than a bad sunburn on the parts of my skin not covered by clothing, and the clothes didn't catch on fire. I really don't recommend you try it yourself, but it won't kill you.
Re:No explosion? (Score:2)
Re:No explosion? (Score:3, Funny)
I, too, have survived fireballs. The critical factor, it would seem, is the ratio of hit points to the level of the caster.
Re:No explosion? (Score:5, Informative)
A (low) explosion is basically an over-pressure of the inside of a sealed container to the point that it breaks catestrophically. (High explosives are obviously different). That's not what happened here - the fuel tank ruptured (not caused by an explosion) and the resulting fuel spill just burnt in the air. That's really no different to if your car fuel tank ruptures and the petrol catches fire, it doesn't explode it just burns. Similarly if you set fire to gun powder in an unconfined space it just burns (quickly), it doesn't explode.
The craft then broke apart due to overpressure on the *outside* of the craft (caused by it turning broad-side in a supersonic airstream). If anything that probably constitutes an implosion, certainly not an explosion.
Re:No explosion? (Score:2)
In an explosion there is a detonation (or pressure) wave that travels from the site faster than the speed of sound - this indeed is what causes most of the damage in an explosion. I think an overpressure wave of around 1 psi will kill you or flatten a house - but I don't remember the specifics. These come from "high explosives" as a previous poster pointed out.
T
Re:No explosion? (Score:2)
Re:No explosion? (Score:2)
Yes, Myth #2 seems to be largely an argument of semantics. The Challenger orbiter didn't explode, it was just sitting on top of a huge tank of liquid hydrogen and oxygen when it ignited. And then it was "torn apart as it was flung free of the other rocket components and turned broadside into the Mach 2 airstream."
Personally, I fail to see any substantive difference between "exploded" and "ripped to pieces at 1500 mph."
Myth #1 seems similarly disingenuous. Sure, "few" people saw the actual explos-- hi
Re:No explosion? (Score:2)
No, that's just burning really fast. To be an explosion it has to be contained, until the pressure builds up.
Re: (Score:2)
Engineers bullied or bamboozled into acquiescence (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the bit that annoyed me most.
The very idea that non-technical management can override or disregard technical advice provided by professionals in their specialist technical area is a complete travesty.
And imposing a flawed managerial direction by applying social pressures (bullying/bamboozling) to brush dissenters under the carpet just made it worse. All highly unprofessional.
I know that it's the way that business works these days, with the management thinking that it is somehow "above" the technical people who deal with the technology on which the enterprise is founded, but it's an insane model in a world that is becoming ever more technical every day.
As non-technical management becomes ever more clueless about technical issues with each passing day of technical progress, businesses who don't accept overriding technical direction at management level are treading the path towards having their own "Challanger disasters". It's a misguided approach.
Re:Engineers bullied or bamboozled into acquiescen (Score:2)
Re:Engineers bullied or bamboozled into acquiescen (Score:5, Informative)
See Tufte's graphs:
badly excepted here: http://www.asktog.com/books/challengerExerpt.html [asktog.com]
reviewed here http://www.statview.com/support/techsup/faq/Tufte
Re:Engineers bullied or bamboozled into acquiescen (Score:2)
Happens in every industry. (Score:5, Insightful)
Many of us can spend more time refuting a non-tech than actually performing the work. It can take more time refuting even most uninformed opinion than the entire projects takes from planning to completion. I have had projects stopped just before release because of some "wild hair" objection by someone higher up only to later unexplicably finding it released.
Its jealously for the most part. Not direct but that is what it still is. They need to feel superior somehow so they mask ignorance with authority. By pulling "rank" they have effectively shown the technical staff whose boss as if it makes right.
Fortunately there are times where their idiocy gets noticed by someone higher up who realizes the issue raised is nothing more than strutting and they get boxed up for a while. But eventually they pop their heads up again when the coast is clear and it is back to step one.
Sometimes I think the motto of most companies is, "We make money inspite of ourselves"
Re:Engineers bullied or bamboozled into acquiescen (Score:5, Insightful)
Tech types need to remember that even *if* their audience is as smart as them, their intelligence may well be targeted at a completely different area, leaving them completely unable to understand what you are saying, or only understand enough to be dangerous.
NASA's Day of Remembrance (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, I look forward to the day when a spacecraft accident is no more notable than an automobile or airplane accident. The best way to honor our lost astronauts is to make space travel more routine, allowing it to get safer and more accessible through experience.
not me (Score:2)
Not I. Tragic accidents like this mean we're living on the cutting edge of our technology, pushing the envelope of what we can do, standing on tip-toe and reaching as high as we can. As long as those who risk their lives do so with eyes wide open, let it rip. I want to live in interesting times, and in a culture that has balls of brass.
If we insist on exploration being safe, we've just pussifie
Dangers of Exploration (Score:2, Interesting)
However, in this era, we cannot fathom thing
Copied straight from Wikipedia! (Score:3, Interesting)
For example, in the second paragraph we find the ENTIRE first myth copied verbatim into the news article with no credit or references given whatsoever!
The rest seems to be original wording though, but I encourage you to dig more into this.
Re:Copied straight from Wikipedia! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Copied straight from Wikipedia! (Score:2)
The wikipedia article took that text straight from the MSNBC article. It was added by Wikipedia user Gene Nyygard, today after Jim Oberg's article came out, and has a correct reference link to the MSNBC article attributing it.
Duuuuude.
Learn to read and check references...
Does it render correctly? (Score:2)
Text partly disappears under features like the author's photograph and the commercial banners.
Is it a mistake in the page's HTML or a bug in Seamonkey that I should report?
What do others see?
Not sure I agree (Score:4, Interesting)
From Encyclopedia Astronautica - http://www.astronautix.com/flights/sts51l.htm [astronautix.com]
"At this point in its trajectory, while traveling at a Mach number of 1.92 at an altitude of 46,000 feet, the Challenger was totally enveloped in the explosive burn. The Challenger's reaction control system ruptured and a hypergolic burn of its propellants occurred as it exited the oxygen-hydrogen flames. The reddish brown colors of the hypergolic fuel burn are visible on the edge of the main fireball. The Orbiter, under severe aerodynamic loads, broke into several large sections which emerged from the fireball. Separate sections that can be identified on film include the main engine/tail section with the engines still burning, one wing of the Orbiter, and the forward fuselage trailing a mass of umbilical lines pulled loose from the payload bay.
The Explosion 73 seconds after liftoff claimed crew and vehicle. Cause of explosion was determined to be an O-ring failure in right SRB. Cold weather was a contributing factor. Launch Weight: 268,829 lbs. "
From the Commission's Report
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l
"At 73.124 seconds,. a circumferential white vapor pattern was observed blooming from the side of the External Tank bottom dome. This was the beginning of the structural failure of hydrogen tank that culminated in the entire aft dome dropping away. This released massive amounts of liquid hydrogen from the tank and created a sudden forward thrust of about 2.8 million pounds, pushing the hydrogen tank upward into the intertank structure. At about the same time, the rotating right Solid Rocket Booster impacted the intertank structure and the lower part of the liquid oxygen tank. These structures failed at 73.137 seconds as evidenced by the white vapors appearing in the intertank region.
Within milliseconds there was massive, almost explosive, burning of the hydrogen streaming from the failed tank bottom and liquid oxygen breach in the area of the intertank.
At this point in its trajectory, while traveling at a Mach number of 1.92 at an altitude of 46,000 feet, the Challenger was totally enveloped in the explosive burn. The Challenger's reaction control system ruptured and a hypergolic burn of its propellants occurred as it exited the oxygen-hydrogen flames. The reddish brown colors of the hypergolic fuel burn are visible on the edge of the main fireball. The Orbiter, under severe aerodynamic loads, broke into several large sections which emerged from the fireball. Separate sections that can be identified on film include the main engine/tail section with the engines still burning, one wing of the Orbiter, and the forward fuselage trailing a mass of umbilical lines pulled loose from the payload bay."
From Mister Oberg's story
"The shuttle did not explode in the common definition of that word. There was no shock wave, no detonation, no "bang" -- viewers on the ground just heard the roar of the engines stop as the shuttle's fuel tank tore apart, spilling liquid oxygen and hydrogen which formed a huge fireball at an altitude of 46,000 ft. (Some television documentaries later added the sound of an explosion to these images.) But both solid-fuel strap-on boosters climbed up out of the cloud, still firing and unharmed by any explosion. Challenger itself was torn apart as it was flung free of the other rocket components and turned broadside into the Mach 2 airstream. Individual propellant tanks were seen exploding -- but by then, the spacecraft was already in pieces."
The Shuttle at that time was made up of the Orbiter, a Fuel Tank and two Solid Rocket Boosters, there was an explosion, so I think Mister Oberg is wrong for saying it did not "explode in the common definition of that word". It blew up.
Obligatory Tufte-Link (Score:3, Informative)
Edward Tufte wrote an excellent analysis [edwardtufte.com] on how crucial information about possible problems was buried in incompetently presented data.
Re: (Score:2)
Quite a bit left completely unsaid... (Score:2, Informative)
occurred. Specifically within the contractor that produced them.
Anyone who has taken an engineering ethics course should have seen this material already:
google's cache of onlineethics.org
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:QhdMxzQaNpoJ:o nlineethics.org/moral/boisjoly/RB-intro.html+&hl=e n&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1 [72.14.203.104]
Slightly more damning is that the engineers from the contractor attempted to have the launch delayed and were overturned
Well done, James (Score:2, Interesting)
James Oberg is a regular participant in several space related newsgroups and news sites that I read. (I note sci.space.station)
Accordingly, I have watched his coverage of several newsworthy space events and know, from my watching of coverage and analysis, that James Obserg is credible and often "ahead of the game" in calling what really happened.
I congratulate James Oberg on this account, and analysis, and ask readers to take his work as 'credible'.
Unfortunately, I have seen numerous analysis pieces t
asbestos (Score:2)
Same thing happened on 9/11. They started talking about how supposedly the towers used to have asbestos insulation, but the evil environmentalists took it away, and if only the towers still had the asbestos insulation the steel columns would not have melted and the buildings would not have colapsed.
Of course in reality
sure there was "political interference" (Score:2)
Of course there was politcal interference (Score:5, Informative)
There were pressures on the flight schedule, but none of any recognizable political origin.
BS. I worked at NASA at the time, and I knew that there were politcal pressures on the flight schedule before the launch. One thing that he conveniently doesn't mention is that the State of the Union address was that night. It is a fact that Reagan wanted to salute the first teacher in space. That was common knowledge. Only an idiot would think that the NASA higher-ups would not feel pressure to launch in those circumstances. (I never heard of any plans to link the flight crew to the speach, which I cannot recall being done for any SOTU with anyone; this sounds like a straw man to me).
What I will give him is that I personally doubt that this pressure took the form of the White House calling up Houston. (There is certainly no evidence of that.) But they didn't have to.
I remember... (Score:2, Informative)
These myths are all either nitpicking or false (Score:2)
I was working there when it happened and saw it (Score:5, Informative)
There was enormous pressure to launch on time. Did the President call the Launch Director and tell him to launch? No, of course not. But NASA's budget depended on getting those launches off and beleive me that is a big motivator.
Did stupid managers ignore the advice of engineers? Not really. Remember that you're dealing with the "fog of war". Nobody knows anything 100% for sure and nobody communicates 100% perfectly. Incomplete data, poorly constructed PowerPoint slides, fear of rocking the boat, preconceived ideas, all contribute to this. Would someone intentionally put the astronauts lives at risk? Of course not, but in the absence of clear information most people just go with what the group wants to do.
Did the astronauts accept the risk? I knew many astronauts (OK actually it was 5 or 6) and they were some of the smartest people I have ever met. They TOTALLY accepted the risk of what they were doing. Just as much as a Marine going into battle accepts the risks. In this case though they were even more educated and aware of the odds. The astronauts I knew usually had multiple degrees, dozens of certifications, and 1000s of hours of training. They knew exactly what they were doing.
Re:I was working there when it happened and saw it (Score:4, Informative)
Uh, James Oberg [wikipedia.org] worked in Mission Control at JSC from well before Challenger until well after. I'd say that qualifies him to "know what he's talking about", at least as much as you're qualified by your experiences.
Re:I was working there when it happened and saw it (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, knowing JimO, and his resume, qualifies me to say: You are an ass with less clue than the average pencil eraser. Mr Oberg was a flight controller from the Skyla
More intresting for myth's not busted or confirmed (Score:5, Interesting)
The challenger disaster was just the result of constant budget cuts resulting in a space craft that did not have proper safety equipment being used in roles it had never been designed for and forced to operate in circumstances that were not safe.
It is not an accident, it was mis-management and Nasa learned nothing from it.
On the other hand, the NASA the US gets is the NASA it is prepared to pay for. Same with ESA really, luckily for the europeans we do not do passenger launches so when the europeans screw up it is "harmless".
saw it live (Score:3, Interesting)
a window facing north. It didn't take a rocket scientist to know something bad had
happened. And network tv was live covering it. We had a portable tv in the office area
providing the sound to our live view out the window.
I remember coming into work the day of the launch mad at myself for forgetting to bring
my binoculars from home.
I Was There And Saw It Live (Score:3, Informative)
28 January 1986 (Score:3, Interesting)
20 years ago? Yikes!
I remember that morning. As a space nut I was watching the launch preparations (and delays) on TV as I got ready for work. They hadn't launched by the time I left.
Later that morning one of our part-time students came in and asked if everybody had heard that Challenger had blown up. I felt myself go grey, went home sick, and spent the afternoon glued to the TV.
So, no, I didn't see it live. Probably just as well.
Apollo 1 was a little before my time - I was only 5 in 1966. I distinctly remember a couple of years later, though, thinking how badly it would suck to be away from home for Christmas while watching coverage of Apollo 8.
...laura
hooray, i wasn't wrong on any of the 7 myths (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Few people actually saw the Challenger tragedy unfold live on television.
Well I did. I was one of the school children in that program.
2. The shuttle did not explode in the common definition of that word.
Well duhh, read the details. I'm sure to most of us 'challenger' meant the whole package, and there was a rather large fireball involved, which in the common definition of the word would qualify as an explosion
3. The flight, and the astronauts' lives, did not end at that point, 73 seconds after launch.
The facts are just unclear.
4. The design of the booster, while possessing flaws subject to improvement, was neither especially dangerous if operated properly, nor the result of political interference.
Though the flaws subject to improvement would likely have been fixed if not for political interference (or beurocracy as you prefer).
5. Replacement of the original asbestos-bearing putty in the booster seals was unrelated to the failure.
Who thought this?
6. There were pressures on the flight schedule, but none of any recognizable political origin.
Except of course for the whole 'teacher in space' deal.
7. Claims that the disaster was the unavoidable price to be paid for pioneering a new frontier were self-serving rationalizations on the part of those responsible for incompetent engineering management -- the disaster should have been avoidable.
Which of course runs counter to his previous claim that political interference had no impact.
All in all, what a crap article.
Re:live at school? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not precisely. I was home sick that day. I was watching Battlestar Galactica on TV when they broke with urgent news. I was 6 at the time. That was the first time I had ever seen 'breaking news' and I remember being stunned by it. I remember seeing pictures of a parachute or something falling down from the sky. Even two days later I thought the astronauts might still be alive underwater or something. A couple years later, I had to build one of those shoe-b
Re:live at school? (Score:5, Funny)
Not as horrible as those nasty little squares of pizza they served that day.
Yuck.
Re:live at school? (Score:2)
Selective outrage? (Score:4, Insightful)
Today, more people will choke on a marshmellow and die than got killed in the Shuttle
Yes, people died and they should have lived. So do all the other that die today. Are they not as worthy to remember? At least the astronauts did something to further mankind.
Re:Story not appreciated (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not gratuitous. It's the 20th aniversary, and it is important to make sure that history is as accurate as possible.
Re:Story not appreciated (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the positive things about the Internet, is it's ability to give everyone a voice. I still have enough faith in the world, that those who what to do the right thing easily outnumber those that dont. Concepts like Wikipedia help to preserve the real facts of events because so many people have a vested interest in keeping the articles they contribute to error-free. Information is power, and the governments of the world don't understand that they no longer control the information flow.
When something tragic happens the independent blogporters outnumber the employed reporters 10 to 1, agreggating those blogports will yield a more accurate and complete dissection of the event than any commercial newsfeeds can or want to provide.
Reading through the Myths in the article I was astounded under Myth #2 to discover that TV companies dubbed in an explosion sound! We can no longer trust what the news shows us.
Paranoid, me? Never.
-Jar.
Guess History is not important (Score:5, Insightful)
>>
>>The fate of the crew was just awful.
>>
>>Being gratitously reminded of it is not appreciated.
The Genocide was Awful. So many Jews died
The rape of Nanjing was Awful. So many Chinese were killed.
The Bombing of Hiroshima was awful.
Please don't mention them or print stories about them. We don't need to be reminded of them, or learn from them, to prevent repeating of our earlier mistakes.
Re:Story not appreciated (Score:4, Insightful)
Not any worse (and in fact, probably much "better") than many airline disasters, including TWA800, Alaska 261, and a litany of others.
Re:Story not appreciated (Score:2)
Re:Spaceflight is dangerous, so what (Score:5, Insightful)
The Space Shuttle is not safe by any stretch of imagination: so far, the track record is an average of one total loss for every 50 flights. (Would anyone ever drive if there was one fatal car accident for every 50 car journeys, or would anyone ever fly if an airliner went down on average once per 50 flights?)
say what? (Score:5, Insightful)
It did? Gosh, I don't remember that. And I'm old enough to have voted for Reagan. Twice.
Re:say what? Typical Slashdot moderation. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think that the Clinton years were any less FUD, you must be the proud owner of a very strong pair of prescription, rose-colored glasses. EVERY Presidency is about FUD to one extent or the other regardless of whether or not that president happens to be of your political party or not. That's partly what politicking is all about.
No, sir, your extremist view ("I have decided for everyone that you're part of the problem because I don't like how you voted!") is the real problem, regardless of which political party is being demeaned or defended.
Re:say what? Typical Slashdot moderation. (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you need to attend a more centrist univerisity. Reagan definitely had his good and bad imprints on US history. His economic decisions fueled our economy, promoted the technology boom and pulled us out of Carter's recession. Unfortunately he did not get to see his impact based on his illness. Bush Sr. and Clinton rode out his legacy for free (until the market collapsed).
That of course came at a price, and that was he was not very sympathetic to the real poor - people that cannot help themselves. And that is a shame. His overspending cut many programs and made many peoples lives harder. But even more benefitted. College enrollment exploded in the 80s fueling our technology/engineering foundation today. Children who otherwise had no change to get into (pay) for college could. I am not sure how any competent "economist" (and I used that term loosely) could possibly say reagonomics were summarily "bad".
I am a staunch liberal and even I can see his place in american history even though I disagreed strongly with many of his views and policies. I still can recognize his economic legacy that we enjoy today. The 80s could have turned out very differently if a different president just sat on the pot (like Bush Sr, Clinton, possibly Bush Jr). I look forward to the next time we elect a truely "Great" president and not just a sleezy politician.
Re:Spaceflight is dangerous, so what (Score:5, Insightful)
Had the poster had a knowledge of the Challenger disaster they should know that the problem was caused by an O-ring failure due to the temperature at launch being significantly below the designed operating temperature of said O-ring. The "two sticks of dynamite between a tank of incredibly flammable gasses" comment is childish at best, but really just demonstrates a lack of understanding. That kind of launch configuration has been used successfully before and since.
It is completely irrelevant to comment that more people die by getting hit by cars than rockets, and making such a comparison shows a clear lack of insight.
It was a big deal because it was a big screw-up - not so much as a distraction from "social conflict", although it will inevitably had some distracting effect and been exploited for that by the media and politicians as all such events are. The real issue and lesson is that NASA had systematic problems that meant that the engineers who knew there was a massive risk of mission failure were ignored. This was all exposed in the Challenger investigation - most clearly by the investigations of Richard Feynman.
This +5 comment is exactly why I want to be able to browse at +10.
Re:Spaceflight is dangerous, so what (Score:2)
There more insightful detail on his view and the problems are described. The author accepts that space flight is inherent dangerous -- he works or worked at NASA and seems to know what he's writing about. Therefore this engineering area calls for special attention to safety. And the managers routinely scoffed off engineers who brought up avoidable risks: "The engineers were challenged t
Re:Spaceflight is dangerous, so what (Score:2)
Far more people ride on cars each day than ride into space.
The reason it was such a big deal was the media and politicians using it to full propaganda value. Nothing like a little shared greaf to bring the nation together. I should remind you, that America in the 1980's had lots of social conflict lying just below the surface.
You need to rea
Re:Sorry, but almost every point .... (Score:5, Informative)
We don't know if everyone eventually passed out; the emergency air packs they had might have kept them conscious, and some of those were turned on. And they all might have woken back up on the way down as air pressure increased again. But we really don't know. The flight recorder stopped when the power went off in the breakup.
We know the breakup didn't kill them all, or knock them all unconscious, because if it had then they couldn't have turned on the air packs.
The LOX tank didn't kill anyone. And you don't light the LOX tank.Jim was referring to the solid rocket boosters.
The putty seal problems existed before the change in materials was made. The problem was unrelated to that change happening. It is a myth that the problems appeared after the change.Please read more carefully.
Claims were repeatedly made that the White House pushed on NASA to get them to launch in time for Reagan to do a live linkup chat as part of the State of the Union.Phone logs, extensive interviews both with the White House staff and the NASA staff, repeated inquiries have shown that there is no factual evidence or ancedotal claim by anyone inside either the WH or the NASA program or its contractors that there was any such WH pressure.
If it happened, they erased all the evidence.
Things which are alledged and have no evidence are at best a myth or conspiracy theory. Calling it a myth, when it's been specifically repeatedly proven to have no factual evidence on the record anywhere, is a prefectly fair claim.
Your entire response seems to boil down to I believe these myths so they must be true!. The irony is astounding.
Re:Sorry, but almost every point .... (Score:3, Interesting)
I know the oxygen tank itself didn't kill them, I said it was dangerous to strap yoursel
Re:Sorry, but almost every point .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Compare with the number of people who remember it, that is very few indeed.
a quick look on Wiktionary shows it to have as one common meaning to destroy violently or abruptly which is certainly what happened to the shuttle.
Which shows why Wiktionary is a pile of junk like Wikipedia. That description could applied to a car hitting a wall at 100mph, or me stamping on a can. The shuttle did not explode, the external fuel tank did but with very little force. The shuttle was mostly destroyed by aerodynamic stress caused by this event. In either case the shuttle was destroyed from without, as opposed to an explostion which is an internal event ("expand suddenly with a loud noise owning to a release of internal energy" - Concise OED, a real dictionary).
Most people would find little discrepancy between a person being subjected to violent trauma, going unconscious or into extreme shock, and dying within a minute and dying instantly.
Almost three minutes is not instantly and, as was pointed out, there is some evidence that people were moving inside the cabin at least enough to activate some emergency equipment. The shuttle cabin was not destroyed by either the fuel tank explosion or the disintegration of the shuttle body and in fact the only reason the crew may not have been conscious is the de-compression idea which itself is unproved. There is no reason to believe that the crew were subjected to violent trauma which put them into extreme shock; that's just a figment of your imagination. NASA have been quiet about this point but in fact at the time of recovering the wreckage they did say that they thought some of the crew had been conscious when the cabin hit the water.
Any rational person would recognise the inherent danger in strapping themselves to the side of an enormous tank of liquid oxygen and lighting it.
And any rational person would recognise that the word "especially" in this context denoted relative danger rather than some absolute scale.
surely this is the wrong word to use for a part that has been proven by more than one panel of highly respected scientists to be inherently flawed.
Read the article again; he's not talking here about the O-ring that failed.
This is simply delusional, and requires no further comment
Wrong on both counts.
It is difficult to know where to start with this statement.
Well, since you clearly agree that the disaster was avoidable, as does the author, I would have thought a good place would have been to say "yes, that's right".
Well done. Worst post I've read so far this year.
TWW
Re:Validity to the article... (Score:2)