Images of Endeavour's Damaged Tiles 331
Roland Piquepaille writes "Neptec Design Group, a Canadian company and a NASA prime contractor for 25 space missions, was kind enough to send me exclusive images of Endeavour's damaged tiles during its last take-off. So here are some of these pictures" The pictures are pretty amazing and make the urgency of this whole thing much more amazing.
Err on the side of caution...don't you think? (Score:4, Insightful)
This sounded especially insane to me...if NASA loses another shuttle because of this same tile-damage problem, and because they couldn't be bothered to take the time to fix the problem when they could have, it will be the end of NASA.
Re:Err on the side of caution...don't you think? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How long has this been happening? (Score:5, Insightful)
A good public debate (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Err on the side of caution...don't you think? (Score:5, Insightful)
This would be like my mom telling me she can do computer support better then me. She's a smart lady, but her KNOWLEDGE level when it comes to Computers is low.
Re:How big is each tile? (Score:3, Insightful)
It looks borderline to me. I think they've successfully landed with much bigger gouges or missing tiles in the past, but it probably depends on WHERE the gouge is. If it's in a flat part of the belly, it's probably not a problem. If it's near a leading edge, more of a problem.
Re:Err on the side of caution...don't you think? (Score:3, Insightful)
You also have to consider position. This is at the very rear of the vehicle. Reentry heating evironments are most severe near the stagnation point at the front of the vehicle. Towards the back you can actually get some recirculation that provides some cooling. It may not be worth the risk/reward to go and patch it, based on locale. I guarantee you if this was on the front of the orbiter, it would be a whole different story.
Re:Without a scale... (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet I so want to do it for myself...
Roland Piquepaille? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If Richard Feynman were alive today... (Score:2, Insightful)
True. He was a passionate guy who cared about things like that. He also had startling insight and an annoying habit of being right most of the time.
Re:How long has this been happening? (Score:4, Insightful)
Limbaugh says "there's a theory going around" and after explaining it says "a lot of people are beginning to think that the banning of Freon actually caused the shuttle accident, the Columbia shuttle accident, two flights ago. And I'm inclined to believe it when I hear this." This was on August 3rd, according to media matters. At this point the NASA report had not been released yet--it wouldn't be fully released for months! There was nothing to lie about!
Can someone really "lie" when they say "there's a theory I'm inclined to believe" ?
But I suppose it's just much easier to hysterically claim that Rush Limbaugh both originated the theory AND lied about it that to actually read your own link though!
Re:[AC]wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Err on the side of caution...don't you think? (Score:3, Insightful)
As a trained project manager,I have to take issue with this statement. I do think that NASA suffers from management who makes risk calculations with too much consideration of 'the schedule' verses the risk of life. However, NASA has done a valid risk mitigation step by examining the shuttle after takeoff and trying to determine what to do. Most sensible people can do the risk management required by asking a few questions. What is the risks? What are the chance of those risks being realized? How can we mitigate those risks? Those analysis steps are done by engineers, but it comes down to the manager who has to give the go/no-go decision. 10% risk of catastrophic failure? Ok, what are the other options?
Stuff like this requires more significant then six sigma quality (3.4 defects per million). The CMS puts a 0% error rate requirement on certain measures for hospital quality. Does someone presenting heart attack symptoms get an aspirin within the first 24 hours of being in a hospital? Do they get a beta blocker within 24 hours? 0 variations are allowed to meet their quality goal. Six sigma level quality would have 1 variance out of large hospital's annual patient level of patients presenting heart attach symptoms, which is unacceptable by the standard. Set a risk measure and goal for shuttle tiles, for example - 0% risk of a tile related catastrophic failure upon re-entry. Then make the engineers plan for how they will achieve it. If the engineers fail at achieving this, causing a catastrophic failure, start license removal procedures on the engineer that signed off on it, followed by criminal charges.
Re:How long has this been happening? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Air Force wanted manned space capability, and offered to help pay for the development if they got some say in the design and were allowed use of the shuttles when built. The USAF insisted on a larger payload bay (60ft long, as opposed to NASA's 40ft plan), which obviously made the vehicle larger. They also wanted the ability to land at the launch site after a single polar orbit, requiring 1000+ miles of crossrange. This led to the heavier delta wing and higher reentry heating loads.
We wound up with a vehicle that was larger, more expensive, and less safe than we should have. The engineers did the best they could under the political mandates they were given.
Re:How long has this been happening? (Score:5, Insightful)
"The crucial factor in the size and shape of the Shuttle Orbiter was the requirement that it be able to accommodate the largest planned spy satellites, and have the cross-range recovery range to meet classified USAF mission's requirement for a one-around abort for a polar launch." The most obvious bad design decision was to send cargo up in a manned mission. Manned vehicles cost a lot more per pound sent to space than unmanned so mixing the two increases the cost of sending stuff to orbit with zero real gain. The other issue is the requirement for a polar orbit. (Think Russia) Getting people to space is hard but doable getting people to space and a polar orbit is a much harder task that is a waste of resources 99% of the time.
Second "Each Shuttle was designed for a projected lifespan of 100 launches or 10 years' operational life." However, Discovery was built in 1985 its last flight is scheduled for 2010.
If you want a cheep reusable rocket rebuild the shuttle with 5% its cargo capacity, a slow reentry, and skip the polar orbit concept and you get a much larger safety margin and a much less extreme operating environment and a lower cost per person to orbit.
Re:How long has this been happening? (Score:5, Insightful)
Where's the space? (Score:1, Insightful)
f-ed (Score:1, Insightful)