Debris From Destroyed Space Shuttle Challenger Found On Ocean Floor 36 Years On (www.cbc.ca) 31
A large section of the destroyed space shuttle Challenger has been found buried in sand at the bottom of the Atlantic, more than three decades after the tragedy that killed a schoolteacher and six others. CBC.ca reports: NASA's Kennedy Space Center announced the discovery Thursday. "Of course, the emotions come back, right?" said Michael Ciannilli, a NASA manager who confirmed the remnant's authenticity. When he saw the underwater video footage, "My heart skipped a beat, I must say, and it brought me right back to 1986 ... and what we all went through as a nation." It's one of the biggest pieces of Challenger found in the decades since the accident, according to Ciannilli, and the first remnant to be discovered since two fragments from the left wing washed ashore in 1996.
Divers for a History Channel TV documentary first spotted the piece in March while looking for wreckage of a Second World War plane. NASA verified through video a few months ago that the piece was part of the shuttle that broke apart shortly after liftoff on Jan. 28, 1986. All seven on board were killed, including the first schoolteacher bound for space, Christa McAuliffe. The underwater video provided "pretty clear and convincing evidence," said Ciannilli. The piece is more than 4.5 metres by 4.5 metres, and likely bigger because part of it is covered with sand. Because there are square thermal tiles on the piece, it's believed to be from the shuttle's belly, Ciannilli said.
The fragment remains on the ocean floor just off the Florida coast near Cape Canaveral as NASA determines the next step. It remains the property of the U.S. government. The families of all seven Challenger crew members have been notified. "We want to make sure whatever we do, we do the right thing for the legacy of the crew," Ciannilli said.
Divers for a History Channel TV documentary first spotted the piece in March while looking for wreckage of a Second World War plane. NASA verified through video a few months ago that the piece was part of the shuttle that broke apart shortly after liftoff on Jan. 28, 1986. All seven on board were killed, including the first schoolteacher bound for space, Christa McAuliffe. The underwater video provided "pretty clear and convincing evidence," said Ciannilli. The piece is more than 4.5 metres by 4.5 metres, and likely bigger because part of it is covered with sand. Because there are square thermal tiles on the piece, it's believed to be from the shuttle's belly, Ciannilli said.
The fragment remains on the ocean floor just off the Florida coast near Cape Canaveral as NASA determines the next step. It remains the property of the U.S. government. The families of all seven Challenger crew members have been notified. "We want to make sure whatever we do, we do the right thing for the legacy of the crew," Ciannilli said.
Re:Property of the US government? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Presuming they meant Columbia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Property of the US government? (Score:5, Insightful)
The government paid for it, it's their property. They have not given up claim to it.
Also, if you read the article, the debris was found near Cape Canaveral so it's possible it's within the 12 mile territorial zone.
Still further, the original owner, in this case the U.S. government, can still claim ownership years, decades [csmonitor.com], or even centuries later [bbc.com].
A country may claim ownership of a wreck if it owned the ship in the first place. Even if a vessel was sunk and abandoned for hundreds of years the original owner can still claim ownership rights.
There have also been cases of a country transferring ownership of the ship to another country for the vessel to be displayed in a museum.
However, ownership can be complicated by the location of the wreck if it lies in the territorial waters of another state.
Under international law, a country has complete sovereignty over these waters and so essentially can do what it wants in terms of taking ownership, says Mr Mackintosh. There are further legal ramifications if the wreck lies in international waters.
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Perhaps you should read your quote :P
Claiming ownership does not mean that you get ownership rewarded or assigned.
R.g. I can claim owneership about your car, my chances to get the keys are rather slim, though.
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The government paid for it, it's their property. They have not given up claim to it.
Yet if you had property under the same circumstances, the government would claim that you abandoned it.
Re: They were alive (Score:3, Insightful)
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The Challenger explosion would have destroyed the cabin or at least breached it.
No, it did not. The crew was alive until the capsule crashed into the ocean. Their voices are recorded.
And had the bean counters not scratched the capsule rescue system, they had survived most likely.
The original design had a parachute based rescue system for the whole capsule.
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Crew cabin likely stayed intact during the explosion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Talk about a lucky find (Score:5, Interesting)
It stands to reason that finding any random lost ship at the bottom of the atlantic would be way more likely than finding an identifiable piece of the space shuttle.
As opposed to ships, which on well travelled routes, have been scuttling / sinking for centuries - there was only one space shuttle challenger, which exploded into untracked pieces. Finding one of these in the expanse of the atlantic sounds like a heck of a lucky find.
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Our generation had a few of those moments, but the Challenger really sticks out to me. Such a weird feeling. We were at the point where the schools had stopped letting us watch every launch because it was starting to become routine, but not so routine that there wasn't a buzz of excitement about it with all the kids. And then we heard the terrible news and we all felt like somebody had punched us in the gut.
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Watching Challenger explode on TV during middleschool was surreal and depressing but for some reason, watching the signature of Columbia's debris field fly over Texas on radar.weather.gov hit me a lot harder.
Yeah. I had already graduated, and watched the Challenger disaster through binoculars from just a few miles away, but watching the Columbia debris re-entry that morning on TV was a lot more difficult for me. At the moment, we were pretty sure that none of the Challenger crew survived, but we KNEW non
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Yeah, the pandemic is more of a slow-burn, drag you to your depressing without you realizing it type thing. Those big "oh, wow" moments like 9/11 and the shuttle explosions are very specific hits. Though to be honest, with Columbia most of us had a tiny bit of, "here we go again" combined with, "death of manned spaceflight for the US" right on the surface. The Challenger was a gut-punch. Columbia was a nation wide head-hanger with a side chaser of, "sucks, but it figures."
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I'd rather let such a legacy fade from memory.
To heal trauma must be forgotten eventually.
Rebooting it just reopens wounds.
Those who do not remember history fail to learn from it. Painful as it may be, this tragedy taught valuable lessons that should not -- must not -- be forgotten.
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Sadly, NASA's response is dishonest (Score:5, Insightful)
The space shuttle system, like all such engineered systems, had design limits. One of those design limits was a limit to the lowest temperatures at which a launch could occur. At the time Challenger was lost, NASA was under a lot of pressure to demonstrate frequent launch and re-use of the orbiters (one of the primary selling points used to convince congress to fund the project in the first place) and this particular launch had been delayed already. There is a common myth that the Reagan White House was pressuring the agency to launch because the President was making a State of the Union speech that evening, but this was not the case. In the post-accident investigation it was clear that program managers were aware of the public and political criticism of all the delays and holds, and wanted to show the program working, but there was no pressure from the administration to be on orbit for the president's speech. When management met pre-flight to decide on the launch, knowing full-well that they were in violation of the low temperature limits of the system, engineers from Morton Thoikol, the SRB manufacturer, objected. Management pressured them to sign-off on the launch, at one point telling them to [approx quote] "take off their engineer hats, and put on their management hats".
An agency that presents itself as the nation's top engineering and science entity blatantly and deliberately violated the design limits of an engineered system, and people died - on national television.
Sadly, on the occasion of this discovery of debris, NASA is spinning. Note this part of the statement: "A major malfunction 73 seconds after liftoff resulted in the loss of Challenger and the seven astronauts aboard". This was NOT a "major malfunction" where something mysteriously failed when it should not have - it was a PREDICTED failure from a system that would have successfully operated if operated within the design limits. In other words "a function" not a "malfunction" in which a system behaves improperly and fails to hold up while operated properly.
The fact that NASA and the contractors later improved the design to make such a failure less likely (improving the SRB joints, adding heaters to them, etc) does not change the fact that the actual failure was caused by a management decision to violate the design limits of the system. Of course it is with a bit of irony that this comes out at this very moment in time - NASA has just (within the past 48 hours) left its new SLS rocket (with shuttle-derived SRBs) on the pad through a hurricaine in which it is possible the wind gusts which exceeded expectations MIGHT have violated the design limits of the stack. I'm NOT predicting any disaster, and have only heard conflicting accounts of the measured gusts and the design limits of THIS system, but it's an interesting occurrence: Once again, NASA management is feeling pressure to launch a system that is over-budget and behind schedule and it may be getting sloppy with design limits while trying to erase the previous occurrence of this mix from our collective memory (and possibly its own memory)
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+1 Insightful
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Your comment is true and hits the nail on the head. However, it overlooks that the Shuttle itself was riddled with engineering compromises. Case in point: the thermal protection system (TPS) tiles were vulnerable to damage by impact debris. Yet the Shuttle design hung the orbiter off the side of a giant tank filled with cryogenic fuel and covered with fragile foam, virtually guaranteeing impact events. There are tens -- maybe hundreds -- of other examples where the overall design was fundamentally flawe
Design compromises (Score:2)
It's absolutely true that the shuttle was a mix of compromises - most man-made systems are. There was a good reason why the orbiter hung on the side of the stack rather than sitting atop it (as had been proposed in some of the rejected designs). The Shuttle had 3 SSMEs (Space Shuttle Main Engines, later given the designation RS-25). These engines were extremely expensive very high-performance LH/LOX engines that were designed for the entire ascent, and designed to be reusable. All other engines of that era
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There is a common myth that the Reagan White House was pressuring the agency to launch because the President was making a State of the Union speech that evening, but this was not the case.
True power is having others do your bidding without having to order them. NASA management accepted that they were expected to launch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]