CNN Reporter 'Still Haunted' By Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster (cnn.com) 94
After nearly 11 years as CNN's space correspondent, Miles O'Brien found himself in 2003 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida covering the launch of the space shuttle Columbia:
As part of the post-launch routine, NASA began sharing several replays of the launch from various cameras trained on the vehicle. And that was when we saw it. Producer Dave Santucci called me into our live truck, and said, "You got to look at this." It was kind of a grainy image of what looked like a puff of smoke, as if someone dropped a bag of flour on the ground and it broke open. We played it over and over again, and it did not look good at all. The giant orange fuel tank was filled with super cold liquid hydrogen and oxygen, so it was enveloped in insulating foam. A big piece of the foam had broken away near a strut called the "bipod," striking the leading edge of the orbiter's left wing. It was made of reinforced carbon to protect the aluminum structure of the spacecraft from the searing heat of re-entry from space.
I reached out to some of my sources inside the shuttle program. Everyone had seen it, of course, but the people I spoke with cautioned me not to worry. The foam was very light, and it had fallen off on earlier missions and nothing of concern had happened as a result... I wish I hadn't taken my eye off the ball. Space was my beat, and I was uniquely positioned to put this concerning event into the public domain. Like NASA's leadership, I went through a process of convincing myself that it was going to be okay. But I had this sinking feeling. It didn't feel right. A spacecraft re-entering the atmosphere at 17,500 miles an hour — much faster than a rifle bullet — is enveloped in a glowing inferno of plasma...
[As it returned to earth 16 days later] the communication between the ground and the orbiter became non-routine. Producers in the control room realized the gravity of the situation, and we cut to a commercial break to get me off the couch. As I was making my way across the newsroom, I started heaving. I knew in an instant that they were all gone. There was no survivable scenario. I was sickened. It was like a body blow. Somehow I got my act together and started talking. I felt like it was my responsibility to mention the foam strike, to get the information out there to the public. About an hour after Columbia had disintegrated, I shared with a huge global audience what I knew... "That bipod is the place where they think a little piece of foam fell off and hit the leading edge of that wing."
During the mission, I could have easily done a story about the foam strike, spreading the word that some NASA engineers believed there may be some reason for concern. What if I had done that? It might have made a difference.
"A rescue mission would not have been impossible," the article concludes, "and I feel certain that if NASA managers saw that gaping hole in Columbia's wing, they would've tried.
"We will never know for sure, but I do know how so many of us on the ground failed to do our jobs during that mission. It still haunts me."
CNN broadcasts the last two episodes of its four-part series Space Shuttle Columbia: The Final Flight tonight at 9 p.m. EST (time-delayed on the west coast until 9 p.m.PST). CNN's web site offers a "preview" of its live TV offerings here.
The news episodes (along with past episodes) will also be available on-demand starting Monday — "for pay TV subscribers via CNN.com, CNN connected TV and mobile apps." It's also available for purchase on Amazon Prime.
I reached out to some of my sources inside the shuttle program. Everyone had seen it, of course, but the people I spoke with cautioned me not to worry. The foam was very light, and it had fallen off on earlier missions and nothing of concern had happened as a result... I wish I hadn't taken my eye off the ball. Space was my beat, and I was uniquely positioned to put this concerning event into the public domain. Like NASA's leadership, I went through a process of convincing myself that it was going to be okay. But I had this sinking feeling. It didn't feel right. A spacecraft re-entering the atmosphere at 17,500 miles an hour — much faster than a rifle bullet — is enveloped in a glowing inferno of plasma...
[As it returned to earth 16 days later] the communication between the ground and the orbiter became non-routine. Producers in the control room realized the gravity of the situation, and we cut to a commercial break to get me off the couch. As I was making my way across the newsroom, I started heaving. I knew in an instant that they were all gone. There was no survivable scenario. I was sickened. It was like a body blow. Somehow I got my act together and started talking. I felt like it was my responsibility to mention the foam strike, to get the information out there to the public. About an hour after Columbia had disintegrated, I shared with a huge global audience what I knew... "That bipod is the place where they think a little piece of foam fell off and hit the leading edge of that wing."
During the mission, I could have easily done a story about the foam strike, spreading the word that some NASA engineers believed there may be some reason for concern. What if I had done that? It might have made a difference.
"A rescue mission would not have been impossible," the article concludes, "and I feel certain that if NASA managers saw that gaping hole in Columbia's wing, they would've tried.
"We will never know for sure, but I do know how so many of us on the ground failed to do our jobs during that mission. It still haunts me."
CNN broadcasts the last two episodes of its four-part series Space Shuttle Columbia: The Final Flight tonight at 9 p.m. EST (time-delayed on the west coast until 9 p.m.PST). CNN's web site offers a "preview" of its live TV offerings here.
The news episodes (along with past episodes) will also be available on-demand starting Monday — "for pay TV subscribers via CNN.com, CNN connected TV and mobile apps." It's also available for purchase on Amazon Prime.
Chief O'Brien (Score:5, Funny)
I would think Chief O'Brien would have known how to handle this situation.
Re:Chief O'Brien (Score:4, Funny)
He's haunted because he couldn't get to the transporter room fast enough to save them.
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Yeah, I'm not so sure about that [chiefobrienatwork.com]... D:
I'm still haunted by it, and I watched it on TV (Score:2)
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You could have at least provided a link. Not often one gets to see what it really looks like when a gun is fired into someone's mouth.
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Like so many others... (Score:2, Insightful)
All I can say is... Go ahead, be haunted. Pray to whatever deity you believe in for forgiveness. But coming out 20+ years later... Narcissism & bad engineering decisions seem to go hand in hand. But Narcissism and journalism? They're joined at the hip. To think you as a journalist had any extra insight, or knowledge... Please... Spare us your bleating...
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So you're mad that a journalist did his job and wrote about something he experienced?
Mad? No I'm at peace with the Shuttle program's mistakes. If anything, I should be mad that he didn't perform actual journalism back in the late 80's or early 90's when it might have made a difference. But even there, it seemed like we all got lulled into a sense of complacency.
What I can be mad about... Is the self promotion... "I was there, I knew something was wrong!"... 20+ years later. Just spare us, and more importantly, spare the families, and the large numbers of first responder's that walked m
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I should be mad that he didn't perform actual journalism back in the late 80's or early 90's when it might have made a difference.
Yeah, he kicks himself over that.
What I can be mad about... Is the self promotion... "I was there, I knew something was wrong!"... 20+ years later.
O_O
He wasn't "self promoting." Jesus!
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Yeah, well, excessive cynicism doesn't make you sound smart. Not to smart people.
All I see is a man, riddled with guilt, finally coming clean.
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It could be construed that 20 years after his initial failure to investigate, he milked his mistake for another story, i.e. more eyeballs. It would seem less mercenary if another reporter had written the story about him.
It is a strange thing that a reporter seems to believe that he was the point of failure that killed the Columbia crew. But not unusual in that reporters are humans just like the people who hate reporters.
I'm sure at the time he felt quite unsettled after putting 2 and 2 together, but at the same time, he didn't have access to anything NASA had. They all had a pretty good idea what was going on.
Now just between us snipes, my own thoughts on the proximate cause of the Columbia disaster came about when t
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Alternatively, had they made the crew aware of the issue, the crew MAY have been able to do something... perhaps make a decision to await rescue... which itself is problematic, but at least the crew wo
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they also milled it. When you mold a plastic, you get a sort of 'rind' as the top layer, this provides some more strength at the surface. However it is not quite so smooth. NASA began milling it to make it appear smoother, had it not been milled, it may not have come free to hit the leading edge of the wing.
Alternatively, had they made the crew aware of the issue, the crew MAY have been able to do something... perhaps make a decision to await rescue... which itself is problematic, but at least the crew would have known in advance and could at least have warned their families that this was a possibility.
Once the foam hit the wing, they could have aborted and used the crew escape system. Would they have survived that? Who knows.
Or the Return to Launch Site (RTLS) - some tricky stuff. The shuttle was a flying brick after all.
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Re: Like so many others... (Score:4, Insightful)
He saw it, the engineers saw it, they dismissed it, now he thinks "if only I, a journalist, had shared my special insight into something NASA dismissed I could have, single-handedly, lead the nation to dream up a successful rescue mission!"
Is everyone at CNN as so self-centered as Jim Acosta?
Re: Like so many others... (Score:5, Insightful)
He literally said if HE had done something he MAY have been able to make a difference. And he's totally correct!
WTF is wrong with some of you people?
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When you experience similar statements every day, coming from a variety of people who fight each other to be in the foreground, starting with the Orange Man himself, you grow to assume egocentric intentions everywhere.
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There are assholes everywhere with nothing to offer but cynicism. And not just in the Trump camp.
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He literally said if HE had done something he MAY have been able to make a difference. And he's totally correct!
WTF is wrong with some of you people?
Multiple parts here:
That's a pretty big "may". I really do understand the concept of guilt, but I'm kind of skeptical that he was the only one on earth that saw the image. Of course he wasn't.
Another thing is that NASA knew there was something that might have happened to Columbia, and that something was that a hunk of foam hit the leading edge of the left wing. This is pretty well documented. There was even a squashed attempt to get some military assets to image the underside of the bird.
Another thing i
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That's a pretty big "may". I really do understand the concept of guilt, but I'm kind of skeptical that he was the only one on earth that saw the image. Of course he wasn't.
The point is by increasing publicity it may have received more attention and perhaps taken more seriously than NASA's practice of normalizing deviance.
There was even a squashed attempt to get some military assets to image the underside of the bird.
More like turned down unprompted offers of assistance from NGA.
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That's a pretty big "may". I really do understand the concept of guilt, but I'm kind of skeptical that he was the only one on earth that saw the image. Of course he wasn't.
The point is by increasing publicity it may have received more attention and perhaps taken more seriously than NASA's practice of normalizing deviance.
I see, so it is definitely his fault - some rando CNN reporter not raising his voice is what caused this. He needs arrested and jailed for murder of the astronauts. /s
NASA knew there was a strike - where do you think the image he saw came from? Russia, CNN's super high technology space Telescope? NASA knew of the strike - long before the CNN reporter. They did some sort of analysis analysis and determined incorrectly that it was not a problem.
There was even a squashed attempt to get some military assets to image the underside of the bird.
More like turned down unprompted offers of assistance from NGA.
Sheesh - is it so important for you to be contrary that you
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I see, so it is definitely his fault - some rando CNN reporter not raising his voice is what caused this. He needs arrested and jailed for murder of the astronauts. /s
NASA knew there was a strike - where do you think the image he saw came from? Russia, CNN's super high technology space Telescope? NASA knew of the strike - long before the CNN reporter. They did some sort of analysis analysis and determined incorrectly that it was not a problem.
What I said was "The point is by increasing publicity it may have received more attention and perhaps taken more seriously than NASA's practice of normalizing deviance." I find myself scratching my head how these sorts of conclusions can be drown from it.
1. Accountability != Responsibility. Miles is clearly not accountable for the disaster. He is responsible for doing his job as a reporter as he conveyed in his statement "I felt like it was my responsibility to mention the foam strike, to get the informa
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Sheesh - is it so important for you to be contrary that you correct things that are already correct?
It matters to me. There is a difference between turning down offers of assistance and not bothering to ask for assistance. While they both yield the same result the fact you are actively refusing an offer is worse than not seeing fit to ask for help.
You have not provided me the citation I asked for. Allow me to give you the official account. Because there were three separate requests for help made by the Debris Assessment Team and others to the DOD. The DoD was exploring assets to help with that until asshat Linda Ham squashed the requests. This is first mentioned on page 37 of the CAIB report. The three imagery Requests:
Imagery Request 1 - Page 140 CAIB Report. Intercenter Photo Working Group Bob Page contacted Shuttle Program Manager for Launc
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What problem, exactly? Did you read the article?
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https://www.space.com/columbia... [space.com]
"Foam shedding had happened numerous times before during shuttle launches, even though the shuttle system wasn't designed to do it; CAIB officials suggested foam loss occurred on more than 80% of 79 missions 'for which imagery was available to confirm or rule out f
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Yeah, that was in the article. They knew it had fallen off on a previous mission and thought it was OK because nothing happened. Strange logic.
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He saw it, the engineers saw it, they dismissed it, now he thinks "if only I, a journalist, had shared my special insight into something NASA dismissed I could have, single-handedly, lead the nation to dream up a successful rescue mission!"
Is everyone at CNN as so self-centered as Jim Acosta?
I liked Miles as reporters go but find it strange the idea something could have been done persists with the benefit of hindsight.
There have been times in history where a single reporter asking public questions have lead to the unexpected. For example a reporters question to John Kerry during the Obama administration lead to Syria willingly giving up its chemical weapons stocks. You would think the domain experts and diplomats would have already exhausted all possibilities before dropping bombs but it is l
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This is the moment where Margaret Brennan asks the question. https://youtu.be/IvSZTiAZ3NY?t... [youtu.be]
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Is everyone at CNN as so self-centered as Jim Acosta?
Yes
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Yes. These various lunatics coming out of the woodwork decades later to second-guess everyone are just moronic. If they didn't listen to Boisjoly, they sure aren't going to listen to someone with absolutely no credentials or credibility from *outside* the loop.
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All I can say is... Go ahead, be haunted. Pray to whatever deity you believe in for forgiveness. But coming out 20+ years later... Narcissism & bad engineering decisions seem to go hand in hand. But Narcissism and journalism? They're joined at the hip. To think you as a journalist had any extra insight, or knowledge... Please... Spare us your bleating...
While I agree that all the public teeth-gnashing about this event right now is a bit grating, I have to wonder what the motivation is. Here we are on the cusp of a new round of human to space exploration, and suddenly we're re-living, extremely publicly, one of the most egregious space tragedies of our recent past. While we have a not insignificant chunk of us already convinced that man space exploration is a huge waste of potential, of lives, of money, of resources. While I don't think everything is a cons
Oh, really? (Score:5, Interesting)
"A rescue mission would not have been impossible," the article concludes, "and I feel certain that if NASA managers saw that gaping hole in Columbia's wing, they would've tried.
A rescue mission WAS impossible.
I can't imagine what the 16 days of the flight would have been like, the crew knowing they were going to die, and the press hammering it and second-guessing NASA until the shuttle exploded...
What could NASA have done? They couldn't prep a shuttle before the astronauts ran out of oxygen - that's just a fantasy born out of ignorance. They were dead the moment that foam fell off the shuttle, there's nothing that could have saved them.
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They couldn't prep a shuttle before the astronauts ran out of oxygen
Atlantis could've been prepped and ready to go in 14 days.
The accelerated schedule would've meant some long hours, but it could've been done.
NASA considered it but decided the damage to Columbia wasn't so bad and didn't want to cancel Atlantis's scheduled mission.
Re:Oh, really? (Score:5, Informative)
Columbia's flight could have been extended to 30 days (oxygen wasn't the problem, the 30-day limit was from lithium hydroxide canisters used to filter carbon dioxide from the atmosphere). Atlantis was already being prepared for a launch planned for 45 days after Columbia's launch, so could have been prepped and launched within the 30 day window (if the decision had been made quickly). It would have been risky, but it was not outside the realm of possibility.
Re: Oh, really? (Score:2)
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You could then too, but only after Columbia demonstrated it was needed.
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How would they know if the whole exercise was worth it? You can't land those things by remote. Well, today you probably could.
I read in another article recently shared on /. that NASA had considered exactly that scenario. They would not have been able to remotely land the shuttle intact on a runway, but they had the ability to remotely pilot it into the ocean and to recover the debris later.
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How would they know if the whole exercise was worth it? You can't land those things by remote. Well, today you probably could.
I read in another article recently shared on /. that NASA had considered exactly that scenario. They would not have been able to remotely land the shuttle intact on a runway, but they had the ability to remotely pilot it into the ocean and to recover the debris later.
Or they could have just kept it in orbit long enough for them to manufacture the thirty-foot cable needed to connect the landing gear control system to the main computer and ship it up there on a subsequent mission along with whatever new computer firmware was necessary to make it capable of turning on the correct outputs.
For that matter, they wouldn't have really been under any sort of deadline to get the empty shuttle back down on the ground if there were no longer any people in it. So ostensibly, they c
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There would be no possibility of recovering Columbia however, as the ground does not have the capability to start auxiliary power units, deploy air data probes, or extend the landing gear. It is thought that the Columbia would be deorbited into the South Pacific.
The APU is a red herring. They start up the APUs a few minutes before the shuttle begins its reentry burn, not during the landing. Nothing prevents them from manually starting them up a few minutes earlier to allow the astronauts enough time to reach a rescue craft.
Remember that what you're quoting was written at the time of the initial investigation. After the crash, NASA immediately began work on an emergency plan to autoland the orbiter without personnel aboard in the event of just such a disaster, an
Re: Oh, really? (Score:2)
Remember, the space shuttle was built to DOD spec to keep the Russians off kilter. If the space shuttle had been abandoned, you could bet your dollar that Russia would have had cosmonauts on the spacecraft
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Remember, the space shuttle was built to DOD spec to keep the Russians off kilter. If the space shuttle had been abandoned, you could bet your dollar that Russia would have had cosmonauts on the spacecraft
At which point NASA could presumably remotely trigger a reentry burn and plunge the thing down into the middle of the ocean as a giant fireball, cosmonauts included. Besides, the shuttle was designed way back in the 1970s. If you think there was any technology on there that the Russians didn't have two decades later, you're kidding yourself. :-)
Re:Oh, really? (Score:4, Informative)
NASA actually planned, a posteriori, a rescue mission; they concluded it was possible although really difficult
https://spaceflightnow.com/col... [spaceflightnow.com]
of course one of the options involves launching _another_ space shuttle to rendezvous with Columbia, which risks either having the same problem as Columbia, or, you know, any kind of problems of both machines colliding
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The fact that they knew tiles came off during launch, and even got damaged in-orbit, and didn't have any provision for recovering from that, is the real issue.
They could have planned to be in orbit long enough to send a rescue mission, or they could have had some means of patching the damaged areas via a spacewalk. By the time it happened it was already too late.
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There were 7 on the shuttle and only 2 needed to fly it. They could have dropped the other 5 off at the ISS and then taken the risk to land. The 5 could have been picked up on subsequent ISS missions. ISS does have excess capacity for emergencies.
I don't think ISS was reachable from Columbia's orbit. AFTER the disaster, shuttle missions profiles were required to be in range of ISS for exactly this reason.
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There were 7 on the shuttle and only 2 needed to fly it. They could have dropped the other 5 off at the ISS and then taken the risk to land. The 5 could have been picked up on subsequent ISS missions. ISS does have excess capacity for emergencies.
I don't think ISS was reachable from Columbia's orbit. AFTER the disaster, shuttle missions profiles were required to be in range of ISS for exactly this reason.
Depends on how you define reachable. As Columbia was equipped, no. With a rescue shuttle whose cargo bay was loaded up with extra fuel tanks containing extra hydrazine and MON-3, maybe, though my crude mental math is saying that the 29,000 kg limit for the payload bay might not leave enough extra fuel to do a reentry burn, so they would then be stuck at ISS until a third shuttle mission brought them down, so that's probably a really silly idea, unless your plan was to mothball Columbia at ISS, in which ca
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Depends on how you define reachable. As Columbia was equipped, no. With a rescue shuttle whose cargo bay was loaded up with extra fuel tanks containing extra hydrazine and MON-3, m
With a rescue shuttle, why go through all these hoops to get Columbia to ISS? Fly a shuttle to Columbia, transfer the people, fly back seems to more logical course of action when you use a shuttle for a rescue mission.
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Yes, the damaged craft needed to be written off.
NASA beancounters and politicians took a risk. Astronauts died.
Again.
Shit Happens. (Score:2, Insightful)
Humans are imperfect. Life is hard. Go to therapy. Smoke some weed. Find a new hobby. Move on.
CFC-free foam caused it (Score:4, Interesting)
Reminder that this happened because NASA wasn't allowed to use foam made with nasty evil CFCs, even for life-critical purposes. The CFC-free foam was a lot more brittle.
It also happened because of other design decisions such as the crew vehicle being placed next to the fuel tank instead of safely above it, each poking holes into the "Swiss cheese model of safety".
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Reminder that this happened because NASA wasn't allowed to use foam made with nasty evil CFCs, even for life-critical purposes. The CFC-free foam was a lot more brittle.
It also happened because of other design decisions such as the crew vehicle being placed next to the fuel tank instead of safely above it, each poking holes into the "Swiss cheese model of safety".
According to the Columbia Accident Investigation report, CFC-reduced foam was not used on areas that were hand sprayed such as the bipod ramp. Since it was foam from the bipod ramp which fell off and hit Columbia's wing, the change to CFC-reduced foam had no effect on this accident.
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It was said at the time that the white paint on the early shuttle tanks served to also keep the foam together and reduce drag on it.
They scrapped it to save money and increase payload by a tiny fraction. But mostly to save money.
Engineers: this is necessary.
NASA Bean Counters: nah.
Every freakin' time.
NASA knew shuttle wasn't safe (Score:3)
then they hired different people to tell the public it was safe.
They knew they were sacrificing astronauts to GO GO GO!!! and they didn't give a shit.
The public knew (Score:2)
This is personal memory but I recall that the foam strike was reported by the press before reentry. The messaging was that, yes the strike happened but we think they will still be OK and there are no alternatives anyway.
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Exactly - in fact, Nasa sent the crew an email saying something like "so small we wouldn't really mention it, but just in case the press ask when you return... a bit of foam fell off the fuel tank during launch - our engineers have looked at it, there's nothing to worry about". I'm not sure they even believed an alternative was worth considering - it simply wasn't needed.
I seriously doubt this guy could have done anything about anything. At that time, Nasa culture was not so hot, and there was far too much
The sad thing is... (Score:3)
...this was the third repetition of the same basic scenario: issue is known and known to be a risk to crew survival, issue occurs several times without anything happening, NASA managers decide the fact that it hasn't caused a problem yet means it'll never cause a problem, issue occurs again and causes a problem resulting in loss of vehicle and crew. One of the first things Scarne says in "Scarne on Cards" is advice for gamblers: the odds don't tell you it won't happen, they tell you how often it will happen.
Note: Boeing management is dealing with the results of that same scenario playing out yet again.
It was an accident... (Score:2, Interesting)
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I feel for everyone involved, but it was an accident. I'd rather a CNN reporter be more distressed by seeing Palestinian children maimed, hospitals bombed, and aid workers killed by Isreal. I think those are purposefully done, are preventable, and will live with me far longer.
Miles only does aviation bits for CNN anymore, he is mostly a tech reporter for PBS.
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And I would rather you not be telling other people what they should be mad at.
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Forgive the pedantry, but I take issue with people's use of the word "know" / "knew". NASA did not know because they did not have true solid factual information about the damage to the wing edge, nor did they have any experience with this level of damage and the catastrophic result.
In fact, there had always been damages to Shuttle tiles in the past, so there was some degree ("some degree", not absolute all or nothing / binary thinking) of reason to think there was a good chance the damage would not result i
Shame (Score:2)
NASA managers ignored foam strikes (Score:2)
Management didn't want to know, promoting launches over the heads of the engineers. That's also what caused the 1986 Challenger disaster.
“On STS-1, the first flight of the Space Shuttle, the orbiter Columbia was damaged during its launch from a foam strike [wikipedia.org]. Foam strikes occurred regularly during Space Shuttle launches; of the 79 missions with available imagery during launch, foam strik
Journalistic Narcissism (Score:3)
And I thought journalists were supposed to do their research before writing an article?! Oh, if only someone had listened to me, they'd have investigated the foam strike! Well, let's start off with this: From Wikipedia, with the source being the accident report: [wikipedia.org]
After receiving notification of the debris strike, engineers at NASA, United Space Alliance, and Boeing created the Debris Assessment Team and began working to determine the damage to the orbiter ... Boeing analysts attempted to model the damage caused to the orbiter's TPS from the foam strike ... On January 26, the Debris Assessment Team concluded that there were no safety concerns from the debris strike.
They certainly didn't make the right decisions, but they did look into it. I highly doubt a journalist with access to far less footage than the actual Debris Assessment Team had would have been able to add anything of any value whatsoever to any meeting they held. It's pure arrogance to think otherwise - unless this guy is literallya rocket scientist as well as a news reporter...
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I agree with you, and commend you for calling him out. Maybe you haven't noticed but in my observation it seems like everyone is expert in everything nowadays.
Adding to that, if you state something online, including here, and it's just a personal experience, observation, anecdote, or opinion, you can get downmodded into oblivion. IE, many angry others insist on people only posting 100% universally accepted facts, that fit everyone everywhere always, and if they disagree in the slightest bit you're beaten do
they had a better chance of surviving re-entry.... (Score:1)
"A rescue mission would not have been impossible,"
One Feared The Seal Design & Did NOT Quote! (Score:2)
At the start of the Shuttle design, RFQs went out to thousands of suppliers in the aerospace sector including a friend & mentor of mine.
Rudolph Kreuger, was an expert is seal design of many types amongst his aerospace contributions. He was a professional engineer and took the proposed rocket stage seal design specifics for the contract seriously and did his calculations.
His conclusion left him concerned about the viability of such a proposed set of conditions for the seal through the range of use condi
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You seem to be talking about a different incident - the Challenger explosion shortly after launch due to failed O-ring. This story is about the Columbia which failed on re-entry due to heat shield damage.
Mgmt/engineer organizational arrogance is deadly (Score:2)