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NASA, their budget, and space program safety.

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12:47 / 01.02.03

Dunno if anyone else has seen it yet, but CNN just showed some pretty disturbing footage from the skies over Texas. The person doing the voice over was likening it to the Mir or Skylab re-entries, ones that were specifically designed to burn up the desbris before impact. NASA lost contact with the shuttle 16 minutes before landing (scheduled for 9:16 AM Feb. 1), both radio and radar. It looks pretty bad.

Here's some links:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/857733.asp?0cv=CA00

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/02/01/shuttle.landing.ap/index.html

http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/02/01/shuttle_exp030201

Zoom.

12:57 / 01.02.03

Yeah. I just woke up to this on the TV. Warnings have gone out over the Dallas/ Fort Worth area to identity but not come in contact with possible scattered debris in that vicinity. NASA hasn't officially claimed it having broken up in the atmosphere on the way in but, like Zoom said, looking at the footage of what looks like a meteor shower of various parts, I don't see any other possibility.

Sad flashbacks from the Challenger disaster. NASA will get another hard kick in the shins from this for sure.

13:45 / 01.02.03

What about the International space station? is there anyone still up their who will now be stranded?

13:51 / 01.02.03

They have other shuttles at their disposal, I do believe.

14:05 / 01.02.03

Yes but all shuttles will be grounded untilits been worked out what went wrong - wasn't it a few years between the challenger disaster and the first manned shuttle flight going up again? Will the US be asking the russians to send a rocket or two up to rescue those up on the station or will they be kept up there with supplies contuing to be sent in progress class rockets?

gentleman loser

14:06 / 01.02.03

Looks like a structural/heat shield failure or both. They are still talking about the possibility of survivors, which is nonsense. There is no way any of the crew could have escaped at the speed Columbia was travelling when it broke up.

From the mission status report:

During a mission status news conference yesterday, Entry Flight Director Leroy Cain was asked about any possible damage to the shuttle's thermal tiles during launch. The tiles are what protect the shuttle during the fiery reentry into Earth's atmosphere.

Tracking video of launch shows what appears to be a piece of foam insulation from the shuttle's external tank falling away during ascent and hitting the shuttle's left wing near its leading edge.

But Cain said engineers "took a very thorough look at the situation with the tile on the left wing and we have no concerns whatsoever. We haven't changed anything with respect to our trajectory design. It will be a nominal, standard trajectory."

Columbia is the oldest space shuttle first flown in 1981.

There are still three crew members on the ISS. They've only been in orbit for a couple of months so I presume they aren't in any immediate jeopardy. The shuttle fleet is going to be grounded for a long time. I think they have a Soyuz capsule so they can return to Earth in an emergency.

Here's an article on the ISS lifeboat problem.

14:07 / 01.02.03

rolling coverage from BBCnews24

14:18 / 01.02.03

According to the radio station I was listening to NASA have lowered their flags to half-staff. So while they're not confirming anything at the moment, they are.

Zoom.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

15:41 / 01.02.03

NPR talked with someone who said that the military in in his town to get some of the debris.

They are reporting it did break up in the atmosphere, and there are a few concerns that the first Israeli astronaut was on the mission, and in a weird sense of irony was one fo the pilots who flew the bombing mission that blew up Iraq's nuclear reactor in the 80's.

I feel numb inside, as I am one of the few people who follow the space program in the US.

16:20 / 01.02.03

The BBC Story
Oh bloody hell, first thing I heard about this was off teletext. Damm this is bad, seven astonauts gone, one shuttle and the ISS in question. Know what you mean about feeling numb, the shuttle and the ISS were one of the few good things that America seemed to be doing at the moment, bit of hope for the future, you know.
Will Bush be bothered to spend the money to make this right now?

The astronauts on the ISS will be OK and be able to get down using Sozuy, they're also OK for supplies with the Progress capsule sending stuff up, but the ISS program is pretty much fucked until the shuttles start flying again.

Just seen that India's first woman astonaut was on board, Kalpana Chawla, along with the first Israeli in space, Colonel Ilan Ramon. And India was just getting excited about space, saw a news report on them wanting to send a moon mission up. Word's fail me.

18:07 / 01.02.03

Numbness is nearly an understatement for the effect that this is having on many of us. It brings back too many images and feelings that we watched almost 2 decades ago. A disaster of "firsts" and we can only hope that an "answer" is given soon as to what exactly happened. Not because we need the thought of it to go away, as I am sure that this will last in our minds for years to come - but rather to give some sense of closure to those that are grieving.

As for myself, I like to have answer. I like to know exactly why it is that I am feeling the feelings that I am - to have the background details. And I wonder if this will fall into the catagory of "I know exactly where I was when..."??? What do you guys think?

-=Velius=-

21:36 / 01.02.03

Would it be too cynical of me to say that this event has just secured Bush another term?

Brigade du jour

21:41 / 01.02.03

Believe my little story on cynicism here Tom, if it makes you feel any better.

I'm working tonight, reading newspapers for the UK Foreign Office and taking stories relevant to them. I hate to admit it, but the first thing I thought when I saw the shuttle news was "oh good, not so much Iraq stuff in the papers tonight then."

Yes I do feel like a bit of a bastard about it, but if I start thinking about actual real death and destruction I would be crying my eyes out every night from reading about it so much.

21:42 / 01.02.03

I think I saw them on TV earlier this week, on the NASA channel. They were explaining the layout of the food trays, and they looked like they were having a great time in zero gravity. Weezer had a thing on their website about how Commander McCool was a big fan and brought his kids to their concert, and was bringing one of their CDs into space with him this trip. I hope they had a good time while they were up there, and I hope it didn't hurt.

They've been using the Columbia since 1981, I think. It's really weird to think of something like, twenty two years old going through all that for so long. Poor kids.

23:15 / 01.02.03

I think if NASA is smart it could use this to publicly plead and beg for a new generation of shuttle and Bush might look like an ass if he refused. But NASA isn't smart and Bush doesn't care about looking like an ass sooo... yeah, kick in the shins.

I heard on the radio that there were some ancient artifacts onboard for ceremonial purposes. Does anyone know what these were?

23:49 / 01.02.03

On deadly cargo, as reported by Jello Biafra on No More Cocoons and If Evolution Is Outlawed...:

The Lethal Shuttle: Plutonium Payload Scheduled. The
space shuttle scheduled to follow the tragic Challenger launch last
year would have carried 46.7 pounds of toxic plutonium-238. A leading
scientist warned that the plutonium, if dispersed in fine pieces by an
exlosion, would release more plutonium radioactivity than the combined
fallout from all nuclear weapons tests of the U.S., the Soviet Union,
and the United Kingdom. Despite the global risks involved, NASA plans
to go ahead with plutonium-fueled space probes when shuttle missions
start again.

And from the BBC, a related item about planned propulsion systems for the US space progam.

Not only may this halt the US, albeit temporarily, in their development of their program, it also appears that it may cause a reconsideration of manned Mars missions and the construction of the ISS.

This interval would facilitate the advancement of the Chinese space program and could see the Chinese in direct competition with the US and European programs.

Strange Machine Vs The Virus with Shoes

23:53 / 01.02.03

All this says to me is that 7 prime Americans died today. A day of mourning is needed to comprehend this horrific situation. These boys died in horrific circumstances. We should kill those who want this sort of killing to continue. This may not have been a terrorist attack. But you can bet your life that this is just what Al Cheida wants.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

00:05 / 02.02.03

Horrible. And (human tragedy aside) a boost for Bush (as Tom indicates), as well as a kick in the bollocks for the space programme.

Of course, the irony is that the security was so high because of paranoia about a terrorist attempt which doesn't seem to have materialised. Mechanical failure and/or human error are just as big a threat as religious fundamentalists.

Hopefully it was quick, as it apparently wasn't for the crew of the Challenger (from what a Nasa tech was saying on a documentary a while back about the last radio contact).

00:08 / 02.02.03

Panarchy posted:

We should kill those who want this sort of killing to continue.

I infer from that that you believe this to have been an attack of some kind but your following statement appears to contradict this:

This may not have been a terrorist attack. But you can bet your life that this is just what Al Cheida wants.

Wants in what sense? Any country or organisation that places itself in direct opposition to the ideals and practices of another and actively seeks to inflict damage upon said other would be likely to view any damage inflicted on them by a third party, whether intentional or unintentional, as indirectly benefitting their cause. Are we to infer something else?

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

01:06 / 02.02.03

I posted this to my journal after reading blog after blog blaming Clinton or Bush for it. It's not directed at anyone here and isn't imnplied to be. But it shows how in the US that no matter what happens, people want to blame a politican for it.

***************

I don't really have much to say about the shuttle explosion except that it has upset me greatly, as do all tragendies like this. Space exploration is dangerous, and I get frustrated that people see it as routine, when it is anything but.

But as I read people blaming Bush or Clinton for it (depending on who they hate) I realize that we, as a country are so consumed with this bi-polar form of hatred that I am disgusted with the lot of them. The President can't stop accidents. Accidents happen. The constant turning of human tragedy into political fighting is enough to make me think that they are all a bunch of chimps who have yet to evolve thumbs to work their damn keyboards.

Stop. Not everything is about getting another 2 years in office for the team you are on.

People are dead and their families are in pain.

Our progress has taken a step back and people will be going to bed tonight in pain or consumed by guilt over things they could not have changed. The man giving the NASA Press conference was in so much emotional pain I wanted him to end it. Even when he said that they checked everything and made the righrt decision, you could see that he felt that they should have done something else and found the mistake.

My thoughts go out to the people touched by this because that's all I really can do.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

05:14 / 02.02.03

And of course God's sick sense of humour decreed that the first Israeli astronaut had to meet his fate above a town called Palestine, Texas.
And it was only days ago the prospect of aiming for Mars again was hot news. Damn.

05:54 / 02.02.03

Heh Heh Hey I work in mysterious ways!

On a brighter note:

http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2003/02/01022003225656.asp

"Russia: Moscow Says Space Mission To Go Ahead

Moscow, 1 February (RFE/RL) -- Russian space officials say the launch of a cargo vessel to the International Space Station tomorrow will go ahead as planned, despite the space shuttle "Columbia" disaster today.

A spokesman for Russia's space mission control center said a "Progress M-47" cargo ship will be launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The mission is due to take fuel, equipment, food, and documents to the one Russian and two Americans aboard the space station.

Sergei Gorbunov, a spokesman for the Russian space agency Rosaviakosmos, said the "Columbia" disaster may affect future supply trips to the space station.

He said it is possible the Russian supply ship "Soyuz" may be used instead of U.S. space shuttles on upcoming flights to the space station.

But Gorbunov said such a decision will depend on conclusions made by American space officials investigating today's disaster."

06:58 / 02.02.03

Space exploration is dangerous, and I get frustrated that people see it as routine, when it is anything but.

This is true. Also, I don't feel sorry for the astronauts. They knew the risks and they died doing something they loved. I mean, how many people can say they've seen our planet from the outside? The Israeli astronaut worked extremely hard to be able to look out of a tiny porthole and maybe feel a little pang of divinity (and space sickness) for a few weeks. I'm pretty sure, at least once, the thought: Now I can die happy. crossed his mind. All these people died achieving their childhood dreams. So what? How many of us are going to die without achieving anything?

Strange Machine Vs The Virus with Shoes

07:29 / 02.02.03

I was taking the Michael in the last part of my post Richard. But I still don’t get all the “hand wringing” about this event. I know that there is a formula for reporting news based on the unpredictability of an event but surely more people die in cases of accidental firearm incidents, car crashes or many other avoidable ways, every day. Space travel is a risky business as others have pointed out. To build this story into an international tragedy stinks of American sympathy mongering. The astronauts will probably be held up as noble heroes embodying the “American way”. I haven’t seen today’s papers but I bet there are pages and pages about how this tragedy occurred and how it should never happen again. This was a very unfortunate industrial accident, but that is all it is. The media circus should take a step back, let the families grieve in peace and report on issues that have greater relevance to our lives.

pointless and uncalled for

09:28 / 02.02.03

This is the thing about occupational hazards, they have an annoying tendancy of occuring.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

11:47 / 02.02.03

impulsivelad- do you feel sorry for their families?

Yeah, loads of people die all the time from less spectacular causes. Most of the time, though, if one of your loved ones dies, you don't have international press swarming all over you.

And yes, if I could die doing something I loved, it would be a result. But if through my death I made my field of study unfundable/undoable for, like, ever, then I wouldn't consider that a sacrifice worth making.

For all my distrust of governments, science, etc, the space programme is something I would love to be successful.

11:51 / 02.02.03

Mm, thanks Panarchy, obviosuly there is one voice of reason left here. The reason for all the handwringing IMHO is mainly that this makes the US (and Israel) look piss poor, and at this point in time, we are all supposed to be getting scared of them and, well, y'know, some of their other phallic symbols. The fact that the money the US paid to put the astronauts up there has been bled out of the miserable and short lives of millions in the developing world should not for one moment allow us to be distracted from these all important 7 people, or from the worldwide cry of 'God Bless Amerikkka', and I second the call for a national day of mourning. In fact no, let's make it international. And while we're at it, lets make it a whole year. A great big whole fucking year of 'let's all feel sorry - again - for those poor ickle Amewikkkans'. Jesus fucking Christ!

This stuff about the plutonium is quite scary, if anyone takes it seriously. The linked article claims there could be enough released to give us all lung cancer. (And here's me trying to give up smoking.) Y'know, if I do get cancer, I may actually have to go so far as to blame the idiot who put all that plutonium in the sky. Sorry Hong Kong, if that strikes you as unreasonable or in any way disrespectful to Amerikkkan jingoism. I just happen to think the money could have been better spent on something that actually made a difference to someone's life (apart from giving them cancer).

12:01 / 02.02.03

And it was only days ago the prospect of aiming for Mars again was hot news. Damn.

Exactly.

12:41 / 02.02.03

What a very, very depressing business.

Even aside from the 2001 / Prometheus Rising trained bit of my brain that's constantly thinking, we should be meeting our evolution on the other side of the solar system right now, and we're still fucking up going into orbit..

..one of those astronauts was called Commander McCool! So Commander McCool the astronaut just got blown up thanks to some random malfunction .. how depressing is that? How much should that not happen?

Oh, and did anyone else catch the guy speaking at the NASA press conference who opened his speech - before condolences to the families etc. - with "I'm proud to live in a country where, when things go wrong, we go and fix 'em". What a fucking creep. What the hell was he trying to achieve by saying that? I guess he thought he was drawing some clever paralells or whatever, but that line of reasoning doesn't even fucking apply to the space shuttle! I'm sorry, but - what a cunt.

14:01 / 02.02.03

Of course I feel bad for their families especially if they had children, but like you said given the chance to do something you love on that scale and quite possibly die. I'd go for it.

Also just cause NASA is probably going to shrink because of this doesn't mean that space exploration is going to become "unfundable/undoable". It only means it's going to become so in America and it was already a joke. I mean, who actually believed NASA was going to get us to Mars? I like some posters have mention China and India (also Japan, Europe, and Russia) are going to become the premier space programs of the 21st century. (My money's on China actually.) So I think it's safe to say the science the 7 people loved is going to move forward despite their death and the US's poor policies.

20:31 / 02.02.03

My thinking on this goes in about seven directions at once, and I'm still trying to sort the lunatic thoughts from the ones worth communicating. I am instinctually reacting to this as part of some improbably vast conspiracy. My prediction, contrary to impulsivelad's, is that the space program is about to go private in the US in a big way, but I'm not really prepared to defend that. I agree that the press coverage is hideous.

One factoid of interest is that one of the disaster scenarios discussed before the mission and being hashed over now (let's try to keep in mind that the "bad tile" thing is one theory among several) involved collision with orbital debris. That would be either chunks of man-made garbage or bits of matter caught in Earth's gravity: barbeliths.

22:13 / 02.02.03

To build this story into an international tragedy stinks of American sympathy mongering.

Sigh. Would this be the same belligerant "America" that is not interested in what the rest of the world thinks? Or are there multiple models of ready-rolled, knee-jerk, Eurotrash criticism? Remember the Russian sub, the Kursk? Did you have a similar "opinion" about that? No, thought not.

Longer sigh ... Yes, maybe the money would be better spent. Instead of putting together gob-smacking technology to prove a point, NASA should get right down to it and build actual weapons. That would be much better, wouldn't it, eh? 'Cause, hey, they're not going to give the money away to starving people, not while the rest of the developed world is sitting down surfing the web in its centrally-heated homes, listening to CDs and feeling righteous.

Anyway, I wanted to let it lie, but I coudn't. It's not just seven astronauts and their families -- thousands of people's hard work and quite a few support jobs have gone down the tube. And if you dump things like space programmes, you should dump a lot of other stuff too.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

12:53 / 03.02.03

I'm not sure if anyone in authority is trying to build this into an international tragedy, beyond the fact that the FIRST Israeli and the FIRST Indian in space were among those dead. But the news sources do seem to be, for want of a better term, 'going on' about it over here. That's the perils of it happening on a slow newsday with no world war three to distract us.

13:46 / 03.02.03

Apparently, the Washington Post science writer filed an article on the Columbia astronauts completing their successful mission, and it was live on the Post's Web site while the accident was occuring. Read it here. The quotes from the astronauts are heartbreaking.

------
As to the shrill suggestions that this accident is being used by the U.S. as aprt of an insidious scheme to gain converts to the cause of their war machine, I think you people have to get over yourselves. This accident will have absolutely NOTHING to do with Bush's re-relection chances. I can't even begin to fathom the logic behind these statements. Apparently, everything that befalls the U.S. has to somehow slide right into the overarching meta-narrative of Bush's mendacity and imperialism. Riiight...

13:47 / 03.02.03

True. It also deserves coverage due to the potential impact on space programs - which as far as I understand are globally reliant on the US, to a significant extent.

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