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NASA, their budget, and space program safety.

  
  

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STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
14:02 / 03.02.03
Sure. I don't for one minute think that when this happened Bush was rubbing his hands with glee- I don't think he's an evil man, just a horribly misguided one with too much power. My problem with most world leaders.

I'm actually (though you may not be able to tell) very upset about this. And not so much for my jokey reason given earlier that it means I personally have so much less chance of getting into space than I did last week.

I believe the space programme is one of the few things humanity has done on a big (okay, huge) scale that has had an ACTUALLY DECENT MOTIVE behind it. Even when it was "we must beat the Russkies into space" it wasn't "we must beat the Russkies into a pulp". The International Space Station, while it may not be that wonderful an achievement, is something pretty fucking impressive, made by both old Cold War adversaries working together (and others). And as such, I would hate to see it mothballed. And I'm sure (though this is where I slip into tabloid-style speculation) the dead astronauts would too.
 
 
Jack Fear
14:23 / 03.02.03
Balls.

The ISS is a shuck, a boondoggle, a MacGuffin to keep public attention diverted from the fact that the space program has pissed away all its enormous potential and hasn't done anything that could rightly be called "exploring" in the last, oh, thirty years or so. It was created primarily to give the shuttles somwhere to go, and and thus to prolong the shuttle program, which has long outlived its usefulness, and thus to keep gov't money flowing to Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

We should be reaching for the stars, and, thanks to patronage, the pork barrel, and an appalling lack of vision, we're still fucking around in our back garden.

I'm angry as hell about this. These people never should have died, because they never should have been up there in the first place, in a twenty-year-old ship built on already-obsolete technologies, doing bullshit experiments that could've been done by robots. They should have been doiong something that fucking matters—flying three-seater spaceplanes to the moon, looking for water, or dropping weather balloons into the Martian atmosphere—not documenting crystal formation in zero-G, or seeing if rabbits will fuck in space, or figuring out how best to observe the Sabbath from orbit.

Exploration works like this: you pick a goal, then design a tool or a vehicle with which to reach it. NASA has spent years working backwards—designing goals (i.e., experiments) to fit the tool it already has (the shuttle)—mostly top justify the shuttle program's horrific cost and inefficiency—because nobody had the guts to say, "This thing is no longer useful—time to scrap it and start over."

This article in TIME Online says it better than I could—passionate, articulate, angry, and well-informed. Read it.

Read it read it read it.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
14:31 / 03.02.03
Of course the U.S. never did beat the Russian's in to space, only to the moon and I still think that was only 'cos Korolev died, but no one ever knows what I'm going on about so I'll get back on point.

This is really a great indication of why more money needs to be poured in to the space programme. The funds have been steadily reduced for years now and here we have the result. The space shuttle is like some strange combination of super-computer and plane, computer's are always crashing and actually so are planes, so it's not so surprising that every 17 years or so there should be a tragic accident. If anything it's weird that there's never been an accident on re-entry before (with the shuttle) because it's ridiculously complex and one simple error in the system can make the whole thing fall apart. As I understand it to get a space shuttle through the atmosphere requires practically every system to be working on board the shuttle.

After 22 years they really should have some different technology to hit us with but I suspect the Russians might come up with it because they've always been better at the whole original idea thing where space is concerned- oh and God bless the Soyuz capsule and in fact Korolev for creating the design bureau that invented it! I sound callous but actually I'm still in shock and I came close to tears when I was watching the news coverage on Saturday night (I had to wait until everyone else went to bed because I knew I might cry) because I'm a total space enthusiast and that numb feeling - still totally there.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
14:39 / 03.02.03
The problem with the TIME article is that it misses our whole enthusiasm about space. We want to send people up there. Screw everything else, when the Russians conceived the space program(me?) they designed big satellites with a view to getting humans in to space. The Americans made tiny objects because they were only intending to send machinery up there but idealistically it's the people that matter because what the hell is the point of exploring space if you don't expect people, one day, to experience it??
 
 
Jack Fear
15:00 / 03.02.03
Anna saith: The problem with the TIME article is that it misses our whole enthusiasm about space. We want to send people up there. ... what the hell is the point of exploring space if you don't expect people, one day, to experience it??

With respect, I think you're missing the point; but you're not alone in that: web pundit James Lileks today wrote

NPR had an interview with one of those people who think we should not send people into space, but rely entirely on robots. As I pulled into the parking lot at the mall he casually asked “what can a man do on Mars that a robot cannot?”

PLANT A FUCKING FLAG ON THE PLANET, I shouted at the radio. ... . On a day when seven brave people died while fulfilling their brightest ambitions, this was the wrong day to suggest we all stay tethered to the dirt until the sun grows cold. Are we less than the men who left safe harbors and shouldered through cold oceans? After all, they sailed into the void; we can look up at the night sky and point at where we want to go. There: that bright white orb. We’re going. There: that red coal burning on the horizon. We’re going. And we’re not sending smart toys on our behalf - we’re sending human beings, and one of them will put his boot on the sand and bring the number of worlds we’ve visited to three. ...

...which is indeed very moving, but disregards the fact that that sort of pioneer stuff is emphatically not what the shuttle program is about. And that the shuttle program has been pretty much the be-all and end-all of NASA for lo these twenty years, and that grand ambitious plans to reach Mars (etc.) have been scuttled because the money that it would take to implement them has been poured instead into the gaping maw of—yes—the shuttle program. And that the shuttle program was not paving the way for pioneer missions in any meaningful fashion. In fact, it wasn't paving the way for much of anything: it had become an end unto itself, a money machine for the aerospace contractors.

NASA was founded on the promise of exploration. That's the NASA that Lileks remembers, the NASA I long for. But it has lost its way, and has for too long been without any real goal beyond its own continuance.

And that seven people died for no reason—that what they died trying to do wasn't even a great, worthy goal, but a "routine mission"—makes me seethe. If an astronaut has to die, let hir die in pursuit of an honest-to-God goal, not for the dubious privilege of training ants to sort tiny screws in zero gravity.
 
 
grant
17:10 / 03.02.03
Three points:
impulsivelad, et al: Other countries do have space programs, yes, but they tend to go up on American rockets. I think Russia is the only other country where space launches are routine. The European Union just had a big setback when their Ariane blew up a few weeks ago.

------

Tom Coates, et al: Actually, this really doesn't look good for Bush. He's been remarkably *quiet* about it, as far as I can tell, considering he's nominally a Texan, and the ultimate authority over NASA. I can't see a way to spin it positively.

-----

Jack Fear: We should be on Mars by now, yes. But... I'm thinking the ISS is probably the best way to get to Mars and beyond. It's easier to get to than a lunar base, and could provide a platform for assembly and launch of ships that couldn't (or shouldn't) take off from Earth. The more routine the missions to the ISS become, the more it becomes "home," and the better situated we are for the next step outward. This mission didn't go to the ISS, sure, and maybe we've lost a little focus there - but still, I can't say it's a bad thing when orbiting the planet becomes routine. It all falls under the category of "practice" in my mind.

Here, from the TIME article:
Did Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon really have to be there to push a couple of buttons on the Mediterranean Israeli Dust Experiment, the payload package he died to accompany to space?

John Glenn didn't even push any buttons. What about Gus Grissom?

From that link: "The astronauts could stay in orbit up to 14 days, depending on how well things went. The purpose of their flight was to check out the launch operations, ground tracking and control facilities, and the performance of the Apollo-Saturn. Grissom was determined to keep 204 up the full 14 days if at all possible."

That's why *he* died. Checking out "launch operations" and "facilities."

Gus Grissom was ready: "If we die, we want people to accept it. We're in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life."


On this point, though... In return for failure, the shuttle program got a big budget increase. Post-Challenger "reforms" were left up to the very old-boy network that had created the problem in the first place and that benefited from continuing high costs.
...I can see where the TIME guy's coming from.

It might also be worth mentioning that a lot of the commercial planes up in the skies are around the same age as Columbia, if not older. They probably have better maintenance plans; they definitely haven't faced the same budget cutbacks NASA has faced since the lunar landing.

And that's the problem. Space shuttles were supposed to be upgradable, modular - a vehicle that could change with new developments. And, while they have to a certain extent, they haven't done it very well, and not nearly enough. Maybe it's because NASA doesn't have the money, or maybe it's because NASA sends the money in the wrong directions. I don't know.

------

So now we've got a few guys up on the ISS (and the whole point behind the ISS is that no matter where you're reading this from, you're a part of "we") who are looking forward to reconstituted borscht for the next few months. Those are the first guys I thought of when I heard the news.

If they leave and no-one else goes up soon enough, we'll have a nice, multi-billion dollar meteor shower and that'll be it. They'll launch satellites for the TV and surveillance, and maybe in 30 years or so the Space Frontier Foundation will open an orbital Ritz-Carlton.

Maybe. And that'll be it.

We need a space station.
Because it seems likely that the next generation of space craft are going to be launched from orbit, whether it's fusion (or fission) engines or solar sailers.
Right now, they're still trying to figure out why astronauts lose bone mass in zero g, and what they can do to stop it. (One of the reasons John Glenn went back into space.) When the first humans get to Mars, it'd be nice if they got home without breaking any bones. That's only one of the weird things that happen to people in space. And that's why it's important to have people up in the space station - to see what happens to *them*. Their bodies are the experiment, moreso than any buttons they're pushing.

And the ISS is a lot closer and a lot easier to get to than the moon - the difference between docking and landing.

Maybe, if this one is left to (literally) crash and burn, someone will put another one up. Maybe. In a while.

So I'm hoping Ken Bowersox, Don Pettit and Nikolai Budarin can hold out for a long, long time. Enough till somebody figures out a new way to get up there and back.
 
 
Mr Tricks
19:06 / 03.02.03
Anyone think this might promt an expanded dialogue on such topics as "radio actice material in space" or even "the weaponization of space" or perhaps the whole "star wars" program?
 
 
grant
19:13 / 03.02.03
it'll definitely get brought up.
 
 
Malle Babbe
19:14 / 03.02.03
I'm sure it will only reinforce certain stereotypes, but a quick perusal of this website will prove that the Iraqi goverment is not the only group gloating over the destruction of the Columbia. How about this gem:

Does anyone believe it was just by chance that this Shuttle blew up over Texas and fell in President Bush's back yard, in a town called Palestine, with an Israeli in it??? Will he see the hand writing on the wall, I hope so, because God is trying to get his attention. God does not want a Palestinian State, President Bush.

or this one?

I believe the tragedy had a spiritual root. I have no doubt that because an Israeli was on board, Muslim clerics all over the world have been praying against the flight to their allah moon god (satan) of Islam. By so doing, they were invoking a powerful satanic curse on the shuttle. Such curses are very real. The only way to be protected from such a curse is to be under the blood of God's own Son, Jesus Christ. Even believers should consciously and prayerfully invoke protection of Jesus' blood in order to cancel curses, and pray for, claim and confess protection according to the Word, such as Psalm 91.

Why do I have to share the same country with these people?
 
 
HCE
19:41 / 03.02.03
Miscellaneous points:

If I am misinformed, please correct me, but I was under the impression that American technology is largely the result of the genius of Indian and Chinese engineers. Would it be more appropriate to say American-funded?

I too am guilty of having immediately tried to figure out who would stand to profit from this.

What's wrong with feeling sorry for the people who died simply because they got blown to bits, and not because of their income, whether they were starving or not, and regardless of their "performed identities" to use a cloying phrase.
 
 
grant
20:33 / 03.02.03
Here's what a friend of mine (a Texas-based science writer) had to say re: Easterbrook's article & the ISS:

The only practical reason to have *people* on
orbit permanently is if the
station is used for exploration further out -
moon, Mars, or asteroids. That
"base-camp" capability was the first to be
dispensed with when the budget
was being cut. All the rest - materials
experiments, Earth observation,
astronomy, non-human biological work - can be
done cheaper, more safely, and
for the most part better on unmanned platforms.

If I had my druthers, I'd get rid of the shuttles
and plow the operations
money into two systems - an unmanned heavy-lift
rocket (which could even be
wholly or partly reusable) and a small "space
taxi" for people. I'd boost
the station to a higher orbit, and start working
on ways to use it as an
assembly point or construction shack for lunar
missions, asteroid
expeditions, and - when the time comes - building
a ship or ships for Mars.
 
 
bjacques
23:36 / 03.02.03
(Disclosure: I worked at NASA-Johnson Space Center in Houston 10-1/2 years, from February '86 to September '96.)

This is the second space disaster I've watched unfold in real time. I was applying for a job at NASA the morning Challenger happened. I saw the same eerie veneer of normality as CNN showed last week, flight controllers continuing to work as trained, while in a state of shock and disbelief. I had tuned into CNN out of boredom exactly when they carried NASA's announcement of loss of signal. Both times it was a clear and mild winter's day, and the disaster left a terrifyingly beautiful signature in the sky.

It's all very well to say the astronauts knew the risks, but it's still a shock to their families and everyone who wants humans to reach space. I'm on the side of those who want us to leave footprints on uninhabited worlds and shake appendages (where applicable) with residents of inhabited ones (if any). Of course we should stop beggaring the rest of the world and share the benefits of civilization. That's our duty if we call ourselves civilized. maybe it can be inspiring but it's not *thrilling.* We humans like thrills, even vicarious ones, and we're curious. Space exploration is a benign way to satisfy both.

I watched then-President Reagan's condolence speech and I now have a lot more respect for him than I do for Bush. Maybe this wasn't Bush's main speech, but I saw a clip this afternoon of him standing in front of a backdrop that said "DEFENDING THE HOMELAND." After expressing his deep sorrow he immediately started talking about terrorist biowarfare attacks and finished by congratulating Tom Ridge the HomeSec chief and some other security goon. That was pretty cheap. Trust Bush to piss away world sympathy for Americans. The man's a moral imbecile.

The Challenger accident was much more preventable than the Columbia one, so I think the hiatus this time won't be anything like the 2-1/2 year one last time. Misgivings about the O-rings' brittleness in cold weather weren't allowed to be passed up the decision chain; momentum and political concerns trumped safety. NASA ain't the only place where that happens. The result was that *everything* was reviewed top to bottom: Shuttle systems and their components, procedures onboard and on the ground, safety checks, etc. I spent a couple of years editing onboard contingency procedures, some of which were vague because the situations calling for them weren't considered survivable. Now they are. This time, about the only things they really need to do are make harder tiles and better glue (for tiles and foam on the external tanks). And maybe another reality check for procedures can't hurt.

The idea of a permanent base in space was Wernher Von Braun's original idea; he didn't like the idea of just going to the moon. Arthur C. Clarke also envisoned an evolutionary approach to space exploration. But the Space Race trumped science. Politics are *always* going to warp programs like the space program. It happens in a democracy and it happened under communism (still does, if you count China). The Soviet Union lost 50 people for the sake of a May Day launch; there's a persistent rumor of a dead cosmonaut from 1960, supported by a mention in Robert Heinlein's travel article from that year ("Pravda Means Truth").

The human space program lopes along because it's expensive for the science it yields, but it's what voters go for when they are paying attention.

As for the nuclear question, it's debatable as to whether the Galileo probe with its radioisotopic thermoeloectric generators (RTGs), scheduled a couple of missions after Challenger, presented a danger. Apollo 13 carried an early model RTG, meant to power lunar experiments, and it survived the heat of re-entry when the lunar module was jettisoned. I believe they know where it sank, and didn't detect any radiation from it. The bigger danger was to the crew and vehicle, because Galileo was to be attached to an Atlas-Centaur booster, fuelled by liquid oxygen and hydrogen. In case of an abort, the booster had to be emptied before the shuttle returned. There was a real chance of an explosion during the fuel dump. Third-hand rumor was that particular crew felt they were carrying a bomb onboard, which Galileo's RTGs would likely have survived. That program was cancelled after Challenger. As for Galileo, it kept the RTGs but was mated to a solid booster instead, so it took the long way around, via Venus and Earth (twice) instead of in a "direct" transfer orbit. Also the extra storage time made the struts from the large antenna stick, which some of you might remember. It still sent back great pics of the comet hitting Jupiter.

I don't think nuclear-powered rockets (NERVA-K/Orion) are a great idea, just because of the trouble in handling isotopes (and their waste) and the "atom state" it can lead to. It would have to be quasi-military because of the security issues. I don't know if an open society can afford this. But I'm open to proposals.

Just one set of opinions among zillions.
 
 
bjacques
01:17 / 04.02.03
Oops, Bush's speech was actually his "heavy on the Homeland Security" budget speech. He just mentioned Columbia in it.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
08:14 / 04.02.03
The idea of a permanent base in space was Werner Von Braun's original idea.


Well, not his *original* idea....he had a few wacky ones before that....
 
 
grant
12:59 / 04.02.03
In all fairness, I should mention that in the letter I quoted above, the writer pretty much agreed with Easterbrook's two main points: the space shuttle (as it stands) is inefficient and outdated, and the ISS isn't doing what it should. He pointed out that zero g training won't be terribly relevant to the big-thrust rockets sending people to Mars because you can make "gravity" by spinning the ship.

bjacques: This time, about the only things they really need to do are make harder tiles and better glue (for tiles and foam on the external tanks). And maybe another reality check for procedures can't hurt.

After the Challenger, they still had Atlantis - the prototype body they first used for landing tests. They just had to outfit it. According to a report on NPR this morning, NASA is now out of spare parts - they're going to have to build the next one from scratch.

Hopefully, it'll be less of a customized schoolbus.

I agree about Bush, though. I haven't seen the speech excerpt, but he's really not doing himself (or the country) any service here. I mean, no memorial? Reagan was nuts, but at least he believed in dream.

I don't think nuclear-powered rockets (NERVA-K/Orion) are a great idea, just because of the trouble in handling isotopes (and their waste) and the "atom state" it can lead to. It would have to be quasi-military because of the security issues. I don't know if an open society can afford this. But I'm open to proposals.

Well, what if they were assembled in space? Same problems? (I understand we'd have to get the fissile material *up to* space, but still....)

Maybe there'll be a fusion breakthrough. Maybe.

------

Also, does anyone have any problems with me moving this thread to the Laboratory?
 
 
Tryphena Absent
13:16 / 04.02.03
(Hate to drag this back but... Jack Fear that wasn't my point at all. The space shuttle may have been designed for such a purpose but I still see little point made in the article for having anything other then rockets - to launch satellites, telescopes etc. NASA was created for space exploration and they fulfill their promise by sending telescopes up etc. Lalala. I have never approved of NASA, having preferred the Russian approach to space travel since I wrote a dissertation on rocket history 1950-69 and the space race at the age of 16. Now there's a country that understands the need for a sacrificial lamb, or should I say dog, human? Yeah they tried to hurry things but they were technologically about a year ahead of the Americans up until 1967.

Yes a new type of vehicle should have been created, of course it should, yet the proposal put forward in TIME is certainly not in tune with the idea of human space exploration.)

I love the idea of the ISS. Sorry, it lives in my imagination, it's not going to go away - I've been dreaming of space station's since I was about 11 and hey, when the anti-memorial man gets us all nuked at least a few astronauts might escape it.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
15:30 / 04.02.03
It's definitely become Lab material now. Which is good- for it to stay Switchboard stuff I reckon it would have needed more ludicrous conspiracy theory.

Due to lack of evidence of terrorist/political links, I think Jack's right.
 
 
sleazenation
21:02 / 04.02.03
Just out of interest does anyone know what happened to space shuttle enterprize - another one of the test models?
 
 
bjacques
22:39 / 04.02.03
Today Bush did his eulogy, which is pretty much what Reagan did 17 years ago. I can't fault him there.

I thought Atlantis was made from a half-finished Shuttle and lots of spare parts. I'm not sure where Enterprise is now, though. It's not at the National Air and Space Museum, anyway. Maybe it was at Edwards AFB for awhile, being used for testing new components and landing weights.

As far as the Shuttle goes, every major project has a history and a context. The production version of the Shuttle, as of 1981, owes a lot to the political and economic realities of the 1970s. We needed to evolve a spacegoing infrastructure, which we didn't really have during the moon race. If we wanted to stay on the moon, go to Mars, whatever, we at least needed a space station complex of some kind, for assembly, fueling, etc. We really did need a space truck. The Space Shuttle, adapted from the piggybacked spaceplane Dyna-Soar concept of the 1960s, made the most sense to Nixon's space advisors. But a space infrastructure was a harder political sell than a spectacular race to the moon. Also, the Vietnam War was more immediate and a huge drain on the economy. Also there was Johnson's Great Society program, an attempt at massive solutions to poverty in the US, not addressed since the Depression (FDR's programs were more about responding to economic emergency than addressing structural poverty). Then the OPEC oil embargo of 1973, which led to the 1974-75 stagflation during Ford's administration, which was essentially a caretaker one and not much given to initiative. Meanwhile, NASA underwent a massive restructuring so that was bad for continuity. Its budgets were pretty much flat in a time of inflation. Then the end of detente with the USSR, and a second oil shock in 1978.

In short, it suffered from low budgets and was nearly cancelled a few times.

Tannhauser, that is a really disturbing rhyme! Where did that come from?
 
 
grant
13:14 / 05.02.03
Today Bush did his eulogy, which is pretty much what Reagan did 17 years ago. I can't fault him there.

Yeah, I heard part of it. He seemed to say the right things.

On the Enterprise:
. In 1985, NASA transferred Enterprise to the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. Since then, Enterprise has been in temporary storage at Washington's Dulles International Airport pending completion of the Museum's new center there, where it will be placed on public display.

For some reason, I thought Atlantis and Enterprise were the same body. Stupid me. Assumptions, assumptions. It's just been in a warehouse since 1985.

According to this page, it was the Endeavour that was made from spare parts for the Atlantis and Discovery.
 
 
grant
13:24 / 05.02.03
If it's disturbing rhymes about Wernher Von Braun you want, Tom Lehrer's probably your man.
 
 
Baz Auckland
17:35 / 05.02.03
I've also heard this loveable duck was inspired by Von Braun, who worked at Disney in the 50s. (No, not on the Roger Myers Sr. feautre 'Nazi Supermen are our Superiors'.)

  
 
8===>Q: alyn
15:37 / 06.02.03
Hey, bluthering blatherskite aside, does anyone understand how a ceramic tile designed to withstand 2000 degree temps & micro-impacts at 12,000mph is damaged by a piece of half-vaporized foam? I'm not saying it's impossible, I just don't understand.
 
 
Ethan Hawke
12:42 / 07.02.03
It turns out, Political Correctness Gone Mad may have brought down the space shuttle.
Quote:

Until 1997, Columbia’s external fuel tanks were insulated with a Freon-based foam. Freon is a chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) supposedly linked with ozone depletion and phased out of widespread use under the international treaty known as the Montreal Protocol.

Despite that the Freon-based foam worked well and that an exemption from the CFC phase-out could have been obtained, NASA succumbed to political correctness. The agency substituted an allegedly more eco-friendly foam for the Freon-based foam.

PC-foam was an immediate problem.

The first mission with PC-foam resulted in 11 times more damaged thermal tiles on Columbia than the previous mission with theFreon-based foam.

If this is true, this might indeed reach "PC gone mad" levels. Think about it - you're concerned with making a fucking rocket taking off into space more ecologically friendly. Is there any single event that pollutes more that launching a shuttle? Replacing some insulation tiles is pissing in the ocean compared to the amount of pollution a shuttle launch must cause.
 
 
Baz Auckland
13:59 / 07.02.03
...but what does environmental protection have to do with political correctness?
 
 
grant
14:14 / 07.02.03
That sounds a bit far-fetched to me. I really don't think foam had squat to do with the accident to begin with, and a shuttle launch pumps so much hydrogen and chlorine *directly* into the ozone layer that the insulation would have to be, like, antimatter to make it any less friendly than the exhaust trail.
(That said, the exhaust is not as bad as people at first thought.)

I can picture, however, NASA simply complying with a no-freon federal regulation rather than jumping through the hoops to get an exemption - and sticking with the formula once the exemption was extended. That's bureaucracy for you. I have some trouble with the idea that they'd notice the kind of significant tile damage from flaking PC foam described in the article and not change something.
 
 
Baz Auckland
12:28 / 10.02.03
An interesting article in the Toronto Star today about making a Space Elevator, and the companies working to get the contract for it.

Even if this is just a 'slow news day' story, it sounds pretty cool. Except for the 2 weeks it would take to get to the top. It also doesn't mention re-renty. If you're going slowly, do you not burn up?
 
 
grant
15:12 / 10.02.03
Yeah. The heat comes from friction with the atmosphere. And you thought turbulence on BritishAir was bad....
 
 
grant
18:49 / 11.02.03
email from writer friend:

> Sad to say, I pretty much agree with this guy -
> Paul Krugman of the New York
> Times.
> As unrealistic as it may sound (the stuff of
> Popular Mechanics covers), this
> is my idea of what we ought to be working on
> instead of throwing more dough
> at the shuttle:
> http://www.highliftsystems.com/


The gist of it: shuttle program oughtta be scrapped, in favor of them same space elevators.

------

Meanwhile, in space:

Seven bells aboard the ISS...

The crew said it would have no problem staying aboard the station longer than planned while program managers decide how to move crews and supplies to and from the research outpost while the American shuttles are grounded. This crew, the sixth to staff the station in the last two years, was scheduled to be replaced during a visit by the shuttle Atlantis in March.


Hoping they feel the same way come April....

--------
 
 
grant
13:24 / 17.02.03
Here's a new development: damage to not the tiles, but the leading edge of wing.

from "Aviation Now" magazine:
High-resolution images taken from a ground-based Air Force tracking camera in the southwestern U.S. show serious structural damage to the inboard leading edge of Columbia's left wing, as the crippled orbiter flew overhead about 60 sec. before the vehicle broke up over Texas killing the seven astronauts on board Feb. 1.


...The ragged edge on the left leading edge, indicates that either a small structural breach--such as a crack--occurred, allowing the 2,500F reentry heating to erode additional structure there, or that a small portion of the leading edge fell off at that location.

...This means that in addition to the possible failure of black tile at the point where the wing joins the fuselage, a failure involving the attachment mechanisms for the leading edge sections could also be a factor, either related or not to the debris impact. The actual front structure of a shuttle wing is flat. To provide aerodynamic shape and heat protection, each wing is fitted with 22 U-shaped reinforced carbon-carbon (RCC) leading-edge structures. The carbon material in the leading edge, as well as the orbiter nose cap, is designed to protect the shuttle from temperatures above 2,300F during reentry. Any breach of this leading-edge material would have catastrophic consequences.


The U-shaped RCC sections are attached to the wing "with a series of floating joints to reduce loading on the panels due to wing deflections," according to Boeing data on the attachment mechanism.


In other words, they're articulated like a lobster tail, sort of. There are some images at the link.



-----



Oddly, I heard this same theory from a UFO researcher (now the director of MUFON international) - a retired aerospace engineer who helped train shuttle astronauts in Houston.

His speculation:
By definition, an unidentified object did hit the shuttle. Some think that object was the tank insulation. I don't believe that explanation because the "ice team" verified that the tank and solid rocket boosters were ice free. Then in the frame-by-frame review of the insulation trajectory doesn't seem to ever hit the leading edge of the wing.

Some think the object was space debris. However, NORAD tracks all space debris and forecasts where it will be at all times. That is why the shuttle and the space station were moved several times in the past - so they would not be in harms way. It is still possible it hit some small item, but the level of damage is doubtful. Small bits have hit a lot of shuttles. One even made a pit in the windshield glass on a past flight.

...My take on this is that it is possible that something powerful was going on in the ionosphere. We know that there was a very large CME (coronal mass ejection) from the sun, charging the upper atmosphere. It has been hinted that atmospheric sprites were seen at high altitude. Also northern light activity was high. Does that possibly mean that this activity highly charged the shuttle vehicle and when it got to a level of another charge that the flash in the orbital path was akin to a lightning bolt discharge, hitting the left wing leading edge, blowing it off and exposing the wing to the extreme heating? I don't know but it is an interesting scenario.

Lots of shuttles have lost tiles or had tiles damaged. That is one reason why it takes so long to get a shuttle ready for the next flight. Many tiles are individually replaced. This has never before caused the loss of the high temperature insulation on the leading edge of the wing.

...In making that decision, I imaging that the DoD long range cameras in the southwestern US and Hawaii and other places were asked to look at the shuttle to determine the extent of the damage. No one has said that they did this until the time that the wing leading edge was damaged. I don’t buy that because back in 1973 the earlier version of those cameras were asked to look at the Skylab to determine the extent of the damage caused by the loss of the solar panel. Although most of us never got to see the photos, we did get enough information to make a fix when the crew did get to orbit. Then when Columbia first launched those cameras looked it over to see if tiles were intact. They were.

...The tiles being discussed by everyone cover the exterior of the whole craft, except for the high heating areas such as the leading edge of the wing. That area is covered with a special molded high temperature insulation that protects the wing and provides an aerodynamic surface. It also creates a smooth flow regime for the air/heat passing over the tiles on the underside of the wing. Those tiles just insulate the wing. The leading edge really takes the high heat and pressure. If that leading edge was faulty, it could fail and cause loss of the vehicle. If that leading edge became damage by space debris, UFO, lightning bolt, etc. it could cause loss of the vehicle. The temperature sensors in the left wing and wheel well rose quickly after what looked like an explosion in the video picture. Very quickly they went to zero indicating failure. That just sounds like loss of wing leading edge high temperature protection.

Keep in mind that the shuttle was upside down and backwards in orbit to do the retro burn. It then inverted and plunged into the atmosphere keeping the heating on the leading edges, nose cone, and lower tiles. Then it started maneuvering as it came down to cause more drag to slow it down. That had been going on when the failure finally occurred. It had made it through the initial plunge and blackout.
 
 
grant
17:16 / 26.03.03
Largely undamaged tape raises NASA's optimism

NASA officials were hopeful Monday that a recently recovered flight data recorder could yield a trove of information about Columbia's destruction.

When the briefcase-sized box was opened over the weekend at a Minnesota specialty firm, technicians discovered only about two feet of tape that had been visibly damaged. The rest appeared to be in good shape.

They worked to stabilize the damaged portions of the tape and were to send it on a chartered NASA jet to Kennedy Space Center in Florida as early as today.

"It gives us strong optimism that we will be able to get information from it," said James Hartsfield, a NASA spokesman in Houston.



Well, this kinda takes me by surprise (in a pleasant sort of way, I guess). I didn't even think they *had* black boxes, not in the way passenger planes do.

Currently, my money's on something happening in the wheel well. I'm still skeptical about tile damage - them planes lose tiles every flight.
 
 
grant
14:20 / 07.05.03
Looks like the falling foam/leading wing edge theory is now (just about) the Official Story, New Scientist reports.
It makes sense.
 
 
grant
19:15 / 04.06.03
So, NASA released their conclusion about the Columbia.

And MSNBC found the reports NASA didn't release to the public.

The friend who sent me this said reading it was like a kick in the stomach.

The documents basically describe how, if the orders had been given, the shuttle astronauts could have investigated the problem and saved their lives.

Here's an excerpt of the article.

The part that says what they should have done -- what they could have done, despite all the factors working against them.

THROUGHOUT THE two-week flight of Columbia in January, NASA engineers and managers had wrestled with whether the impact of insulating foam on the shuttle's wing during launch posed any threat.
But neither serious inspection plans nor workable rescue scenarios were ever developed because the need for them wasn't recognized.

After the Columbia disintegrated, killing its seven-member crew, the independent panel investigating the tragedy asked a NASA team to go back and look at what the space agency might have come up with had that need been recognized. The group, led by experienced flight director John Shannon, was assigned to look at the areas of rescue, repair, entry trajectory redesign, and combinations of these three.

The NASA team described their findings in an oral presentation on May 22 to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, which verbally described the findings to the news media. But both NASA and CAIB declined to to provide the briefing documents on which those findings were based; documents that MSNBC.com has since obtained.

PARALLEL TRACKS: RESCUE, REPAIR

The study rests on two major assumptions:

That there was a recognized catastrophic threat to the shuttle and crew, either from a 6-inch hole in the leading edge of the wing, or a 10-inch gash from the loss of a panel-to-panel seal.

That NASA management was willing to risk another shuttle launch even before the cause of the fatal damage to the first was known.

From those assumptions, the NASA team developed a timeline of events:

On the third day of flight, military photography of the damaged wing would be taken, while the crew and engineers on the ground planned for an inspection spacewalk, if needed. That spacewalk would take place on the fifth flight day, at which point the lethality of the damage would be known for certain and the emergency procedures initiated.

For the next twenty days, work would proceed in parallel on two options: rescue and repair.

The rescue option depended on whether the shuttle Atlantis could be prepared for launch in such a short time. If it became clear that Atlantis was not going to be ready in time, Columbia's crew would expend their remaining supplies in the two additional spacewalks needed to make a jury-rigged fix to the hole, and then trust their lives to the repairs and try to land on their own.

INSPECTION SPACEWALK

The inspection spacewalk itself would have been almost trivial, the NASA team discovered, requiring neither a risky free-flight by an untethered astronaut nor complicated lash-up ladders. The two trained spacewalkers aboard Columbia, Mike Anderson and David Brown, would have been able to do it with their hands. Since the shuttle's bay doors folded open and down over the wings, the outer edge of a door was already only four feet above the wing surface. One astronaut would grab the door edge with his hands and extend his lower body down to the top of the wing, his feet cushioned by towels to prevent tile damage. The other crewman would then climb down the first astronaut's body and peek over the wing's leading edge at the damaged thermal shield. Eyeball descriptions, and photographs, would document the severity of the damage.

As to the problem of extending the Columbia mission until a rescue shuttle arrived, space doctors struggled with how to extend the existing 68 cans of lithium hydroxide -- a chemical which absorbs carbon dioxide from the air -- from the planned 20 days (this included contingency extension days) to a full 30 days. If the crew could be kept asleep for 12 hours per day -- perhaps with medication -- the 30 days would have been achievable without ever going over the 2 percent carbon dioxide concentration that is the standard maximum allowable level. But even in a situation where the crew slept only eight hours a day, 30 days was reachable if the carbon dioxide concentration was allowed to reach 3.5 percent, a level the doctors considered "acceptable."

Columbia already contained enough of every other category of "consumable," including oxygen, which was used both for breathing and power. The plan would be to allow one inspection spacewalk, then power the shuttle down to below 10 kilowatts -- about a third of the level of full operation -- and wait out the rescue launch.



There's more on the site.


An illustration from the presentation given to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board shows how two spacewalkers could have visually inspected the damage to the wing's leading edge.
 
 
Mirror
20:01 / 04.06.03
I saw this article some time ago, but since it hasn't been posted here I thought I'd share it:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/902224.asp?0sl=-41


MOJAVE, Calif., April 18 — Aircraft designer Burt Rutan unveiled Friday a fully-built launch system that, if flights outside the atmosphere prove successful, would be the first private manned space program. Both the spacecraft, called SpaceShipOne, and its launch platform, a futuristic jet known as the White Knight, were developed and built in secret and have already begun tests at lower altitudes.


It's looking more and more like private enterprise will be what finally gets us off this rock.
 
 
grant
13:38 / 05.06.03
Yeah, there's a thread here on it. I found pictures of the ship and the astronauts. Rutan is *cool*.
 
  

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