Shuttle doomed 81 seconds after liftoff

http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/us/SciTech/columbia030418.html

"The evidence comes from an old magnetic tape recorder that is part of the Orbiter Experiment Support System, sources said.

It shows an unusual temperature increase in a key sensor just behind the leading edge of the left wing near the spot where foam that fell from the shuttle's external fuel tank is suspected of striking the shuttle, just 81 seconds into the flight.

The temperature spike happens within the next 40 seconds. Usually during this phase of flight, the temperature would be decreasing or holding steady, sources said."

I think NASA already knew the problem was the foam insulator to begin with. They needed to make sure it was beyond just plausible to isolate it as the leading problem. In the end, it's a costly mistake that hopefully, leads to new ideas to allow the shuttle crew to either remedy their problems while in space, or have an alternate escape route if they know beforehand there would be a problem.

Shuttle Wing /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif

Dan

It seems strange that NASA wouldn't have access to ALL the data that is being collected from the sensors on the vehicle during a shuttle mission. The shuttle is up there for usually more than a week... Why isn't it possible to download and analyze ALL the data while the astronauts float around drinking Tang and making happy videos?

It's difficult to understand NASA's complacency given the billions of dollars and lives at stake, not to mention the dwindling number of shuttles left in the fleet. Simply put: space travel is really DANGEROUS.

I expect far fewer manned missions in the next 20 years; it's just not worth the risk and cost.

I think it has to do a lot with the technology used in there.
Magnetic tape? Its been a long time since most flight data recorders used tape.
How do you tack good telemetry onto older outdated technology?

[ QUOTE ]
PhotonBoy said:
I expect far fewer manned missions in the next 20 years; it's just not worth the risk and cost.

[/ QUOTE ]
I think you're right about there being fewer missions in the future, unfortunately, but I think it is worth the risk IF they do something worth the risk. (Manned mission to Mars?)
Even if all they did in space was scientific "fluff", we all know that they men and women of the astronaut corps will still be waiting in line to go. They know it's dangerous, and they are compelled to do it. And these aren't nimrods we're talking about, taking stupid, uninformed risks. They are smart, motivated, dedicated individuals.



[ QUOTE ]
Floating Spots said:
I think it has to do a lot with the technology used in there.
Magnetic tape? Its been a long time since most flight data recorders used tape.
How do you tack good telemetry onto older outdated technology?

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree with you, too. I think technology takes some time to find it's way to the orbiter. Equipment that goes on aircraft, and especially onto spacecraft, goes through exhaustive testing and re-testing, and revision upon revision, before it is allowed in a spacecraft, or an aircraft, for that matter.
It would take scads of bandwidth to telemetry everything to the ground, not to mention extra equipment (weight), and engineers on the groung to monitor it.

I think the engineers at NASA did a fine job. Sometimes things like this just happen, and no one can predict them. Sure, they knew that the tile was damaged, but it had happened (9) times before, without incident. They made a decision.
I don't beleive any of the hype I've seen in the media about flight safety being compromised in the shuttle program. And the very email they site as an example proves my point.
The engineer who wrote the email wasn't on the shuttle program. He heard about the tile, and went out of his way to communicate his concerns to a fellow engineer that he used to work with, that he knew worked on the shuttle program.

It would appear that we have at last realised that Man isn't indestructable,,,
We never thought that we'd see the day that supersonic aeroplne flight might cease, but BA and Air France are to suspend the operation of Concorde indefinitely.
Both the Shuttle and Concorde are relics from a bygone age when there was so much more optomism about technology. But the technology on these craft is 40 or so years old! We saw them as items of the future, now they may be consigned to history.
Plkanet Earth needs new technology now,,, not to put a man on Mars but to help feed the starving millions of people on every continent of this planet.
I am in agreement that we should expand our horizons and we should develop the new technology that'll do it, but we need to get it in perspective with the wider issues.

Looks like some new interest.

http://www.dailysentinel.com/news/newsfd/auto/feed/news/2003/06/12/1055468403.04889.1676.0222.html

The fact that anything could be recovered, let alone a tape, is still amazing to me.

I have put together a fact sheet for the Columbia Shuttle HERE.

Here are some videos of a wing test in case you haven't seen it or want to look at it closer.

http://boss.streamos.com/download/caib/roundtable_20030604/l4_test1.mpg

http://boss.streamos.com/download/caib/roundtable_20030604/l3_test1.mpg

Skid

I don't think we (Americans) can consider stoping manned space exploration. Not to sound paranoid but there are other countries out there that might be doing regular manned trips to space soon. I don't like the thought of a moon base manned by a country that may be our enemy.
We have lost much of our lead in space exploration. The scientific advances, practical and theoretical, that space has brought us should be continued.

If you ask me,,, ALL disasters in the space industry, are caused by one thing. LACK OF FUNDING ....

Nasa gets around 2 to 7% of the amount of money the Military gets. Now I understand the military does a wider variety of things, and have invented plenty of useful life saving even, things for us. But, NASA has to make things cheaper, less robus, less engineered, due to the small amount of money they get. We are talking about putting people in space,, I dont think the words cheap, less, fewer, or minimum should be used in this situation.

Look HERE for information I put together on Columbia. (I mentioned it in the above thread also). That has some of NASA's annual funding.

[ QUOTE ]
jtice said:
Look HERE for information I put together on Columbia. (I mentioned it in the above thread also). That has some of NASA's annual funding.

[/ QUOTE ]

You've made them all "doc" file downloads. You might get more readers if you change them to txt or pdf files. People are reluctant to open doc files for good reason.

hmm, ok ill do that,,, but the columbia one, has pics in it,,, and all are formatted .. pretty /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif

Now I'm feeling bad for having told you. Maybe you can put both "doc" and "txt", and give your visitors a choice. Some might think the colorful formatting is worth risk. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

true, i might do that,,, thanks for the input,,, should i just copy and paste the tex over to notepad? or is there a better way?

You could copy and paste, but you'll have some editing to do. If you used Word or a similar word processor, you can usually do a "save" as a txt file while it's loaded.

Shuttle cassette tape a hoax

NASA says shuttle cassette tape a hoax

"NACOGDOCHES -- A woman who left an anonymous message with a newspaper tip line suggesting she had found a mini-cassette from the space shuttle Columbia acknowledged to NASA today she did not have such a tape, an official said."

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/1951192

Shuttle Tragedy \'Smoking Gun\' Found

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20030707/shuttle.html

"July 8, 2003 — In a sad and dramatic finale to a series of tests to recreate the damage that downed shuttle Columbia and killed seven astronauts, a 1.6-pound chunk of foam blasted from the barrel of a nitrogen gun on Monday punched a jagged 16-inch hole in a donor shuttle wing panel."

Re: Shuttle Tragedy \'Smoking Gun\' Found

I saw that test on the news last night. But they didn't say that they used a nitrogen gun or that the foam chunk they shot at the wing was 1.6 pounds.