Another Space Shuttle

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When humanity wants to go forward it has to make sacrifices, **** happens..

 

I didn't see the things on telly that Elios told about, and I'm glad I didn't. I think I wouldn't have any telly left here.
On the 1st of Februari, 50 years ago, our country was flooded for a big part. But you see no pictures of the many dead people. It was immoral. If people today are gonna search out the catasrofies by themselves, giggling while thay do, then what will I see on telly in the next 50 years?
And what 'funny' jokes will be made?

Sorry for being off-topic.

[ February 02, 2003, 13:52: Message edited by: Master of Nuhn ]

 

Shell, I agree with you, but if you want animals to get more rights, taking away respect from humans isn't going to be the way.

 

Eilos, you say this is a major tragedy, i hardly think it can be classed as that, and as for crying about it. Well i don't believe you.

I think Z-Layrex was actually making the point that because they are American everyone has to hype up the situation. If it was Russians, it would not even make the headlines.

It is a shame that this has happened but not really worth thinking about too much. These people died doing what they know to be a dangerous job, same principles as apply to the army. But i DO have a lot of respect for their work. (unlike the army)

 

I call B.S. Just turned on CNN and they were talking about -- the 7 Canadians in B.C. that lost their lives in an avalanche.

I distinctly remember when the Kursk was lost noone sat around saying : "well, they knew it was dangerous." They certainly didn't say, "Boom!" The loss of the Kursk was all over the news in the U.S. and the loss of a shuttle would be as well.

[ February 02, 2003, 18:00: Message edited by: Laches ]

 

The reality of the situation is that CNN is based here, in the States.

So is MSNBC. So is ABC, ESPN, and a few others which I don't remember the acronym for.

It's closer to home. I don't get the BBC on my TV. But I do get CNN and MSNBC.

If I was watching BBC, I'd be expecting Britt stuff. If I was watching FBC (whatever), I'd be expecting French stuff. MBC, Mongolian stuff. RBC, Russian stuff. SBC, Slovakian stuff.

Anyways, those airframes are getting old. Really old. Upwards of 20 years old.

Time for a new Shuttle.

 

It wasn't just an American mission, there was an Israeli and Indian astronaut on the ship as well. The other thing to keep in mind is, the NASA space program is not about just advancing American interests in space, it's advancing the interests of humanity as a whole.

Although it is a terrible loss and tragedy, I hope it doesn't set back the space program too much. The truth is, space travel is an exacting science, desptie how "routine" shuttle launches seem nowadays. The re-entry trajectory needs to be perfect every time! Too steep and your craft burns up on re-entry, too shallow and you bounce off the atmosphere.

I certainly feel for the familites of those lost...But their's was a dangerous profession, each astronaut knows the risks each time they go up. And if given the chance to go or not into space, knowing the risks involved, I doubt any of them would have made a choice not to go.

 

To be honest here, I see some spokesperson for NASA has said "may have knocked off some tiles".

And, when I read about the foam nailing the wing, my instinctive reaction was that they would have done an hour-long space walk, and visually inspected the wing as best they could, and done a cursory inspection of the rest of the craft.

Man.

They go out with the equipment every single time. They go up with all the tools they need, and the SCPU's and the whole works for anything "extra" that they might just be handed. I don't really know, but as psycho as they let those engineers get, I bet they have a contingency plan for losing the teflon tiles. There's probably one or two spares they take with them.

And yeah, everytime they exit the craft, they take some radiation and a greater risk of losing someone to debris.

But, from what it sounds like, it wasn't quite a "routine" glitch for the foam to hit the boat. Hell, even the ice doesn't make the headlines, and the foam was registered on the news the day after it went up.

Even if it was just a bad call, I'm wondering why they didn't check out the boat.

 

Wouldn't this better fit AoDA?

 

EJ...there was no way for them to go out and inspect. They haven't carried MMU's (Manned Maneuvering Units - basically jet backpacks) since before Challenger was lost, and there are no handholds on the outside of the shuttle (they wouldn't be practical as they would just burn up on re-entry and need to be replaced). Most EVA's you see them doing are usually confined to the payload bay area, and anywhere the robot arm can reach....the wings and underside of the vehicle are not accessible, even with the arm. Also, on the first three missions, there was a plan to repair tiles in case of damage. It was just an epoxy resin that would ablate, or burn off, during re-entry. They don't carry it anymore, for what reason, I don't know. As for carrying replacement tiles, that wouldn't be practical, since no two tiles are exactly the same. They would have to carry an entire set just to be sure they had the ones that needed replacing, and that's over 30,000 of them.

As for the age of the shuttle fleet, each shuttle was designed to last for 100 launches, and this was Columbia's 28th flight - not even middle aged yet. Also, since Columbia was the first shuttle built, it was overengineered and actually much stronger than the other 4 (now 3). This also meant it was heavier than the others, so was the only shuttle in the fleet not able to reach the ISS. Also keep in mind, Columbia just came off a 17 month overhaul and upgrade, using 1,000,000 man-hours of labor.

As for the foam coming off and making headlines this time when they don't usually do that, the only thing I can think of is that normally pieces falling off are not as visible as this one was. They are usually only a few inches in size, but this piece has been described as "as big as a door".

 

If there is one thing I hate, its being called a liar. Sir Dragon, where the hell do you get off doing so? You, don't believe I cried hearing aobut this? Are you some shallow person that you think it is impossible for someone to be emotional over an event were lives were lost because you aren't? You don't know me, you have no idea what kind of a person I am except from reading what I post here. How dare you make an an accusation of me such as that.
I consider any event that takes place were lives are lost to be a major tradgedy. Yes, its true they knew the risks getting into it. But that still doesn't make it any less of a terrible event.

 

Wow.

Just wow.

I was under the impression they carried a MMU (hell, I called it a Self Contained Propulsion Unit; shows you how much I know) every time. I know you have to cut back on weight, so you can do other things, but it gives me the willies just thinking about not having the ability for someone to leave the shuttle. I've seen them launching the satellites with them, so I know they still take them up according to the mission. And the neat satellite missions are still classified to this day, so you never really know what their whole manifest is. With an Israeli onboard, I'm guessing they didn't take any of the fun stuff.

It's like Apollo 9 (?), where they had just the command module. And if that little jewel didn't work, or the batteries started popping, there'd have been some dead astronauts.

This one time, I'm wondering if it (the MMU) would have come in handy. If we've just been getting pretty lucky all this time.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not the guy that sits down here and says crap like "you were wrong". I don't know the pressures everyone was facing. I know it's different when you're the one on the scene, making the call.

Hell, half the mission control guys might have been operating on 4 hours of sleep in the past 48 hours for all I know. I do know funding is a pain. Micromanagers yelling about money better spent on affirmative action and kickbacks and whatnot.

All I'm saying here is how do we (in reference to NASA and the United States; it's not like I work for NASA here) prevent something like this from happening again?

Would a visual inspection have even turned up anything if there was something amiss? Can you do internal damage that isn't externally visable?

If there were tiles missing, what's the option? Get another shuttle up there? How dangerous would it be to have to just throw the whole mission together within 3 days like that? Is there another External Tank ready to go within that time frame? What about the SRB turnaround time?

Man. This is the kind of psychosis I'm talking about. When the Apollos were going up, and even when the shuttles were first launching, they had people who's jobs were just comming up with THE most retarded possibilities, then they had other teams comming up with solutions from those retarded possibilities. The waste tube backing up and stuff.

The resin sounds like a good engineer's plan. But if it was 5 or 6 tiles, you'd have to have another answer.

 

Well EJ....the biggest reason they don't do what they should is cost. It costs money to send up shuttles on a more frequent schedule, and it's not a simple matter to just fuel up the ET and mosey on out to the pad. At best, a shuttle can be readied for a flight in about two months, and once it gets to the pad, it takes a couple days to go through all the system checks, fueling, and such. I have no doubt that if an emergency cropped up with a magnitude of the Apollo 13 mission, that they could accelerate the prep time somewhat, but it would still take at least a month to get another shuttle up there.

Most of the costs of the shuttle program - and the space program in general - is in manpower. Sure, the launch vehicles have a high cost in and of themselves, but it's the day-to-day workings of the ground crews, mission-control people, contractors, janitors, security people, and whatnot that eats up most of the budget. It's the same with military funding...most of the $$ goes for paying the soldiers, giving them and their families medical care, providing housing, food, etc. Even while I was in the military, we were always told that the government would rather lose equipment than people, because equipment is easy and cheap to replace, people aren't. It's the same way with the space program.

The short-sightedness of the government budget people is what has brought on a lot of this. By cutting NASA's budget constantly, they forced them to cut back on better systems, some safety features (biggest example - using solid rocket boosters for liftoff...once they're lit, you can't shut them off, unlike the liquid-fueled main engines), building a larger fleet, which would allow more frequent flights and allow a backup that might be needed for emergencies, and so on. The original plans for the shuttle were to have a totally reuseable system, with the shuttle riding piggyback on a larger launch vehicle (similar to the modified 747 used to transport the orbiter from California landings back to Florida), but it was deemed too expensive, and so sacrifices were made. In the past ten years, there have been many programs started that would eventually replace the shuttle system, but nearly all have been abandoned due to costs - NASA just doesn't have the funding to continue with projects such as the ISS, AND develop new launch systems, so they have to rely on older systems and modify existing equipment, to do things it was never intended to do. Even the crawler/transporter used to ferry the shuttle to the pad (originally built to carry the Apollo Saturn V vehicles to the pad) wasn't intended to last more than a few hundred hours of operation...it's at several thousand hours now, and to be honest, even if NASA had the money to replace it, I don't think they would, because in this case, it was well-designed, and well worth the money spent on it to begin with.

A visual inspection MIGHT have turned up some missing tiles, but if they weren't missing, but simply loose, or cracked, they might never have noticed. It would also take several hours to inspect them, and even then you wouldn't get a good look at them. It takes several people a couple weeks to check them out on the ground...imagine one or two people, in EVA suits and microgravity, trying to check them all out.

Again, it all comes down to the compromises required to perform a mission on a very limited budget. I'm not saying that if NASA had an unlimited budget, that things like this WOULDN'T happen, but they would happen less frequently. Actually, when you think about it, NASA's safety record is pretty good. We've sent over 400 people into space since the early sixties, and lost only 17 people (and 3 of those were on the ground, with no intention of a launch for another couple weeks), 115 shuttle launches, 6 Mercury flights, 12 Gemini flights, 10 Apollo flights, 3 Skylab missions, and the Apollo/Soyuz Test Project. That's really not a bad record for such a low budget agency to have. Think how much better it would be if they had the money to implement certain safety features.

For example, when I was in the Air Force, I worked on F-111's. These were the only aircraft the military had in active duty with an escape capsule, rather than ejection seats. The entire cockpit would seperate and land on a parachute. Now if NASA had the $$, they could have implemented a similar system for the shuttle, and 14 astronauts might still be alive today. Or at least they would have stood a better chance...

 

True, they may have had some options. But going at the speed they were going? I was listening to a press conference today that was with a NASA representative (I think) and a similar question came up. He pointed out that anything being ejected from that speed would have been shredded instantly.

 

Not if it was designed from the start to be able to withstand the forces involved. After all, the shuttle as a whole survives those speeds and higher with no problems (except in this case, obviously). Again, it goes back to all the design compromises made at the beginning of the shuttle program - the original designs had an ejectable crew capsule, but it was deemed too costly and not necessary.

Of course, that spokesman is correct in his assessment, but only for the shuttle as it exists now. There's no way that an ejectable crew capsule can be retrofitted onto current vehicles, but any new programs that make it to production can - and dare I say it? - WILL have a crew capsule that can survive separation at high speeds and altitudes. [sarcasm]But only if the budget allows for it.[/sarcasm]

The shuttle program is the only manned program in the history of either the American or Soviet/Russian space programs that has no escape system for it's crews (well, actually there is one, but the shuttle has to be at 20,000 feet or lower, traveling under Mach 1 and in a normal flight attitude - no help for those seven souls lost yesterday). Mercury and Apollo had the Launch Escape System (the latticework tower and rocket motors above the capsule) and the Gemini program had ejection seats. In the case of Columbia, it wouldn't have helped, since the accident occurred during re-entry, but it may have helped the Challenger crew.

On that note, I'd like to end here with a poem that might help people to understand why we (meaning mankind) do things like go into space. This poem and the words before it was copied and pasted from another message board I frequent.

The poem, "High Flight," was written by John Gillespie Magee, a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force whose life ended in the Second World War. It's such a trifle compared to the heavy sadness we all feel, but I think it captures the reason why some of us -- and maybe all of us -- dream of "slipping the surly bonds of Earth," even if it means risking the ultimate price. The poet and Columbia's brave crew may have met the same end, but it's comforting to know that they had much, much more in common.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds,--and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless falls of air...
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor e'er eagle flew--
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

 

Hmmmm.

Man.

Sounds like not a whole lot that could have been done. Even if they'd seen something was wrong.

How much oxygen and water do they take up with them? The usual missions last, what, 14 days?

Do they take a full month's worth of consumables?

So, you'd have had, at the most, maybe 2 weeks to come up with something?

 

Beautiful and fitting poem.
The news tonight was like, "We take you live, to where roving reporter, Max Studreporter is with John Redneck who has found what may be the largest piece of the shuttle Columbia."
WTF, so you find a piece you're a celebrety or something? The guy was talking about how he found it this morning in his horse pasture. He said he didn't think anything of it yesterday. He thought it was a horse toy and the horses were kicking it around and playing with it overnight. Another was acting like he was the ***t for finding it. I know, I know, its just human nature. But, arrrgggghhhhh!

[ February 03, 2003, 08:15: Message edited by: Elios ]

 

EJ....yeah, their hands were pretty much tied on what they could do. If something like this had happened before, mission control could have advised Columbia to abort the mission. During launch, there ARE plans to abort, depending on the circumstances. Assuming that they knew the insulation from the ET would have caused the kind of damage it MAY have done, they would just ride out the flight until the SRB's burned out and separated, then they could have shut down the main engines, separated from the ET and glided in to a landing at one of the emergency landing fields in Spain or Africa...that's what they're there for. However, since this was a first time occurence, they had no idea it was as serious as it turned out to be.

I believe every shuttle mission takes up a full load of 30 days supplies, just in case. You're right in that most missions only last about two weeks, but there have been several missions that had to be extended, for either weather problems on the ground, or problems occurring with whatever they are doing up there, such as satellite repairs taking longer than expected, or problems with one or more of the four main computers, or for other reasons. Unfortunately, I don't think it would be long enough to get another shuttle ready to go get them.

Elios....I agree. I've heard of this poem since I was about eight or nine (I'm 38 now). One of our local TV stations would play a video after the National Anthem when they would sign off at 2 or 3 in the morning. The video featured a voiceover of someone reciting it, while footage of U.S. Air Force T-38 Talon jet trainers were flying through "the long, delerious, burning blue". I wish they still did that, so I could videotape it.

About 15 years ago, maybe longer, Berke Breathed did a Bloom County Sunday comic strip with the poem being written over various panels of Opus the penguin attempting to fly. I cut it out and framed it and it hangs on the wall near my computer. The humor is lost right now, but the message is still the same...we will always try to strive for the impossible.

I've seen other news reports that make me really cringe at the ignorance of some people. CNN had a news ticker going that said the shuttle was flying "18 times the speed of light". Another report stated that the shuttle was at 200,000 miles altitude (it was actually 200,000 FEET - for reference, the moon is about 240,000 MILES from Earth), and another placed it at 200 feet. Another reporter was talking to some other official and deliberately trying to get the guy to say it was a terrorist act.

To paraphrase Don Henley of the Eagles:

"Well, I could have been an actor
But I wound up here
I just have to look good
I don't have to be clear
Come and whisper in my ear
We need dirty laundry

See the bubbleheaded bleachblonde
Comes on at five
She can tell you 'bout the shuttle crash
With a gleam in her eye
It's int'resting when people die
Give us dirty laundry"

[ February 03, 2003, 08:44: Message edited by: MaxxQ64 ]

 

Spot on.

 

Some people make me sick. I saw a picture yesterday, and I swear, it looked so computer generated. We have all seen the footage where you can't tell what it is, and it just splits apart, well this one had a huge explosion, and shrapnel flying off, with a good three millimeters of white bordering around all of that fake looking stuff! This is a time of mourning, not some jerks claim to fame.