13 Years Ago Today Columbia Remembered
- Thread starter Villanova U
- Start date
Really inferior sequel to Challenger disaster. Bunch of streaking objects across sky doesn't evoke a lot of excitement. The original was a huge fireball that made people jump up from their seats. This was just a Yawn.
Apparently mission control knew they were going to burn up during re-entry but decided against telling the astronauts
NickleDimer
Post 'Til Your Fingers Bleed
A proper remembered thread. Well done. Let's cut spending on science and nasa and build 5 more air craft carriers.
No teacher. A piss poor visual death of astronauts. Happened at 8am on a Saturday. And in 2003 no one gave a shit about NASA, space or shuttle launches.
That doesn't exactly support your argument, and cites (without attributing) a blog post from this Wayne Hale guy. All it says is that there was a guy who thought there might be a problem. The article also uses the term "on orbit," which doesn't make any sense. Very TJ Corbs-type reporting.
Here is the quote from the actual blog post:
During the last week of Columbia’s flight, I was in Houston and attended the MMT on Monday morning in person. Calvin Schomberg of JSC’s Engineering organization gave the discussion of preliminary results on possible damage to the shuttle tiles from the ascent debris strike. Much has been made of this analysis in the CAIB report. There were flaws in the analysis, but post accident testing showed that the bottom line was correct: a glancing foam strike on the underside of the left wing would have damaged the soft thermal tiles but probably not to the point at which fatal heat would reach the interior of the wing. Calvin was a recognized expert on the shuttle tile system. After discussion of other minor issues on the mission and the status of the ongoing experiments, the MMT was adjourned.
In the hall outside the meeting, I encountered Don Curry. I asked him if there was any concern with the RCC. His reply ‘Oh, the RCC is tough stuff. You know during qualification testing we even shot ice at it. The RCC is OK.’ That was good enough for me. The expert had spoken. It never occurred to me to ask anyone else; nor did the question come up formally during the MMT review.
In the hall outside the meeting, I encountered Don Curry. I asked him if there was any concern with the RCC. His reply ‘Oh, the RCC is tough stuff. You know during qualification testing we even shot ice at it. The RCC is OK.’ That was good enough for me. The expert had spoken. It never occurred to me to ask anyone else; nor did the question come up formally during the MMT review.
This is kind of like saying that mission control knew there was a chance they could die, because space flight is inherently dangerous, and elected not to tell them. There is no evidence anywhere that anyone in Nasa knew that the shuttle was damaged. They saw that some foam had come off the shuttle during launch and hit the wing, which happens all the time. They had no imaging equipment on board and no way to see if anything was wrong with the heat shields. They weren't anywhere near the ISS to maybe have someone take another look.
What would you have liked them to have said? "Uhh, this is Houston. Some foam came off during launch and hit your wing. This happens all the time, and our analysis shows that there might be damage but probably not to the point of being dangerous. Nothing you can do to look at it and diagnose it, and even if there was, there's nothing you can do to fix it anyway. Maybe just try to go a little slower when you slam into the atmosphere at a million miles per second. We have no facts whatsoever, we are just reporting speculation for no reason. Thanks, bye."
Should have trusted me. 21st century aviation disaster is kind of my thing
