Listen to David McAlary's report (RealAudio) McAlary report - Download 583k (RealAudio)Posted on 02/01/2003 8:02:03 PM PST by Destro
NASA Grounds Shuttle Fleet While Probing Columbia Disaster
David McAlary
Washington
02 Feb 2003, 01:22 UTC
Listen to David McAlary's report (RealAudio) McAlary report - Download 583k (RealAudio)
The U.S. space agency, NASA, is suspending future shuttle flights until it knows what caused the loss of the shuttle Columbia and its seven- member crew. Columbia broke up over Texas Saturday minutes before it was to land in Florida after a 16-day research mission in Earth orbit.
Seven astronauts, including the first from Israel, went down to their deaths in a hail of shuttle debris over Texas. Dramatic videotapes from a Dallas television station show it streaking to Earth in several smoking pieces.
Shuttle officials say the first sign of a problem was the loss of readings from sensors that measure tire pressure and temperature and structural heat on the orbiter's left side as it at headed toward landing at 18 times the speed of sound. Chief flight director Milt Heflin says controllers lost all contact with the shuttle minutes later.
"We lost the data and that's when we clearly began to know that we had a bad day," he said.
News reports tell of shuttle remains strewn across a wide area of east Texas. NASA is sending technicians to Texas to collect it with help from national, state, and local emergency agencies. NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe has established both an internal and independent external review board to investigate the cause of the disaster.
"This is indeed a tragic day for the NASA family, for the families of the astronauts, and likewise tragic for the nation," said Mr. O'Keefe.
The head of the shuttle program, Ron Dittemore, says debris analysis is key to understanding what happened to Columbia. He pledged a non-stop effort to assess it and all related flight data.
"It's going to take us some time to work through the evidence and the analysis to clearly understand what the cause was," he explained. "We will be poring over that data 24 hours a day for the foreseeable future."
Pending the answer, NASA is suspending all space shuttle flights. It has stopped preparing orbiters for flight at the Kennedy Space Center launch site, including the one that was scheduled to exchange crews at the International Space Station in early March.
A Russian supply rocket, set for launch Sunday, is bringing supplies that NASA says will support the station crew through late June.
Seventeen years ago, the shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after launch, but the Columbia disaster is the first time a shuttle has been lost returning from orbit since the program began 113 missions ago in 1981.
At the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, space expert Joan Johnston-Freese notes that takeoff and landings are the most dangerous times for space shuttles.
"That's when the maximum pressure and velocity occur," she said. "The shuttle lands as a large glider and control is always a challenge, but under those conditions of pressure and velocity, the shuttle is so super-heated at that point that it's a very volatile situation under the best of conditions."
As part of NASA's probe, technicians will look for any signs that an unusual launch incident may have damaged critical insulating tiles on the shuttle's left wing, the side of the shuttle where the sensor readings went dead. Insulation from the rocket that helped boost Columbia to orbit flew off and hit the wing during liftoff.
Shuttle manager Dittemore says that after exhaustive analysis early in the mission, flight engineers determined that it probably would have no affect on the flight. But given Columbia's loss, he did not dismiss the potential impact to the wing.
"We're going to go back and see if there is a connection. Is that the smoking gun? It is not. We don't know enough about it. A lot more analysis and evidence needs to come to the table," he emphasized. "It's not fair to represent the tile damage as the source. It's just something we need to go look at."
When the Columbia disaster occurred, NASA administrator O'Keefe was at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida awaiting the shuttle's return with the families and friends of the astronauts. What was to be a happy reunion turned into grief-stricken moments of consolation. Mr. O'Keefe paid tribute to the astronauts, whom he said dedicated their lives to facing scientific challenges for all of us on Earth.
"The loss of this valued crew is something we will never be able to get over and certainly the families of all of them," he said. "We have assured them we will do everything, everything, we can possibly do to guarantee that they work their way through this horrific tragedy."
Security had been tighter than usual at the landing site because the presence of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon prompted government fears that he might be the target of a terrorist attack. However, NASA says there is no indication that terrorism is involved in the shuttle loss.
Your post brought this Urban legend to mind.
True, if sad, analogy. One time is a chance, two times is a system...
I am all for human space exploration but I do not think that shuttles should be flown ever again. The Space Shuttle is obsolete. The fact that NASA has no alternative now does not speak kindly for their planning abilities. It looks like human space flight is set back by decades as a result of the NASA approach.
I've heard that O'Keefe has reputation of a "bean counter". Not exactly the right qualifications for a leader of space exploration. He is the guy who scuttled X-33 BTW. They planned to fly the shuttles for 15 more years! This disaster was bound to happen...
The Russian philosophy on space vehicles is build them simple and strong, and test the crap out of them. That is very similar to the old American attitude as exemplified by the Boeing development of the B-29, the B-47, and the B-707.
The Soyuz rocket and capsule system does its job just fine: it gets people into space and back down again reliably. That's it. That's all you need to do. They don't try to fly an incredibly complex machine operating near the edge of its capability. There's a lot to be said for that.
It all depends on the mission and what you want to do. If you want to commercialize space, you use the shuttle and technologies. If you want to make survival missions, then you use rockets and simplicity.
It is like choosing between being a survivalist or a surgeon. The missions are different and the tools of surgery are markedly different. You are comparing Apples and Oranges.
That is pure garbage. The shuttle makes satellite placement what 100 -- 200 percent more expensive than disposable rockets?
The most important of those limits are not the current ones, but the one imposed by Presidents Nixon and Carter, when the shuttle was designed. Lots of factors led to a "spend money later during operations rather than during design and production" attitude. One major example, directly related to the Challenger disaster, was that the Shuttle was originally to have a fly back booster, rather than the solid rocket motors that they ended up with. The shuttle is th only manned spacecraft to ever use solid rockets, and it uses the largest diameter ones every made (for production at least). Even then, logistical considerations meant that the SRBs are not as large in diameter as the designers might have wished.
Indeed, it was "a generation behind" when the first one flew, and like the rest of the Soviet/Russian space program, doesn't have all that great a safety record either.
The Soyuz is a capsule, not a booster. The Russians do have some big boosters, although nothing in Saturn V class, not that works that is.
I love Star Trek too, but we ain't there yet.
And if you and Lamar Smith (Rep. Texas) get your way, we never will be, now will we?
The only way something "disposable" makes any sense at all is if it leaves the booster on the ground. Say using a great big ass laser for example.
Umm, Boeing bought MacDac about 4-5 years ago, it was in all the papers. Perhaps you meant Boeing and LocMart? Those being about the only games in town when it come building things that fly, not counting things that beat the air into submission with Rotors, although many of those are Boeing birds too,and none are LockMart)
Well they really didn't have any choice, their first H-bombs were big suckers and so they had to build big rockets to carry them. Some of that they did by simpley stacking together lots of (relatively) small rocket engines.
I mis-stated above, the Soyuz is a rocket as well as a capsule, the design goes back to the early Soviet ICBMs, IOW to the late '50s early 60s.
It's called Energia
I was under the impression that the X-30 and the Aurora where vastly similar.
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