Posted on 02/02/2003 6:35:58 PM PST by TLBSHOW
;^)
These folks at NASA are no more above suspicion than the people we've had at the CIA, for example.
Does anyone REALLY think that CIA employees are a risky bunch, but NASA folks aren't?
I suggest that given enough scratch--which al-Qa'ida, Saddam, and the Saudi Arabian oligarchy, for example, have in great abundance--do you really think it impossible that they could have bought a high-ranking technician who might have fixed things so that Israeli Air Force officer never saw earth again? And our brave crew with him?
Sorry, to me it is no more improbable to consider than that NASA folks in toto were lax and incompetent--again.
I think the great majority of those folks are too conscientious, especially after Challenger, to allow something like this to happen quite by accident.
I have NOTHING to go by than my own tinfoil hat-eligible suspicions, but this is just too coincidental.
A shuttle flight, post-9/11, with Israel's first astronaut, disintegrates on reentry?
Nah, that's just a coincidence...isn't it?
Wow, it was a little bigger than I thought. I thought it was about the size of a small person.
Looks like it was bad from the start. No point in telling the crew and public if there was no way out. The chance for a safe re-entry was still there.
Yeah, I agree. It just would've been a death sentence.
There was no sure way of knowing how much damage there was, once the shuttle was in orbit. Second guessing is all there is. 20-20 hindsight is much clearer.
True.
WRIGHT IS RIGHT! RESPONDED TO KOZAK: "I think you're missing the point. ON THE GROUND, it's a multi-step procedure. In space, on an emergency basis, ANY tile repair is going to be better than bare shuttle aluminum skin. And it could easily be cut-n-paste. Anything to improve the chances of getting home." KOZAK RESPONDED: Really? You know this for a fact? What type of adhesive do they use in the vacumm and temperature extremes of space? Duct tape? You think you are MORE informed then the engineers and techs at NASA? You think that they haven't studied this in the past? EVERYTHING is SO EASY from the couch and in retrospect....
The black heat-shield material would ALREADY BE GLUED to the styrofoam AS USUAL. The only step needed to be acomplished by the crew in space is cutting the already-coated styrofoam and then glueing it to the shuttle. I would think that there is some kind of adhesive that could be used in space.
As far as being "MORE informed than the engineers and techs at NASA," I am not an engineer and I don't purport to be one. I do, however, "think-out-of-the-box," which according to what happened on the Apollo 13 mission, the "engineers" were pretty poor at "thinking-out-of-the-box." It seemed to be a strain for them to come up with a way to make the contraption work. I FREQUENTLY come up with creative, "thinking-out-of-the-box" ways to accomplish things.
P.S. The Doctor just came in and we're breaking outta here right now!!! Finally, after a WEEK!
It would be like looking for viles of smallpox, or another weaponized bio agent in Iraq.
Engineers tend to want to "do things right." Engineers abhor slapdash solutions and will usually reject any solution that doesn't come with a guarantee of engineering elegance and permanency. But when you're out there with missing tiles, bare aluminum skin and your own neck on the line, you TAKE the inelegant solution because it keeps you from cremation.
So the engineers will naturally tend to reject any repair idea that isn't as good as a ground-applied tile. That's just their mindset. They are also, unfortunately, huge disciples of the Not Done Here Theory - it can't be good because we didn't think of it.
Michael
Thanks for the credit Jael, that was admirable on your part to take the time to link to my original post, but you did the most thorough job. Giving credit for "first source" isn't something the mass media often does, especially when they get their story ideas from sites like FreeRepublic!
I consider the Greg Katnik NASA article finding a group effort, starting with Prov1322's initial post Very close-up, slo-mo of the Columbia launch debris. which caught my attention and started my initial research (flash video no longer up unfortunately), through the far more excellent detailed posts you have made in this thread. [By the way, I have discovered that the reason you couldn't reach my link to NASA engineer Greg Katnick's article "Working on a Tile Damage Mystery (in which significant tile damage due to external tank insulation debris was found on Columbia's flight STS-87 in late 1997) was because I accidently linked to his bio instead of the article, which you fortunately managed to find again yourself and post in this thread. Interestingly, I first found the alternate link you posted in this thread, http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/2121/used_news.htm, but searched a little more to find the "official" nasa link. We must both use Google.]
So, WE Freepers broke this story about Katnick's NASA article first, on 2/1/2003 on Freerepublic at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/834139/posts?page=54#54.
As best as I can tell, this did not make the major news until the following two articles:
* Orlando Sentinel's Bob Shaw and Michael Cabbage wrote the article Foam chunks a problem since 1981. This was posted at www.orlandosentinel.com on Monday, 2/3/2003, however the same article with the title Fuel-tank insulation capable of causing `incredible damage' is at www.centredaily.com, a PA newspaper, with the post date 2/2/2003.* John Kelly's 2/3/2003 Florida Today article NASA's debris experts have been working on foam issue for years . This was posted at Freerepublic by McGruff at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/835049/posts.
Since that time, a Google news search shows Katnik's name all over the place, this story is really spreading. On 2/4/2003, The NY Times James Glanz and Edward Wong's article " '97 Report Warned of Foam Damaging Tiles-Absence of Freon Led to Detachment of Foam" also fell in line to make Greg Katnik a bit famous, as kattracks posted a link to at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/835505/posts.
But remember, we posted it here at FreeRepublic first!.
In my original post, I noted that Katnick had written an article. It was on a NASA educational site for students, and its obvious its the same source the big guys used -did they get it from FreeRepublic, or did they do their own search?; The news guys turned it into a "report," and the Orlando Sentinel provided this clarification just yesterday, 1/4/2003:
The NASA engineer credited with writing a sharply critical 1997 report about damage to heat-resistant tiles on the space shuttle Columbia said Monday that the report had actually been ghostwritten by another NASA writer.But Greg Katnik, a shuttle engineer who led the team that inspected the Columbia in December 1997, stood by the accuracy of the report. The report said more than 300 of the shuttle's fragile tiles had been damaged by foam insulation that fell off its external fuel tank during liftoff from Kennedy Space Center.
The report, which summarized a formal 76-page inspection analysis that Katnik had submitted to NASA, also said that more than 100 of Columbia's tiles had to be replaced and called the damage to the shuttle "significant."
But Katnik, a 20-year employee of Kennedy Space Center, said his formal analysis had been summarized and "embellished" by a NASA writer for NASA Quest, an agency-run Web site aimed at schoolchildren.
"I don't write that way either for kids or adults," he said. "I think he [the writer] was trying to make it dramatic for the kids.
"It wasn't meant to sound that dire," he added.
Katnik pointed to passages on the Web site describing a "massive" loss of insulating foam from the external fuel tank.
He said the NASA ghostwriter had accurately summarized the facts in his report -- which was not filed until February 1998 -- but had made the language more conversational. For example, his conclusion that the number of damaged tiles was "out of family" was changed to read, "the extent of the damage at the conclusion of this mission was not 'normal.' "
He said the NASA writer had turned his customarily "dry" technical language into something "that is more or less a detective story." It was intended to be an example of "how engineering is used to detect and fix a problem," he said.
The report was first cited in a story in Monday's Orlando Sentinel. The newspaper's attempts to reach him for comment Sunday had been unsuccessful.
On Monday, after receiving numerous calls from reporters, Katnik was given clearance by his NASA supervisors to answer questions.
Anthony Colarossi can be reached at acolarossi@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-6218
Keep it up.
LOL
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