Columbia

[Benji]

This stuff always gets me down. I'm going to look at my Orange post.

[ApolloXI]

ABC Primetime's special on the Columbia was caulk full great info. They brought in three 3 famous space explorers Story Musgarve, an Apollo XIII Flight Dir., and Another I can't remeber who. Musgarve said that he has developed a way to look at the under side of the wing but the flight said that at that time they had to clue what to look for a pin sized hole to a huge gash. They had the engineer who sent the e-mail that said he disagreed with the board he was on to see if any damage was created my the foam. As we are taut is space camp that we must speak our opinion out if something is wrong but he had no proof but a gut feeling. I think that he still should have voiced his opinion to the broad because he might have been not the only person with a gut feeling.

[Benji]

It's good to put something down on paper. If you send an e-mail, you have proof that you thought there might be a problem and you did your job. But think of all of the similar e-mails for other missions that there weren't problems with. There's just no way to be 100% sure.

[Boomerang]

Well unfortunately i missed the program because i didnt lknow about it till it was too late to see it. Anyone know if it will be rebroadcast? Also i dont know if they showed the foam test they conducted yestrerday or not but the foam punched a hole about 16 inches wide in the RCC panel. And on space.com theure is an article today that says Atlantis had hot gas leak into its wing 3 years ago although nothing as major as this. Aparently it was caused by ice falling from the external tank and striking the right wing of Atlantis.

[Benji]

So this is a bigger problem than we thought. We need new equipment.

[stargazer0105]

They had the engineer who sent the e-mail that said he disagreed with the board he was on to see if any damage was created my the foam.

I dont' know if anyone else noticed, but they talked about a meeting that was held where they gave anyone who thought something might be wrong a chance to speak up, and he sat there and kept his mouth shut. Last night it sounded to me like he was trying to cover up not objecting then.

[Boomerang]

Aparently so. Hopefully they can build on the repair research NASA LaRC did in the 80s and come up with some way of repairing tiles in orbit till we can get something new flying. Unfortunately we need the shuttle right now if we want to keep the ISS up and running so we cant just stop flights all together and wait to develop- something new.

[ApolloXI]

Also i dont know if they showed the foam test they conducted yestrerday or not but the foam punched a hole about 16 inches wide in the RCC panel.

Yes they did show it. The hole was big enough to put your head thourgh it. I say they should layer the title on all the leading edges.

[Boomerang]

Well this is weird because i know i responded to this post but for some reason i guess it didnt go through. There is one problem with layering tiles. The weight. Even thouygh the tiles are light weight the more weight you add the less cargo you can carry. And you have to remember the shuttle is covered in thousands of tiles so that could be a lot of extra weight added.

[Benji]

On all of the leading edges there is RCC, Renforced Carbon-Carbon. It's very strong, much stronger than the tiles on the rest of the craft. For more info, check out the Thermal Protection System Modifications section of the Space Shuttle Reference Manual

[Boomerang]

Well i already knew that one Benji but even so layering them like Apollo suggest would add weight that the shuttles cant afford on many missions. Some of the ISS assembly flights the shuttles are being pushed to their limits in weight as it is so adding more weight like that isnt an option. Weight has been a problem since the beginning of the space program. Look at Apollo even with the huge Saturn Boosters the CSM and LM's pushed the boosters to their limit weight wise. And although the shuttle has a large cargo capacity it still has limits and as i said before some of the ISS flights are already pushing that. Best option in my eyes looks like a repair kit. NASA LaRC developed one in the 80's but it was abandoned. And some work would need to be done to update it fpr the current TPS but it could be done.

[Benji]

Weight will always be a problem as long as we're using rockets to get into space. It takes a lot of fuel to get anything into orbit. I agree. We need the Shuttle to go to the ISS, but we won't be able to get there if we add too much weight. We need a solution to keep these bird flying until we can replace them.

[Boomerang]

Well thats what NASA has been working on since the accident. The repair kit they are working on is a big step. The redesigns of the area around the bipod and making spy sattelites available for every flight as well as only launching during the day and improving camera quality will all help keep this from happening again. I just hope we can get the shuttles flying again and at the same time get to work on a replacement.

[ApolloXI]

There is an article about would should be done about the Columbia debris on http://www.space.com. I think that some of the debris like the crew cabin and the left wing should on be used for resreach and development but thing like the right wing and other pices should at least be displayed NASA's center or the Smithsonian. A window from Apollo I is displayed in the USSRC such artifacts remind us of the risk of manned flight. I think NASA should print a book with black and white photos of the crew cabin and other parts of the shuttle to give people diffrent prosptive views. Plus most of the damage to the cabin is mostly from the breakup.


NASA Debates Display of Columbia Debris
By Mike Schneider
Associated Press
posted: 09:00 am ET
21 July 2003



CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- NASA officials are delicately seeking advice about what to do with the 84,000 shattered pieces from Columbia, cautiously broaching the idea of putting some shuttle parts on display.

There is no precedent for publicly displaying disasters from the U.S. space program. And in the case of Columbia, there are mixed feelings among the survivors of the astronauts.

"It touches everybody who sees it,'' said Jonathan Clark, husband of astronaut Laurel Clark. "It has a tremendous impact on you. It makes you realize the importance of space exploration."

Kirstie McCool Chadwick, sister of pilot Willie McCool, said she supports the debris being used for research, but ``I don't know what the purpose of displaying it in public would be. I'm not sure that it makes sense to me."

Officials from several cities have written NASA asking for pieces of Columbia for their own memorials, and curators at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington have been holding informal discussions with the space agency.

A decision may come by the end of this month. For now, the debris is spread on the floor of a hangar at the Kennedy Space Center. It will remain there until the end of August when the Columbia Accident Investigation Board is expected to issue its report on the cause of the disaster. The shuttle broke apart over Texas on Feb. 1, killing all seven astronauts.

"One thing we're not going to do, which was done with the Challenger, is lock it up and bury it and pretend that it didn't happen,'' NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe said recently.

Curators at the Smithsonian museum plan to review the debris to see what pieces they may be interested in acquiring.

"Initially, we wouldn't have plans for it to go on display, only to collect it for preservation as historic artifact,'' said Valerie Neal, a space history curator at the museum. "What we might do in the future, I just don't know."

The Air and Space museum has all the spacecraft from the Mercury and Apollo programs, except the Liberty Bell 7 and Apollo 1. The Liberty capsule carrying astronaut Gus Grissom sank in the Atlantic after the hatch blew off prematurely in 1961. Grissom escaped unhurt; the capsule was recovered in 1999 and is part of a traveling exhibition currently at the Arizona Science Center in Phoenix.

Three astronauts, including Grissom, died in the Apollo 1 launch pad fire in 1967. The only artifact the museum has from Challenger is a flag from the mission kit.

The museum has never had an exhibit on aviation or aerospace disasters, although a previous exhibit on airships had charred artifacts from the Hindenberg, said Peter Jakab, a curator in the museum's division of aeronautics.

The obvious reason for not having such displays is ``the ghoulish factor,'' he said. ``We focus on the technological successes of aerospace.''

The pieces from Challenger were put into two abandoned missile silos at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station after the 1986 disaster. The Apollo 1 capsule is in storage at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.

Whoever exhibits any pieces of Columbia is going to have to be careful, said curators experienced with collecting debris from disasters.

"It's not just the objects that are sensitive. It's the issue behind them that's sensitive,'' said Sarah Henry, vice president of programs at the Museum of the City of New York, which has remnants from the Sept. 11 attacks. ``The way you display objects can either exacerbate that sensitivity or be respectful of that.

NASA has also sought guidance on handling the makeshift memorials of flowers and cards left outside its facilities. Joel Walker, NASA's acting director of center operations directorate, talked with officials at the Oklahoma City National Museum, which honors the 168 people who died in the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building.

"I said to NASA, 'What do you intend to do?''' said Jane Thomas, collections manager at the Oklahoma City memorial. ``They went away and came back and said they were really up in the air about that and supposed they wanted to do some exhibit."

For now, the shuttle debris, ranging from melted drops of aluminum to a massive 14-foot piece of the spacecraft's underside, will be in permanent storage on the 16th floor of the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center at the end of September.

Most of the pieces will make their lasting home in a secure, air-conditioned 10,000-square-foot room of the Vehicle Assembly Building. The building, one of the largest in the world, is where the shuttle orbiter is attached to the external fuel tank and solid rocket boosters before launches.

In May, NASA sent out a letter to academics and industry researchers asking for research proposals and suggestions on how best to preserve and manage the debris from Columbia.

The space agency has received about 20 proposals from researchers, said Mike Leinbach, shuttle launch director who oversaw the assembly of the debris in Florida.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama will be given pieces of debris to study fracture mechanics and overheating. The University of Rhode Island is leading a group of universities that want debris for teaching purposes, to demonstrate to engineers in training how the metal on the shuttle was stressed.

Whatever decisions are made about the debris, Barbara Anderson, mother of Columbia astronaut Michael Anderson, said she hopes the pieces are treated with the reverence they deserve.

"To me it's more than just a piece of metal," she said. "It represents their lives, their souls."

[ApolloXI]

My gradfather sent I article from the local paper saying inspectors had to buy thier own tools. When I can find the full article on the net I will post it.
"NASA inspectors charged with making sure the space shuttles are safe to fly were forced to buy their own tools and prevented from making spot checks..."
""they were supposed to have a nin-time magnifer and they only had three, and it was taking monthsto get a nine-timemagnifier, so they went down and bought one at Home Depot," he said"

The Times-Union, Jacksonville, Thursday, July 17, 2003

[Benji]

The Columbia Report will be realeased tommorrow morning. Says President Bush:

"I've been a strong supporter of NASA. I want to look at the report before I comment. You may have seen the report; I haven't, in which case, I want to look at it. I do believe that a space program is important for a country that is trying to stay on the leading edge of technological change. But let me look and first see what the report says, how critical it is, what it says, what it means. And I'll answer -- try to answer that very question after I've had a chance to enrich my knowledge about a pending report."

For a copy, see http://www.caib.us/, it should be on sometime after 10 am.

[Benji]

I was busy doing school work this morning and I completely forgot about the CAIB report until I got a Space.com e-mail with an article about it. I had just settled down to read it when I had to go to school. I've read the Executive Summary. It places the physical blame on that foam hitting RCC panel 8, but also blames NASA's structure and management. I'll report back with more later, but I have class.

[spacecampaddict28]

I read the first few pages and it wasn't anything I didn't expect. It happened with Challenger (though it technically was a successful launch) and now it happened again. I read a book about it and it was like 600 pages long....written before Columbia, yet ironically it says the same things about NASA Management....

[Benji]

This entire incident has changed my view of the NASA management and organizational scheme. I really never thought about it much before. I figured post-51L fixes had been made and everything was cool, but I never read much about it until this report. NASA has a complex matrix organization. Hopefuly, it will be made much simpler. Several requests were made to have the DoD image Columbia in orbit and were shot down rather than forwarded. If a team agrees that further steps should be taken on something, somebody near (organizationally) to the control of the mission should be alerted.

An interesting side note that probably has nothing to do with the disintegration: RCC Panel 8-Left (the one that was damaged by the foam) was original, though refurbished by Boeing. Atlantis once was impacted by something on RCC Panel 10-Right and had a nice bit of damage done, though not large enough to cause any problematic problems. See CAIB Report page 56 for pics.

On Flight Day 2, post accident analysis by Air Force Space Command radar tracking network show an object (2003-003B) separated from the shuttle (2003-003A). This object may have been a fragment of a RCC panel, though results could not positively identify it.

Another interesting note: MOCR was still looking for Columbia, trying to regain comm, and didn't know she was lost until one of the controller's friends had seen the video on one of the 24 news networks and called him on his cell phone. According to the transcripts, this was at EI+1710, 9:12:39 EST, when Columbia should have been lining up on Runway 33. This, of course, doesn't surprise me. If you're work for NASA and you want to see what's going on, you go to MOCR or turn on NASA TV. Coverage of landings is substandard anywhere else. They didn't know until an outsider clued them in.

[Boomerang]

GraNTED I HAVENT HAD A CHance to read more than the first 3 pages of the report since school started yesterday and i have had little free time but was the cell phone thing in the report. Because if it was im not sure its true. I've read the transcripts from MOCr that morning. At that point listed above CAPCOM was still trying to regain communications with the orbiter. Granted someone should have seen it by that point and should have heard the sonic booms but they were still going under the assumption that the shuttle was still on aproach, Infact the contingency wasnt declared till 7 minutes after the expected landing time. And there was no communicati9ns over the loop indicating any flight controler knew anything more than what they had on their screens and data coming in from tracking centers. I could be way off here ill try to read the report this weekend sometime in whole.