Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: some history on the shuttle Columbia...

my profile | my password | search | faq & rules | forum home

»	Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE » Community » Film-Yak » some history on the shuttle Columbia... (Page 2)

This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3

Author

Topic: some history on the shuttle Columbia...

Scott Norwood
Film God

Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99

posted 02-03-2003 08:34 PM

Interesting Washington Post article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16650-2003Feb2.html

I agree with one of this article's major points--from an economic point of view, the shuttle program was a failure. The transition from expendable rockets to a reusable shuttle vehicle hasn't saved money and has consumed resources which could have been better utilized in other aspects of manned spaceflight.

This isn't to say that the shuttle isn't an impressive work of engineering (it is), but rather that it hasn't proven to be the cheap, efficient space transport vehicle that it was intended to be.

And I say this as a very strong supporter of NASA and manned space exploration in general.

| IP: Logged

Darryl Spicer
Film God

Posts: 3250
From: Lexington, KY, USA
Registered: Dec 2000

posted 02-03-2003 08:43 PM

I guess you could say the everything looks good on paper until you put it into action. I remember going to the Kennedy Space Center in 1975 and there was this model set up it was the future of space. It had a shuttle on a launch pad and you pushed a button to launch it and I was like COOL! Then I remember the first shuttle. ENTERPRISE....It's first and only flight was lauched off the back of a 747 jet. Then the big one the first lauch into space of the shuttle Columbia. then watching it reenter and make it's landing at Edwards airforce base.

The Canadian band Rush wrote a song about that first launch. It's called Countdown and can be heard on their Signls CD. Cool song and in Concert for that tour they played it with the shuttle launching on the big screen behind them.

| IP: Logged

Mark Gulbrandsen
Resident Trollmaster

Posts: 16657
From: Music City
Registered: Jun 99

posted 02-03-2003 10:21 PM

Scott,
I know what they are implying in the article, but you have to stop and think what if the shuttle was not re-usable and NASA had to use a new one for every space voyage as in the Saturn/ Apollo days......In that respect its quite sucessful...lets see 100 plus launches at 2 billion per orbiter.....
If you look at it in that respect it actually did save money, plus alot of the technological spinoffs have actually made money. I don't quite agree with their assessment, although it sure has cost far more per launch then originally expected. Its been worth it though.
Mark

| IP: Logged

Steve Kraus
Film God

Posts: 4094
From: Chicago, IL, USA
Registered: May 2000

posted 02-03-2003 10:24 PM

Mark, I think the point is that with expendable spacecraft they wouldn't cost 2 billion or whatever each. No one is talking about an expendable shuttle!

| IP: Logged

Paul G. Thompson
The Weenie Man

Posts: 4718
From: Mount Vernon WA USA
Registered: Nov 2000

posted 02-03-2003 10:56 PM

Of all the launches we have had over the past umpteen years, it appears NASA does not have a contingency plan to activate in event of a potential disaster where the crew is still "safe." I would think that NASA should have learned that in the Apollo 13 Era.

I read in the paper that a vehicle launch to pick up the crew in event their shuttle was damaged to the point where it could not safely re-enter the atmosphere was not possible. There were none that were ready for such a mission, and the crew didn't have enough oxygen on board the Challenger to keep them alive in the interim. The earliest NASA could have one "ready to go" would have been 1 March 2003.

What a hell of a way to run a railroad....

As far as the damage that might have been inflicted to the shuttle's wing, I think it was a "bad call" by the NASA engineers. I guess NASA's computer simulations indicated there was no safety issue to be concerned about. Maybe NASA should realize the computers cannot duplicate actual real life situations.

| IP: Logged

Mark Gulbrandsen
Resident Trollmaster

Posts: 16657
From: Music City
Registered: Jun 99

posted 02-03-2003 11:11 PM

Well, Saturn 5's were not exactly cheap either.....I think you'd find that some sort of expendable craft that could duplicate the lifting ability of the shuttle would be VERY expensive. Not perhaps as much, but over time very much more. Without the shuttle its doubtful there would there be an International Space Station as it is today, or any venture of that sort. What ever station there might be would very likely be on a much smaller scale. Technological spin offs are also very important to consider. One important recent spin off was the development of the new hydrogen fuled motor for the latest Delta rocket. Due to space shuttle spin offs it was far easier, and far less costly to develope that motor. But this is only one of thoudands of examples of this sort of spin off. Ya have to look at em all.
Mark

| IP: Logged

Mark Gulbrandsen
Resident Trollmaster

Posts: 16657
From: Music City
Registered: Jun 99

posted 02-03-2003 11:21 PM

Paul,
A NASA engineer said tonight that even at the altitude they were at in 80 seconds when the piece broke loose that they could not have landed safely. Had the tiles been damaged or missing that even at that altitude they would still have had a burn through followed by eventual craft disentegration. Its unfortunately part of the risks these people take, and one reason why they get the highest respect from almost everyone out there. Don't know if I would want to strap myself to a rocket to go to work.....

I do think NASA does need to come up with some sort of rescue scheme for a stranded craft, or a plan to get them to the International Space station one way or another. Also, the flight crew needs to be able to do an inspection of the crafts more important vulnerable areas before re-entering. A method of tile repair satisfactory enough to return safely also needs to be developed.
Mark

| IP: Logged

Paul G. Thompson
The Weenie Man

Posts: 4718
From: Mount Vernon WA USA
Registered: Nov 2000

posted 02-03-2003 11:33 PM

Mark, on your last paragraph, I will say [thumbsup]

That's basically the whole point I was trying to make. Thank you for doing that for me.

| IP: Logged

Darryl Spicer
Film God

Posts: 3250
From: Lexington, KY, USA
Registered: Dec 2000

posted 02-04-2003 12:52 AM

Problem is once again it can look good on paper but trying to come up with a rescue scheme or have the abillity to repair the shuttle in space would be greatly difficult and maybe even more dangerous. The one thing we have to remember is that there is a lot of space junk flying around in orbit up there. From large dead satlelites to tiny pieces of junk. When the astronauts do a spacewalk they are at risk of being hit buy the small particles. The windshields of past shuttle flights have had to be replaced because of damage caused by these small particles. The space station had to be placed in a higher orbit not only to maintain an orbit without it decaying but to also be away from most of this junk.

I am not saying that something couldn't be developed for these situations but in order to do so they will need another large preperation hanger since they can only prep one shuttle at a time.

The idea of them makeing something to fix tiles in space may not be feasably possable. This is something for the engineers to decide. The tiles are individually numbered and none of them fit the same so having spares would not be possable. The weight alone would be restrictive.

| IP: Logged

William Leland III
Master Film Handler

Posts: 336
From: Charleston, SC,
Registered: Aug 2002

posted 02-04-2003 02:22 AM

Mark Gulbrandsen said :

" A NASA engineer said tonight that even at the altitude they were at in 80 seconds when the piece broke loose that they could not have landed safely. "

So this means when the Columbia left earth, NASA knew they wouldn't be able to return. If this is true why didn't NASA tell the American public after the shuttle blew-up? Why keep us in the dark. The truth will always prevail.

First I don't believe the shuttle left earth without space suits or space walking suits. If I was an astronaut I would demand a space suit.

Second the shuttle could get close enough to the ISS and space walk (using space suits) to a hatch or something. Then wait until another shuttle picks them up.

Why are we Americans so suprised that this happens? We know space travel is not safe. Look at all the Soviet problems. They have lost many people in space. We know that there are risks involved, hence the long training and skill that is needed to obtain these task involved with space flight.

NASA needs to have some sort of "back-up-plan". If they can't find money in the budget to create a "back-up-plan" then maybe we need to rethink of a safer way to explore the stars.

| IP: Logged

Mark Gulbrandsen
Resident Trollmaster

Posts: 16657
From: Music City
Registered: Jun 99

posted 02-04-2003 03:32 AM

Yea,
I don't know how many miles they're up in 80 seconds, but its too far if there is tile damage. Probably too high up to do an abort to emergency landing location. They are already going well into the mach numbers by then. There would still be alot of friction and probable burn through, etc. You still have to disipate all that stored energy (many mach numbers of speed) in order to land again.
I believe we have no choice but to keep flying the shuttles for quite a long time, as they say a new space plane system is at least 10 to 15 years away. I doubt that the space plane will have the heavy lift capacity either as the Shuttle can lift many, many tons into orbit. So that also means a new heavy lift system as well as the space plane system will have to be in place! For now though some sort of inspection system needs to be put into place for an orbiter just entering space, as well as several contingency plans. From orbit, I think the most practical would be to get them to the ISS. If the first, and last thing they did was a "walk around" that might help to at l;east alert them to some problem.
Many do not realize it but the X-15 was pretty close to being able to make it into space. It actually did touch the lower limits of outer space a number of times. It just lacked the heat shield system and the ability to re-enter properly from the farther reaches of being in orbit, it also did not have any type of manuvering system once it might get to orbit. However the X-15 was even more dangerous to fly... almost every flight had different problems of its own. The shuttle, as compared to what these guys were doing, is about 10,000 times safer! Read some books on the X-15 project if you want to be really amazed!! Much of the data from the X-15 program went into designing parts of the shuttle system.
Mark

| IP: Logged

Darryl Spicer
Film God

Posts: 3250
From: Lexington, KY, USA
Registered: Dec 2000

posted 02-04-2003 09:54 AM

wasn't it one of the X models that was in the real crash footage they used at the beggining of the Six Million Dollar Man.

The problem with getting to the space station for columbia was that they did not have enough fuel to get them close enough to the station to do a safe space walk. The station is in a higher orbit than the shuttle was and has a more stationary orbit around earth where as the shuttle has a fast orbit around the earth. The sun rises in the shuttle window every 90 minutes.

Since they had no plans to do anything involving opening the cargo bay doors they did not have the large robotic arm on board or the needed control packs for a space walk.

| IP: Logged

John Pytlak
Film God

Posts: 9987
From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922
Registered: Jan 2000

posted 02-04-2003 10:31 AM

The most appropriate movies with similar events and decision-making processes treated realistically are "The Right Stuff" and "Apollo 13". I suspect the potential damage to the left wing was not discovered until the instrumentation camera images were analyzed after the fact, and the Columbia already in orbit:

A NASA memo written 12 days after launch, and reported by CNN reads:

quote:
The STS-107 mission is progressing nominally and all Orbiter subsystems are performing satisfactorily. No Orbiter issues have been reported in the previous 24 hours. The Orbiter consumables remaining are above the levels required for completion of the planned mission.

Regarding the debris hit on the left wing last discussed in the Fourth Daily Report; systems integration personnel performed a debris trajectory analysis to estimate the debris impact conditions and locations. This analysis was performed utilizing the reported observations from the ascent video and film. It was assumed that the debris was foam from the external tank. Based on the results of the trajectory analysis, an impact analysis was performed to assess the potential damage to the tile and radial carbon carbon (RCC). The impact analysis indicates the potential for a large damage area to the tile. Damage to the RCC should be limited to coating only and have no mission impact. Additionally, thermal analyses were performed for different locations and damage conditions. The damage conditions included one tile missing down to the densified layer of the tile and multiple tiles missing over an area of about 7 in by 30 in. These thermal analyses indicate possible localized structural damage but no burn-through, and no safety of flight issue.

Don L. McCormack Jr.

STS-107 Lead MER Manager

[ 02-04-2003, 12:48 PM: Message edited by: John Pytlak ]

| IP: Logged

Darryl Spicer
Film God

Posts: 3250
From: Lexington, KY, USA
Registered: Dec 2000

posted 02-04-2003 07:00 PM

That is correct John. They did not see the problem until viewing the footage the next day. But, the problem extends further than that. All the way back to 1997 when a piece of foam fell off and struck part of the same shuttle. They found damaged tiles but no burn thru on inspection after the shuttle returned. So here we go again. We have a problem it is causing damage but not severe in their eyes to fix or look into fixing the problem. Now that we have loss of life and equipment the problem needs to be fixed. Something that could have been done 5 years ago.

there is the possability that other damage occured that did not fit into the computer analysis. One thing I read today was that the piece of hardened foam was larger than they initially thought.

| IP: Logged

John Walsh
Film God

Posts: 2490
From: Connecticut, USA, Earth, Milky Way
Registered: Oct 1999

posted 02-04-2003 10:46 PM

I don't remember which shuttle it was (may have even been the 'test' shuttle Enterprise) but I remember NASA got some flak years ago because they had hired all kinds of untrained people to glue tiles on. They had janitors, high school kids, anyone avaiable gluing them on in an effort to maintain a deadline.

| IP: Logged

All times are Central (GMT -6:00)

This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3

Printer-friendly view of this topic

The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.