Columbia shuttle lost Part II

[Ned]

Just a small point, but if the shuttle's angle of attack is with the left side of the shuttle into the wind, the temperature on the left side of the main fuselage would be expected to rise.

It did, beginning over California.

I was reading up on the attitude control systems of the shuttle during re-entry. Until the shuttle reaches Mach 3, the shuttle relies on three IMU's located in the crew bay. They are very temperature sensitive.

[Tolls]

MtG:
I didn't think there was anything on the ISS for that.

They tried to do some shots of the shuttle from ground based stuff 5 years ago, and the pictures were nowhere near good enough to resolve the sort of damage we seem to be talking about here, assuming it was the launch that was the problem.

The latest from NASA seems to show an increase in temperature that is not consistent with what is expected should this have been caused by damaged wing tiles during launch. Could be a strike during re-entry, then...in which case none of this speculation is worth anything.

[Tolls]

The shuttle was in the throws of attempting to decelerate, which it does by pitching and yawing, increasing the drag on one side then the other...so the footage seems to match what they thought was going on on the ground...at least from what I've been reading the past couple of days.

[Ned]

Tolls, So if there was damage to the left side, they should have stopped yawing to the right so as to protect the left side.

[Tolls]

The whole point of those manouevres is to slow down the shuttle...without them they would (I assume) quite seriously overshoot the runway, and also the shuttle would be under longer heatstress (it would take longer to slow down).

And all this is under the assumption that the damage was then viewed as somehow serious which was not the case.

[SlowwHand]

They found the nose cone.
I'm still amazed at what has actually been found.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Ned
Boris, It happened, that's all I know.

To clarify, you're strange for thinking your waking up then means anything, not for waking up at that point.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


To clarify, you're strange for thinking your waking up then means anything, not for waking up at that point.

Boris, I have had enough "strange" experiences in my life to give credence to the possiblity that humans can communicated with one another telepathically.

Just as a point of reference, NASA now says that the shuttle's first's anomoly occurred at 5:52 when the tiire hydraulic temperature sensors shows a temperature spike. This is the exact time I woke up and looked at the clock.

[Ned]

BTW, I had heard that Ilan Ramon had taken picture of Earth from the orbiter. The picture reportedly shows a wing with a crack and a dent on its leading edge.

Has anyone else seen this picture? Link?

[Dis]

surely not

[Dis]

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/02/04/sprj.colu.shuttle.investigation/index.html

It seems to me this is a serious design problem. How are they going to correct this?

Perhaps they can design the external tank in some way to prevent things from falling off of it. If they cannot do that they have a serious problem on their hands.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Dissident

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/02/04/sprj.colu.shuttle.investigation/index.html

It seems to me this is a serious design problem. How are they going to correct this?

Perhaps they can design the external tank in some way to prevent things from falling off of it. If they cannot do that they have a serious problem on their hands.

In retrospect, there is a lot about the space shuttle that seem to be a design flaw. The shuttle needs to use its main engines to boost into orbit. This requires it to be strapped onto the side of the SRB's and the main fuel tank. It appears now that there have been a number of incidents where debris from the SRB's or the fuel tank, inlcuding ice, have fallen onto the orbiter. Given the fragility of the orbiter's TPS, one would think that any ability for debris to hit the orbiter is a design flaw. Since debris cannot be eliminated, it may require the shuttle to be grounded permanently.

[Dis]

of course we can't ground the shuttle permantly.

So it will be interesting to see what they do.

[Adam Smith]

Only in America would the pilot be named Willie McCool.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Ned


Boris, I have had enough "strange" experiences in my life to give credence to the possiblity that humans can communicated with one another telepathically.

Just as a point of reference, NASA now says that the shuttle's first's anomoly occurred at 5:52 when the tiire hydraulic temperature sensors shows a temperature spike. This is the exact time I woke up and looked at the clock.

Oooooh well then!

First, there's no way of knowing if your clock is syncronized with the NASA clock. It could have been off by several minutes. So maybe you actually looked at the clock at 5:49 NASA time or 5:56.

Second, there are probably about 35 million people in California. Given there are only 720 minutes in a morning, on average about 49,000 people wake up there every minute of every morning. OK, subtract the graveyard shift folks, but still...

It was a coincidence. I just looked at my computer clock, and it said 11:40 PM. Now that was the exact time the Titanic struck the iceberg, and I'm a Titanic buff...must be some sort of psychic occurance!

Or a coincidence.