Columbia astronauts weren't told of malfunction

[SlowwHand]

Wooden stake.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Oh God, where's my wooden stake?

Is it in your CASDI filings? If it is, we'll give the cost to manufacture one and a 10% award fee with this change order.

That's a pretty way to put it. If you designed the spaceship to have an LES, neither Challenger nor Columbia would have happened.

Not correct. No LES ever designed or proposed would have saved Challenger - in fact, all existing LES designs would have been jettisoned well before Challenger got to that altitude, since the LES would prevent the execution of the turn and roll manuever to start the positioning for orbital insertion. The extent of damage to Columbia was not known in time. Foam strikes happened on virtually every mission, so you wouldn't abort over it. This was the one case where the foam strike hit the RCC leading edge, not TTS tiles.

LES would not have saved either crew. Those losses were preventable, but by other means.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Col. Ramon was a brave person, doing his job. No different than the rest of the crew. I would hope Al is capable of seeing that fact; but I don't waste TOO much hope.

IMO, the biggest set of astronaut balls ever, outside first three Mercury missions, were on Laurel Clark. diving medical officer, submarine medical officer, radiation health officer, flight surgeon, then astronaut. She was one kick-ass human being.

[DanS]

More stupid hiding the ball. A proper LES would have moved the Shuttle from side-mount design. Thus, no Columbia. Challenger exploded at 48,000 feet, well before Saturn V's LES was jettisoned. Shuttle's positioning for orbital insertion was specific to Shuttle. With a proper LES, no Challenger.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Who's hiding the ball now? You're using an ancillary component like LES as the reason to redesign the entire system from scratch, which is your previously stated point of view. Tails wagging the dog is cute with puppies, but it's not the way you engineer and build stuff.

And yes, if you don't build the shuttle, nothing will happen with the shuttle.

[DanS]

If you can't build a spaceship without a proper LES, then it has no business launching in the first place. Full stop. To launch is to kill your crew about 1-in-50 launches.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Only if you also have a schedule first, safety second arrogant culture. Both STS losses were 100% preventable with the existing design, especially Challenger, which was deliberately launched outside the launch window set by Morton Thiokol and other primes and agreed by NASA. Challenger was avoidable as well, with the existing design. Take the policy and management flaws out, and you have a loss rate of 0 based on the actual experience with the fleet.

[Dinner]

I'm pretty sure all of the astronauts knew there was a chance the mission might not be a success and that they already said their good byes to family and friends before they got on board. I'm not sure it would have helped to tell them about one of what was no doubt dozens of technical issues prior to launch. They needed their head in the game so they could do their jobs and that meant not distracting them with other stuff which was the technical teams job to solve.

[Dinner]

More stupid hiding the ball. A proper LES would have moved the Shuttle from side-mount design. Thus, no Columbia. Challenger exploded at 48,000 feet, well before Saturn V's LES was jettisoned. Shuttle's positioning for orbital insertion was specific to Shuttle. With a proper LES, no Challenger.

But then my middle school would have had a different name. :sadyes: