Columbia Investigators Fire Foam Insulation at Shuttle Wing, Blowing Open 2-Foot Hole; The crowd of about 100 gasped and cried, "Wow!" when the foam hit.

[Jay]

Shuttle Foam Test Yields Hole in Wing
Columbia Investigators Fire Foam Insulation at Shuttle Wing, Blowing
Open 2-Foot Hole

The Associated Press

SAN ANTONIO July 7
The team investigating the Columbia disaster fired a chunk of foam
insulation at shuttle wing parts Monday and blew open a gaping 2-foot
hole, offering dramatic evidence to support the theory of what doomed
the spaceship.

The crowd of about 100 gasped and cried, "Wow!" when the foam hit.

The foam struck roughly the same spot where insulation that broke off
Columbia's big external fuel tank during launch smashed into the
shuttle's wing. Investigators believe the damage led to the ship's
destruction during re-entry over Texas in February, killing all seven
astronauts.

It was the seventh and final foam-impact test by the Columbia Accident
Investigation Board, and it yielded by far the most severe damage.

The 1.67-pound piece of fuel tank foam insulation shot out of a
35-foot nitrogen-pressurized gun and slammed into a carbon-reinforced
panel removed from shuttle Atlantis.

The countdown boomed through loudspeakers, and the crack of the foam
coming out at more than 500 mph reverberated in the field where the
test was conducted.

Twelve high-speed cameras six inside the wing mock-up and six outside
captured the event. Hundreds of sensors registered movements, stresses
and other conditions.

NASA will continue gathering more information about the poorly
understood pieces that line the vulnerable leading edges of shuttle
wings, board member Scott Hubbard said.

One month ago, another carbon shuttle wing panel smaller and farther
inboard was cracked by the impact, in addition to an adjoining seal.
This time, the entire 11 1/2-inch width of the foam chunk rather than
just a corner during previous tests hit the wing, putting maximum
stress on the suspect area.

[Doug Ellison]

"Jay" > wrote in message
s.com...
> Shuttle Foam Test Yields Hole in Wing
> Columbia Investigators Fire Foam Insulation at Shuttle Wing, Blowing
> Open 2-Foot Hole


WOW :O

Doug

[Lynndel Humphreys]

Good article at

http://www.msnbc.com/news/867336.asp?0cv=CB10#BODY



> > Shuttle Foam Test Yields Hole in Wing
> > Columbia Investigators Fire Foam Insulation at Shuttle Wing, Blowing
> > Open 2-Foot Hole
>




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[Dale]

On Mon, 7 Jul 2003 17:50:55 -0400, "Lynndel Humphreys" > wrote:

>Good article at
>
>http://www.msnbc.com/news/867336.asp?0cv=CB10#BODY

From the article-

“There’s a lot of collateral damage,” Hubbard said.
Hubbard also said he believed the test showed that it
would have been very difficult, if not impossible, to repair
the foam damage during orbit.

If an in-orbit repair capability is one of the requirements for
a return to flight, what do they do now?

Dale

[Ronald O. Christian]

On Mon, 07 Jul 2003 14:55:37 -0700, Dale > wrote:
>If an in-orbit repair capability is one of the requirements for
>a return to flight, what do they do now?

Um, redesign the fuel tank so it doesn't shed foam on liftoff?


Ron
-
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messages that are of no help whatsoever. Pretains to help files,
messages or documentation that convey no useful information, or
pedantically repeat the blindingly obvious.

[Rusty Barton]

Jay wrote:
> Shuttle Foam Test Yields Hole in Wing
> Columbia Investigators Fire Foam Insulation at Shuttle Wing, Blowing
> Open 2-Foot Hole
>

Picture of hole at Houston's KHOU-TV 11 Website:

http://www.khou.com/



Rusty Barton - Antelope, California

Visit my Titan 1 ICBM Website at:

http://www.geocities.com/titan_1_missile

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[Lynndel Humphreys]

>
> If an in-orbit repair capability is one of the requirements for
> a return to flight, what do they do now?
>
It is my understanding there is no repair option for the RCC. It is a risk
of flight just as birds have been known to bring down planes. The RCC is a
TPS so a protection system for the TPS seems reasonable. Just like driving a
car there is a risk of a wreck. Safety first but would you stop cars,planes,
or trains after the first accidents. Or would you stop going into tall
buildings because an elevator fails? The risk is not to minimize risk or to
minimize risk.




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[David Corsi]

My god.

> Picture of hole at Houston's KHOU-TV 11 Website:
>
> http://www.khou.com/

[Hallerb]

>
>If an in-orbit repair capability is one of the requirements for
>a return to flight, what do they do now?
>
>Dale

Redesign time/

[Lynndel Humphreys]

> > Sure looks real tricky to fix in flight.
> > Hand me that duct tape.
>
> Yeah -- duct tape made up of RCC. That's the ticket! (Yeah, right...)
>
Better idea than using the cargo bay doors as thrust reversers.




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[Jorge R. Frank]

"Lynndel Humphreys" > wrote in
:

>> If an in-orbit repair capability is one of the requirements for
>> a return to flight, what do they do now?
>>
> It is my understanding there is no repair option for the RCC.

Not currently, but CAIB recommendation #3 is for NASA to develop one.

http://www.caib.us/news/press_releases/pr030627.html

"Before return to flight, for missions to the International Space Station
(ISS,) develop a practicable capability to inspect and effect emergency
repairs to the widest possible range of damage to the Thermal Protection
System (TPS,) including both tile and Reinforced Carbon Carbon (RCC,)
taking advantage of the additional capabilities available while in
proximity to and docked at the ISS."

I doubt a repair capability can be developed to deal with *this* level of
damage, of course. The most likely outcome is to redesign the trouble spots
on the ET (bipod ramp, intertank flanges and stringers) to prevent foam
from coming off the tank in the first place, and a *modest* RCC repair
capability based on a narrow interpretation of "widest possible range of
damage".

--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
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[LooseChanj]

On or about 08 Jul 2003 03:21:15 GMT, Jorge R. Frank >
made the sensational claim that:
> I also highly doubt the US government will waive or repeal the act
> as long as the current government of Iran is in power.

My guess is they'd rather repeal the current gov't of Iran first anyhow. :-)
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[Jorge R. Frank]

(Allen Thomson) wrote in
om:

> "Jorge R. Frank" > wrote
>
> [snippage]
>
>> > If the option of flights that only go to the ISS is taken, then
>> > NASA should fund Russian Soyuz launch vehicles sufficient to have
>> > that back-up capability available in the future to bring down
>> > everybody safely regardless of crew size.
>
>> It is illegal for NASA to do so, due to the Iran Nonproliferation
>> Act. I highly doubt the Russians will stop selling missile and
>> nuclear technology to Iran; it is far more lucrative than any Soyuz
>> deal NASA could possibly offer. I also highly doubt the US government
>> will waive or repeal the act as long as the current government of
>> Iran is in power.
>
>
> Assuming NASA were to decide they really needed Soyuzy, there are
> probably ways to finesse the INA. Provided, of course, the relevant
> people on the Hill could be persuaded to look the other way.

True. There's also an exception provision built into the INA itself, but
IIRC it requires NASA to declare an "emergency" on ISS (and certain
committee chairmen have made it clear that they don't consider "temporary
demanning of ISS due to consumables shortage" to be an emergency).


--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

[dave schneider]

"Rusty Barton" > wrote with:
>
> Picture of hole at Houston's KHOU-TV 11 Website:
>
> http://www.khou.com/
>


An alternate link is <http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20030707/shuttle.html>

/dps

[Jorge R. Frank]

"Charleston" > wrote in
news:BIBOa.69601$1e.28191@fed1read04:

> "Jorge R. Frank" > wrote in message
> ...
>> "Charleston" > wrote in
>> news:%umOa.99672$%42.72249@fed1read06:
>>
>> > NASA could also fly only to the ISS
>> > or to an orbit from which one can access the ISS
>>
>> Practically speaking, there is no difference between these two. An
>> orbit from which one can access the ISS would require the same
>> inclination, launch window, and launch targeting as an actual ISS
>> flight. It would also require maneuvers on the part of the orbiter to
>> *keep* it that way throughout the mission, due to the effects of
>> differential nodal regression.
>
> There was discussion about this issue ad nauseum shortly after the
> accident. I thought someone who knew orbital mechanics wrote that you
> might be able to change the orbit of an orbiter a degree or so if you
> burned the OMS and RCS to nearly empty.

You're correct; I did say that. I neglected to say (because I thought it
went without saying) that one degree of plane change is utterly trivial.

The "standard" shuttle inclinations are 28.45, 39, 51.6 (ISS), and 57
degrees. Note that none of the others are within a degree of 51.6 degrees.
So it's impossible to reach ISS from any of the standard inclinations other
than 51.6.

But the orientation of the orbital plane isn't just defined by inclination;
it's also defined by right ascension of the ascending node (RAAN), which is
set at launch time. It's possible (by launching 12 hours from the "correct"
inplane time) to put the RAAN 180 degrees out and create a planar wedge
angle of (2x51.6=) 103.2 degrees, even though the inclination would be
correct.

Furthermore, the RAAN changes over time due to Earth's equatorial bulge
(nodal regression), a function of both altitude and inclination. So unless
the altitude difference between the orbiter and ISS were small enough to
make the differential nodal regression less than a degree over the duration
of the flight, the planes would drift apart and you'd lose the ability to
reach ISS.

So I stand by my statement: an "orbit that can reach ISS" with the shuttle
is practically no different than a dedicated ISS flight, since the
inclination, launch time, and altitude are all constrained as they would be
if you were actually going to ISS in the first place.

> I don't think anybody did the
> calculations for an orbiter less its cargo. Not that all cargos are
> removable mind you.

Take a 240 klb orbiter, jettison 40 klb cargo, and you now have an orbiter
with 5/6 the mass. So your plane change capability goes up by 6/5, or 1.2
degrees.

>> Personally, I'd consider it a tragedy if there were no more missions
>> to the Hubble Space Telescope. Given the current loss of redundancy
>> of the HST gyros, it is very unlikely to survive until the launch of
>> the JWST without at least one more shuttle servicing mission.
>> Shoot, I'd volunteer for such a mission myself, with or without
>> any kind of fancy tile repair kit.
>
> We can build another even better space telescope. We can place it an
> orbit near the ISS.

JWST isn't going anywhere near ISS. It's going to the Earth-Sun L2 point.

> What we can't do is rebuild the lost prestige of
> another orbiter accident on reentry in a manner akin to what we just
> went through. I agree it would be a tragedy if we can not revisit the
> Hubble

It's not *just* a tragedy. NASA is *required* to have a safe end-of-life
disposal plan for Hubble, and Hubble doesn't have a propulsion system of
its own that could be used to deorbit it (ala Compton GRO). If there are no
more shuttle flights to Hubble, it will re-enter uncontrolled, with all the
third-party liability that implies.

>> > NASA could for once and for all cut the Shuttle crew size
>> > from 7 to 5 permanently to maximize time on orbit in the orbiter
>> > and subsequently in the ISS in an emergency.
>>
>> I do not believe that to be a wise move. ISS assembly flights are
>> tightly timelined; everyone on the crew is busy practically the
>> entire mission. If you reduce the crew size from 7 to 5, you reduce
>> the amount of work that can be done on that flight to 5/7, and you
>> must increase the number of flights on the manifest by a factor of
>> 7/5 to make it up. More flights means more risk, offsetting the risk
>> reduction you get from the smaller crew.
>
> Well I think we probably just disagree. You can train five to do the
> work of seven
> over a longer flight. With as few flights as there are now, training
> is not a show stopper anyway.

But consumables are. ISS flight durations are consumables-limited, and
there's not enough room in the bay on assembly flights to add an EDO
pallet.

> I know it is not the
> same, but we got to the moon and back with three crew members who
> multi-tasked a lot. We even performed a rendezvous and docked two
> vehicles while orbiting the moon. Somehow though it takes seven crew
> members per flight to assemble a Space Station in low earth orbit?

Apples and oranges. ISS assembly is much more complex. The hardware, for
the most part, is already built, so it would be tough to reduce that
complexity. One CDR of a future shuttle flight confided to me that one
silver lining of the accident is that he may finally get a seventh
crewmember, since he considers the timeline for his flight oversubscribed.

> The reason NASA has not drastically cut the size of the astronaut
> corps may be more political than practical. Astronaut corps cuts
> however are a subject for a thread of their own.

It's also a subject completely independent of the size of each flightcrew.

> There are many escape system enhancements that
> could be made if you just limit the crew to five and reconfigure the
> upper deck seating for those five astronauts. There are a number of
> flight control system failures during reentry that can happen which
> result in out of control situations that still allow for successful
> rocket extraction at altitudes from 100K feet on down. NASA's own
> documents address this issue. STS 9 was as close as we have come to
> loss of control that I am aware of (other than STS 107), but the
> possibility is always there as long as you have single points of
> failure in your flight control system. Of course even redundant
> systems fail.

We will just have to agree to disagree here, too. :-) Crew escape systems
in general are heavy, expensive, require a long time to implement, aren't
terribly reliable, have narrow operational envelopes, and carry large
operational impacts.

The extraction system you speak of, for example, would require 4.5 years
for the first kit delivery and an 18 month OMM to install in each vehicle.
It would increase mass by 122 lbm (the lowest of all the escape options
being considered). During ascent, it could only be used from 0-9 kft, and
even then only if there's no fireball. It only reduces overall mission risk
by 31%. And I can't tell you the price tag, but rest assured, it's
expensive.

Don't bother quoting me any contrary numbers for the above system unless
they're newer than 4/23/03; otherwise, they're out-of-date.

There are other escape systems under study that can support larger crews,
have wider operational envelopes, or offer more survivability. But they
carry heavier weight and operational impacts, take longer to implement, and
cost more.

With a finite shuttle upgrade budget, tradeoffs will always have to be
made. You rank the options by risk reduction divided by cost and work your
way down the list. Upgrades that improve the survivability of the vehicle
will almost always beat out crew escape systems in such a trade, especially
if you count the cost of lost vehicles against the crew escape system costs
(as you should, because you could have spent the same amount of money on a
system that would save *both* the vehicle and crew). Mind you, that's just
for the shuttle; for hypothetical *new* vehicles, escape systems look
better since you're designing them in from the ground up rather than trying
to retrofit them after-the-fact.

>> > If the option of flights that only go to the ISS is taken, then
>> > NASA should fund Russian Soyuz launch vehicles sufficient to have
>> > that back-up capability available in the future to bring down
>> > everybody safely regardless of crew size. This would actually be
>> > the cheapest and quickest way to get the shuttle back up there
>> > sooner and safer. It is sad that NASA and the Russians did not
>> > develop such a plan as the ISS deployment matured.
>>
>> It is illegal for NASA to do so, due to the Iran Nonproliferation
>> Act. I highly doubt the Russians will stop selling missile and
>> nuclear technology to Iran; it is far more lucrative than any Soyuz
>> deal NASA could possibly offer. I also highly doubt the US government
>> will waive or repeal the act as long as the current government of
>> Iran is in power.
>
> Laws can be amended if the will is there.

You think the "will" for ISS comes anywhere close to the "will" to fight
the so-called War on Terror? The administration is talking war with Iran;
they sure as hell aren't going to look the other way while the Russians arm
them.

> Some good can occasionally
> come out of disasters. Even if NASA never gave the Russians a nickel
> (they have given them a lot more than that for ISS)

Every nickel of it was before 2000, when the Iran Nonproliferation Act was
passed.

> nothing would
> stop the President from making a gentleman's agreement for support in
> the future. Surely our ego is not so large as to decline help from
> anybody. Finally, if you have a crew of ten on the ISS, I'd call that
> an emergency.

You'd probably get it down to seven right away by bringing three home in
the Soyuz.


--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
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[Charleston]

"Jorge R. Frank" > wrote in message
...
> "Charleston" > wrote in
news:BIBOa.69601$1e.28191@fed1read04:
> > "Jorge R. Frank" > wrote in message
> > ...
> >> "Charleston" > wrote in
> >> news:%umOa.99672$%42.72249@fed1read06:
> >>
> >> > NASA could also fly only to the ISS
> >> > or to an orbit from which one can access the ISS
> >>
> >> Practically speaking, there is no difference between these two.

That's fine with me.

> So I stand by my statement: an "orbit that can reach ISS" with the shuttle
> is practically no different than a dedicated ISS flight, since the
> inclination, launch time, and altitude are all constrained as they would
be
> if you were actually going to ISS in the first place.

I understand what you are saying.

<snip>

> >> Personally, I'd consider it a tragedy if there were no more missions
> >> to the Hubble Space Telescope. Given the current loss of redundancy
> >> of the HST gyros, it is very unlikely to survive until the launch of
> >> the JWST without at least one more shuttle servicing mission.
> >> Shoot, I'd volunteer for such a mission myself, with or without
> >> any kind of fancy tile repair kit.
> >
> > We can build another even better space telescope. We can place it an
> > orbit near the ISS.
>
> JWST isn't going anywhere near ISS. It's going to the Earth-Sun L2 point.

I hope it is more reliable than Hubble and is built more accurately since we
can't go fix it.

> > What we can't do is rebuild the lost prestige of
> > another orbiter accident on reentry in a manner akin to what we just
> > went through. I agree it would be a tragedy if we can not revisit the
> > Hubble
>
> It's not *just* a tragedy.

I was agreeing with and quoting you :-)

> NASA is *required* to have a safe end-of-life
> disposal plan for Hubble, and Hubble doesn't have a propulsion system of
> its own that could be used to deorbit it (ala Compton GRO). If there are
no
> more shuttle flights to Hubble, it will re-enter uncontrolled, with all
the
> third-party liability that implies.

It would not be the first time NASA's plans did not work out the way they
had planned.

> >> > NASA could for once and for all cut the Shuttle crew size
> >> > from 7 to 5 permanently to maximize time on orbit in the orbiter
> >> > and subsequently in the ISS in an emergency.
> >>
> >> I do not believe that to be a wise move. ISS assembly flights are
> >> tightly timelined; everyone on the crew is busy practically the
> >> entire mission. If you reduce the crew size from 7 to 5, you reduce
> >> the amount of work that can be done on that flight to 5/7, and you
> >> must increase the number of flights on the manifest by a factor of
> >> 7/5 to make it up. More flights means more risk, offsetting the risk
> >> reduction you get from the smaller crew.
> >
> > Well I think we probably just disagree. You can train five to do the
> > work of seven
> > over a longer flight. With as few flights as there are now, training
> > is not a show stopper anyway.
>
> But consumables are. ISS flight durations are consumables-limited, and
> there's not enough room in the bay on assembly flights to add an EDO
> pallet.

Ah, now we are talking about mission planning. Are you really suggesting
that NASA must fly 7 people to the ISS to put it together with three people
already there? If a construction mission to ISS could not be adjusted for a
crew of five ala training the commander and pilot to help, you could simply
line up your Soyuz launches to send up a crew that has been trained to
assist in ISS construction when the orbiter arrives. After the orbiter
leaves, the ISS crew executes normal operations. The common sense business
practice of dual-use can apply to astronauts. It is not as if this is
impossible. We could go around an around on this and you can if you want
to, without me. I believe that when NASA is forced, or *directed* to to
manifest foreign astronauts for purely political reasons, they knock regular
astronauts out of the opportunity for a flight they have earned by hard
work. There has always been some low key resentment in the astronaut corps
for the payload specialist position.

> > I know it is not the
> > same, but we got to the moon and back with three crew members who
> > multi-tasked a lot. We even performed a rendezvous and docked two
> > vehicles while orbiting the moon. Somehow though it takes seven crew
> > members per flight to assemble a Space Station in low earth orbit?
>
> Apples and oranges.

Not at all. My point here was that highly trained test pilots were trained
to not only fly to the moon, but to actually do geological work, as well as
run a number of experiments, recover specific samples, catalog findings, and
photo document the trip. On a few missions, the command module pilot was
also trained to do a space walk to recover experiments and film from the
service module. Please do not denigrate their work. The ISS, while
difficult to assemble had to be designed for a heavily suited and gloved
astronaut to perform tasks.

> ISS assembly is much more complex. The hardware, for
> the most part, is already built, so it would be tough to reduce that
> complexity. One CDR of a future shuttle flight confided to me that one
> silver lining of the accident is that he may finally get a seventh
> crewmember, since he considers the timeline for his flight oversubscribed.

The practice of planning too much work in a mission is nothing new to NASA
and it has caused occasional complaints from the crew. One could argue that
NASA tries to accomplish too much in a given mission. Again that is a
mission planning issue, one that your friend should not even have to
contemplate.

> > The reason NASA has not drastically cut the size of the astronaut
> > corps may be more political than practical. Astronaut corps cuts
> > however are a subject for a thread of their own.
>
> It's also a subject completely independent of the size of each flightcrew.

NASA elected to maintain the capacity of a crew of seven after Challenger.
They knew their options then and they won't change now unless forced to do
so.

> The extraction system you speak of, for example, would require 4.5 years
> for the first kit delivery and an 18 month OMM to install in each vehicle.

That depends directly on the resources applied to the job. If Congress
funded enough money to do it quicker NASA could speed up the process quite
dramatically. The truth is there is no will to do this at NASA for a
variety of reasons. Apparently the value of a human life and frankly just
as importantly, the loss of prestige, having lost 14 shuttle astronauts, in
preventable accidents has not sunk in at NASA. IMO, NASA is on the verge of
losing the high honor it once had. In fact in many ways it already has.
Even today the public learns that NASA knew of plasma intrusion on an
Atlantis flight in 2000. We only learned of it, after a FOIA request from
the AP was answered. IOW, someone leaked the story to a reporter
anonymously and the reporter nailed NASA with a FOIA. I can tell you that
there are a lot of people out there that find it almost incomprehensible
that NASA failed to even go look at the orbiter, let alone try to do
something about it. The basic group think at NASA and its contractors, as
reflected in yours and other responses here is at variance with politically
good common sense. You see, it is not always that an escape system will
work, it is the opportunity to escape that will count in the public's mind.
The orbiter spends a significant amount of its envelope below 100k feet, and
in both ascent and landing it will always have a significant failure
potential.

> It would increase mass by 122 lbm (the lowest of all the escape options
> being considered). During ascent, it could only be used from 0-9 kft, and
> even then only if there's no fireball.

Not true. Use of the rocket extraction system at or near lift-off for
instance is high risk due to ground proximity, angle of extraction, and
Range Safety detonation issues. OTOH, there are a number of scenarios in
which an intact crew compartment severed from the rest of the orbiter in a
structural break-up will serve as an excellent escape platform once it has
pulled away from the break-up. You don't even acknowledge a successful
extraction after a two or three SSME out situation after SRB separation.
There are a number of abort situations in which the crew could stay with the
orbiter til near or at landfall (avoiding the small potential for drowning),
and still have time to be extracted. Some of these situations are
borderline for orbiter survival. With the bail-out option, when do you jump
and when don't you? If you are so concerend about saving the orbiter, I can
make several arguments for staying with the orbiter way longer than can now
be done with manual bailout, giving the commander every last possibility of
saving the 2 billion dollar bird. I could go on but I won't.

> Don't bother quoting me any contrary numbers for the above system unless
> they're newer than 4/23/03; otherwise, they're out-of-date.

No need to, I made my points and I relied on former astronauts and NASA's
own documents for the discussion.

<snip>

> You rank the options by risk reduction divided by cost and work your
> way down the list. Upgrades that improve the survivability of the vehicle
> will almost always beat out crew escape systems in such a trade,
especially
> if you count the cost of lost vehicles against the crew escape system
costs
> (as you should, because you could have spent the same amount of money on a
> system that would save *both* the vehicle and crew). Mind you, that's just
> for the shuttle; for hypothetical *new* vehicles, escape systems look
> better since you're designing them in from the ground up rather than
trying
> to retrofit them after-the-fact.

I am well aware of NASA's risk management philosophy. It is only a
philosophy. It is obvious that it is not really applied in a quantitative
and scientific manner and several reviews have clearly stated that fact. It
will be more obvious soon enough. If NASA actually spent as much time and
effort applying the risk management philosophy you and others have
repeatedly extolled the virtues of, we would not be talking right now.
There have been enough studies to fill a bookcase on properly following up
on repeat criticality one failures, properly assessing them, and then fixing
them before flying again. The golden bb will always be there, but when you
let it be shot at you repeatedly, or worse don't even recognize it is being
shot at you, that is pure folly.

<snip>

> You think the "will" for ISS comes anywhere close to the "will" to fight
> the so-called War on Terror?

Nope, and that does concern me.

> The administration is talking war with Iran;

They haven't even finished the war in Iraq yet.

> they sure as hell aren't going to look the other way while the Russians
arm
> them.

Ya they will. They are doing it now.

> > Some good can occasionally
> > come out of disasters. Even if NASA never gave the Russians a nickel
> > (they have given them a lot more than that for ISS)
>
> Every nickel of it was before 2000, when the Iran Nonproliferation Act was
> passed.

I referred to the past tense.

> > nothing would
> > stop the President from making a gentleman's agreement for support in
> > the future. Surely our ego is not so large as to decline help from
> > anybody. Finally, if you have a crew of ten on the ISS, I'd call that
> > an emergency.
>
> You'd probably get it down to seven right away by bringing three home in
> the Soyuz.

Okay so that still leaves seven crewmembers. If there are two less
crewmembers using consumables they could survive longer. That would give
Russia longer to build those extra charity rescue Soyuz vehicles we won't
fund.

Daniel

[Jan C. Vorbrüggen]

> I hope it is more reliable than Hubble and is built more accurately since we
> can't go fix it.

You could argue that it would have been as costly or possibly even cheaper
to build another copy of HST, with updated instruments, and launch that,
instead of repairing it in situ.

> Ah, now we are talking about mission planning. Are you really suggesting
> that NASA must fly 7 people to the ISS to put it together with three people
> already there? If a construction mission to ISS could not be adjusted for a
> crew of five ala training the commander and pilot to help,

The commander and pilot are already intimately involved in those missions.
Note that of the ten people on board, three are the outgoing and three are
the incoming ISS crew, and their timeline is taken up with the hand-over
and some logistics task already. That leaves four people to do any
installation, and that's a tight fit, especially if any EVAs are required.

Jan

[Doug...]

In article <4MPOa.69746$1e.25309@fed1read04>, says...
> "Jorge R. Frank" > wrote in message
> ...
>
> <snip excellent discussion>
>
> > > ...Finally, if you have a crew of ten on the ISS, I'd call that
> > > an emergency.
> >
> > You'd probably get it down to seven right away by bringing three home in
> > the Soyuz.
>
> Okay so that still leaves seven crewmembers. If there are two less
> crewmembers using consumables they could survive longer. That would give
> Russia longer to build those extra charity rescue Soyuz vehicles we won't
> fund.

Just to bring a few cold-water-in-the-face facts into the mix, here...
someone correct me if I'm wrong, but AFAIK, without a lot of
supplementation from the orbiter, the ISS can't support more than three
people for more than a week or two. Even with "oxygen candles" and such,
there just isn't a capability to support that many people for very long.
I think the limiting factors are CO2 absorption and water.

So, while you can use ISS as an emergency port if the shuttle is damaged
during ascent, you still need to plan for how you can keep all those
people alive and healthy until another shuttle can come up to get them.

Also, returning some of the crew via the Soyuz is problematic -- you'd
then have no emergency return capability, unless you first got another
Soyuz up to ISS. Russia can't just crank out Soyuz vehicles anymore (as
if they always could), and AIUI there are a number of issues with having
multiple Soyuz vehicles docked to the station while an orbiter is also
there. So, if you had a problem that required evacuation of ISS while
you had 10 people there, or especially after you brought three back on a
Soyuz, you'd be SOL. People could die. (And that doesn't even address
the issue of there usually being only one person on ISS at a given time
who is checked out on actually flying a Soyuz.)

I'm not saying that ISS cannot be made to serve as an emergency bolt-hole
for the crew of a damaged shuttle. I'm just saying that, as it's
currently configured, there are a number of life-critical issues around
the concept.

--

It's not the pace of life I mind; | Doug Van Dorn
it's the sudden stop at the end... |

[MasterShrink]

>We can build another even better space telescope. We can place it an orbit
>near the ISS. What we can't do is rebuild the lost prestige of another
>orbiter accident on reentry in a manner akin to what we just went through.
>I agree it would be a tragedy if we can not revisit the Hubble, but the
>politicians will have to make that call and it is not clear what it will be.
>It will probably argued for awhile.

To be blunt if there is any reason the shuttle should fly again I'd say it
should be because of the HST. I'd rather the ISS program were scrapped than
Hubble simply because the science accomplished by the Hubble strikes me as more
noteworthy than what has been accomplished aboard ISS.

-A.L.

[Paul F. Dietz]

Dale wrote:

> Can't really disagree with you there. But ground-based telescopes are catching
> up with, and in some cases, surpassing HST.

In some respects, but not overall. The background light level for space
scopes is far lower, for example (no airglow, just zodiacal light and some
galactic junk), which has good effects on the signal to noise ratio. Ultraviolet
observations are much better done in space as well.

Paul

[Dale]

On 10 Jul 2003 01:41:29 GMT, (MasterShrink) wrote:

>To be blunt if there is any reason the shuttle should fly again I'd say it
>should be because of the HST. I'd rather the ISS program were scrapped than
>Hubble simply because the science accomplished by the Hubble strikes me as more
>noteworthy than what has been accomplished aboard ISS.

Can't really disagree with you there. But ground-based telescopes are catching
up with, and in some cases, surpassing HST.

Dale

[Herb Schaltegger]

In article >,
"Paul F. Dietz" > wrote:

> Ultraviolet
> observations are much better done in space as well.

Not to mention most infrared observations (all that nasty H2O and dust
in the atmosphere . . .)

--
Herb Schaltegger, Esq.
Chief Counsel, Human O-Ring Society
"I was promised flying cars! Where are the flying cars?!"
~ Avery Brooks

[Doug...]

In article >,
says...
> Doug... > wrote in
> :
>
> <snip>
>
> > I'm not saying that ISS cannot be made to serve as an emergency
> > bolt-hole for the crew of a damaged shuttle. I'm just saying that, as
> > it's currently configured, there are a number of life-critical issues
> > around the concept.
>
> True - I don't think anyone's denying that. But it gives you the best
> chance.

I'm glad to hear that there are teams working on the procedures for using
ISS as a "safe haven" in the event of Columbia-like orbiter damage. I
just wanted to point out that it's not *quite* as simple as "hey, just
let the shuttle crew stay on the station for a few weeks, no biggie."
There are indeed issues to be considered -- as currently configured,
using ISS as a bolt-hole exposes the whole crew, and the station itself,
to increased risk. Definitely a better chance than trying an entry with
a breach in the wing, of course... but still, increased risk.

Now, if you could just expedite the development of a Hab module and the
ELSS racks to support a seven-person station crew, that would reduce the
risk some... especially if you only increase the station crew to four or
five until the OSP is ready. Maybe beef up the station's ELSS so that it
can support, say, 15 people for a period of up to two months without
resupply. That way, you add extra capability and reduce the risk of an
ELSS single-point failure requiring station evacuation, among other
things... I don't have a good first-order engineering concept of what
that would take, but it ought to be do-able, I would think.

--

It's not the pace of life I mind; | Doug Van Dorn
it's the sudden stop at the end... |

[Jorge R. Frank]

"Charleston" > wrote in
news:4MPOa.69746$1e.25309@fed1read04:

> "Jorge R. Frank" > wrote in message
> ...
>> "Charleston" > wrote in
> news:BIBOa.69601$1e.28191@fed1read04:
>> > "Jorge R. Frank" > wrote in message
>> > ...
>> >> "Charleston" > wrote in
>> >> news:%umOa.99672$%42.72249@fed1read06:
>> >>

>> JWST isn't going anywhere near ISS. It's going to the Earth-Sun L2
>> point.
>
> I hope it is more reliable than Hubble and is built more accurately
> since we can't go fix it.

I hope so too. Unfortunately JWST requires a cold thermal environment that
it can't get in LEO.

>> NASA is *required* to have a safe end-of-life
>> disposal plan for Hubble, and Hubble doesn't have a propulsion system
>> of its own that could be used to deorbit it (ala Compton GRO). If
>> there are no
>> more shuttle flights to Hubble, it will re-enter uncontrolled, with
>> all the
>> third-party liability that implies.
>
> It would not be the first time NASA's plans did not work out the way
> they had planned.

All the more reason to ensure it doesn't happen again.

> Ah, now we are talking about mission planning. Are you really
> suggesting that NASA must fly 7 people to the ISS to put it together
> with three people already there?

Not necessarily on every flight - some assembly flights have carried 5 or
6, due to performance limits. But it does limit what you can do.

> If a construction mission to ISS
> could not be adjusted for a crew of five ala training the commander
> and pilot to help

The commander and pilot are already fully utilized. On STS-113 (and a few
other flights) the CDR was the prime arm operator. On STS-117, the PLT
will perform EVAs.

> We could go around an around on this and you can if you want to,
> without me.

I have no desire to go around and around on this. I have stated my position
and find yours completely unconvincing. You probably feel the same.

> I believe that when NASA is forced, or *directed* to to
> manifest foreign astronauts for purely political reasons, they knock
> regular astronauts out of the opportunity for a flight they have
> earned by hard work. There has always been some low key resentment in
> the astronaut corps for the payload specialist position.

I agree.

>> The extraction system you speak of, for example, would require 4.5
>> years for the first kit delivery and an 18 month OMM to install in
>> each vehicle.
>
> That depends directly on the resources applied to the job. If
> Congress funded enough money to do it quicker NASA could speed up the
> process quite dramatically.

Ah, the old "you can make a baby in a month by getting nine women pregnant"
argument. Even if true, the more money you spend on escape systems, the
less money you can spend on other vehicle upgrades that improve crew *and
vehicle* survivability. There is a high opportunity cost to be paid here,
even if you refuse to see it.

> The truth is there is no will to do this
> at NASA for a variety of reasons. Apparently the value of a human
> life and frankly just as importantly, the loss of prestige, having
> lost 14 shuttle astronauts, in preventable accidents has not sunk in
> at NASA.

None of the escape systems would have saved the Columbia crew, including
the one you champion. NASA had a choice between implementing a crew escape
system that improves crew survivability, and other upgrades that improve
crew and vehicle survivability. They chose the latter. That does not
indicate a lack of concern for human life, as you allege. I find your
statement disgusting.

>> Don't bother quoting me any contrary numbers for the above system
>> unless they're newer than 4/23/03; otherwise, they're out-of-date.
>
> No need to, I made my points and I relied on former astronauts and
> NASA's own documents for the discussion.

I am relying on current astronauts and NASA's own more recent documents.

>> The administration is talking war with Iran;
>
> They haven't even finished the war in Iraq yet.

And they didn't finish the war in Afghanistan before starting the one in
Iraq. Your point is?

>> they sure as hell aren't going to look the other way while the
>> Russians arm them.
>
> Ya they will. They are doing it now.

In what sense? Sure, they have not yet actually started bombing the Russian
companies doing the selling. But they have slapped limited sanctions (the
Iran Nonproliferation Act) on Russia, and are doing some quiet saber-
rattling in other areas.

--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

[Herb Schaltegger]

In article >,
Doug... > wrote:

> Now, if you could just expedite the development of a Hab module and the
> ELSS racks to support a seven-person station crew, that would reduce the
> risk some... especially if you only increase the station crew to four or
> five until the OSP is ready. Maybe beef up the station's ELSS so that it
> can support, say, 15 people for a period of up to two months without
> resupply. That way, you add extra capability and reduce the risk of an
> ELSS single-point failure requiring station evacuation, among other
> things... I don't have a good first-order engineering concept of what
> that would take, but it ought to be do-able, I would think.

The Hab is already fully designed; I don't know if the can has actually
been built but the basic design's the exact same as the Lab (orignially
the lab didn't have an observation window and the Hab design did, but
the Lab as actually built included the window) Building it isn't much of
a show-stopper but would take some time and money. I don't know if the
Space Station assembly facility at MSFC adjacent to Building 4755 is
still there or not. NASA might contract Alenia to build it anyway, as
they just finished fab'ing the extended Node 2.

Space Station ECLSS racks (one for each Lab and Hab module) were spec'd
for a nominal four crew members per unit. Each was designed to operate
in a "safe haven" mode (basically, higher power, higher flow rates,
faster cycle times, etc) to support eight crew for something like 28
days. On the other hand, the CDRA unit installed in the Lab has been a
true PIA (NASA ought to be suing AiResearch for that mess).
Furthermore, with the reduced ISS crew size (3 at first, maxing out at
7), there very well may have been relaxations of certain design
criteria. Specifically, the flow rates for the TCCS and flow
rates/cycle times for the CDRA may have been reduced to accomodate the
smaller crew. It may be simply a matter of patching the s/w to increase
capacity in an emergency, provided the power is there to support it.

Water should be a non-issue; with that many people on the station over
more than few days (and without assistance from orbiter ECLSS), humidity
would rise dramatically and all that water would come right out of the
THC subsystem. Whether it's potable or not would depend on the how
emergent the "emergency" really is!

--
Herb Schaltegger, Esq.
Chief Counsel, Human O-Ring Society
"I was promised flying cars! Where are the flying cars?!"
~ Avery Brooks

[Lynndel Humphreys]

bombing the Russian
> companies doing the selling.


They are very sensitive and sentimental people.




-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
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[Brian Thorn]

On 10 Jul 2003 01:41:29 GMT, (MasterShrink)
wrote:

>>We can build another even better space telescope. We can place it an orbit
>>near the ISS. What we can't do is rebuild the lost prestige of another
>>orbiter accident on reentry in a manner akin to what we just went through.
>>I agree it would be a tragedy if we can not revisit the Hubble, but the
>>politicians will have to make that call and it is not clear what it will be.
>>It will probably argued for awhile.
>
>To be blunt if there is any reason the shuttle should fly again I'd say it
>should be because of the HST. I'd rather the ISS program were scrapped than
>Hubble simply because the science accomplished by the Hubble strikes me as more
>noteworthy than what has been accomplished aboard ISS.

US Investment in Hubble Space Telescope:
About $3 Billion

US Investment in International Space Station:
About $30 Billion and counting.

Watching expression on Congresscritters faces when you tell them to
scrap ISS:
Priceless.

Brian

[Brian Thorn]

On 10 Jul 2003 13:56:21 GMT, "Jorge R. Frank" >
wrote:


>Right. But in this scenario (orbiter TPS damaged, but life support intact),
>we will assume that the orbiter consumables can be used to depletion, and
>that both the orbiter and ISS will be powered down as deeply as possible.
>That buys you quite a bit of time.

Just out of curiosity, why do you need to power down the ISS?

Brian

[Mike Dicenso]

On Thu, 10 Jul 2003, Herb Schaltegger wrote:

> The Hab is already fully designed; I don't know if the can has actually
> been built but the basic design's the exact same as the Lab (orignially
> the lab didn't have an observation window and the Hab design did, but
> the Lab as actually built included the window) Building it isn't much of
> a show-stopper but would take some time and money. I don't know if the
> Space Station assembly facility at MSFC adjacent to Building 4755 is
> still there or not. NASA might contract Alenia to build it anyway, as
> they just finished fab'ing the extended Node 2.

The Hab module's pressure shell has been built, but is only partially
outfitted. It was last being used as a pathfinder test article for the Lab
(Destiny) module before work was ordered stopped. The MSFC facility is
still there, though most of the work being done has been reduced down to a
support level. It's hard to say whether or not the Hab module could be
finished up there, or if the work would have to be picked up by Alenia.
Certainly the plan several years ago was to have Alenia do just that, but
the deal may very well have quietly fallen by the wayside.
-Mike

[Charleston]

"Doug..." > wrote in message
...
> In article >,
says...
> > "Charleston" > wrote in
> > news:4MPOa.69746$1e.25309@fed1read04:
> >
> > <snip>
> >
> > >> The extraction system you speak of, for example, would require 4.5
> > >> years for the first kit delivery and an 18 month OMM to install in
> > >> each vehicle.
> > >
> > > That depends directly on the resources applied to the job. If
> > > Congress funded enough money to do it quicker NASA could speed up the
> > > process quite dramatically.
> >
> > Ah, the old "you can make a baby in a month by getting nine women
pregnant"
> > argument. Even if true, the more money you spend on escape systems, the
> > less money you can spend on other vehicle upgrades that improve crew
*and
> > vehicle* survivability. There is a high opportunity cost to be paid
here,
> > even if you refuse to see it.

I think you missed part of the point I was trying to make. The public has
an expectation that NASA tries to give the crew a way out. Well NASA really
does not give the crew a way out except under the most benign of
circumstances. Politically NASA does not get it. As for how long it will
take to make extraction kits, we could argue all day. I have seen estimates
of 18 to 24 months and a lot of preliminary work has been done. The idea
that it would take four and a half years is popycock IMO, and it should
absolutely embarass you and others in the aerospace engineering field to
even make such a suggestion. I wonder how fast NASA could get it done if
the Congress had the nuts to cut off flight ops until it's done. Your
example is really no more than NASA plugging in the answer they want--a long
time. Never mind that the orbiters could turn into my generation's version
of the B-52.

> Back when I worked for Arthur Andersen, in the early to mid 80's, the
> saying was "Give me 270 pregnant women and I'll give you a baby in a
> day."

Cute Doug, but that firm has some serious arithmetic maladies ;-)

> I think it might be useful, in the discussion of crew extraction options,
> to compare the shuttle operations to airline operations. It is obviously
> impossible to provide passenger extraction options on airliners for a
> majority of the scenarios which result in total loss of vehicle.
> Hundreds of people die in plane crashes in an average year, and up to a
> billion dollars worth of airplane hardware and ground damage can result
> in years with more than average numbers of crashes. Against that, in 20
> years of shuttle operations, two vehicles and 14 crew members have been
> lost. I know this doesn't make the shuttle "safer" than an airliner, but
> there remains risk in boarding an airliner.

We can make that comparison but is of limited value and accuracy because
airliners (except SST) are not high performance airplanes. A slighly more
valid model but still of limited accuracy would be to compare the orbiter to
a high performance fighter plane. So let's do that. Consider then that the
miltary provides an escape system because the risk of being shot down or
having other unrecoverable problems in a fighter plane is significant and
predictable. The risk, BTW is much lower than getting killed in an orbiter
by several orders of magnitude. To make the comparison more accurate, we
would have to remove the ejection seats from all jet fighters. Not a good
idea politically. Okay so now if we start counting the bodies we get about
an 80% survival rate with fighter plane ejection seats and 100% loss without
them. Surprise, ejection seats can no more save the fighter pilot in all
circumstances than they could for an orbiter crew. Yet they are used anyway
because it is the right thing to do. It is also the expensive thing to do.
It is part of the military value system that also says nobody gets left
behind.

Life before machine.

> Airlines mitigate that risk by trying to ensure aircraft survivability in
> the largest number of different malfunction scenarios as possible. They
> not only try to proactively anticipate failure modes and engineer
> survival capabilities, they also react to fatal crashes and, when
> necessary, impose new requirements on existing fleets. They're forced
> into this approach because they simply can't extract the passengers in-
> flight. This approach has not killed the airline industry, as far as I
> can tell, and I'd wager that your average airline passenger feels his/her
> risk is quite a bit lower than your average astronaut takes on.

If the airline passenger feels a lot safer, it is because it is true.

> To concentrate on crew extraction processes (that, by the way, will
> inevitably not be capable of providing safety under the conditions that
> killed the two shuttle crews we've lost) at the expense of making the
> vehicles safer to fly, is, in my opinion, short-sighted. I truly think
> the airline industry's approach is best in this situation -- make the
> vehicle as safe as possible and accept the fact that crew extraction,
> especially during the highest-risk flight phases (the highly
> dynamic phases of ascent and descent), is an unrealistic goal.

I don't claim that an extraction or ejection seat set-up will work in all
circumstances as I have pointed out before. It will offer the crew more
opportunities to survive than they have now. It will take away a significant
number of black zones in the flight envelope. It will work for the most
critical phases of flight in most circumstances. For the money, it was and
remains worth it. The Challenger accident demonstrates an unexpected
example of how an extraction or ejection system can avail the crew of the
opportunity to escape. No guarantees, just a chance. You can not state
that the Challenger crew would not have survived (assuming the crew was
limitied to five) because we know for a fact that the crew and crew
compartment survived break-up.

As for the Columbia debacle, no solution is perfect, but the accident was so
easily avoidable it should never have happened. The only thing I know of
that might have saved the Columbia crew would have been the ability to eject
the payload when the problem was discovered and to use a more benign reentry
profile. From this point forward, it looks like every mission will be one
that allows a dumping of the payload (ISS). We don't know if that would
have been enough to get the crew compartment through reentry so that the
crew could then punch out at a lower altitude. In fact I am not sure how
they died or when they died. Perhaps a patch could have been placed over
the hole on Columbia's RCC which though inadeqaute for saving the orbiter,
might save the crew compartment.

Finally, I know that only a few that post here regularly think I have a
valid point here, but let me remind you that the Aerospace Safety Advisory
Panel has repeatedly urged NASA to implement a long term escape solution. I
think they understand Jorge's points about cost tradeoffs better than him
and yet those experts have repeatedly urged an escape system be implemented
ANYWAY. So if a Safety commiitee comprised of renowned experts gets it--why
doen't NASA and this group? Is the ASAP a pointless group to be ignored or
even fired at will by a NASA Administrator? Somehow it all seems so very
pathetically wrong.


> For example, when Soyuz 1 killed its pilot, did the Russians try to
> retrofit a way to separate the pilot from his craft in case the
> parachutes failed? It was obviously possible to do so -- Vostok did it.
> But this would have reduced the Soyuz's capabilities too much and limited
> the crew size too much. So, instead, they fixed the problem that made it
> impossible to safely ride a Soyuz to the ground. I'm just saying that,
> as a reaction to fatal flight accidents, extraction has often been
> secondary to making the vehicle safely able to perform its mission and
> return the crew alive.
>
> And BTW, just as an aside, how do you propose to provide crew extraction
> capability during the peak heating phase of entry, when a Columbia-type
> disaster is most likely to occur? It stretches the technology terribly
> close to the breaking point.

There is no solution for this situation. The TPS is a criticality 1 system.
Therefore any failure of that system warrants scrutiny of the highest order.
If such scrutiny had been in place in NASA's risk management structure
scheme it should have caught the problem before Columbia's last flight.

Reentry is not the most likely place for a failure. The denser air of the
lower atmosphere is the place where the orbiter is most likely to lose
aerodynamic control.

Daniel

[Jorge R. Frank]

"Charleston" > wrote in
news:WIuPa.1132$zy.1058@fed1read06:

> "Doug..." > wrote in message
> ...
>> In article >,
>>
> says...
>> >
>> > Ah, the old "you can make a baby in a month by getting nine women
> pregnant"
>> > argument. Even if true, the more money you spend on escape
>> > systems, the less money you can spend on other vehicle upgrades
>> > that improve crew
> *and
>> > vehicle* survivability. There is a high opportunity cost to be paid
> here,
>> > even if you refuse to see it.
>
> I think you missed part of the point I was trying to make. The public
> has an expectation that NASA tries to give the crew a way out. Well
> NASA really does not give the crew a way out except under the most
> benign of circumstances. Politically NASA does not get it.

I don't think I missed it. I stated that for whatever amount of money a
crew escape system costs, there are other upgrades that could have been
done instead that provide better improvements to crew and vehicle
survivability with less weight and operational impacts. You have not
refuted that. Instead, you speak of public expectations and politics. This
is just hallerb's "PR should come ahead of crew and vehicle safety"
argument, presented more eloquently but no more convincingly.

> As for
> how long it will take to make extraction kits, we could argue all day.
> I have seen estimates of 18 to 24 months and a lot of preliminary
> work has been done. The idea that it would take four and a half years
> is popycock IMO, and it should absolutely embarass you and others in
> the aerospace engineering field to even make such a suggestion. I
> wonder how fast NASA could get it done if the Congress had the nuts to
> cut off flight ops until it's done. Your example is really no more
> than NASA plugging in the answer they want--a long time.

Umm, no. That particular number came from a company trying to *sell* crew
escape systems to NASA.

> Finally, I know that only a few that post here regularly think I have
> a valid point here, but let me remind you that the Aerospace Safety
> Advisory Panel has repeatedly urged NASA to implement a long term
> escape solution. I think they understand Jorge's points about cost
> tradeoffs better than him and yet those experts have repeatedly urged
> an escape system be implemented ANYWAY. So if a Safety commiitee
> comprised of renowned experts gets it--why doen't NASA and this group?

Because "Argument by Authority" is a logical fallacy. The argument itself
either makes sense or it doesn't, regardless of its authors' credentials.
--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

[Charleston]

"Jorge R. Frank" > wrote in message
...
> "Charleston" > wrote in
> news:WIuPa.1132$zy.1058@fed1read06:
>
> > "Doug..." > wrote in message
> > ...
> >> In article >,
> >>
> > says...
> >> >
> >> > Ah, the old "you can make a baby in a month by getting nine women
> > pregnant"
> >> > argument. Even if true, the more money you spend on escape
> >> > systems, the less money you can spend on other vehicle upgrades
> >> > that improve crew
> > *and
> >> > vehicle* survivability. There is a high opportunity cost to be paid
> > here,
> >> > even if you refuse to see it.
> >
> > I think you missed part of the point I was trying to make. The public
> > has an expectation that NASA tries to give the crew a way out. Well
> > NASA really does not give the crew a way out except under the most
> > benign of circumstances. Politically NASA does not get it.
>
> I don't think I missed it. I stated that for whatever amount of money a
> crew escape system costs, there are other upgrades that could have been
> done instead that provide better improvements to crew and vehicle
> survivability with less weight and operational impacts. You have not
> refuted that. Instead, you speak of public expectations and politics.
This
> is just hallerb's "PR should come ahead of crew and vehicle safety"
> argument, presented more eloquently but no more convincingly.

Not here or at NASA anyway. It's hard to convince this group of the value
of an escape system, when the group for the most part still denies that the
very escape system of which I have spoken may well have saved five
astronauts on Challenger. I can not place a value on the success of the
escape system anymore than the military can for its fighter planes and
certain bombers. If you want to argue another upgrade is better, name one
that would have saved the Challenger crew other than fixing the o-rings or
putting in an escape system. As long as you can play this little denial
game hey whatever works for you.

> > As for
> > how long it will take to make extraction kits, we could argue all day.
> > I have seen estimates of 18 to 24 months and a lot of preliminary
> > work has been done. The idea that it would take four and a half years
> > is popycock IMO, and it should absolutely embarass you and others in
> > the aerospace engineering field to even make such a suggestion. I
> > wonder how fast NASA could get it done if the Congress had the nuts to
> > cut off flight ops until it's done. Your example is really no more
> > than NASA plugging in the answer they want--a long time.
>
> Umm, no. That particular number came from a company trying to *sell* crew
> escape systems to NASA.

As cheaply as possible no doubt. Did this company show varying timelines
based on resources employed? Name the company, show a price, etc.,
otherwise what's the point?

> > Finally, I know that only a few that post here regularly think I have
> > a valid point here, but let me remind you that the Aerospace Safety
> > Advisory Panel has repeatedly urged NASA to implement a long term
> > escape solution. I think they understand Jorge's points about cost
> > tradeoffs better than him and yet those experts have repeatedly urged
> > an escape system be implemented ANYWAY. So if a Safety commiitee
> > comprised of renowned experts gets it--why doen't NASA and this group?
>
> Because "Argument by Authority" is a logical fallacy. The argument itself
> either makes sense or it doesn't, regardless of its authors' credentials.

Oh, now that is funny, because my "appeal to authority" is based on an
outside group taking an objective look at problems at NASA with the sole
intent of helping make things safer. Your appeal to authority is based on
an entrenched group of government employees supported by contract personnel
who's very careers depend on flying and who's profitability is a function of
more flights.

Daniel

[Charleston]

"Jorge R. Frank" > wrote in message
...
> "Charleston" > wrote in
news:wLzPa.1160$zy.1012@fed1read06:
>
> > If you want to argue another
> > upgrade is better, name one that would have saved the Challenger crew
> > other than fixing the o-rings or putting in an escape system.
>
> You don't even need an upgrade for that; just don't launch in cold
weather, like the Thiokol engineers urged.

Jorge that is a very big assumption on your part. It immediately reminded
me of the assumptions made that led to Columbia coming home. In both cases
the assumptions appear rational on the surface, but in fact, they are not.
If you look back at STS 61-A and STS 2 plus other warm weather launches with
o-ring problems you need to explain those too if you really believe warm
weather would have been a panacea for Challenger and by inference all
follow-on flights. If you can explain away the warm weather damage in a
scientific manner and still make your cold weather launch theory stick
please do so. Let me just ask this question. At what *warm* temperature
would it have been safe enough to launch Challenger? Would you bet someone
else's life on this--bypassing an expensive redesign? Also, what would your
Launch Commit Criteria for that decision be based upon? The Roger's
Commission made no serious effort to explain the warm weather launch o-ring
damage of earlier flights. Did you ever wonder why?? Instead they focused
on cold weather. It had a dramatic effect on most of the reviewers of that
investigation including you apparently. The truth is that the joint design
while poor may have failed in warm weather just as surely as it did on
January 28, 1986. We will never know will we? I believe that STS 51-L
failed because that launch combined engineering aspects of both warm weather
launches and cold weather launches which experienced o-ring problems,
specifically STS 61-A and STS 51-C. If you knew what those characteristics
were you would not make the assertion you did. Your self-assured statement
reflecting a willingness to make a quantum leap assertion on flight safety
is seriously
scary.

> >> Umm, no. That particular number came from a company trying to *sell*
> >> crew escape systems to NASA.
> >
> > As cheaply as possible no doubt. Did this company show varying
> > timelines based on resources employed? Name the company, show a
> > price, etc., otherwise what's the point?
>
> I'm not at liberty to reveal that. If you wish to perform your victory
> dance now, be my guest.

Nah, the simple fact that it is was a solicitation and not a serious Request
For
Proposal was humorous enough.

> >> Because "Argument by Authority" is a logical fallacy. The argument
> >> itself either makes sense or it doesn't, regardless of its authors'
> >> credentials.
> >
> > Oh, now that is funny, because my "appeal to authority" is based on an
> > outside group taking an objective look at problems at NASA with the
> > sole intent of helping make things safer.
>
> If that were the case, I wonder why the ASAP didn't declare the ET foam
> shedding problem a safety-of-flight hazard in their 2002 report.

It is really quite simple to explain. If you read the annual ASAP reports
over the years you keep seeing this.

"The Panel shall review safety studies and operations plans referred to it
and shall make reports thereon, shall advise the Administrator with respect
to the hazards of proposed operations and with respect to the adequacy of
proposed or existing safety standards, and shall perform such other duties
as the Administrator may request."

NASA Authorization Act of 1968 | Public Law 90-67, 42 U.S.C. 2477

Imagine that Jorge. The law compels the ASAP to review NASA's very own
safety studies! The ASAP can not review what NASA does not refer to them
nor produce. Of course this leads one to soon realize that NASA has written
safety studies on crew escape systems. The ASAP has read them, interviewed
engineers, held meetings with NASA managers, and then endorsed them. Just a
couple years before both Challenger and Columbia were lost, the ASAP
ironically recommended that crew escape systems be installed. In one case
it may have saved a crew of five, in another, who knows, if things were done
more responsibly.

> > Your appeal to authority is
> > based on an entrenched group of government employees supported by
> > contract personnel who's very careers depend on flying and who's
> > profitability is a function of more flights.
>
> But an escape system would be a cash cow for the contractors! It would
> keep the contractors employed for years, and the reduction in crew/payload
> would require ISS assembly to be stretched out over more flights.

Point well taken, kind of like that cash cow that was sitting out in the
pasture after Challenger to redesign the bum boosters NASA had already begun
redesigning, and that cash cow out there right now getting ready to read the
CAIB report and eat some RCC, tile repair kits, ISS mods.... ...as for
stretched out over more flights you are assuming the ISS will survive
long-term in Congress. I hope it does too, but who knows?

Daniel