Pre-Columbia Criticism of NASA's Safety Culture in the late 1990's

I meant back on that original drawing board in the early 1970s. Take
the crew cabin and "augment" the design so that it then becomes a
functional crew escape module. We've already seen how the
"unaugmented" (if you will) crew cabin has served as a means of crew
separation from a disintegrating STS stack.


~ CT


The ORIGINAL design called for that and was cut for weight budget reasons

But they didnt downgrade the structure so the crew structure survives very
well.

From Derek Lyons:
(Stuf4) wrote:

We've already seen how the "unaugmented" (if you will) crew cabin
has served as a means of crew separation from a disintegrating STS stack.

We've also seen that in both cases it was not possible to detect the
damage early enough to ensure a clean seperation.

On the contrary, what both cases have shown that is that no
pre-failure detection was necessary for crew cabin separation. In
both cases, the orbiter disintegrated while the crew cabin remained
intact while gaining physical separation from the rest of the debris.


~ CT

From Dan Foster:
wrote:

Just how do you practice bailing out of a space shuttle?

The CAIB report addresses exactly that point with a nice photograph of
someone fully suited up with lanyard attached to the bailout pole along the
side of a C-141 cargo plane at altitude, in the progress of bailing out,
while upside-down. It's a pretty nice photograph. See page 215 of the CAIB
report.

That is not an astronaut in that photo. It is a test jumper with
hundreds of jumps experience.

I expect that NASA would duly repremand any astronaut who got caught
in such high risk activity. And no astronaut would have the cool
presence of mind to maintain a thumbs-up (see photo) while sliding
down that pole. Ha!

A C-141 may not be a Space Shuttle, but the conditions were certainly
equivalent: level flight altitude, 20,000 feet or less, etc. (The procedure
starts at no earlier than 40,000 feet but IIRC, jumps don't actually start
until about 20,000 feet or so?)

I don't know if Shuttle crews are actually expected to do that practice
bailout for real, or if they normally go through the motions but not
actually jump. Certainly an element of risk if they went through it for a
realistic practice that may not ordinarily be commensurate with the number
of times they're likely to need to do this for real at the end of a mission.

(These points are addressed in my response to Jonathan above.)

I'm sure that the reason why there is no NASA requirement to practice
actual bailout is that the training poses a much higher risk than any
possible benefit that would come out of the small chance of needing to
use that training.


~ CT

From Greg Moo
Imagine a car company that does a study and determines that it is too
expensive to build a vehicle with airbags and even seatbelts, and that
the performance of that vehicle will be degraded by this safety
equipment. So they build it. And there is a long line of people who
still want to buy it and drive it. When those vehicles crash (and
they will crash) and their occupants take their final ride through the
front windshield, I can guarantee you that the NTSB would hold that
car company accountable for willful negligence.


History has proven you wrong.

I probably overreached with that verbiage of "...I can guarantee you
that the NTSB would...", but I expect you see the point I was making.


~ CT

This is a vital role of government: to step in and set safety
standards where an uninterfered market will trend toward an unsafe
solution.

....or, in the case of the USA, an oversafe solution up to and including
wiping every manufacturer off the market...market forces here including
the judicial system with juries adjudicating complicated technical issues
and all.

Jan

From Jan Vorbrüggen:
This is a vital role of government: to step in and set safety
standards where an uninterfered market will trend toward an unsafe
solution.

...or, in the case of the USA, an oversafe solution up to and including
wiping every manufacturer off the market...market forces here including
the judicial system with juries adjudicating complicated technical issues
and all.

The current incarnation of the US government is a monstrosity that
none of the founding fathers would approve of. King George looks
impotent in comparison.

An interesting novel could be written where Independence Hall has a
crystal ball. What would those famous men have done differently had
they been able to see into the future to the results of what they were
creating.

It's possible that they may all have decided to go home to dig through
their closet for their bottle of "Royal Crown Polish"!


~ CT

You are making blanket assertions that don't hold up to serious
analysis. (Not to mention the implied comment that judges are capable
of adjudicating compmlicated technical issues; just how much litigation
and trial experience do YOU have?)

Enough.

Hereabouts, there are specialised groups of judges who handle certain
classes of cases exclusively; they usually are well respected by their
"customers".

And surely Lipobay (or whatever it was called in the US) is an example
of this in action. Or the alledged "poisoning" of apples by Alar.

Jan

In article ,
Jan C. Vorbruggen wrote:

You are making blanket assertions that don't hold up to serious
analysis. (Not to mention the implied comment that judges are capable
of adjudicating compmlicated technical issues; just how much litigation
and trial experience do YOU have?)

Enough.

Sure. As a jurist? Juror? Counsel? Witness?

Hereabouts, there are specialised groups of judges who handle certain
classes of cases exclusively; they usually are well respected by their
"customers".

Tell me again how that would work in a country of 260 million people
(plus no doubt several million illegal residents), comprised of 51
semi-sovereign jurisdictions (including D.C. but not including any U.S.
territories or protectorates), each with about four hundred years of
jurisprudential precedent to rely on/depend on/comply with, not to
mention various state and federal Constitutional guarantees of right to
trial by jury in nearly all matters. (And the very reason such
provisions were placed in those Constitutions was to prevent historical
abuses of power by judges).

And surely Lipobay (or whatever it was called in the US) is an example
of this in action.

Baycol? The medical evidence is pretty compelling, your insinuation to
the contrary notwithstanding. And I don't see Bayer planning bankruptcy
any time soon (which just belies your rationale for bringing it up in
the first place).

Or the alledged "poisoning" of apples by Alar.

How many apple growers/distributors/retailers were financially ruined or
bankrupted? None? Gee, what a surprise. And how many manufacturers of
alar (or any other apple pesticide) were bankrupted by the public hue
and cry? You need to come up with some better examples.


Jan

--
Herb Schaltegger, B.S., J.D.
Reformed Aerospace Engineer
"Heisenberg might have been here."
~ Anonymous

In summary, it would have been easy to design the shuttle with crew escape
capability covering the vast majority of ascent/entry

I didn't think you could answer my question.

I didn't ask about ascent. I specifically asked about the stage at where
Columbia was lost.

The fact remains, that if the thermal protection system fails (tiles, heat
shield, whatever you want to call it) during reentry, the spacecraft is toast.
Nothing can save it, or the crew.
Bill Harris

Sci-Fi Quote of the month:
"We will never forgive and we will never forget." - Stilgar, "Dune"

From Bill Harris:
In summary, it would have been easy to design the shuttle with crew escape
capability covering the vast majority of ascent/entry

I didn't think you could answer my question.

I didn't ask about ascent. I specifically asked about the stage at where
Columbia was lost.

I have addressed -107 type entry scenarios. If you don't like my
analysis, there are specialists within the field who can give you
their analysis as to how easy it could have been done.

I was at the library yesterday and was surprised to find the AvWeek
article titled "Crew Module Separated" (Sep-1-03,p31). This led me to
go back to the CAIB report to find the section where crew module
integrity was discussed: p77(of248) titled "STS-107 CREW
SURVIVABILITY". The report is very clear in the fact that it was well
after vehicle breakup that aerothermal loads finally caused the loss
of integrity of the crew module. This tells me that a module designed
for aerodynamic stability and given adequate thermal protection would
have survived (or at least *could* have survived).

It was deeply saddened to read...

"The death of the crew members was due to blunt trauma and hypoxia."

Death by hypoxia?! I hope this is referring to crew members who
weren't wearing their gloves/helmet. Now if it was a fully suited
crewmember who died from hypoxia, then I would find that exceptionally
disturbing. The report does not say how close anyone came to
surviving, but death by hypoxia requires a certain length of *time*,
which tells me that they (or at least, someone) may have survived the
debris of cabin breakup.

I am wondering about the possibility that following cabin breakup,
someone gets ejected out of their seat to go into a freefall. Imagine
then that after the long hot-to-cold freefall an altitude sensor in
the ACES automatically deploys their chute, to minutes later touch
down softly in a Texas field... only to find that this crewmember died
of *hypoxia*.

The fact remains, that if the thermal protection system fails (tiles, heat
shield, whatever you want to call it) during reentry, the spacecraft is toast.
Nothing can save it, or the crew.

We agree that the spacecraft is toast. As to the crew, CAIB stops
well short of saying what could have saved them. But they do say
this:

"The Working Group's results significantly add to the knowledge gained
from the loss of Challenger in 1986. Such knowledge is critical to
efforts to improve crew survivability when designing new vehicles and
identifying feasible improvements to the existing Orbiters."
(p77of248)

They do NOT say...

"Spacecraft and crew are toast so we aren't going to bother making
efforts toward designing a way to save future astronauts in similar
situations."


~ CT