STS51L Accident Questions

"Pat Flannery" wrote:
Charleston wrote:

The best motion picture film photography of the smoke puffs at launch,
that is the cameras positioned with a direct angle to observe the
start-up tranisent as to location, direction of smoke, size, etcetera,
all failed to operate! The odds of that failure being coincidence are
dim, but it did happen that way.


And your point is?

That is was not a coincidence and the film issue was never adequately
resolved.

http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v3appn.htm Page N-74)

"7) Factors or Anomalies Not Ruled Out
The pattern of camera locations of the items that failed does not appear to
be a random pattern. The grouping of failed items cannot be rationalized on
the basis of purely statistical rationale without reaching an extremely high
improbability estimate.

It cannot be explained why the cameras on the MLP deck, which according to
all evidence should have been in a more favorable environment than the
cameras on the FSS, had a high failure percentage, while the FSS cameras had
no failures.

The fact that the most important cameras, in terms of direct viewing of the
critical event at lift-off, were among the failed items is only partially
explainable as a random statistic. The percent of failed items to total MLP
items is 32 percent. Of the nine failed items, four are considered most
important as directly viewing the smoke event. The percent of critical items
to failed items is 44 percent.

Other factors about which there is insufficient evidence to report will be
the subject of continuing investigation."

As for your inability to see the smoke, please don't blame me. It takes
a
lot of bandwidth to put up MPEG II or AVI. I will put up some higher
resolution photography later tonight for a limited timeframe. Personally,
I can see plenty of black smoke up to about 3.4 seconds, and subsequently
I see significant diffuse smoke brightly illuminated by the light of the
SRB flames.

That stuff coming off the side of the tank, and falling into the area
behind the ET isn't related to the SRB problem, it shows up on every
Shuttle launch; it's either some sort of venting from the ET or frost
falling off of its exterior surface.

You don't know that for sure. The 3 dimensional origin of most of the smoke
is from the right half of the vehicle. Undoubtedly some of the smoke is
from ET offgassing and a little frost; nevertheless, smoke was conclusivley
seen by LMSC as early as T+15 seconds from the E-217 70mm film and in the 40
to 45 second timeframe with "solid material" being visible from the same
camera.

Also, I conclude that the "STS 51-L JSC Visual Data Analysis Sub-Team"
and the team at LMSC got it right when they saw smoke and "solid
material" as late as 45 seconds emanating from the same region of the
vehicle.

Are we talking about the SRB here, or some other part of the vehicle?

From the area where smoke was seen shortly after lift-off.

Unfortuantely, they were overruled by the film team at KSC. As you
probably know, it is KSC's views that are reflected in the final
Presidential Commission report.

As we have photos showing the plume coming out of the SRB and impinging on
the ET's surface, followed by the failure of the ET, and also detailed
extremely clear film of the burning of the O-rings at the field joint
during SRB ignition with a plume of smoke exiting the SRB, this whole
thing is about as open and shut case as it's possible to get in regards to
the cause of the accident.

So do you conclude that NASA could not have overlooked multiple failures,
with one failure initiating others in a cascading series of events outside
of the current leaky field joint failure as reflected in the STS 51-L
history books? Please keep an open mind.

Daniel