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The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien



 
 
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  #51  
Old January 30th 17, 09:35 PM posted to sci.space.history
Fred J. McCall[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,018
Default The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien

"Scott M. Kozel" wrote:

On Sunday, January 29, 2017 at 8:48:04 AM UTC-5, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...

On Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 5:39:54 PM UTC-6, Stuf4 wrote:
My original speculation in this thread about how the shuttle
might have been used in brewing up any kind of attack plan
was referring only to the planners. It was their job to
dream up crazy things.


As it was, the only shuttles that were disintegrated happened
as a result of lack of care, rather than anything intentional.

Correct, they were management failures, not technological failures.


To be fair, middle level shuttle managers were put in a bad spot by the
higher ups. They had to manage what amounted to an experimental program
and pretend it was an "operational" program after five test flights.
The higher ups put a huge amount of pressure on middle management to
increase the flight rate. This created the management culture of "if
we're going to ground it, you have to prove to me it will fail", which
doomed the Challenger crew.

Middle managers were also forced to do this with a budget which was
smaller than it should have been. An example of this was right before
Challenger there was a distinct lack of spare parts. They were pulling
parts from recently returned orbiters so they could be installed on
another orbiter which was being prepared to fly. Imagine if you had two
cars and had to pull the cylinder head from one and install it on the
other when you wanted to use it. Insane, right?

To begin with, the SRBs ought to have been replaced with reusable liquid
boosters, but that would have been *quite* expensive to develop (which
is why SLS is still using solids). Other improvements, like non-toxic
OMS/RCS propellants and replacing the APUs and hydraulics with
electrically operated actuators would have improved the turn-around time
and reduced the risks to ground crews.


It was an avoidable disaster, they should not have launched on such a cold day, and that precipitated the failure of the O-rings.


All disasters are avoidable simply by never flying. The problem, as
Jeff noted, was that to scrub the launch because of the cold it would
have been necessary to PROVE that the cold would lead to disaster.
They'd launched in cold before and gotten away with it and there was
blow-by on the O-rings even in warmer weather.


Columbia could have been saved; if they used ground based telescopes to find the damage, then they would have had 2 weeks to come up with a patch from either material on board or material sent up on an expendable rocket, then EVAs to apply the patch. The ability to patch would have been marginal, but they would have had a good shot at a safe landing.


Do you understand what was damaged on Columbia? I don't think you
could have seen it with a ground based telescope and even if you could
the Shuttle would have been a write off because there was no way to
effect a repair on orbit. There's no way to 'patch' that kind of
damage.


--
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to
live in the real world."
-- Mary Shafer, NASA Dryden
  #53  
Old February 3rd 17, 11:49 AM posted to sci.space.history
Stuf4
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 554
Default The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien

From Fred McCall:
Jeff Findley wrote:

In article ,
says...

On Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 5:39:54 PM UTC-6, Stuf4 wrote:

snip
As it was, the only shuttles that were disintegrated happened
as a result of lack of care, rather than anything intentional.

Correct, they were management failures, not technological failures.


To be fair, middle level shuttle managers were put in a bad spot by the
higher ups. They had to manage what amounted to an experimental program
and pretend it was an "operational" program after five test flights.
The higher ups put a huge amount of pressure on middle management to
increase the flight rate. This created the management culture of "if
we're going to ground it, you have to prove to me it will fail", which
doomed the Challenger crew.

Middle managers were also forced to do this with a budget which was
smaller than it should have been. An example of this was right before
Challenger there was a distinct lack of spare parts. They were pulling
parts from recently returned orbiters so they could be installed on
another orbiter which was being prepared to fly. Imagine if you had two
cars and had to pull the cylinder head from one and install it on the
other when you wanted to use it. Insane, right?

To begin with, the SRBs ought to have been replaced with reusable liquid
boosters, but that would have been *quite* expensive to develop (which
is why SLS is still using solids). Other improvements, like non-toxic
OMS/RCS propellants and replacing the APUs and hydraulics with
electrically operated actuators would have improved the turn-around time
and reduced the risks to ground crews.

Unfortunately, SLS/Orion seems to have given up on reuse which creates a
vicious cycle of low flight rates and high launch costs. The very low
flight rate is bad for safety for a variety of reasons. Imagine a job
where every task you perform has to be done perfectly, but you only do
each task every other year, so you are assigned hundreds of tasks to
perform for each mission. You'd have little chance to get better at
your tasks, since by the time you have to repeat a task, you will have
forgotten most of what you learned from doing it the last time.


There are times when I think Usenet needs a 'Like' button...


I myself see a lot to be in wanting in Jeff's post.


JF: Imagine if you had two cars and had to pull the cylinder head from one and install it on the other when you wanted to use it. Insane, right?"

That is called "cannibalization", and a very common practice in high performance aerospace vehicles. Hardly ideal, but a cost-effective approach to maintenance.


JF: "the SRBs ought to have been replaced with reusable liquid boosters"

A fact that so many people are willing to ignore is that the SRBs performed totally adequately for 24 straight missions. They never failed a single time. So that's 48 SRB successes in a row. 144 field joints did their job.

The only time they failed was when NASA decided to launch with temps WAY OUT OF LIMITS. Here is an exact quote from Thiokol's Bob Ebeling:

"[W]e're only qualified to 40 degrees ...'what business does anyone even have thinking about 18 degrees, we're in no man's land.'"
(https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2007...of-challenger/)

THAT is the one and only proximate cause of the Challenger disaster.

....and the culpability for this fatal error falls not only on NASA top management, nor middle management, but the one level of decision-making that everyone, for whatever reason, chooses to avoid mentioning:

- Operations.

THEY were the ones whose duty was to know these limits better than anyone else involved in the launch decision. Yet all of them decided to not voice their objections. That goes for the dozens upon dozens of people in Launch Control, the many dozens in Mission Control, and also the crew themselves.

The crew paid for this mistake with their lives.
Other people in operations like Gene Thomas, Bob Sieck, Jay Greene, Fred Gregory, etc got *promoted*.

That's the most effective way to cover up an egregious error. Everybody pretend that it never happened. That it wasn't their job to stop the launch. It's much easier to blame an inanimate object like O-rings even though they had a track record of a 100% success rate when launched within temp limits.

SRB field joints had a batting average of 1000. 144 successes with 144 at bats.

Not a perfect design, to be sure. But it worked when established limits were respected.

O-rings are *NOT* what killed Scobee and his crew. It was every person involved in the chain that arrived at the decision that it was a good idea to launch in spite of the freezing cold temps.


And it likewise needs to be identified that also culpable for these 7 fatalities is everyone from back in the 1970s who was involved in the decision to not give shuttle crews a viable means of escape. It would have been very easy to have designed the crew cabin as a breakaway structure. Being a pressure vessel, it was already robust. Not much more was needed than a stabilization drogue chute and thermal protection. A set of very light tiles or blankets would have done the trick. From there, all the crews would have needed was pressure suits with parachutes.

Such a simple low cost lightweight low-performance-impact solution would have saved 14 lives. Or if it failed in saving lives, it would have at least given them a fighting chance. Some glimmer of hope for survival.

In the case of 51-L, something as simple as a sport parachute might have made the difference between living and dying. This is *half* of what recreational parachutists use on a daily basis. Just give the astronauts the "reserve". But no. They were not even given that much.

~ CT
  #54  
Old February 3rd 17, 12:03 PM posted to sci.space.history
Stuf4
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 554
Default The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien

From Fred McCall:
"Scott M. Kozel" wrote:

On Sunday, January 29, 2017 at 8:48:04 AM UTC-5, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...

On Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 5:39:54 PM UTC-6, Stuf4 wrote:
My original speculation in this thread about how the shuttle
might have been used in brewing up any kind of attack plan
was referring only to the planners. It was their job to
dream up crazy things.


As it was, the only shuttles that were disintegrated happened
as a result of lack of care, rather than anything intentional.

Correct, they were management failures, not technological failures.

To be fair, middle level shuttle managers were put in a bad spot by the
higher ups. They had to manage what amounted to an experimental program
and pretend it was an "operational" program after five test flights.
The higher ups put a huge amount of pressure on middle management to
increase the flight rate. This created the management culture of "if
we're going to ground it, you have to prove to me it will fail", which
doomed the Challenger crew.

Middle managers were also forced to do this with a budget which was
smaller than it should have been. An example of this was right before
Challenger there was a distinct lack of spare parts. They were pulling
parts from recently returned orbiters so they could be installed on
another orbiter which was being prepared to fly. Imagine if you had two
cars and had to pull the cylinder head from one and install it on the
other when you wanted to use it. Insane, right?

To begin with, the SRBs ought to have been replaced with reusable liquid
boosters, but that would have been *quite* expensive to develop (which
is why SLS is still using solids). Other improvements, like non-toxic
OMS/RCS propellants and replacing the APUs and hydraulics with
electrically operated actuators would have improved the turn-around time
and reduced the risks to ground crews.


It was an avoidable disaster, they should not have launched on such a cold day, and that precipitated the failure of the O-rings.


All disasters are avoidable simply by never flying. The problem, as
Jeff noted, was that to scrub the launch because of the cold it would
have been necessary to PROVE that the cold would lead to disaster.
They'd launched in cold before and gotten away with it and there was
blow-by on the O-rings even in warmer weather.


Columbia could have been saved; if they used ground based telescopes to find the damage, then they would have had 2 weeks to come up with a patch from either material on board or material sent up on an expendable rocket, then EVAs to apply the patch. The ability to patch would have been marginal, but they would have had a good shot at a safe landing.


Do you understand what was damaged on Columbia? I don't think you
could have seen it with a ground based telescope and even if you could
the Shuttle would have been a write off because there was no way to
effect a repair on orbit. There's no way to 'patch' that kind of
damage.


No way? Au contraire. It is quite possible that *duct tape* might have gotten them home.

The Air Force has a program called "ABDR" that teaches how to do such repairs. They will cut things like soda cans and flatten them out and then duct tape them onto holes on a jet's wing or fuselage as a viable patch.

So for doing a MacGyver-style Aircraft Battle Damage Repair of Columbia's wing leading edge, you scour the crew cabin for some flat bendable piece of metal. Maybe use clipboards. Whatever. Then go out and tape it over the gaping hole. On day of Entry, hope it holds long enough to get you home.

As for detecting the damage, they could either have used NRO spy sats, or simply get out and look. Such an EVA could have been done on Flight Day 2.


One of the most heinous issues with the Gehman Report was that while Wayne Hale was the most vocal proponent for using such assets to try and determine that the vehicle was critically damaged...

Hale is one and the same person who in response to the STS-112 SOFI damage, stated his official position that the foam strike risk was acceptable. This was said in a recorded meeting that the investigators were tasked to listen to, leading up to greenlighting the launch one-prior to STS-107. Yet Gehman did not mention this fact in his report at all.

In the aftermath, Hale's efforts were taken to be heroic, when he had all the data he needed to know that continuing to launch without a rescue or repair plan was way short of a smart thing to do.

Linda Ham and Ron Dittemore were hung out to dry when they had followed the exact course of (in)action that Wayne Hale had been subscribing to prior to the launch.

In all, there were inexcusable errors made well before the launch as well as during the mission.

One fatal error goes all the way back to the 1970s:
- Not giving the crew a viable escape option.

Next highest on the list of fatal errors that were totally inexcusable was:
- Not having a viable foam damage repair plan, nor
- Rescue mission plan.

Considering what happened to STS-112, the decision to launch STS-113 was blatantly negligent. Wayne Hale was cavalier in reiterating the program's standard position that the SOFI threat was an accepted risk.

There were plenty of signs going back decades that SOFI was a serious problem that could, on any mission, inflict fatal damage to the orbiter. This is why so much effort was made in photographing the ET's after MECO.
This is why they implemented the ET video camera mod.

STS-112 was ironically the first flight of the ET camera. And that is the mission that was shouting out that SOFI was a problem not to be ignored. How did NASA respond? They ignored it.

~ CT
  #55  
Old February 3rd 17, 12:33 PM posted to sci.space.history
Jeff Findley[_6_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,307
Default The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien

In article ,
says...
There are times when I think Usenet needs a 'Like' button...


I myself see a lot to be in wanting in Jeff's post.


JF: Imagine if you had two cars and had to pull the cylinder head from one and install it on the other when you wanted to use it. Insane, right?"

That is called "cannibalization", and a very common practice in high performance aerospace vehicles. Hardly ideal, but a cost-effective approach to maintenance.


Firstly, I believe in primary sources. Here is the best source when it
comes to the causes leading up to the Challenger disaster:

Report to the President
By the PRESIDENTIAL COMMISSION
On the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident
June 6th, 1986
Washington, D.C.
https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/outreac.../assets/rogers
_commission_report.pdf

Cannibalization is discussed on page 174 under the heading of "Effect of
Flight Rate on Spare Parts". This was *not* a good thing when parts
were being pulled after *every* flight.

JF: "the SRBs ought to have been replaced with reusable liquid boosters"

A fact that so many people are willing to ignore is that the SRBs performed totally adequately for 24 straight missions. They never failed a single time. So that's 48 SRB successes in a row. 144 field joints did their job.

The only time they failed was when NASA decided to launch with temps WAY OUT OF LIMITS. Here is an exact quote from Thiokol's Bob Ebeling:

"[W]e're only qualified to 40 degrees ...'what business does anyone even have thinking about 18 degrees, we're in no man's land.'"
(https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2007...of-challenger/)

THAT is the one and only proximate cause of the Challenger disaster.


Actually, your thinking is pretty much exacly how middle management was
handing several different issues with the space shuttle system, any one
of which could have caused loss of orbiter and crew. The thinnking that
"we've gotten away with it for 24 missions, so there is no reason to
stop flying" is why Challenger happened. It's quite simply wrong headed
thinking to point to *one single cause* in cases like this. Several
things were wrong with the SRB field joint and several other systems in
the space shuttle were just as bad.

The fact of the matter is that the o-rings should never have come into
contact with combustion gasses and should never have experienced
erosion. While temperature did have a huge impact on the probability of
burn through, other factors (such as cases being out of round, joint
rotation when pressure built up, and the fatally flawed way the joints
o-ring seals were tested) could very well have caused a failure even
when flown at temperatures over 40 degrees.

Again, take a look at *all* of the systems which were modified and
upgraded during the downtime following Challenger. There were
*several*.

...and the culpability for this fatal error falls not only on
NASA top management, nor middle management, but the one level
of decision-making that everyone, for whatever reason, chooses
to avoid mentioning:

- Operations.

THEY were the ones whose duty was to know these limits better
than anyone else involved in the launch decision. Yet all of
them decided to not voice their objections. That goes for the
dozens upon dozens of people in Launch Control, the many
dozens in Mission Control, and also the crew themselves.

The crew paid for this mistake with their lives.
Other people in operations like Gene Thomas, Bob Sieck,
Jay Greene, Fred Gregory, etc got *promoted*.

That's the most effective way to cover up an egregious error.
Everybody pretend that it never happened. That it wasn't their
job to stop the launch. It's much easier to blame an inanimate
object like O-rings even though they had a track record of a
100% success rate when launched within temp limits.

SRB field joints had a batting average of 1000. 144 successes
with 144 at bats.

Not a perfect design, to be sure. But it worked when
established limits were respected.

O-rings are *NOT* what killed Scobee and his crew. It was
every person involved in the chain that arrived at the decision
that it was a good idea to launch in spite of the freezing
cold temps.


Yes the decision making was flawed. But even worse the culture was
flawed. The shuttle was flying with *several* systems which were quite
marginal and could lead to loss of the orbiter and the crew. It's not
that this *one* decision was wrong. That's far too simplistic.

And it likewise needs to be identified that also culpable for these
7 fatalities is everyone from back in the 1970s who was involved in
the decision to not give shuttle crews a viable means of escape.
It would have been very easy to have designed the crew cabin as a
breakaway structure. Being a pressure vessel, it was already
robust. Not much more was needed than a stabilization drogue
chute and thermal protection. A set of very light tiles or
blankets would have done the trick. From there, all the crews
would have needed was pressure suits with parachutes.


Agreed that the system was flawed in that it lacked a crew escape
capability on a vehicle that was large, complex, and prone to failure.
As for an escape capsule being a viable add-on to the shuttle, I call
bull****.

Look at the history of the F-111 and B-1A crew capsule escape systems.
Making such a system work while an aircraft is breaking apart is *very*
difficult. Making one work at "max-Q" during a shuttle launch (i.e.
when Challenger broke up due to aerodynamic forces) would have been even
harder. Making one work for a Columbia syle accident would mean the
escape capsule would have to be an actual reentry capsule with its own
heat sheild, reaction control system, parachutes, landing air bags, and
etc.

All of this would have added complexity, weight, and even additional
failure modes. Since the shuttle program was already not meeting its
payload goals, this could have resulted in a vehicle with a large
payload bay but little to no actual payload mass capability.

Such a simple low cost lightweight low-performance-impact solution
would have saved 14 lives. Or if it failed in saving lives, it
would have at least given them a fighting chance. Some glimmer
of hope for survival.


Except such a system would not have been lightweight, low cost, or even
highly reliable based on the long history of "escape capsules" on high
performance aircraft.


In the case of 51-L, something as simple as a sport parachute might
have made the difference between living and dying. This is *half*
of what recreational parachutists use on a daily basis. Just give
the astronauts the "reserve". But no. They were not even given
that much.


Which is why after Challenger the crews wore both pressure suits and the
shuttle was equipped with an escape pole.

But leaving in criticallity one failure points, like the flawed SRB
field joint, is still not a good idea. And again, that was not the only
criticallity one failure point addressed post Challenger. You're
glossing over details and that's never a good idea when the details
matter.


This has been discussed to death in the distant past. Why don't you re-
read the entire Rogers Commission Report on Challenger, the Columbia
Accident Investigation Report, and take a look at what modifications
were made to the space shuttle system after each of these accidents.
You'll find that it's not as simple as one failure point. Accident
investigations like this tend to uncover many failure points.

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.
  #56  
Old February 4th 17, 02:32 AM posted to sci.space.history
Fred J. McCall[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,018
Default The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien

Stuf4 wrote:

From Fred McCall:
Jeff Findley wrote:

In article ,
says...

On Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 5:39:54 PM UTC-6, Stuf4 wrote:

snip
As it was, the only shuttles that were disintegrated happened
as a result of lack of care, rather than anything intentional.

Correct, they were management failures, not technological failures.

To be fair, middle level shuttle managers were put in a bad spot by the
higher ups. They had to manage what amounted to an experimental program
and pretend it was an "operational" program after five test flights.
The higher ups put a huge amount of pressure on middle management to
increase the flight rate. This created the management culture of "if
we're going to ground it, you have to prove to me it will fail", which
doomed the Challenger crew.

Middle managers were also forced to do this with a budget which was
smaller than it should have been. An example of this was right before
Challenger there was a distinct lack of spare parts. They were pulling
parts from recently returned orbiters so they could be installed on
another orbiter which was being prepared to fly. Imagine if you had two
cars and had to pull the cylinder head from one and install it on the
other when you wanted to use it. Insane, right?

To begin with, the SRBs ought to have been replaced with reusable liquid
boosters, but that would have been *quite* expensive to develop (which
is why SLS is still using solids). Other improvements, like non-toxic
OMS/RCS propellants and replacing the APUs and hydraulics with
electrically operated actuators would have improved the turn-around time
and reduced the risks to ground crews.

Unfortunately, SLS/Orion seems to have given up on reuse which creates a
vicious cycle of low flight rates and high launch costs. The very low
flight rate is bad for safety for a variety of reasons. Imagine a job
where every task you perform has to be done perfectly, but you only do
each task every other year, so you are assigned hundreds of tasks to
perform for each mission. You'd have little chance to get better at
your tasks, since by the time you have to repeat a task, you will have
forgotten most of what you learned from doing it the last time.


There are times when I think Usenet needs a 'Like' button...


I myself see a lot to be in wanting in Jeff's post.


JF: Imagine if you had two cars and had to pull the cylinder head from one and install it on the other when you wanted to use it. Insane, right?"

That is called "cannibalization", and a very common practice in high performance aerospace vehicles. Hardly ideal, but a cost-effective approach to maintenance.


No, it's not 'cost effective' at all. The 'cost effective' thing to
do is to have spares and maintain all your vehicles. We had them
until they were used up in order to build Endeavour on the cheap. What
do you get for the cost of moving parts from vehicle to vehicle to
vehicle? More costs, that's what.


JF: "the SRBs ought to have been replaced with reusable liquid boosters"

A fact that so many people are willing to ignore is that the SRBs performed totally adequately for 24 straight missions. They never failed a single time. So that's 48 SRB successes in a row. 144 field joints did their job.


Well, no, they didn't, unless your definition of 'adequate' equals
"didn't catastrophically fail". There were many cases of O-ring burn
and leakage. 'Luck' shouldn't be a part of 'adequate' performance.
Math in public is hard. There are six joints PER SRB and two SRBs per
launch, so 24 launches equals 288 joints.


The only time they failed was when NASA decided to launch with temps WAY OUT OF LIMITS. Here is an exact quote from Thiokol's Bob Ebeling:

"[W]e're only qualified to 40 degrees ...'what business does anyone even have thinking about 18 degrees, we're in no man's land.'"
(https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2007...of-challenger/)

THAT is the one and only proximate cause of the Challenger disaster.


Except that that launch was not the only one to show evidence of hot
gas escaping through the O-ring. In point of fact, the joints had
been on the critical failure list since 1982, but NASA waived their
own safety requirements in order to keep flying.


SRB field joints had a batting average of 1000. 144 successes with 144 at bats.

Not a perfect design, to be sure. But it worked when established limits were respected.


So why did the Rogers Commission describe them as "a faulty design
unacceptably sensitive to a number of factors"? *I* know why, but you
don't seem to.

Look at the failure modes for segmented solid boosters. Now look at
the failure modes for liquid boosters. Add in the inability to
terminate thrust once the solids are lit and any sane human being will
arrive at the conclusion that putting people on solid rockets is a
very bad idea.


--
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to
live in the real world."
-- Mary Shafer, NASA Dryden
  #57  
Old February 4th 17, 03:18 AM posted to sci.space.history
Fred J. McCall[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,018
Default The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien

Stuf4 wrote:

From Fred McCall:
"Scott M. Kozel" wrote:

On Sunday, January 29, 2017 at 8:48:04 AM UTC-5, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...

On Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 5:39:54 PM UTC-6, Stuf4 wrote:
My original speculation in this thread about how the shuttle
might have been used in brewing up any kind of attack plan
was referring only to the planners. It was their job to
dream up crazy things.


As it was, the only shuttles that were disintegrated happened
as a result of lack of care, rather than anything intentional.

Correct, they were management failures, not technological failures.

To be fair, middle level shuttle managers were put in a bad spot by the
higher ups. They had to manage what amounted to an experimental program
and pretend it was an "operational" program after five test flights.
The higher ups put a huge amount of pressure on middle management to
increase the flight rate. This created the management culture of "if
we're going to ground it, you have to prove to me it will fail", which
doomed the Challenger crew.

Middle managers were also forced to do this with a budget which was
smaller than it should have been. An example of this was right before
Challenger there was a distinct lack of spare parts. They were pulling
parts from recently returned orbiters so they could be installed on
another orbiter which was being prepared to fly. Imagine if you had two
cars and had to pull the cylinder head from one and install it on the
other when you wanted to use it. Insane, right?

To begin with, the SRBs ought to have been replaced with reusable liquid
boosters, but that would have been *quite* expensive to develop (which
is why SLS is still using solids). Other improvements, like non-toxic
OMS/RCS propellants and replacing the APUs and hydraulics with
electrically operated actuators would have improved the turn-around time
and reduced the risks to ground crews.

It was an avoidable disaster, they should not have launched on such a cold day, and that precipitated the failure of the O-rings.


All disasters are avoidable simply by never flying. The problem, as
Jeff noted, was that to scrub the launch because of the cold it would
have been necessary to PROVE that the cold would lead to disaster.
They'd launched in cold before and gotten away with it and there was
blow-by on the O-rings even in warmer weather.


Columbia could have been saved; if they used ground based telescopes to find the damage, then they would have had 2 weeks to come up with a patch from either material on board or material sent up on an expendable rocket, then EVAs to apply the patch. The ability to patch would have been marginal, but they would have had a good shot at a safe landing.


Do you understand what was damaged on Columbia? I don't think you
could have seen it with a ground based telescope and even if you could
the Shuttle would have been a write off because there was no way to
effect a repair on orbit. There's no way to 'patch' that kind of
damage.


No way? Au contraire. It is quite possible that *duct tape* might have gotten them home.


Complete and utter ********. Congratulations on demonstrating your
absolute and abysmal ignorance of just what failed and of what the
purpose of the failure point was.


The Air Force has a program called "ABDR" that teaches how to do such repairs. They will cut things like soda cans and flatten them out and then duct tape them onto holes on a jet's wing or fuselage as a viable patch.


You're talking about temporary repairs to bullet holes in flat pieces
of non-critical structure merely in order to smooth airflow, which is
just a little bit different than trying to replace a high temperature
piece of the TPS with a bit of tin can and speed tape. You can't fix
leading edge damage on ordinary aircraft like that, so you certainly
can't fix hypersonics with it.


So for doing a MacGyver-style Aircraft Battle Damage Repair of Columbia's wing leading edge, you scour the crew cabin for some flat bendable piece of metal. Maybe use clipboards. Whatever. Then go out and tape it over the gaping hole. On day of Entry, hope it holds long enough to get you home.


It won't. The first heat pulse will make it go away as if it wasn't
even there. When the experts started looking for a way to deal with
this type of damage after the accident, they came to the conclusion
that there was no way to implement an on-orbit repair.


As for detecting the damage, they could either have used NRO spy sats, or simply get out and look. Such an EVA could have been done on Flight Day 2.


They wouldn't have been looking in the right place for the right
thing. They were looking for TPS tile damage near the leading edge,
which is why they thought it was an acceptable risk. Nobody believed
that a piece of foam would be a sufficient impact to damage the RCC.


--
"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the
truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."
-- Thomas Jefferson
  #58  
Old February 4th 17, 03:23 AM posted to sci.space.history
Fred J. McCall[_3_]
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Posts: 10,018
Default The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien

Jeff Findley wrote:


Agreed that the system was flawed in that it lacked a crew escape
capability on a vehicle that was large, complex, and prone to failure.
As for an escape capsule being a viable add-on to the shuttle, I call
bull****.


And the primary reason that it lacked a crew escape module is because
it was impossible to safely and rapidly terminate thrust to the solids
to allow such a system to work.

Which brings us back to flying human beings on solid boosters is a
special kind of stupid.


--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn
  #59  
Old February 4th 17, 04:42 PM posted to sci.space.history
Jeff Findley[_6_]
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Posts: 2,307
Default The Space Race was about Power Projection - Miles O'Brien

In article ,
says...
Columbia could have been saved; if they used ground based telescopes to find the damage, then they would have had 2 weeks to come up with a patch from either material on board or material sent up on an expendable rocket, then EVAs to apply the patch. The ability to patch would have been marginal, but they would have had a good shot at a safe landing.


Do you understand what was damaged on Columbia? I don't think you
could have seen it with a ground based telescope and even if you could
the Shuttle would have been a write off because there was no way to
effect a repair on orbit. There's no way to 'patch' that kind of
damage.


No way? Au contraire. It is quite possible that *duct tape* might have gotten them home.

The Air Force has a program called "ABDR" that teaches how to do such repairs. They will cut things like soda cans and flatten them out and then duct tape them onto holes on a jet's wing or fuselage as a viable patch.

So for doing a MacGyver-style Aircraft Battle Damage Repair of Columbia's wing leading edge, you scour the crew cabin for some flat bendable piece of metal. Maybe use clipboards. Whatever. Then go out and tape it over the gaping hole. On day of Entry, hope it holds long enough to get you home.


Wrong. The wing leading edge was reinforced carbon-carbon composite.
This was the material on the shuttle which could withstand the most
reentry heating. This isn't something you can "MacGyver" with any spare
parts on board Columbia.

Jeff
--
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These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
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