MEDS Glass Cockpit Led to Death of Columbia Crew (One Gaping Hole in the CAIB Report)

A popular poster available from NASA is the one showing the shuttle's
modern glass cockpit. Whenever I look at this image:

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/...2000e10522.jpg

....I feel a sickening reminder of how this glass cockpit led to the
death of the seven Columbia astronauts.

Gehman's group worked diligently over seven months to deliver a
statement that NASA lacked adequate funding for safe shuttle
operations. This is a seriously flawed conclusion. NASA was given 10
figures worth of money to improve the shuttle - well over a billion
dollars. The problem that proved fatal was that NASA prioritized
glitz over safety.

Here is a .pdf of a 1997 GAO report on shuttle upgrades:
http://www.gao.gov/archive/1998/ns98021t.pdf

Page 6 highlights the four most costly upgrades, including over $200
million to fund a snazzy glass cockpit. What was NASA doing pumping
so much money into an upgrade that had questionable value with regards
to safety? What was Congress doing in approving NASA's wish list?
How is it that priorities got so backwards that safety took a back
seat to "flash"?

Consider this feeble justification for the MEDS upgrade:
_____

....Gregory, who piloted space shuttle mission STS-67 in 1995 and also
helped evaluate MEDS from a pilot's perspective.

Most astronauts entering the space shuttle for the first time, find
the experience to be a step backwards. "The flight instruments are
very reminiscent of the 60s and 70s technology," Gregory says. "When
MEDS was first being developed...the shuttle pilots were older
pilots...used to the steam gauges.

"Today, new shuttle commanders and pilots are used to the glass
cockpits of the F-15s, F-16s and F/A-18s, which they have flown either
as operational or test pilots. This [upgrade] is bringing them back to
what is familiar to them."

_____

(From http://www.defensedaily.com/reports/...paceshutle.htm)


So with MEDS making the top four with regards to cost, consider the
upgrades that didn't make the cut. Years before STS-107, NASA had
designed a more robust replacement for WLE RCC to counter:

"...the risk of a catastrophic puncture of an Orbiter wing leading
edge..."

A simple Googling of [WLE MMOD] will take you straight to the webpage
that NASA keeps available (MMOD stands for Micro-Meteoroid Orbital
Debris). The quote above is taken from this page:

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/upgrades/wle.html

This site (last updated on "04/07/02") offers lots more info on this
upgrade that got cancelled:

_____

Solution: Design being implemented provides additional insulation
(Nextel 440 fabric) behind the Inconel foil for WLE panels 5-13.

Initial Operation Date: Phase II Upgrade
OV-102 STS-103 (12/2/99)
OV-103 STS- 97(4/8/99)
OV-104 STS-92 (1/14/99)
OV-105 STS-96 (12/9/98)
_____

So why did Hal Gehman and his group not bother to highlight this fact?

A thorough investigation would have criticized this misappropriation
of MEDS at the expense of safety. A tragic irony is that Willy McCool
had a leading role in the MEDS upgrade. Here is a photo of him
working at SAIL, the Shuttle Avionics Integration Lab (designated as
OV-095):

http://www.unitedspacealliance.com/p...ds/meds12b.jpg

Here's a page listing shuttle program goals:

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/upgrades/goals.html

Nowhere do I see a goal of "keeping up with the Jones's" triple-7
style, as Bill Gregory seems to justify the cost. But it is brutally
evident that what was sacrificed at the expense of the decision to
implement MEDS was:

"Goal 1: Fly Safely".


NASA had gotten plenty of money to fly the shuttle safely. That money
was not spent wisely.


~ CT

I'd tend to think that there is more justification to be found for MEDS
than the one you cite, which indeed is feeble. Two points I remember: it
became increasingly difficult and costly to maintain the original display
equipment; and the new devices allow more information to be presented
in more easily perceptible form, required for the additional tasks in
building ISS.

Solution: Design being implemented provides additional insulation
(Nextel 440 fabric) behind the Inconel foil for WLE panels 5-13.

I doubt that this modification would have made much of a difference in
the STS-107 scenario - it is directed at the much smaller damage caused
by orbital debris.

Jan

I'm sorry, but you are talking with the benefit of hindsight, a technology
not available to us!

The leading edge scheme, for instance, was named after what it was supposed
to prevent, namely micro meteorite damage, which I gather has not been a
significant problem, so little wonder it was not given a high priority.

Now if it had been called foam impact strangthening of leading edge, then
two things should have happened,
1 why the hell do we need to do this, fix the bloody foam!

and

if we fix the foam, do we really need this?

The glass cockpit sounds valid to me, as it must save a lot of retraining of
how to use equipment, and presumably be easier to actually fly it.

So, I say, lets spend the money of hindsight research! :-)

Brian

--
Brian Gaff....
graphics are great, but the blind can't hear them
Email:
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Stuf4 wrote:
A popular poster available from NASA is the one showing the shuttle's
modern glass cockpit. Whenever I look at this image:

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/...2000e10522.jpg

...I feel a sickening reminder of how this glass cockpit led to the
death of the seven Columbia astronauts.

What a crock of ****. Not spending the money on the Meds would not stop
the foam strike. You idiot

Julian

In article ,
Julian Bordas wrote:

Stuf4 wrote:
A popular poster available from NASA is the one showing the shuttle's
modern glass cockpit. Whenever I look at this image:

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/...es/jsc2000e105
22.jpg

...I feel a sickening reminder of how this glass cockpit led to the
death of the seven Columbia astronauts.

What a crock of ****. Not spending the money on the Meds would not stop
the foam strike. You idiot

Julian


Not only that but do you really think Nextel 440 fabric behind the
leading edge would have provided sufficient thermal protection for a TEN
INCH hole in the RCC panel 8? Furthermore, have you even seen the foam
test strike videos? It's is VERY possible that the foam would (and did)
knock large pieces of fractured RCC straight back into the cavity; it is
very unlikely that any sort of high-tech fabric insulation would survive
such a shattering impact to the RCC; it would tear or rupture as the RCC
fragment(s) were smashed back through it.

The upgrade you refer to was supposed to help in a micrometeoroid impact
scenario. I suggest you consider the sizes, masses, velocities and
impact angles such an uprgrade is supposed to help with, and consider as
well the estimated sizes of any supposed RCC penetrations caused by such
an impact.

On second thought, why don't you spend less time digging through obscure
reports for bits of data which are meaningless without full context and
MORE time understanding fundamental principles of engineering?

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

Stuf4 wrote:
A popular poster available from NASA is the one showing the shuttle's
modern glass cockpit. Whenever I look at this image:

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/...2000e10522.jpg

...I feel a sickening reminder of how this glass cockpit led to the
death of the seven Columbia astronauts.

[snip]

Sounds to me like you're trying to create a cause celebre. With the
benefit of hindsight, it's easy to say we should have upgraded RCC or
updated CRATER or performed more foam strike testing. Instead, NASA
updated the cockpit as part of shuttle upgrades to keep the shuttle
flying for another 20 or 30 years.

Saying things like "...this glass cockpit led to the death of the seven
Columbia astronauts" is a sensational claim devoid of merit.

"Stuf4" wrote:
...I feel a sickening reminder of how this glass cockpit led to the
death of the seven Columbia astronauts.

This is asinine... even for you.

Roger
--
Roger Balettie
former Flight Dynamics Officer
Space Shuttle Mission Control
http://www.balettie.com/

(Stuf4) wrote in message . com...
NASA had gotten plenty of money to fly the shuttle safely. That money
was not spent wisely.

Right. And had we lost a shuttle due to instrumentation failure of
some kind, say a crash-landing or erroneous abort due to incorrect
readouts, you'd be complaining that they'd spent money on leading edge
upgrades (which probably wouldn't have saved Columbia anyway) rather
than replacing the antique instruments.

This is the problem with the shuttle: it's not that there are glaring
faults that are being deliberately ignored, it's that there are so
many potentially fatal flaws that if you fix one it just means that
another one will kill you instead.

Mark

Stuf4 wrote:
Consider this feeble justification for the MEDS upgrade:

You forgot the fact that the new cockpit weighs a lot less, consumes less
power (considere that fuel cells share oxygen with humans, loweing power
consumption helps when the time comes to add a few days to a mission), and are
far less complex to maintain.

And while MEDS currently only replicates old steam gauges, they were
developped to allow future plans to make more dramatic changes to the cockpit
flight computers, allowing further automation. So I am not sure of that $200
million you quoted was simply for MEDS or if it included a substantial portion
for the baseline design of a new cockpit to come in the future.

On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 13:01:31 GMT, stmx3
wrote:

Sounds to me like you're trying to create a cause celebre.

....Kids, don't fall for this troll. ~CT or Stuff4 is a rather infamous
troll around these groups. If you google on his account, you'll find
all he does is post banal and impossible conspiracy theories designed
to **** people off with their sheer audacity and ignorance. Note that
you'll need to search before 2/1/03, as he thankfully vanished after
Columbia(*) and only recently resurfaced a couple of weeks ago.

Don't let his bull**** start screwing up the group again. PLEASE just
killfile the troll and be done with him.

(*) The hope at the time was that he was in the debris path and got
painfully killed by an impact or ten.

OM

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