New Columbia loss report out today

Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:
wrote in message
...
On Jan 6, 10:20?am, "Jorge R. Frank" wrote:
Abrigon Gusiq wrote:
Old tech that was left out cause of weight, but can it be retrofitted
into current shuttles
No.

or not left out off any future shuttle or like
vehicles.
There won't be any.

well convert shuttles to cargo ONLY, and give pilot and co pilot
ejection seats whih were on first 2 flights, so its possible

For a VERY small part of the flight regime. You've been told this many
times, but continue to ignore it.

Practically zero during ascent, actually, since the suit's ceiling is
reached long before SRB sep.

" wrote:
:
:On Jan 6, 5:05?pm, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:
:
: well convert shuttles to cargo ONLY, and give pilot and co pilot
: ejection seats whih were on first 2 flights, so its possible
:
:
: For a VERY small part of the flight regime. ?You've been told this many
: times, but continue to ignore it.
:
:
:well its the most hazardous.just ask the challenger crews familys..
:

I believe Challenger occurred outside the regime where seats would
have helped.

:
f course they could give the 2 crew mini capsule ejection systems
:

Or they could just use magic teleport systems, since those won't work,
either.

:
:nasa has publically stated all future crew systems will require launch
:boost escape
:

Yes, probably via an 'escape tower' booster attached to the front of
the capsule to pull it clear.


--
"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

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
dakotatelephone...


And personally I've always thought this was a poor argument. Sure,
removing the extra mass helps, but you lose functionality. And you
increase workflow in the processing steps.


Columbia though always had poorer performance in regards to payload than
the other Shuttles as it was heavier than they were; so the mass saved by
not carrying the RMS could be used to carry more experiments for the
flight aboard the SPACEHAB module.

Sure, but at the loss of functionality.


Would it have made a difference in Columbia, probably not since it was
never routine to scan the exterior. Though, perhaps in this case they
might have taken a look.


If they could have, I'm sure they would have, as they did consider doing a
EVA to see if any damage could be detected.

Yeah, unfortunately it's definitely a case of "if"


Pat



--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.

On Jan 6, 9:30�pm, "Jorge R. Frank" wrote:
Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:





wrote in message
....
On Jan 6, 10:20?am, "Jorge R. Frank" wrote:
Abrigon Gusiq wrote:
Old tech that was left out cause of weight, but can it be retrofitted
into current shuttles
No.

or not left out off any future shuttle or like
vehicles.
There won't be any.

well convert shuttles to cargo ONLY, and give pilot and co pilot
ejection seats whih were on first 2 flights, so its possible

For a VERY small part of the flight regime. �You've been told this many
times, but continue to ignore it.

Practically zero during ascent, actually, since the suit's ceiling is
reached long before SRB sep.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

they should only fly with full pressure suits locked and sealed.

lesson from that soyuz that depressurized suddenly

On Tue, 30 Dec 2008 22:20:18 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote:

As the report mentions, when the vehicle was breaking up it was at very
high altitude and low atmospheric pressures, and two of the main
components of _that_ atmosphere are oxygen and atomic oxygen (ozone).
And it looks like titanium when heated and brought into contact with
that sort of gas mixture may behave way differently than it does on the
ground, including starting to ignite, or at least severely oxidize, at
fairly low temperatures - below those that aluminum burns at under the
same conditions.

The vehicle was at hypersonic speeds and the very definition of
hypersonic is that the surface of the vehicle and the atmosphere
interact. The interaction creates all sorts of strange species, even
in normal, controlled flight. Consider the catalysis caused by the
sea salt deposited on the tiles or the smear of metal oxides
downstream of the instrumentation covers, for example.

Mary "Oddness is to be expected, in other words."
--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer
We didn't just do weird stuff at Dryden, we wrote reports about it.
or
Visit my blog at http://thedigitalknitter.blogspot.com/

On Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:32:11 -0800 (PST), Stuf4
wrote:


How's this for a major epiphany... If you don't design your
spacecraft with any way for your crew to survive a huge range of
mishaps, when those mishaps occur then the crew is expected to die.

Acceptable risks. The nation has changed its attitude toward what is
acceptable since the Orbiter was designed, including people here, but
those of us in the community mostly haven't. The STS was never
intended to be perfectly safe. Killing off a crew and losing a
vehicle now and then was expected from the moment pencils first
touched paper. The same is true of aircraft, which is why the USAF
has the Air Force Flight Test Center and the USN has the Naval
Aviation Test Center.

As I said in about 1989, perfect safety is for people who don't have
the balls to live in the real world.

Mary "Thirty years later and it's still the stone truth."
--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer
We didn't just do weird stuff at Dryden, we wrote reports about it.
or
Visit my blog at http://thedigitalknitter.blogspot.com/

On Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:10:01 GMT, Peter Stickney
wrote:

Pat Flannery wrote:



Craig Fink wrote:
One of the other interesting failure was in some of the seat
structure, "broom-straw" fractures 3.1-16. Aluminum is a good conductor
of heat, but it also has a huge thermal expansion coefficient. I haven't
seen a "broom-straw" fracture before. Seems that Aluminum 7075 is a
laminate material.


I've never seen aluminum fracture that way either; it looked like
something you'd encounter with a layered composite material more than a
metal.

Broom Straw Fractures occur when the metal fails at temperatures near its
melting point. They're fairly common in airplane crashes, and can occur in
other materials than aluminum - I've seen it in steel.
Not unexpected, considering the environment that it was in.

You took the words right out of my mouth. I'm not a materials or
structures person, but this is one of the few bits of information I've
picked up over the years.

Another bit of information for those interesting in such is that you
can tell who was flying a dual-control general aviation airplane (the
kind with yokes) at impact by whose thumbs are fractured.

Mary "Accident investigation is not for the weak."
--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer
We didn't just do weird stuff at Dryden, we wrote reports about it.
or
Visit my blog at http://thedigitalknitter.blogspot.com/

"Reunite Gondwanaland (Mary Shafer)"
wrote:

:On Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:32:11 -0800 (PST), Stuf4
wrote:
:
: How's this for a major epiphany... If you don't design your
: spacecraft with any way for your crew to survive a huge range of
: mishaps, when those mishaps occur then the crew is expected to die.
:
:Acceptable risks. The nation has changed its attitude toward what is
:acceptable since the Orbiter was designed, including people here, but
:those of us in the community mostly haven't. The STS was never
:intended to be perfectly safe. Killing off a crew and losing a
:vehicle now and then was expected from the moment pencils first
:touched paper. The same is true of aircraft, which is why the USAF
:has the Air Force Flight Test Center and the USN has the Naval
:Aviation Test Center.
:
:As I said in about 1989, perfect safety is for people who don't have
:the balls to live in the real world.
:
:Mary "Thirty years later and it's still the stone truth."
:

Yep. The problem is we started treating the Shuttles like they
weren't experimental vehicles, putting teachers and such on them.

Some of us remember the statement (and the argument it was made
during) and agree with it. At some point, it's time to kick the
tires, light the fires, and GO...


--
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to
live in the real world." -- Mary Shafer, NASA Dryden

"Reunite Gondwanaland (Mary Shafer)"
wrote:

On Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:32:11 -0800 (PST), Stuf4
wrote:


How's this for a major epiphany... If you don't design your
spacecraft with any way for your crew to survive a huge range of
mishaps, when those mishaps occur then the crew is expected to die.

Acceptable risks. The nation has changed its attitude toward what is
acceptable since the Orbiter was designed, including people here, but
those of us in the community mostly haven't.

Including *some* people here. I've argued for safety, but accept that
losses are inevitable and that a tradeoff must be made between safety
and functionality.

But then I've been in a semi dangerous profession where the chance of
getting killed was part of the allure - weaklings didn't make the
club.

The STS was never intended to be perfectly safe. Killing off a crew
and losing a vehicle now and then was expected from the moment pencils
first touched paper. The same is true of aircraft, which is why the
USAF has the Air Force Flight Test Center and the USN has the Naval
Aviation Test Center.

We mostly learned on the job and depend on deep institutional memory.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

Reunite Gondwanaland (Mary Shafer) wrote:
You took the words right out of my mouth. I'm not a materials or
structures person, but this is one of the few bits of information I've
picked up over the years.

Another bit of information for those interesting in such is that you
can tell who was flying a dual-control general aviation airplane (the
kind with yokes) at impact by whose thumbs are fractured.


When I thought about it, I had seen a fracture like that before... it
happened on a drill bit I was using that got red hot and shattered.
When you start realizing what fractures like that meant in regards to g
forces on those seats as they heated and decelerated, it's a great
mercy that the crew were either unconscious or dead at that point.
I'm still surprised that the problem with the inertial locks on the
shoulder straps wasn't spotted at some point.
According to the report, the only markings on them were apparently from
tests performed just before delivery.
Since none of them locked, this was either a severe inherent design
flaw, or some endemic maintenance problem regarding them
On car seatbelts they accidentally lock up all the time, and one would
have thought that someone would have noticed that they were awfully free
moving when the astronauts were being strapped into the seats during
practice runs or for actual flights.

Pat