The first explanation doesn't explain how the Columbia initially rolled into the wrong flight attitude, and the second is unlikely considering the importance of the tiles, the fact that Columbia had recently been completely refurbished, and that they probably undergo inspection before each flight. So probably some chemical/engine failure I think is more likely at this point.

They'd better find the cause of the problem soon, for the indefinite shutdown of the international space station would really be a serious loss for international research and development. Not to downplay the tragedy of losing the seven astronauts, though.

"Space shuttle Columbia down. I do not have words for this.

I am watching coverage on different networks. CBC Newsworld just interviewed writer Robert Sawyer for his reflections on the shuttle program and potential causes of the disaster. The Newsworld interviewer asked Sawyer whether the cause was "arrogance" on the part of the U.S. government. (Sawyer said no.) This is one of the most odious questions I can imagine. It took minutes for the CBC to twist a tragedy into a politically motivated theatre of hate. Talk about manufacturing consent.

Furthermore... the interviewer linked American "arrogance" explicitly to current potential conflict in the Middle East. My only surprise is the CBC did not manage to sneer at the death of Israel's first astronaut in the same breath.

The CBC Ombudsman may be reached through this website.

posted by Nicholas | 9:54:10 AM"

http://ghostofaflea.blogspot.com/2003_01_26_ghostofaflea_archive.html#88377587

Oh well, I'm sure a few more people will find a way to blame the Bush administration for this tragedy.

To try to assign blame for this tragedy, or to say that anyone deserved it, would be odious and futile as well.

There is one lesson to be drawn here, though. Even with the best planning, the best equipment, and the best training, events can on occasion go catastrophically wrong. Make of this what you will.

Thanks, Brad--that was actually informative.

Andres wrote, for the indefinite shutdown of the international space station would really be a serious loss for international research and development. How's that? The ISS is a boondoggle.

And DT, I'm a liberal, I despise Bush, and I don't blame the disaster on him. These things happen, as Andres pointed out. Especially with something as advanced but also as dangerous as space shuttle flights.

David:
"Oh well" - what exactly do you mean by that? So you've already moved on to being indignant about non-existent political attacks? Oh well, I guess some people recover from these things faster than others.

I thought the Columbia was the first shuttle ever to launch twenty-something years ago. Why in God's name were they flying in a ship that was so old?

Bobby wrote, Why in God's name were they flying in a ship that was so old?

Well, old doesn't mean "bad". The US still flies B-52s that are quite old.

Besides, we could build new ones, but that would cost money. It's not obvious it's worth it. Of course, a few more crashes like this, and we won't have any choice. (Well, we could abandon manned spaceflight for a few decades, which I think is the right thing to do, since there's no obvious reason we can't do w/o it, but...)

Best,

Bobby, as has been mentioned several times today elsewhere, the shuttles are designed for 100+ flights apiece. This was OV-102's 28th flight.

And Stephen is right. B-52s will be in service until about 2030.

>> The shuttle was built as a space truck, and then the International Space Station was built to give it something to do. <<

And therein lies the root of the problem. This never made sense, as many have said all along.

The Space Station and Shuttle have been hugely costly in dollars, draining them not only from other space science but from science projects in many other fields, *and* dangerous to human life -- costly there too now, with two of five shuttles now lost -- while producing precious little science compared to what could have been by the same funds deployed in unmanned space missions and other science with no lives on the line.

The Economist recently had a pretty tough review of the status of NASA, still online at http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=1441752

Opinion (pre disaster) regarding the shuttle: "what is really needed is an 'exit strategy' from the whole sorry mess."

And regarding the Space Station:

"None of this, of course, answers the question of why the station should continue to survive at all....NASA would like to get some science done on it, so as to justify its existence. At present, with only a three-man crew aboard (due to the limited capacity of the Soyuz escape pod), this is not possible.

"If the budget request goes through, that will change a bit. There will be more shuttle launches to the station, and they will have science payloads on board. However, it is likely that the experiments themselves will actually be done on the shuttle. It will merely be docked to the station for an extended period while the research is carried out.

"On top of that, there remains the question of whether any of the science will be worthwhile. Except for research directed at making manned space-flight easier (a pretty circular argument for justifying human-conducted experiments in space), it is hard to see the case for any human experimenters in space at all."

If there's any upside to this tragedy it will be if people in high places finally learn that institutional politics and inertia are no justification to gut the science budget on waste in a way that they know is bound to get good people killed, as the follow-up analysis of the Challenger tragedy accurately predicted -- it would happen again.

Then the Space Station can be rationally treated as the sunk cost it is, and the billions of dollars now being poured into it can be redirected into scientifically productive unmanned space missions at a small fraction of the cost, and into other science as well, and the astronauts' lives can be saved for the few, rare, missions where humans are both needed in space and worth risking for the payoff.

The Time "science correspondant" is ill-informed as to the function of wing flaps and aerodynamics he states:

"The first, which I believe is the likeliest explanation, would be an aerodynamic structural breakup of the shuttle caused by it rolling at the wrong angle. Remember, after reentry, the shuttle is descending without power, which means astronauts at the controls can't compensate for a loss of attitude by using the engines, they can only do so using the flaps."

Wing Flaps for "attitude" control, maybe. Roll is controlled by ailerons (unless Mr. Kluger thinks ailerons are flaps) and the vertical stabilizer (rudder). Perhaps on the shuttle using flaps for attitude control was a procedure, but that sounds very unlikely given that wing flaps tend to be located on the wing adjacent to the fuselage at the wing root, where there is not much of an effect on the rolling moment of the aircraft. Ailerons are at or near the end of the wings, and are used to induce/correct rolling moments in an aircraft.

Flaps in fact produce lift, but also produce a corresponding amount of drag, and can eventually become more troublesome than they are of help since there are other implications with respect to how they change the wings shape/geometry itself. Essentially wing flaps allow for a higher angle of attack flight attitude at lower speeds (that's why they put the flaps down on final in that airliner). If there were a rolling moment introduced at the speeds that the shuttle was traveling and it was violent/sudden enough, even the automated flight control systems might not have been able to compensate for the out-of-control situation. I doubt flap deployment would even be recommeded unless there were other procedures to go with it, because among other things virtually every aircraft has a Maximum Flap Extension Speed which exist for both safety and structural reasons. I think Mach whatever they were traveling would exceed it.

Both the Mission Commander and the Pilot were military test pilot school grads and career test pilots before becoming astronauts. Out-of-Control situations are routinely taught to military jet aviators who are not test pilots, so I'm sure that their training in that area was much more extensive than the average aviator would get (actually, I know it was).

It's pointless to speculate what the cause of the accident was at this point. "Journalists" like Kluger should go learn a little about things like aviation before they become subject matter experts in Time and blather on in public. He obviously knows very little about aviation/basic aerodynamics and I discount what other statements he makes. "Rolling at the wrong angle"; after 30 years of flying, 14 years as a military aviator and 17 years of instructing, I'm not sure what that means. Exactly.

Whoa! Jim Glass and I completely agree with each other on this one, for once.

I'm skeptical that we'll be able to stop wasting $$ on manned space flight. The problem isn't just folks in the government doing stupid things (which I won't deny is part of the problem). The bigger problem is that there are a lot of folks out there, even nominally intelligent ones, who insist that manned space flight is important, even though there's absolutely no support for their position.

My own favorite is the argument of technological spinoffs. But that argument favors unmanned spaceflight, since it will generate some extra problems in robotics and AI that will need to be solved. Technology for warm, oxygenated environments that have low enough radiation counts for mammals like us is a dead end.

Best,

Those of us who support manned space flight think that the ultimate goal of space flight is colonization. If it were just research then those who believe that unmanned space flight makes more sense and that manned space flight should be stopped would have much the stronger argument. We also think that the public doesn't care a whit about unmanned spaceflight and that retreating to nothing but unmanned flight would lead to a long term gutting of NASA.

Something else that is worth pointing out is that the shuttles were certified for 100 missions each, but not for 20 years lifetime. The designers assumed we would reach one launch a week and that in ten years, 12 years tops they all would be retired and replaced by shuttle II in the 1990s.

Ian Welsh wrote, Those of us who support manned space flight think that the ultimate goal of space flight is colonization. If it were just research then those who believe that unmanned space flight makes more sense and that manned space flight should be stopped would have much the stronger argument.

That's silly. Even if you're in favor of colonization, it's much more rational to start with unmanned exploration. That way, the robots can build the habitat first, and we can just move in.

Besides, you can dream all you want about colonization, but there's many things that are problematic. First, there's absolutely no way it can be used to reduce population here on earth with current technology---the number of rocket launches needed would damage the ozone layer. Any other technology---space elevators, mass drivers---are way far off. In terms of colonization itself, yeah, sure, it's a nice idea, but again it's technologically difficult. "Floating" colonies would be hard to build---if you think the shuttle has metal fatigue after 20 years, what about a big rotating colony? And if you liked the WTC attack, you're gonna love the myriad ways you could destroy such a floating habitat. That leaves things like tunneling on the moon. And, again, it's better to get started with robots.

We also think that the public doesn't care a whit about unmanned spaceflight and that retreating to nothing but unmanned flight would lead to a long term gutting of NASA.

Just because the public likes a wasteful program doesn't mean it should be funded. And there are all sorts of things the public doesn't care about. Say some NSF funding of advanced materials research. Same thing would go for space science.

As conservatives would say, you want manned space flight? Fine---you can pay for it out of your own pocket.

Best,

sjfromm

I agree with Ian that a retreat from human missions will lead to the evisceration of NASA. It could also presage a greater shift towards the military in conducting space affairs. I am not in favor of either of these outcomes.

BTW, not only do I think that colonization is a good long term goal for the space program, I believe that it is also a good long term goal for humanity. We are still in the infancy of the space age. We must not turn away from it now.

My impression, cheerfully unsubstantiated by any actual hard evidence, is that Congress actually thinks of NASA as a jobs and other pork program. Scientific payoff isn't a consideration, which is good because the International Space Station doesn't rate to produce any (source for that last: memory of Science magazine's evaluation).

Someone might find and post Feynman's report on the Challenger. I expect some of his observations are still germane.

Mickey Kaus was right, it didn't take Greg Easterbrook long:

"The Space Shuttle Must Be Stopped"

http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101030210/sceasterbrook.html
~~

... too expensive, too risky, too big for most of the ways it is used, with budgets that suck up funds that could be invested in a modern system that would make space flight cheaper and safer ... no project has done more harm to space exploration.

Will the much more expensive effort to build a manned International Space Station end too? In cost and justification, it's as dubious as the shuttle. The two programs are each other's mirror images. The space station was conceived mainly to give the shuttle a destination, and the shuttle has been kept flying mainly to keep the space station serviced....

... the space shuttle was designed under the highly unrealistic assumption that the fleet would fly to space once a week and that each shuttle would need to be big enough to carry 50,000 lbs. of payload. In actual use, the shuttle fleet has averaged five flights a year; this year flights were to be cut back to four. The maximum payload is almost never carried. Yet to accommodate the highly unrealistic initial goals, engineers made the shuttle huge and expensive....

Capitalism, of course, is supposed to weed out such inefficiencies. But in the American system, the shuttle's expense made the program politically attractive. Originally projected to cost $5 million per flight in today's dollars, each shuttle launch instead runs to around $500 million. Aerospace contractors love the fact that the shuttle launches cost so much... Any new space system that reduced costs would be, to the contractors, killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

Just a few weeks ago, NASA canceled a program called the Space Launch Initiative, whose goal was to design a much cheaper and more reliable replacement for the shuttle. Along with the cancellation, NASA announced that the shuttle fleet would remain in operation until 2020, meaning that Columbia was supposed to continue flying into outer space even when its airframe was more than 40 years old!

True, B-52s have flown as long. But they don't endure three times the force of gravity on takeoff and 2000° on re-entry.

A rational person might have laughed out loud at the thought that although school buses are replaced every decade, a spaceship was expected to remain in service for 40 years. Yet the "primes," as NASA's big contractors are known, were overjoyed when the Space Launch Initiative was canceled because it promised them lavish shuttle payments indefinitely...
~~
Well, there's one man's opinion.

Jim Glass wrote, True, B-52s have flown as long. But they don't endure three times the force of gravity on takeoff and 2000° on re-entry.

That's absolutely true. My original point was that just-because-it's-old doesn't a priori mean it can't fly. But you're right, of course; it's an empirical question. I worry that the answer will be "build new ones" with the attendant waste of taxpayer money.

Best,

Here is a link to Feynman's appendix "Personal observations on the reliability of the Shuttle" To the Rogers Commission Report.

Feynman being one of my heroes, I just had to find the article...gotta love search engines!

Sorry for the Rant earlier...just hate uninformed journalists.

Wow, the Feynman thing is damning.

If the disaster was indeed due to Columbia "rolling at the wrong angle," it wasn't the pilot's fault. Here's what Kenneth Chang writes in Monday's New York Times: "In its last orbit, 176 miles above the surface, the space shuttle Columbia sped along at 17,300 miles per hour, backward.... [After slowing down] Columbia then flipped under to face forward, its nose pointed upward at an angle, almost belly-flopping into the atmosphere. From this moment on, the shuttle was in a powerless glide path.... The pilots also had little to do but monitor the instruments as the computer guided the craft down.... On its final approach [to the runway], the computer would relinquish control of the shuttle to the pilot, who would set the shuttle down at 215 m.p.h."

the money quote from Feynman:

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

I'm waiting for Rumsfeld to propose bringing the manned space flight program into the protective and well-funded embrace of the military. I can hear it now, "Earth orbit is the ultimate high ground and is far too important to be left to those fuzzy-headed idealists at NASA."

>> I'm waiting for Rumsfeld to propose bringing the manned space flight program into the protective and well-funded embrace of the military.<<

It was embraced by the military from the very beginning. That's why so many shuttle flights went up from Edwards AFB, among other things.

>> I can hear it now, "Earth orbit is the ultimate high ground and is far too important to be left to those fuzzy-headed idealists at NASA."<<

You can find many people in the military explicitly saying "space is the ultimate high ground" right now. And the fact that that aren't as fuzzy headed as NASA is why they no longer push to put people in space, moved largely back to using rockets after _Challenger_, and are taking the high ground with unmanned craft.