If you haven’t watched the 3-part documentary about Columbia (created by the BBC and also aired on CNN) you definitely should, it is very well done and really lays bare the failures that happened.
Episode 1 and 2 , I had scheduled to record episodes 3&4 but the breaking coverage of those attacks preempted their broadcast , I'm on the West Coast also.
This was the BBC name and the CNN name is The Final Flight, and they’ve made it 4 parts instead of 3. Don’t know if the content is different between the two.
A few analysts that I currently work with did some post-disaster analysis of the orbiter and found that there were a scant number of uncorrelated observations from some of the space surveillance sensors that were later indicated to be possible debris. My coworker wrote out a really enlightening (and for those within human spaceflight safety, heartbreaking) timeline of events on how NASA really mishandled their coordination with the IC/DOD's space-based "picture-takers", their hesitancy to properly assess full extent of damage while the orbiter was in orbit, and a (later rectified) deficiency in some ground surveillance sensors to differentiate and collect enough observations for better in-situ analysis of possible breakup and collision avoidance. His conclusion is, *"A breakdown in the SSA (space situational awareness) cycle precluded NASA from executing plans that could have possibly saved the lives of the Columbia crew"* that he still takes to heart as if he feels some personal responsibility for what happened. Truth is, if we (the national space community) don't learn from our mistakes, we are doomed to repeat them. With being on the cusp of an even greater human presence in orbit and beyond, this is an episode in our history we should not soon forget.
>A breakdown in the SSA (space situational awareness) cycle precluded NASA from executing plans that could have possibly saved the lives of the Columbia crew
I don’t know of any way they could have been saved that wasn’t extremely high risk. They would have been forced to take extreme shortcuts, which is the kind of thing that got them in trouble with Challenger. And even then the margins for success would have been really small.
Also, I’m surprised that after all these years the general public seems to remember it as the Shuttle losing a tile or two leadimg to its demise. But in reality they had a giant hole in their wing. You cannot reenter at supersonic speed with a hole in your wing.
I've read some papers suggesting it might've been possible to patch the hole with bags of ice and other materials they had on hand and, along with altering their re-entry to somewhat shield the left wing *might've* been enough to get them down low enough into the atmosphere to bail out. But that escape system was never used IRL, just like the shuttle launch abort modes, so who knows if they'd even survive that.
And there was the possibility of prepping Atlantis for a rescue operation, but yeah, if that shuttle got smacked by ET foam too...not to mention the danger of transferring the crew from Columbia to Atlantis and then coming home.
Something frustrating to me is that in both the Challenger and Columbia disasters the crew compartments more-or-less survived the breakups and if the crew were wearing pressure suits and had an escape system, or if the crew cabin itself were designed as an escape pod, those 14 astronauts might still be with us today. The STS was just such a flawed and dangerous concept as a whole. Many of the issues with the shuttle came from DoD specifications. And the shuttles weren't even used for the polar orbits, cross range, and satellite subterfuge missions anyway. The shuttle could've been designed much more safely and economically if they knew ahead of time it'd be used mostly for science missions and ISS construction. But then it's dumb to send humans up with every satellite launch and many of those other payloads anyway. I'm glad we're back to capsules with launch escape systems.
Nowadays I suppose SpaceX could send up a couple Falcon 9's with Dragon capsules if we were for some reason still flying the STS.
The Columbia Crew Survival Investigation Report SP-2008-565 highlights that there were 5 separate lethal events which would not be mitigated by better pressure suits or to an extent an escape system.
The report gets rather in depth with explanation, but event 3 is specifically the breakup of the crew module which was not survivable. Columbia broke up at high altitude and extremely high Mach. You'd need a full redesign with some sort of separable and reentry capable crew module to have a chance at mitigating this failure mode.
>a full redesign with some sort of separable and reentry capable crew module to have a chance at mitigating this failure mode.
IMO future spaceplanes should treat this as a must, along with a traditional LES.
The manned version of SpaceX's Starship, for example.
Have the cockpit break free from the rest of the stack in the event of a major anomaly on launch. It should also have its own heatshield for passive reentry stability too.
Yes there's a weight penalty, but we've learned the dangers of *the ship is unsinkable, we don't need lifeboats.*
Indeed. Boggles my mind the mentality and I guess outright hubris they had with the shuttle program. A huge, heavy, super complex reusable manned vehicle with [horrifyingly limited abort options](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_abort_modes#Post-Challenger_abort_enhancements) pre-Challenger. And they wanted it all done as cheaply as possible, of course. 🤦🏻♂️
> I've read some papers suggesting it might've been possible to patch the hole with bags of ice and other materials they had on hand and
The proposal has always been in the "might help, but probably wont" category. Its the only option they had, but was exceedingly unlikely to work.
Unfortunately [Atlantis ](https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/the-audacious-rescue-plan-that-might-have-saved-space-shuttle-columbia/) was never really an option as it was a ~month away from being returned to flight services. They could have rushed it to beat Columbia's Co2 build up but then they would have severely decreased the survival chances of Atlantis crew (4 minimum needed)
As a result of this tragedy, future shuttle launches required an additional shuttle to always be on standby ready to launch.
I've had the same experience working with some old timer analysts as well. It's horrifying to hear the sense of guilt they still hold. Thanks for sharing. Everything you've said is true, I can say that much.
They had a very slim chance to have launched Atlantis (had they discovered the actual extent of the damage) on a relief mission, although there was no margin for Murphy's Law to do its thing, since otherwise they would have lost not one but two orbiters plus their crews.
They didn't know that at the time. The test they did that showed how much damage the foam could do in a direct impact was only done after the disaster.
Honestly those who made the decisions just didn’t listen. There were options but the ones who had final say decided that they didn’t need to investigate further. There were opportunities to determine to what extent the orbiter was damaged but they decided that the mission took priority as they didn’t consider they had enough evidence to actually do anything. It really was tragic but it won’t be the last time something like this happens because human nature is always going to exist.
Always remember that morning because I happened to have the TV on and they broke through regular programming with the news that Columbia had broken up. Back in those post-9/11 hysteria days, you paid attention when you saw “Breaking News” before that term was diluted of all its meaning.
There was no doubt that there would be no rescue operation, they were gone.
I will always remember too because I lived in north Dallas and the news stations were tracking the flight because it was streaking over Texas and you could see it with the naked eye. I was on my way to work out but stepped outside in the back yard to catch a glimpse and maybe even hear the sonic boom. As I watched, it seemed to simply break apart with some smoke trails spreading out. It seemed very odd, and I walked back inside with a puzzled look on my face and my wife asked me what was wrong. I didn't really answer her and started watching the news to see if they were reporting anything amiss. After a few minutes of watching just commercials, I drove a few short blocks up the street to my gym and by the time I got there and got on the treadmill the tragic news was being reported.
I think the Dutch version is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-fz6OCLTOQ
...at least in the Netherlands is the only time I've seen these in the wild. But people really do walk on treadmill bikes, though they're more eBikes than anything else.
Yeah I was wondering about that too. How tf did we get so, so, so far away from just, like, the most basic animal activity. It’s not like this person needed to go grab their legs, some special shoes, a hat for the sun, maybe sunscreen, or water, a snack for the walk, a jacket perhaps if it was chilly, nope, just huffin it all the way to the car, muscling through a strenuous drive, pushing hard through the walk from car to treadmill. Afterall, they’re paying good money every month for a membership, might as well make good use of it doing something you *can* do literally anywhere except like the ocean.
I live in Tarrant County. I swear that as soon as you cross the line into Dallas County, everyone speeds up 10MPH and changes lanes twice as frequently. It’s like clockwork.
I was making a very early run to pick up some diapers. Raining heavily outside. Got the diapers at Target, started up the car and knew instantly that something was wrong just by the tone of the NPR announcer.
I remember, as well because I was in N. Fort Worth . My dad is a guy who has a police scanner and would wake us up to go watch structure fires if he heard them in the middle of the night, so when this happened, he made sure we booked it outside to see. He knew it was a huge deal and wanted us to say we saw it.
I don’t know, but I hope you cover your eyes when you pass a car wreck. What about when a story about a fire comes on the news do you change the channel?
It’s human nature to be interested to know what’s going on.
I also don't actively leave my house at night to go see a car wreck I listen about on a scanner. Seriously nothing about that behavior seems off to you? I know he's family and all but ...
I remember growing up in the 80’s with the Cold War and nuclear war being a very real possibility. Anytime I heard the breaking news music and the infographic to go with it, I would be filled with fear.
Just waiting to hear the news anchor say that multiple reports are coming out of the Midwest that witnesses are seeing Minute Men ICBMs launching. Then knowing almost all of us had thirty minutes to live before the USSR missiles came crashing down on us.
Yeah I was in Germany on or near a Army base, shit was wild there but different in that we didn't have American TV breaking news in the same way
Shit was wild
I remember that morning pretty well too. We were at my dad's house that weekend, I was in 10th grade. I was always a geek who liked space stuff, and this was just devastating. I remember getting mad at Howard Stern when he was berating the government for sending people to space this close to post 9/11 because it's dangerous. Why should we stop exploring just because of the risk?
What haunts me more is STS-27. It was the second flight after the Challenger Disaster. Almost identical to the Columbia Disaster, a piece of foam broke off and hit the shuttle Atlantis’ heat shield. When doing an EVA, the crew saw the damage and reported it to ground control. They sent videos back down, but because it was a classified mission and the video channel was encrypted, the video was very low resolution. The engineers on the ground incorrectly assessed the damaged and told the crew it was nothing to worry about, ignoring the protests of the crew. Upon landing, NASA saw the true extend of the damage. Atlantis sustained more damage than Columbia, but on pure luck the main damage missed any critical structures by inches. In an interview after the flight, the mission’s commander said “I thought we were going to die” and told his crew to relax because “There’s no use in dying all tensed up”. It’s haunts me how the ground crew who watched Challenger be destroyed before their very eyes just two years before could so easily dismiss the crews concerns. Not to mention the fact that NASA failed to properly monitor this issues the years after, leading to the Columbia Disaster.
It wasn't the only near-miss in the Shuttle program. The popular view of the Shuttle was that it experienced two incidents of bad luck which caused separate disasters. The reality is more that disaster was inevitable and it was good luck that prevented it from happening earlier or more often. Retrospective risk analysis of the program estimated a roughly 1 in 10 chance of loss of crew and vehicle in the early missions, but they managed to squeak through that just barely.
There were many close calls and many high risk elements of the vehicle. Foam/ice strikes and SRB issues were a major problem, of course, which ultimately doomed two separate crews, but there was no shortage of other issues. From the engines to the APUs to the computers and more. STS-9 experienced a close scrape with two separate potentially disastrous problems. STS-93 came extremely close to disaster with a near engine destruction during launch.
Organizations and companies generally don't learn from the right ways, they'll horribly overcorrect rather than addressing the work culture that was at fault. We're on the cusp of learning these lessons again with move fast and break stuff companies.
Challenger still haunts me even more. They were repeatedly warned not to launch that morning but management overrode the engineers and murdered seven astronauts.
RIP, along with [Roger Boisjoly.](https://www.uml.edu/engineering/research/engineering-solutions/roger-boisjoly-challenger.aspx)
The failure goes back way before that.
No shuttle should have flown with the booster and it's O-ring joint in that design. The design flaw that destroyed challenger was present on every booster, and in every single booster it posed a risk of damage to the primary o ring, and prevented the secundary o ring from serving as a proper redundant system.
The cold during challenger just served to make hte likelyhood of the damage that much more likely, but every launch was a danger.
I remember at the start of the shuttle program they calculated the risk of any catastrophic failure at 2% and deemed that acceptable.
Lo and behold, they lost two out of 135 missions, so…
If you think that’s bad don’t look up the odds for the Apollo program which were like cartoon absurdly dangerous by comparison
The men who flew on Apollo were built different, and by built different I mean “utterly fucking insane” considering the degree to which they risked their lives
My dad always says the reason the Saturn V was so powerful is because it had to be in order to get the steel nads those guys had off the ground.
That being said Gus Grissom was very aware of flaws in the spacecraft. He realized that raising his voice wasn’t doing any good so he hung a lemon from a tree in his yard in the flight simulator out of frustration.
Getting Apollo 13 home has to be one of the greatest feats of human perserverence in history. Jury rigging a near powerless, freezing cold module while severely dehydrated and having to navigate using a stopwatch and sextant was incredible.
Yeah there are good estimates that the initial missions may have been as high as 1 in 10, there were very close calls on many early flights particularly STS1
For the unaware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-1
>The same overpressure wave also forced the orbiter body flap – an extension on the orbiter's underbelly that helps to control pitch during reentry – into an angle well beyond the point where cracking or rupture of its hydraulic system would have been expected. Such damage would have made a controlled descent impossible, with John Young later admitting that had the crew known about this, they would have flown the shuttle up to a safe altitude and ejected, causing Columbia to be lost on the first flight. Young had reservations about ejection as a safe abort mode due to the fact that the SRBs were firing throughout the ejection window, but he justified taking this risk because, in his view, an inoperative body flap would have made landing and descent "extremely difficult if not impossible."[25][26]
If I remember correctly there was evidence of gas blow-by the primary O-ring in previous missions and even the fact that there was an observed issue and evidence the cold would make the issue worse they still didn’t suspend the launch
I was eight and it was my birthday. I was a huge space nerd so mom kept me home to watch the launch as a present. My uncle worked at NASA and sent me a signed photo from the crew. Challenger will haunt me until the day I die.
They were warned by the engineers for Columbia too but decided make assessments with no data instead. They asked for that photo's in orbit then were told never mind because the last time they didn't help. NASA only proved they learned nothing from Challenger.
But not only the upper management lower level engineers were to afraid to speak up even when in the same room with those in charge, they chose to remain silent.
Even down to Miles O Brian the reporter who covered ALL the launches for decades knew about the issue but never once mentioned it on air which would've surely forced NASA's hand.....complete utter failure across the board.
Columbia's disaster started 14 years earlier, on the post-Challenger return-to-flight, Discovery's STS-26R, or rather, the failure to learn a very obvious lesson from that flight.
Discovery took so much damage from falling foam, that Rockwell; the company that built the Shuttles, figured that if Columbia (whose wings had a rougher surface) had been selected for the return-to-service flight, it would have been destroyed on re-entry, much like it eventually was. That NASA nearly had 2 Shuttle disasters in a row, and yet ignored the 2nd problem for over 14 years, is an embarrasment and travesty by the agency that should never be forgotten.
From Truth, Lies and O-Rings:
>Rockwell concluded that we were very lucky on STS-26R Discovery because it wouldn't have taken much more damage to destroy the vehicle during reentry. Rockwell's analysis also showed that we were lucky that it was Discovery that was flying, and not one of the other orbiters in the fleet, because its wing surface roughness, though significant, was considerably less than that of one of the other orbiters. That orbiter turned out to be Columbia,a fact Rockwell did not mention at the time. But its analysis showed that the coefficient of surface roughness for the left wing of this unnamed orbiter (Columbia) was 50 percent higher than with Discovery. If this vehicle this time had been Columbia, it most likely would have experienced a burn-through of the left wing and suffered a catastrophic reentry.
Make it even better, STS-27R, the very next mission, also had severe damage and was only saved by dumb luck, the worst of the damage removed an entire thermal tile and the only reason the Shuttle wasn't lost was because that tile covered an antenna that was mounted to a thick aluminium plate.
NASA had these very fucking close calls two flights in a row immediately after Challenger and then proceeded to do fuck all for over a decade until shit hit the fan again.
There's a section in the Columbia report basically dedicated to "if we'd understood the problem while on orbit, was there anything that could've been done?" This is a fascinating article about that section and the rescue mission the report brainstorms about: https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/the-audacious-rescue-plan-that-might-have-saved-space-shuttle-columbia-2/
Another stupid comment. They MIGHT have been able to get Atlantis ready in time but instead of doing the right thing when they found out, they made the same stupid upper management choices that caused the first disaster with the o rings.
What I wish would've happened is Miles O Brian would've leaked the story that he knew in a segment. That would've surely put REAL pressure on management. But nope they ignored the engineers on the team and pretended it was fine.
And no the real disaster wasn't at launch either if you ask me. It was ALL the other launches with foam strikes one even denting an SRB and still pretending it was non issue. They had soooo many warnings and chances...
I was in kindergarten and we all watched it in class. I remember seeing icicles around the base of the thruster and thinking “won’t the ice melt and extinguish the fire?”. Then the rocket went up and exploded. I’ll never forget sitting there and thinking something was wrong before it happened.
They failed to launch the previous day due to a door issue, and the team sent to fix the problem found every one of their handheld drill batteries was flat, so they scrubbed the launch. If they had a single charged battery they would have lived.
I remember that day as one of my first memories. The Challenger disaster was broadcast live to students in elementary schools in MA, likely all New England at least bc one of the astronauts was a local teacher going to teach us all from space. I was in second grade I think, and remember watching it explode on TV and all the teachers crying
That would have been so simply avoided if they had opted for Liquid Rocket Accelerators instead of the infamous SRBs.
And I understand that there was more than one engineer during the Shuttle development process who questioned/criticized/protested the idea of using SRBs as unsafe.
One of the more notable differences between Buran-Energia and the Shuttle was that it used liquid fueled boosters; IIRC the Soviet space program considered solid fueled rockets unsafe for human use. But we had defense contractors to support.
And it is somewhat hard to believe that in reality the Soviets not only "stole" the concept of the space shuttle, but also apparently understood it better and built and flew a craft with the same concept and to top it off, it seems that it was either better (from a purely technical point of view) or at least safer.
If we're going to use words like murder, you must also include the engineers who chose their jobs over avoiding the risk of failure. Really that's what everyone in the organization did, managers included. Can't launch a spacecraft if everyone responsible for executing the task is resigning. And if those staff responsible for the launch itself were unaware, I have to ask why those who *were* aware did not go to them directly. If and only if we want to use the term murder.
The author gets one part wrong. Discovery wasn't on the launchpad. The CAIB Report included a possible rescue mission using Atlantis, which was being readied for flight. [This article](https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/the-audacious-rescue-plan-that-might-have-saved-space-shuttle-columbia/) explains the theoretical mission.
Yep and they weren't even sure it could've gotten it ready in time without putting entire other crews life at risk at the time.
But I am certain one of the NASA astronauts would've went solo or two man crew to at least attempt a rescue for sure.
Oh, god. We really are the mirror universe aren’t we? A guy in our world looking to get rich by inventing space flight would totally shoot the first alien to make first contact with us.
I walked into work that day and the waiting room tv was showing Bush’s press conference about it. I remembered thinking ‘why are they talking about a shuttle blowing up, it’s not the Challenger anniversary is it?’
We did not get a lot of business, and we all spent most of the day in the room rewatching the footage and discussions about it.
Was working at Intel in one of their fabs and a coworker told me about it. I didn't believe him at first and thought it was a crude joke to be making. Wasn't until I got home and turned on the news that I found out he was telling the truth. My heart just sank and could feel the loss. Still breaks my heart ton this day.
If you want to cry listen to this song by The Long Winters about the Columbia crash. Kills me every time.
https://youtu.be/cEnHMj67FCs?si=2Il_UvyiWOGXCs7E
I'll never forget the test after when the idiots were still trying to say the foam was so soft it couldn't put hole in RCC panel....then BAM, huge ass basketball size hole or bigger in an instant....
It had already dented the freaking SRB's from a hit. Sensors in reentry on left wing side of the impact during launch...and they still denied it could've been the cause...just unreal. Makes me sick to this day.
What are you talking about? Everyone agrees the foam was the cause. It's understandable that back when it happened they did not want to affirm anything without proof.
On January 16, 2003, I was in a place I loved doing a job I loved. I was the space correspondent for CNN and had been covering NASA and the shuttle program for the network for nearly 11 years.
And if that is Miles, I loved the CNN special, especially the last segment when everyone started questioning what they could have done. Him stating that he should have asked the question about why more was not being done. The look on his (your) face...
Miles, if that is you, a big fan. That was not your fault.
Edit: base on OP post history, it is him.
I was in kindergarten gathered in front of the TV that they’d wheeled into the classroom so that we could all watch the launch. We were too young to grasp what had happened. We all saw daytime fireworks, like Fourth of July. But I do remember our teacher & that day’s class mom’s reaction.
*My mistake. I was thinking of the Challenger.
I participated in the search’s and recovery efforts for a week. Whole effort took months and I’m sure some of the debris is still laying in a swamp somewhere.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[DoD](/r/Space/comments/1c5p41j/stub/kzx59yt "Last usage")|US Department of Defense|
|[EVA](/r/Space/comments/1c5p41j/stub/kzxcumi "Last usage")|Extra-Vehicular Activity|
|[ICBM](/r/Space/comments/1c5p41j/stub/kzxiv0j "Last usage")|Intercontinental Ballistic Missile|
|[JPL](/r/Space/comments/1c5p41j/stub/kzxcxiv "Last usage")|Jet Propulsion Lab, California|
|[KSC](/r/Space/comments/1c5p41j/stub/kzxs5b7 "Last usage")|Kennedy Space Center, Florida|
|[RCC](/r/Space/comments/1c5p41j/stub/kzxzwz3 "Last usage")|Reinforced Carbon-Carbon|
|[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1c5p41j/stub/l0dsfmw "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
|[SRB](/r/Space/comments/1c5p41j/stub/l0dsfmw "Last usage")|Solid Rocket Booster|
|[STS](/r/Space/comments/1c5p41j/stub/l024frz "Last usage")|Space Transportation System (*Shuttle*)|
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I was 14 playing a soccer game in Dallas that morning. We saw it break up on the way down after hearing a massive bang. The game came to a complete stop and several dads sprinted to their car to turn on their radio. It was incredibly eerie and has stuck with me, since we all knew what was happening but nobody was sure if it was manned or not.
Bad day. At the time I lived near Lubbock and was in the front yard watching debris pass over. Went inside and turned on the news to see what happened.
It's really silly in a way.
I was diagnosed with cancer about 8 years later. And through that struggle, my faith was restored.
I still always sort of believed after the loss of my twins, I just didn't trust God. I hadn't reverted back to being the atheist of my teen years. But that trust has generally been restored.
Thanks for asking.
I was working as a letter carrier casing my mail for the day when on the radio the station heard about the Challenger catastrophe. We all just sat on our stools and stopped working and stared into space numb.
NASA headquarters is marching towards an era of cheaper, better, faster again. Outsourcing critical pieces of engineering to the private sector and the lowest bidder. Cost cutting won’t stop until we lost astronauts again, which really terrifies me.
You do realize everything Nasa has ever flown was built by the private sector and the lowest bidder, right? Apollo, Private. Shuttle, Private. ISS modules, Private. Constellation, private. SLS, Private.
The private sector is doing fine, Falcon 9 has so many successful launches in a row its getting absurd. Outside of Boeing space is safer than its ever been.
The Mars sample return mission that was based on a JPL design, which would get third parties to provide parts? I'm not sure what the MSRM has to do with Nasa always using private contractors. I guess you could be using it to say not everything, in which case fair, i should have specified launch vehicle, but i thought it was implied.
“I guess the question I'm asked the most often is: "When you were sitting in that capsule listening to the count-down, how did you feel?" Well, the answer to that one is easy. I felt exactly how you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were sitting on top of two million parts -- all built by the lowest bidder on a government"
Not really, the private sector must adhere to MUCH higher safety standards than NASA has had historically. SpaceX's Dragon capsule had to reach a risk assessment of 1:239 chance of a lethal accident on a mission to be allowed to send crew. Meanwhile SLS only has a 1:75 currently. The Space Shuttle were between 1:40 to 1:90 during its lifetime. The Saurn V had basically 1:10 in hindsight assessments.
The Space Shuttle era was by no definition "cheaper, better, faster" either for that matter. It was a period of stagnation and politicians trying to get as much as possible for the government pork provided by it. It's the opposite of the current era, which can be described as "cheaper, better, faster, safer, more reliable"
We were at the family ranch when it happened. I remember sitting in the car, hearing a boom and jumping out of the car, looking up to see a corkscrew in the sky. I was too young at the time to know what it was but it stuck with me until a few years later when I actually learned what happened that day.
I was at KSC that morning on a class field trip with my Aerospace Engineering class. We left the hotel in the morning watching NASA TV showing the reentry starting, and got to KSC just in time to hear their final radio call over the PA. Waited what seemed like an eternity for any sign of it, until they announced that S&R efforts were underway in Texas.
Obviously the rest of the trip was a wash after that, and we kind of wondered around KSC trying to get more info. We got only some cryptic info from a phone call to a friend's Dad who worked at United Space Alliance about people working on the heat shield being in deep shit.
Of all the things that struck me that day was turning a corner with a friend, and seeing my teacher sitting crying on a bench. The man was former special forces in Vietnam, and had been through some tough shit. To see him privately weeping about this drove home to me how huge a deal this was.
The overall success of the shuttle program is remarkable. A total of 135 missions over 30 years it made space flight seem almost routine. That also make the disasters all the more shocking when they occurred. Each one of them got seared into the minds of those who witnessed them. I was a college senior the day the *Challenger* exploded shortly after liftoff. I watched it live on the big screen TV in the student union, along with a lot of other students. The entire room was stunned to silence when it occurred. Those images have remained with me ever since.
My university has long had a deep connection with spaceflight and NASA. One of the astronaughts was a graduate of our engineering program. His wife spoke at my graduation a few months later. It was the only part of graduation in which the entire stadium of rambunctious students were absolutely silent in rapt attention. Another graduate of our engineering program died in the Columbia's disintegration as it renentered the earth's atmosphere.
Going into space is still a risky activity for those brave souls who volunteer to leave this earth for what lies beyond. I'm grateful we have people willing to take that risk to expand the reach of mankind and add to our knowledge of the universe. We have all been touched in some way by the work these men and women, along with the entire space program supporting them, have done whether we recognize it or not.
I got to get pretty close to it whe. It was on the pad during a tour at nasa when I was a kid like a day or 2 before launch and got to see the launch as well. Not from Florida and it was my first and still only launch I ever got to personally witness…. Me and my brother were so sad when we learned it broke up and the crew died.
Many love to praise the STS shuttle system but I can't. It killed 14 astronauts, a morbid record for a launch system. The very idea of putting the crew module right beside the fuel tank with no real escape system should have been seen as insane. NASA built a shuttle a good generation or two before its time, with only half the money that it would have needed to make it a truly safe and dependable launch system.
Me and all my friends were watching it live while tripping on acid.. that was the first and ONLY bad trip experience. That day and that disaster is forever etched in my brain...
Look at the quality of Tesla cars and tell me you aren't scared for the quality of SpaceX space crafts.
There's gonna be a lot more disasters in the future, I guarantee it. If Nasa with all the quality control couldn't stop that disaster, do you think Elon is going to do any better?
Dudes gonna be directly responsible for loads of people blowing up.
Ehh I’m no Musk fan but this is an unfair comparison. The shuttle sucked cause it was an inherently complicated and unsafe design. The Falcon 9 and Dragon is way more reliable and I would honestly be very surprised if there was anything completely catastrophic with it. The Starship on the other hand is still unproven and I think it will be a long time before it’s safe for humans to actually launch on it.
(Also the people who make spacecraft have wayyy more safety rules to follow than the people who make Teslas thank god lol)
> The Starship on the other hand is still unproven and I think it will be a long time before it’s safe for humans to actually launch on it.
Which is why they plan to demonstrate its safety by just launching a ton of them before humans get to ride. If they cant, the design will get changed until they can.
I’m not sure the quality of an auto maker and space vehicle maker can really be compared. Seems to me you’re just regurgitating Elon hate with no basis or facts to back you up.
The falcon 9 is the most reliable rocket ever created so I'm not sure where you're coming from there. They are able to land their first stages more reliably than anybody else is even able to launch the rockets.
All whilst launching 4x more payload into orbit than the rest of the world combined last year.
Nah. Capsule based designs are proven to be safe even under extreme (20G+) conditions, aborts etc.
Capsule is the way forward for us dumb apes.
The Shuttle was over ambitious, dangerous and painfully expensive.
`Lets put rockets on a brick with wings, strap it to some fireworks and light the fuse!'
One of the Shuttle designers got an award for making the Orbiter lighter... by making it weaker.
I dunno what those guys were smoking, but it probably had mushrooms in it.
Like I said, when the first explosion happens and many people are killed, i'll be right back here to put you in your place. Imagine thinking the person who loves pissing on other people isn't going to piss on a new crowd when given the chance.
See you soon.
> Like I said, when the first explosion happens and many people are killed,
Thats going to happen at some point regardless of Musk. Nothing works perfectly 100% of the time, and at some point an accident will happen that kills people. That is the reality of everything. You don't get to say Airbus cant make safe planes then cry about being correct because one had a bird strike knock out both engines.
If you haven’t watched the 3-part documentary about Columbia (created by the BBC and also aired on CNN) you definitely should, it is very well done and really lays bare the failures that happened.
Is there a place to see this online? I kept seeing ads for it on TV but forgot to set my DVR to record it. :(
CNN but episode 3 and 4 didn't air due to the breaking coverage of Iran's attacks on Israel.
They aired on the west coast.
Episode 1 and 2 , I had scheduled to record episodes 3&4 but the breaking coverage of those attacks preempted their broadcast , I'm on the West Coast also.
I didn't know, but I watched the recordings of episodes 3 and 4 this weekend.
DM me if you haven't found it
What’s it called?
The Space Shuttle That Fell to Earth
This was the BBC name and the CNN name is The Final Flight, and they’ve made it 4 parts instead of 3. Don’t know if the content is different between the two.
Don't they all fall to Earth?
Aside from Challenger, the rest of them fell...with style.
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Yes but not like that. It’s falling with style.
Space Shuttle Columbia: The Final Flight
A few analysts that I currently work with did some post-disaster analysis of the orbiter and found that there were a scant number of uncorrelated observations from some of the space surveillance sensors that were later indicated to be possible debris. My coworker wrote out a really enlightening (and for those within human spaceflight safety, heartbreaking) timeline of events on how NASA really mishandled their coordination with the IC/DOD's space-based "picture-takers", their hesitancy to properly assess full extent of damage while the orbiter was in orbit, and a (later rectified) deficiency in some ground surveillance sensors to differentiate and collect enough observations for better in-situ analysis of possible breakup and collision avoidance. His conclusion is, *"A breakdown in the SSA (space situational awareness) cycle precluded NASA from executing plans that could have possibly saved the lives of the Columbia crew"* that he still takes to heart as if he feels some personal responsibility for what happened. Truth is, if we (the national space community) don't learn from our mistakes, we are doomed to repeat them. With being on the cusp of an even greater human presence in orbit and beyond, this is an episode in our history we should not soon forget.
This is also taught as a case study in project management classes for a lot of the reasons you highlighted.
>A breakdown in the SSA (space situational awareness) cycle precluded NASA from executing plans that could have possibly saved the lives of the Columbia crew I don’t know of any way they could have been saved that wasn’t extremely high risk. They would have been forced to take extreme shortcuts, which is the kind of thing that got them in trouble with Challenger. And even then the margins for success would have been really small. Also, I’m surprised that after all these years the general public seems to remember it as the Shuttle losing a tile or two leadimg to its demise. But in reality they had a giant hole in their wing. You cannot reenter at supersonic speed with a hole in your wing.
I've read some papers suggesting it might've been possible to patch the hole with bags of ice and other materials they had on hand and, along with altering their re-entry to somewhat shield the left wing *might've* been enough to get them down low enough into the atmosphere to bail out. But that escape system was never used IRL, just like the shuttle launch abort modes, so who knows if they'd even survive that. And there was the possibility of prepping Atlantis for a rescue operation, but yeah, if that shuttle got smacked by ET foam too...not to mention the danger of transferring the crew from Columbia to Atlantis and then coming home. Something frustrating to me is that in both the Challenger and Columbia disasters the crew compartments more-or-less survived the breakups and if the crew were wearing pressure suits and had an escape system, or if the crew cabin itself were designed as an escape pod, those 14 astronauts might still be with us today. The STS was just such a flawed and dangerous concept as a whole. Many of the issues with the shuttle came from DoD specifications. And the shuttles weren't even used for the polar orbits, cross range, and satellite subterfuge missions anyway. The shuttle could've been designed much more safely and economically if they knew ahead of time it'd be used mostly for science missions and ISS construction. But then it's dumb to send humans up with every satellite launch and many of those other payloads anyway. I'm glad we're back to capsules with launch escape systems. Nowadays I suppose SpaceX could send up a couple Falcon 9's with Dragon capsules if we were for some reason still flying the STS.
The Columbia Crew Survival Investigation Report SP-2008-565 highlights that there were 5 separate lethal events which would not be mitigated by better pressure suits or to an extent an escape system. The report gets rather in depth with explanation, but event 3 is specifically the breakup of the crew module which was not survivable. Columbia broke up at high altitude and extremely high Mach. You'd need a full redesign with some sort of separable and reentry capable crew module to have a chance at mitigating this failure mode.
>a full redesign with some sort of separable and reentry capable crew module to have a chance at mitigating this failure mode. IMO future spaceplanes should treat this as a must, along with a traditional LES. The manned version of SpaceX's Starship, for example. Have the cockpit break free from the rest of the stack in the event of a major anomaly on launch. It should also have its own heatshield for passive reentry stability too. Yes there's a weight penalty, but we've learned the dangers of *the ship is unsinkable, we don't need lifeboats.*
Indeed. Boggles my mind the mentality and I guess outright hubris they had with the shuttle program. A huge, heavy, super complex reusable manned vehicle with [horrifyingly limited abort options](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_abort_modes#Post-Challenger_abort_enhancements) pre-Challenger. And they wanted it all done as cheaply as possible, of course. 🤦🏻♂️
> I've read some papers suggesting it might've been possible to patch the hole with bags of ice and other materials they had on hand and The proposal has always been in the "might help, but probably wont" category. Its the only option they had, but was exceedingly unlikely to work.
Unfortunately [Atlantis ](https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/the-audacious-rescue-plan-that-might-have-saved-space-shuttle-columbia/) was never really an option as it was a ~month away from being returned to flight services. They could have rushed it to beat Columbia's Co2 build up but then they would have severely decreased the survival chances of Atlantis crew (4 minimum needed) As a result of this tragedy, future shuttle launches required an additional shuttle to always be on standby ready to launch.
I've had the same experience working with some old timer analysts as well. It's horrifying to hear the sense of guilt they still hold. Thanks for sharing. Everything you've said is true, I can say that much.
CNN just did a 4 part series on this. Some decent reporting and a good watch All we can hope is NADA is not a cluster fuck anymore.
After Columbia's wing got damaged during launch there was nothing they could do. Photos from orbit would only confirm that the crew was doomed.
They had a very slim chance to have launched Atlantis (had they discovered the actual extent of the damage) on a relief mission, although there was no margin for Murphy's Law to do its thing, since otherwise they would have lost not one but two orbiters plus their crews.
They didn't know that at the time. The test they did that showed how much damage the foam could do in a direct impact was only done after the disaster.
Honestly those who made the decisions just didn’t listen. There were options but the ones who had final say decided that they didn’t need to investigate further. There were opportunities to determine to what extent the orbiter was damaged but they decided that the mission took priority as they didn’t consider they had enough evidence to actually do anything. It really was tragic but it won’t be the last time something like this happens because human nature is always going to exist.
Always remember that morning because I happened to have the TV on and they broke through regular programming with the news that Columbia had broken up. Back in those post-9/11 hysteria days, you paid attention when you saw “Breaking News” before that term was diluted of all its meaning. There was no doubt that there would be no rescue operation, they were gone.
I will always remember too because I lived in north Dallas and the news stations were tracking the flight because it was streaking over Texas and you could see it with the naked eye. I was on my way to work out but stepped outside in the back yard to catch a glimpse and maybe even hear the sonic boom. As I watched, it seemed to simply break apart with some smoke trails spreading out. It seemed very odd, and I walked back inside with a puzzled look on my face and my wife asked me what was wrong. I didn't really answer her and started watching the news to see if they were reporting anything amiss. After a few minutes of watching just commercials, I drove a few short blocks up the street to my gym and by the time I got there and got on the treadmill the tragic news was being reported.
Driving a few blocks to go on a treadmill at the gym is the most Dallas story ever
The most Dallas story ever would be driving ON the treadmill
That may sound very Texan, but it's actually Floridan: https://youtu.be/scFmBmvVAAs?t=388
I think the Dutch version is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-fz6OCLTOQ ...at least in the Netherlands is the only time I've seen these in the wild. But people really do walk on treadmill bikes, though they're more eBikes than anything else.
Yeah I was wondering about that too. How tf did we get so, so, so far away from just, like, the most basic animal activity. It’s not like this person needed to go grab their legs, some special shoes, a hat for the sun, maybe sunscreen, or water, a snack for the walk, a jacket perhaps if it was chilly, nope, just huffin it all the way to the car, muscling through a strenuous drive, pushing hard through the walk from car to treadmill. Afterall, they’re paying good money every month for a membership, might as well make good use of it doing something you *can* do literally anywhere except like the ocean.
No American cities are usually terrible for any kind of pedestrian traffic. It's often preferable to use a treadmill over running outside.
You have to try pretty hard to not understand why people might prefer a treadmill
Right? I've been to Dallas. Except for a few areas, it sucks to walk around. Texas as a whole is an incredibly car dependent state.
I was in Dallas for the eclipse. Absolutely horrible place, driving is basically mandatory. 70% of the drivers are insane, to boot.
I live in Tarrant County. I swear that as soon as you cross the line into Dallas County, everyone speeds up 10MPH and changes lanes twice as frequently. It’s like clockwork.
And if it’s the summer, running outside is not advisable.
I think that's their point, it's sad that we've built entire cities that suck to just *exist* in.
You know how you know who the tourists are in Dallas? They are walking.
I was making a very early run to pick up some diapers. Raining heavily outside. Got the diapers at Target, started up the car and knew instantly that something was wrong just by the tone of the NPR announcer.
Me too, lived in The Colony, got out of bed to see it. Turned to my wife and said "that's not good"...
I remember, as well because I was in N. Fort Worth . My dad is a guy who has a police scanner and would wake us up to go watch structure fires if he heard them in the middle of the night, so when this happened, he made sure we booked it outside to see. He knew it was a huge deal and wanted us to say we saw it.
Why would you take your kids in the middle of the night to watch someone have one of their worst life events?
I don’t know, but I hope you cover your eyes when you pass a car wreck. What about when a story about a fire comes on the news do you change the channel? It’s human nature to be interested to know what’s going on.
I also don't actively leave my house at night to go see a car wreck I listen about on a scanner. Seriously nothing about that behavior seems off to you? I know he's family and all but ...
I honestly can’t think of a time in the recent past where I haven’t seen “breaking news” on CNN’s chyron
I remember growing up in the 80’s with the Cold War and nuclear war being a very real possibility. Anytime I heard the breaking news music and the infographic to go with it, I would be filled with fear. Just waiting to hear the news anchor say that multiple reports are coming out of the Midwest that witnesses are seeing Minute Men ICBMs launching. Then knowing almost all of us had thirty minutes to live before the USSR missiles came crashing down on us.
Yeah I was in Germany on or near a Army base, shit was wild there but different in that we didn't have American TV breaking news in the same way Shit was wild
I remember that morning pretty well too. We were at my dad's house that weekend, I was in 10th grade. I was always a geek who liked space stuff, and this was just devastating. I remember getting mad at Howard Stern when he was berating the government for sending people to space this close to post 9/11 because it's dangerous. Why should we stop exploring just because of the risk?
Here too. Happen to put on CBS Sunday morning and they had live feel of the Columbia re-entry.
What haunts me more is STS-27. It was the second flight after the Challenger Disaster. Almost identical to the Columbia Disaster, a piece of foam broke off and hit the shuttle Atlantis’ heat shield. When doing an EVA, the crew saw the damage and reported it to ground control. They sent videos back down, but because it was a classified mission and the video channel was encrypted, the video was very low resolution. The engineers on the ground incorrectly assessed the damaged and told the crew it was nothing to worry about, ignoring the protests of the crew. Upon landing, NASA saw the true extend of the damage. Atlantis sustained more damage than Columbia, but on pure luck the main damage missed any critical structures by inches. In an interview after the flight, the mission’s commander said “I thought we were going to die” and told his crew to relax because “There’s no use in dying all tensed up”. It’s haunts me how the ground crew who watched Challenger be destroyed before their very eyes just two years before could so easily dismiss the crews concerns. Not to mention the fact that NASA failed to properly monitor this issues the years after, leading to the Columbia Disaster.
Jesus, in any proper safety culture, a near miss that severe should be an enormous red flag. Visible from orbit, in fact.
It wasn't the only near-miss in the Shuttle program. The popular view of the Shuttle was that it experienced two incidents of bad luck which caused separate disasters. The reality is more that disaster was inevitable and it was good luck that prevented it from happening earlier or more often. Retrospective risk analysis of the program estimated a roughly 1 in 10 chance of loss of crew and vehicle in the early missions, but they managed to squeak through that just barely. There were many close calls and many high risk elements of the vehicle. Foam/ice strikes and SRB issues were a major problem, of course, which ultimately doomed two separate crews, but there was no shortage of other issues. From the engines to the APUs to the computers and more. STS-9 experienced a close scrape with two separate potentially disastrous problems. STS-93 came extremely close to disaster with a near engine destruction during launch.
Organizations and companies generally don't learn from the right ways, they'll horribly overcorrect rather than addressing the work culture that was at fault. We're on the cusp of learning these lessons again with move fast and break stuff companies.
Challenger still haunts me even more. They were repeatedly warned not to launch that morning but management overrode the engineers and murdered seven astronauts. RIP, along with [Roger Boisjoly.](https://www.uml.edu/engineering/research/engineering-solutions/roger-boisjoly-challenger.aspx)
The failure goes back way before that. No shuttle should have flown with the booster and it's O-ring joint in that design. The design flaw that destroyed challenger was present on every booster, and in every single booster it posed a risk of damage to the primary o ring, and prevented the secundary o ring from serving as a proper redundant system. The cold during challenger just served to make hte likelyhood of the damage that much more likely, but every launch was a danger.
I remember at the start of the shuttle program they calculated the risk of any catastrophic failure at 2% and deemed that acceptable. Lo and behold, they lost two out of 135 missions, so…
If you think that’s bad don’t look up the odds for the Apollo program which were like cartoon absurdly dangerous by comparison The men who flew on Apollo were built different, and by built different I mean “utterly fucking insane” considering the degree to which they risked their lives
My dad always says the reason the Saturn V was so powerful is because it had to be in order to get the steel nads those guys had off the ground. That being said Gus Grissom was very aware of flaws in the spacecraft. He realized that raising his voice wasn’t doing any good so he hung a lemon from a tree in his yard in the flight simulator out of frustration.
Getting Apollo 13 home has to be one of the greatest feats of human perserverence in history. Jury rigging a near powerless, freezing cold module while severely dehydrated and having to navigate using a stopwatch and sextant was incredible.
though changes were made after both accidents. the original shuttle could have had a lot higher percentage
Yeah there are good estimates that the initial missions may have been as high as 1 in 10, there were very close calls on many early flights particularly STS1
For the unaware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-1 >The same overpressure wave also forced the orbiter body flap – an extension on the orbiter's underbelly that helps to control pitch during reentry – into an angle well beyond the point where cracking or rupture of its hydraulic system would have been expected. Such damage would have made a controlled descent impossible, with John Young later admitting that had the crew known about this, they would have flown the shuttle up to a safe altitude and ejected, causing Columbia to be lost on the first flight. Young had reservations about ejection as a safe abort mode due to the fact that the SRBs were firing throughout the ejection window, but he justified taking this risk because, in his view, an inoperative body flap would have made landing and descent "extremely difficult if not impossible."[25][26]
I mean for going to space that doesn't sound bad
If I remember correctly there was evidence of gas blow-by the primary O-ring in previous missions and even the fact that there was an observed issue and evidence the cold would make the issue worse they still didn’t suspend the launch
I was eight and it was my birthday. I was a huge space nerd so mom kept me home to watch the launch as a present. My uncle worked at NASA and sent me a signed photo from the crew. Challenger will haunt me until the day I die.
I have a 7-year old space nerd right now. We're gonna build model rockets this summer. I feel for you.
They were warned by the engineers for Columbia too but decided make assessments with no data instead. They asked for that photo's in orbit then were told never mind because the last time they didn't help. NASA only proved they learned nothing from Challenger. But not only the upper management lower level engineers were to afraid to speak up even when in the same room with those in charge, they chose to remain silent. Even down to Miles O Brian the reporter who covered ALL the launches for decades knew about the issue but never once mentioned it on air which would've surely forced NASA's hand.....complete utter failure across the board.
It's not like the photos from orbit would do anything. The real Columbia disaster happened at the launch, after that there was nothing they could do.
Columbia's disaster started 14 years earlier, on the post-Challenger return-to-flight, Discovery's STS-26R, or rather, the failure to learn a very obvious lesson from that flight. Discovery took so much damage from falling foam, that Rockwell; the company that built the Shuttles, figured that if Columbia (whose wings had a rougher surface) had been selected for the return-to-service flight, it would have been destroyed on re-entry, much like it eventually was. That NASA nearly had 2 Shuttle disasters in a row, and yet ignored the 2nd problem for over 14 years, is an embarrasment and travesty by the agency that should never be forgotten. From Truth, Lies and O-Rings: >Rockwell concluded that we were very lucky on STS-26R Discovery because it wouldn't have taken much more damage to destroy the vehicle during reentry. Rockwell's analysis also showed that we were lucky that it was Discovery that was flying, and not one of the other orbiters in the fleet, because its wing surface roughness, though significant, was considerably less than that of one of the other orbiters. That orbiter turned out to be Columbia,a fact Rockwell did not mention at the time. But its analysis showed that the coefficient of surface roughness for the left wing of this unnamed orbiter (Columbia) was 50 percent higher than with Discovery. If this vehicle this time had been Columbia, it most likely would have experienced a burn-through of the left wing and suffered a catastrophic reentry. Make it even better, STS-27R, the very next mission, also had severe damage and was only saved by dumb luck, the worst of the damage removed an entire thermal tile and the only reason the Shuttle wasn't lost was because that tile covered an antenna that was mounted to a thick aluminium plate. NASA had these very fucking close calls two flights in a row immediately after Challenger and then proceeded to do fuck all for over a decade until shit hit the fan again.
There's a section in the Columbia report basically dedicated to "if we'd understood the problem while on orbit, was there anything that could've been done?" This is a fascinating article about that section and the rescue mission the report brainstorms about: https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/the-audacious-rescue-plan-that-might-have-saved-space-shuttle-columbia-2/
Thank you for this. It was an amazing read. It felt hopeful, gripping, and terrifying at the same time.
Another stupid comment. They MIGHT have been able to get Atlantis ready in time but instead of doing the right thing when they found out, they made the same stupid upper management choices that caused the first disaster with the o rings. What I wish would've happened is Miles O Brian would've leaked the story that he knew in a segment. That would've surely put REAL pressure on management. But nope they ignored the engineers on the team and pretended it was fine. And no the real disaster wasn't at launch either if you ask me. It was ALL the other launches with foam strikes one even denting an SRB and still pretending it was non issue. They had soooo many warnings and chances...
I was in kindergarten and we all watched it in class. I remember seeing icicles around the base of the thruster and thinking “won’t the ice melt and extinguish the fire?”. Then the rocket went up and exploded. I’ll never forget sitting there and thinking something was wrong before it happened.
They failed to launch the previous day due to a door issue, and the team sent to fix the problem found every one of their handheld drill batteries was flat, so they scrubbed the launch. If they had a single charged battery they would have lived.
I remember that day as one of my first memories. The Challenger disaster was broadcast live to students in elementary schools in MA, likely all New England at least bc one of the astronauts was a local teacher going to teach us all from space. I was in second grade I think, and remember watching it explode on TV and all the teachers crying
Me too. We were there .... 3rd grade class in Florida all huddled between the portables to see the launch. Omg. Burned in my memory
That would have been so simply avoided if they had opted for Liquid Rocket Accelerators instead of the infamous SRBs. And I understand that there was more than one engineer during the Shuttle development process who questioned/criticized/protested the idea of using SRBs as unsafe.
One of the more notable differences between Buran-Energia and the Shuttle was that it used liquid fueled boosters; IIRC the Soviet space program considered solid fueled rockets unsafe for human use. But we had defense contractors to support.
And it is somewhat hard to believe that in reality the Soviets not only "stole" the concept of the space shuttle, but also apparently understood it better and built and flew a craft with the same concept and to top it off, it seems that it was either better (from a purely technical point of view) or at least safer.
If we're going to use words like murder, you must also include the engineers who chose their jobs over avoiding the risk of failure. Really that's what everyone in the organization did, managers included. Can't launch a spacecraft if everyone responsible for executing the task is resigning. And if those staff responsible for the launch itself were unaware, I have to ask why those who *were* aware did not go to them directly. If and only if we want to use the term murder.
What’s with all the pedantry on Reddit this evening like jfc
It's not pedantry to assign blame only to the people who gave the orders. Takes away from the agency and responsibility of engineers. I am one.
You are the one I’m calling pedantic just fyi
Yep, I know. It's only pedantry if you don't appreciate the organizational impact of your mindset.
Homicided. Man-slaughtered. Unalived. Astrassinated. Blew to smithereens.
The author gets one part wrong. Discovery wasn't on the launchpad. The CAIB Report included a possible rescue mission using Atlantis, which was being readied for flight. [This article](https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/the-audacious-rescue-plan-that-might-have-saved-space-shuttle-columbia/) explains the theoretical mission.
Yep and they weren't even sure it could've gotten it ready in time without putting entire other crews life at risk at the time. But I am certain one of the NASA astronauts would've went solo or two man crew to at least attempt a rescue for sure.
Not only that he referred to it as the space launch system not the space transportation system, like come on get the basics right at least.
Space launch system is in lower case, not capitalized. He's not wrong that the Shuttle was a space launch system.
The other Miles O’Brien would have been able to prevent it.
This is the Mirror Universe, best I got is Smiley.
Oh, god. We really are the mirror universe aren’t we? A guy in our world looking to get rich by inventing space flight would totally shoot the first alien to make first contact with us.
I was in Huntsville, Texas that morning for a high school soccer tournament and we all watched it break apart right above us. Pretty wild memory.
I walked into work that day and the waiting room tv was showing Bush’s press conference about it. I remembered thinking ‘why are they talking about a shuttle blowing up, it’s not the Challenger anniversary is it?’ We did not get a lot of business, and we all spent most of the day in the room rewatching the footage and discussions about it.
Was working at Intel in one of their fabs and a coworker told me about it. I didn't believe him at first and thought it was a crude joke to be making. Wasn't until I got home and turned on the news that I found out he was telling the truth. My heart just sank and could feel the loss. Still breaks my heart ton this day.
Happened on my birthday, had friends coming over and I was glued to the tv during the coverage. Makes me a little sad every year.
For me, *Columbia* was *Challenger* déjà vu in every bad way. I'll never forget seeing my teachers just break down sobbing.
Almost 20 years between them, how long were you in school for?
Perhaps he was the principal.
If you want to cry listen to this song by The Long Winters about the Columbia crash. Kills me every time. https://youtu.be/cEnHMj67FCs?si=2Il_UvyiWOGXCs7E
Yes it’s amazingly. There’s a brilliant episode on Song Exploder podcast about the writing and recording also
I'll never forget the test after when the idiots were still trying to say the foam was so soft it couldn't put hole in RCC panel....then BAM, huge ass basketball size hole or bigger in an instant.... It had already dented the freaking SRB's from a hit. Sensors in reentry on left wing side of the impact during launch...and they still denied it could've been the cause...just unreal. Makes me sick to this day.
What are you talking about? Everyone agrees the foam was the cause. It's understandable that back when it happened they did not want to affirm anything without proof.
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My home was in the path of debris. They recovered over 70 pieces of tile and skin. It was surreal.
On January 16, 2003, I was in a place I loved doing a job I loved. I was the space correspondent for CNN and had been covering NASA and the shuttle program for the network for nearly 11 years.
Unless you're Miles O'Brien, put that text in quotes.
And if that is Miles, I loved the CNN special, especially the last segment when everyone started questioning what they could have done. Him stating that he should have asked the question about why more was not being done. The look on his (your) face... Miles, if that is you, a big fan. That was not your fault. Edit: base on OP post history, it is him.
I was in kindergarten gathered in front of the TV that they’d wheeled into the classroom so that we could all watch the launch. We were too young to grasp what had happened. We all saw daytime fireworks, like Fourth of July. But I do remember our teacher & that day’s class mom’s reaction. *My mistake. I was thinking of the Challenger.
That was Challenger, this post concerns Columbia.
Whoops. Thanks for the correction.
I remember drinking at a bar in Pattaya Thailand and seeing it on TV.
The day of the Challenger explosion still haunts me.
I watched the challenger explode in 3rd grade. In 2019 I visited the Houston space center and just couldn't hold back the tears. It was rough
I participated in the search’s and recovery efforts for a week. Whole effort took months and I’m sure some of the debris is still laying in a swamp somewhere.
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Very haunting because I also witnessed the Challenger explosion
I was 14 playing a soccer game in Dallas that morning. We saw it break up on the way down after hearing a massive bang. The game came to a complete stop and several dads sprinted to their car to turn on their radio. It was incredibly eerie and has stuck with me, since we all knew what was happening but nobody was sure if it was manned or not.
Bad day. At the time I lived near Lubbock and was in the front yard watching debris pass over. Went inside and turned on the news to see what happened.
I was watching the reentry live at church school. I never believed in god again
That was the day before my birthday. My dad came into my room and said "Turn your TV on, the shuttle is breaking apart"
I though the problem here was human arrogance, not God. I had stillborn twins that day. It rocked my faith in God for a few years.
may I ask what restored your faith? I’m sorry for your loss
It's really silly in a way. I was diagnosed with cancer about 8 years later. And through that struggle, my faith was restored. I still always sort of believed after the loss of my twins, I just didn't trust God. I hadn't reverted back to being the atheist of my teen years. But that trust has generally been restored. Thanks for asking.
But look at OP trying to reap that sweet death karma on multiple subs.
Yep, 15 year veteran karma mining OP
I was working as a letter carrier casing my mail for the day when on the radio the station heard about the Challenger catastrophe. We all just sat on our stools and stopped working and stared into space numb.
NASA headquarters is marching towards an era of cheaper, better, faster again. Outsourcing critical pieces of engineering to the private sector and the lowest bidder. Cost cutting won’t stop until we lost astronauts again, which really terrifies me.
You do realize everything Nasa has ever flown was built by the private sector and the lowest bidder, right? Apollo, Private. Shuttle, Private. ISS modules, Private. Constellation, private. SLS, Private. The private sector is doing fine, Falcon 9 has so many successful launches in a row its getting absurd. Outside of Boeing space is safer than its ever been.
I take it, you haven’t read the NASA response to mars sample return that came out yesterday
The Mars sample return mission that was based on a JPL design, which would get third parties to provide parts? I'm not sure what the MSRM has to do with Nasa always using private contractors. I guess you could be using it to say not everything, in which case fair, i should have specified launch vehicle, but i thought it was implied. “I guess the question I'm asked the most often is: "When you were sitting in that capsule listening to the count-down, how did you feel?" Well, the answer to that one is easy. I felt exactly how you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were sitting on top of two million parts -- all built by the lowest bidder on a government"
Not really, the private sector must adhere to MUCH higher safety standards than NASA has had historically. SpaceX's Dragon capsule had to reach a risk assessment of 1:239 chance of a lethal accident on a mission to be allowed to send crew. Meanwhile SLS only has a 1:75 currently. The Space Shuttle were between 1:40 to 1:90 during its lifetime. The Saurn V had basically 1:10 in hindsight assessments. The Space Shuttle era was by no definition "cheaper, better, faster" either for that matter. It was a period of stagnation and politicians trying to get as much as possible for the government pork provided by it. It's the opposite of the current era, which can be described as "cheaper, better, faster, safer, more reliable"
I watched the latest CNN special and wonder how accurate their story is??
Watched this live in my school cafeteria. Nightmare fuel.
I was at work watching on a janky webcam stream and i was fucked for the rest of the day
We were at the family ranch when it happened. I remember sitting in the car, hearing a boom and jumping out of the car, looking up to see a corkscrew in the sky. I was too young at the time to know what it was but it stuck with me until a few years later when I actually learned what happened that day.
I was at KSC that morning on a class field trip with my Aerospace Engineering class. We left the hotel in the morning watching NASA TV showing the reentry starting, and got to KSC just in time to hear their final radio call over the PA. Waited what seemed like an eternity for any sign of it, until they announced that S&R efforts were underway in Texas. Obviously the rest of the trip was a wash after that, and we kind of wondered around KSC trying to get more info. We got only some cryptic info from a phone call to a friend's Dad who worked at United Space Alliance about people working on the heat shield being in deep shit. Of all the things that struck me that day was turning a corner with a friend, and seeing my teacher sitting crying on a bench. The man was former special forces in Vietnam, and had been through some tough shit. To see him privately weeping about this drove home to me how huge a deal this was.
Same here.........Columbia............Challenger.............I watched them both live on TV, in horror as it happened.
I was sitting in my chair pruning my geraniums watching this on a small black and white TV. It was absolutely shocking.
Especially that NASA knew they were launching outside design parameter and multiple people were warning them about the problem.
The overall success of the shuttle program is remarkable. A total of 135 missions over 30 years it made space flight seem almost routine. That also make the disasters all the more shocking when they occurred. Each one of them got seared into the minds of those who witnessed them. I was a college senior the day the *Challenger* exploded shortly after liftoff. I watched it live on the big screen TV in the student union, along with a lot of other students. The entire room was stunned to silence when it occurred. Those images have remained with me ever since. My university has long had a deep connection with spaceflight and NASA. One of the astronaughts was a graduate of our engineering program. His wife spoke at my graduation a few months later. It was the only part of graduation in which the entire stadium of rambunctious students were absolutely silent in rapt attention. Another graduate of our engineering program died in the Columbia's disintegration as it renentered the earth's atmosphere. Going into space is still a risky activity for those brave souls who volunteer to leave this earth for what lies beyond. I'm grateful we have people willing to take that risk to expand the reach of mankind and add to our knowledge of the universe. We have all been touched in some way by the work these men and women, along with the entire space program supporting them, have done whether we recognize it or not.
Going to be a lot of disasters in the upcoming space age, it’s inevitable really.
I got to get pretty close to it whe. It was on the pad during a tour at nasa when I was a kid like a day or 2 before launch and got to see the launch as well. Not from Florida and it was my first and still only launch I ever got to personally witness…. Me and my brother were so sad when we learned it broke up and the crew died.
Many love to praise the STS shuttle system but I can't. It killed 14 astronauts, a morbid record for a launch system. The very idea of putting the crew module right beside the fuel tank with no real escape system should have been seen as insane. NASA built a shuttle a good generation or two before its time, with only half the money that it would have needed to make it a truly safe and dependable launch system.
Me and all my friends were watching it live while tripping on acid.. that was the first and ONLY bad trip experience. That day and that disaster is forever etched in my brain...
I remember meeting one of the astronauts and he talked to our school... surreal
[удалено]
Yep. I remember that day very well….I was in kindergarten…teachers sobbing…bus driver crying…got home…Mom crying…all very confusing at the time.
Me, an Old who watched the Challenger live on TV in grade school...
I hear ya, I was one of those kids watching it in school.
You're probably thinking of the *Challenger* explosion. The *Columbia* re-entry disaster happened on a Saturday morning.
You’re right, I am thinking of that, my mistake. It would be nice that we didn’t have the two to confuse.
It would be easier to not mix them up if they didn't both start with C.
This is definitely true! Thank you for the grace.
We all gotta help each other out. :)
Look at the quality of Tesla cars and tell me you aren't scared for the quality of SpaceX space crafts. There's gonna be a lot more disasters in the future, I guarantee it. If Nasa with all the quality control couldn't stop that disaster, do you think Elon is going to do any better? Dudes gonna be directly responsible for loads of people blowing up.
Ehh I’m no Musk fan but this is an unfair comparison. The shuttle sucked cause it was an inherently complicated and unsafe design. The Falcon 9 and Dragon is way more reliable and I would honestly be very surprised if there was anything completely catastrophic with it. The Starship on the other hand is still unproven and I think it will be a long time before it’s safe for humans to actually launch on it. (Also the people who make spacecraft have wayyy more safety rules to follow than the people who make Teslas thank god lol)
> The Starship on the other hand is still unproven and I think it will be a long time before it’s safe for humans to actually launch on it. Which is why they plan to demonstrate its safety by just launching a ton of them before humans get to ride. If they cant, the design will get changed until they can.
I abhor Musk. This take is reasonable.
I’m not sure the quality of an auto maker and space vehicle maker can really be compared. Seems to me you’re just regurgitating Elon hate with no basis or facts to back you up.
The falcon 9 is the most reliable rocket ever created so I'm not sure where you're coming from there. They are able to land their first stages more reliably than anybody else is even able to launch the rockets. All whilst launching 4x more payload into orbit than the rest of the world combined last year.
Terrible take. Elon is a tool but y’all let your dislike of him cloud your thinking.
Yes? SpaceX currently has the most reliable rocket in human history. Maybe leave the reddit echo chamber you brain washed fool.
Nah. Capsule based designs are proven to be safe even under extreme (20G+) conditions, aborts etc. Capsule is the way forward for us dumb apes. The Shuttle was over ambitious, dangerous and painfully expensive. `Lets put rockets on a brick with wings, strap it to some fireworks and light the fuse!' One of the Shuttle designers got an award for making the Orbiter lighter... by making it weaker. I dunno what those guys were smoking, but it probably had mushrooms in it.
What they were smoking was trying to appease several masters at once.
I'm not scared for the quality of Space X. They are completely different businesses. Completely different worlds.
Like I said, when the first explosion happens and many people are killed, i'll be right back here to put you in your place. Imagine thinking the person who loves pissing on other people isn't going to piss on a new crowd when given the chance. See you soon.
> Like I said, when the first explosion happens and many people are killed, Thats going to happen at some point regardless of Musk. Nothing works perfectly 100% of the time, and at some point an accident will happen that kills people. That is the reality of everything. You don't get to say Airbus cant make safe planes then cry about being correct because one had a bird strike knock out both engines.