Re: [twuug] Space Shuttle Columbia blows up on reentry!

[Charles Shannon Hendrix <shannon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Feb 02, 2003 at 08:35:16AM -0700, Jerry M. Howell II wrote:

> > On Sat, Feb 01, 2003 at 12:39:47PM -0500, Adam Crosby wrote:

[actually I was the one who wrote this]

> > The current system was designed in response to Challenger because the
> > crew module was intact when it struck water, and they could have survived.
> > 
> > Originally the idea was to have a real ejection system designed for
> > extreme speed and altitude.  By the time Challenger exploded, there was
> > nothing availabe, for a variety of reasons.
> > 
> > I'm sure the topic is going to come up now, but I doubt they'd spend
> > the money to do something that technically difficult, not now anyway.
> > Then again, they did have at least a simple or preliminary design before,
> > and maybe they tested it and have some ideas to work on.  I'd hesitate
> > to say it isn't possible.
> >
> 
> It probably is posable but this requires funding. If we did like some
> ppl. sugest on this list that won't be posable. Hell, thats part of the
> reason a better rocket booster wasn't on the chalanger and the O ring
> failed miserably. Do we realy need death to motivate us to increase
> funding or safety. Sheesh...

Yeah, seems like that.  What bothers me most about Challenger is that
NASA knew it was going to happen.

There is an age old problem in engineering, and other disciplines, in
which you become accoustomed to failure, and then ignore it, so long as
it doesn't cause disaster.

Static tests since 1977 showed o-ring rotation in the boosters during
ignition, and expansion which exposed the rings to hot gasses.  The second
ring was added as redundancy, but also made the system more fragile.

When NASA went to use them as shuttle boosters officially, the Air Force
recommended a redesign, as did several NASA engineers, and they also
demonstrated o-ring failures.  Thiokol made only minor changes to the
rings after that.

In fact, even during shuttle launches, o-rings failed, but didn't cause
catastrophe.  During the second shuttle launch, and o-ring burned through,
but the gases didn't hit the fuel tank like they did in Challenger five
years later.  They almost always suffered erosion.  Thus, failure had
become accepted routine.  This is one of the most dangerous things to
let happen in engineering.





-- 
UNIX/Perl/C/Pizza____________________s h a n n o n@wido !SPAM maker.com




-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
* To unsubscribe from the TWUUG discussion list, either send e-mail to
-  twuug-request@twuug.org with the word "unsubscribe" by itself
-  in the body of the message or visit: 
-  http://www.twuug.org/lists/twuuglists.html