[ale] OT: Space Shuttle Columbia

[James P. Kinney III]

Jeff,

I think you may be misunderstanding just how awful the tiles are. There
are 20,000+ on each shuttle and no two are the same. Repairing any on
the ground is a difficult process that takes weeks with a good jig
system to support them while the cement sets. The cement is unapplyable
in space. Temperature and pressures are wrong. The stuff has to cure
under the right conditions.

Part 2:

Emergency escape process is not possible at certain points in the take
off and landing. Altitude, speed, air pressure, temperature, all
conspire at that near the pad and near the top and near the reentry burn
phase to make any escape mechanism possible.

Now let me clarify possible: Within the constraints of the current
shuttle system shape and lift and flight parameters, and emergency
escape pod or parachute or something, just isn't possible to retrofit
and still have it be useful at all. It must be born in mind that the
shuttle is not a NASA design, it is a Congress designed system. The
Congress critter played politics and shouted down the engineers. NASA
never wanted a fleet of these things. They wanted only 1 for
experimental testing of concepts. 

On Tue, 2003-02-04 at 21:12, Jeff Hubbs wrote:
>  > The bottom is smooth. Nowhere to hold on/attach to. Adding attachment
> > points would result in an unacceptable amount of friction at that point
> > and would likely result in the same thing we saw Saturday. 
> 
> I know that the bottom is smooth.  But, we all know that they've had the
> MMU for YEARS and it's not very big; why is it not standard equipment? 
> It needs no attachment points.  Barring that, what about slinging some
> nylon rope.  Why was there no EVA suit?
> 
> > Besides, even
> > if they knew, what options did they really have? 
> 
> Read on.
> 
> > Can't fix it.  
> 
> Point taken, but could they not fix it because it's IMPOSSIBLE or
> because they didn't have a few pounds of tools or parts?  
> 
> > Can't
> > re-enter any other way. 
> 
> I am not satisfied of that.  When you say "any other way," you mean with
> a normal wheel landing at the Cape or at Edwards.  I am not satisfied
> that, knowing serious damage was present, that an abnormal re-entry
> wasn't an option, even if it meant a mid-ocean ditch.  Besides, there
> are emergency runways all over the world - IIRC, Dobbins is one.
> 
> > Can't dock at the ISS. Can't just fire up Atlantis
> > and send them a ride. They took their chances and lost. That's life on the
> > edge. The same thing happens in military aviation, just on a much smaller
> > scale. You put your fate in the hands of the Almighty and do your job as
> > ordered.
> 
> I'm not sure of your point.  This was not a military mission nor was it
> an all-military crew.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
-- 
James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics) <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7 

 This is a digitally signed message part