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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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I’d have waited awhile, but the TV mediots are already trying to place the events of today into A Grand Context. They are speaking in sweeping generalization and grand predictions of Its Effect On America, The End Of The Space Station… and so forth.
Yes there will be some effects, but primarily this is a human tragedy. We’ve lost some brave people and many of us empathize with the great vision and are saddened by the loss.
But it is not going to cause any Earth shattering changes. It is not going to scar the national psyche. It is just a family funeral of loved ones in which we are all part of the extended family; those of us in the space community feel it perhaps more deeply than most but not nearly so much as their co-workers in Houston and Cape Canaveral or their families.
With all of that said, I can now plunge into the punditry.
The shuttles are going to be grounded for anything from months to a year. This will cause an enormous impact on the ISS scheduling. Completion will be thrown back by years. It is not only the loss of time while the fleet is grounded; it is the loss of capacity. Columbia was not much use for ISS missions and so it was useful for other non-ISS missions. Now those missions will have to be cut or serviced by the remaining fleet. That means a lengthening of the ISS completion time line. This can be somewhat ameliorated by giving the Russians a bundle of money to handle most of the supply trips.
We can’t abandon the ISS for a long period of time. It must be reboosted at regular intervals because the vast solar arrays give it a lot of drag. There is a small amount of gas even at that altitude. Enough to slowly bring it down. So there is no real option of abandoning it for a couple years. You can’t.
You also can’t risk bringing something that big into re-entry in one piece; and you can’t disassemble it without shuttle support.
So NASA must get the fleet flying again. President Bush has already said we will not abandon space. In the community, we all knew that. It’s simply too important now.
There will almost certainly be a push for a replacement vehicle. The shuttle is, after all, a 1975 base level of technology. It’s been upgraded and retro fitted, but even the newest shuttle, the Endeavour, is nearing 15 years old. The problems are budgetary and the inability of the “old aerospace” to perform on anything like a reasonable time and budget. I had actually much hoped NASA would work with the existing shuttles until the end of the decade, long enough to let the start up companies move in and revolutionize the field.
NASA will go to Boeing or Lockmart for a replacement. They are not going to talk to XCor or Armadillo or any of the other companies who will develop the true space ships.
What is my guess? I will suggest we’ll see a half hearted program for a shuttle replacement initiated. It will run over budget or be stillborn like every other such program in the last 15 years. The ISS schedule will stretch out to a completion date of 2010, almost 30 years after Ronald Reagan called for a space station to be completed in 10 years. An X-Prize space ship will fly suborbital this year or next year and there will be private tourists on private suborbital flights by 2006 and orbital by 2010. NASA will then buy one for crew turnaround. The Russians will get a big capital infusion to turn out more Soyez and Protons.
The world will keep turning and the sky will stay firmly in place.
Time for a belated tea (I’ve been running on nuts and candybars all day) and the late news is on in a half hour. I’ll be back then with whatever new info I have. The main thing on my mind now is: “where did the crew compartment come down? Did it burn up and break up during re-entry or hit mostly intact?
It’s a pretty sturdy bit of structure and about the only chance they’ll have for… well, humans don’t do so well in a re-entry plasma.
Later.
LATER: Networks seem to be far behind the blogosphere curve. Only thing new is that some partial remains have been found. They also suggested loss of a one of the control surfaces. While that would indeed cause loss of control and breakup, I see no reason for it to occur; and besides which, that port-side tire telemetry tells me a different story. So I’m still standing by my first scenario.
ONE MORE THING: One of the TV shots clearly showed one of the re-entry engines from the back of one of the OHMS pods (those bumps in the back by the tail). So much of the debris came down more quickly than I thought, and that probably means it came down in much smaller pieces than I expected. I also am wondering what portion came down in the smoking field they showed. Nothing there was identifiable from the helicopter overview.
I’ve thought of one other scenario to add to my initial list. Since the Shuttle was a spacehab mission, the payload is likely to have been well forward. If the payload tie downs to the longerons were to have broken during the reentry, the payload would have slammed into the back and the payload doors. The vehicle would then break up as in the other scenarios.
I rate this idea as extremely unlikely but worth tossing out for the sake of completeness.
Okay, I’ve got the timeline and I will strongly bet the booms were off the varous bits. Here is the evidence:
“We were outside and my Dad said “there it is!” in one piece. Then a tiny, tiny piece came off and I was somewhat perplexed. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Then bigger pieces rained away from the main piece. It looked very similar to the video we saw of the Russian space station Mir reentering. Later, there was one loud boom and accompanied by smaller booms. Normally we hear two distinct sonic booms when shuttles pass over during entries.”
I think it is safe to assume there were numerous sonic booms due to the numerous bits of wreckage each having its’ own shock cone around it.
On this day, the space shuttle Columbia has been lost during re-entry. Rick Husband, Bill McCool, Mike Anderson, Kalpana Chawla, Dave Brown, Laurel Clark and Ilan Ramon died in the breakup of the spaceship.
May their souls rest in peace and guide those who work to carry on their dreams of the high frontier.
For so long as humans fare the spaceways this time of the year will be labeled accursed and unlucky.
The network news here are utterly clueless. But then I’ve said that before. The reports were not totally without value, although I’d have gotten as much real information with the volume turned off. The various shots of the breakup were informative.
Many report a window rattling bang. This could be due to a number of reasons, but the one I find most likely is sonic booms. There usually are booms from the shuttle re-entry anyway and with the vehicle still travelling at the velocity it was at the time of breakup, I would be highly surprised if there were not severe booms from major structural elements tumbling in a supersonic flow.
I will not guarantee I am correct, but I have my doubts the RCS would have produced a loud enough explosion to be heard on the ground. The APU fuel supply might have, but I think that might even be marginal.
It is apparent from the films that one major structural element left the shuttle first, followed by the breakup of the rest of the vehicle a few seconds later. This is what would be expected from any of the three possible scnarios I discussed below.
Debris has rained down on Texas and apparently one major debris field is around Nagodoches. From what I have seen so far, the bits on the ground are light bits of composite. When you see black bits, those are likely from the underbody. None of the photos showed major structural elements. They have far more mass and will not decelerate as quickly, thus they will have travelled much farther. 12,500 mph is 2/3 of orbital velocity, so they were still deep in the re-entry. In particular, the Main engines and the crew compartment are likely to have travelled a very long distance before impact. Depending on the track at the time of breakup, they might have made it into the Gulf of Mexico. I really can’t guess how far a multon bungalow sized pressure vessel would take to decelerate from that velocity, or even if it could have held together.
This appears to have been an aerodynamically violent event beyond what most of us could imagine. I will guess they died instantly due to the very sudden very high G deceleration.
Best I can do with the very limited information I have so far…
MORE: Just back from stocking up on junk food for a long night. I forgot to mention one useful bit of information pointed out by an “expert” science journalist but not expanded upon. The contrail goes spiral after the first bit comes off. That almost clinches it in my mind. The first bit to break off had to be large from what the image shows: I would think it more likely a wing than the vertical stabilizer; the subsequent spiral looks like a violent roll to me, which is what a would expect after losing a wing.
Since, like Rand, I do not feel fatigue failure of the spar as highly likely, I’d say it is a burnthrough on the wing, possibly abetted by the insulation loss from the ET damaging the thermal protection system (TPS) on takeoff as reported earlier.
It would have been a simply hellish few seconds.
STILL MORE: As I think about it, the puffs of smoke and flashes one sees in the broken bits are most likely the volatiles cooking off. Also the boom would have occured well before the breakup even started if people got outside to watch it happening. I do not have an accurate time line on this yet. But if the booms were explosions, you would have seen bits coming off silently followed perhaps a minute of more later by a muffled boom. The shuttle is perhaps 50 miles away in those pictures you are seeing if it was 200K feet up and not directly overhead. Speed of sound is much, much less than that of light as I’m sure you are all aware but our media seems not to be.
I have little information at present. The news over here has not cut in over the sports and soaps, but I have received a call and found a short story at Fox.
Contact with the shuttle Columbia was lost during re-entry. Whatever you worship, pray. I would have little hope for good news and will soon be calling friends as there is no one around me here how would fully understand.
Frontiers are not safe places and are not for the cowardly or the weak of heart.
MORE: Channel 4 cut in for 60 seconds and showed the breakup film clip. That’s all. The media here isn’t worth the bandwidth it takes up. Here is my bet based on very little information, including this report:
“On launch day, a piece of insulating foam on the external fuel tank came off during liftoff and was believed to have struck the left wing of the shuttle.”
I suggest there was damage to the TPS on one wing, causing a burn through and structural damage leading to failure of the wing structure when aerodynamic forces built. The shuttle has very high wing loading, so any loss of margin would be disastrous. If one wing fails, the shuttle will immediately roll violently into the direction of the failed wing followed by god only knows what sort of tumble. It would break up into major components almost immediately. That is what we saw on the clip.
There would be very little fuel on board. Only some remnants of RCS fuel, a lot of hypergolics for the APU and perhaps a small left over from the reentry burn. Almost all off this is at the extreme rear in the two lumpy bits either side of the vertical stabilizer.
A second scenario is catastrophic failure of the APU’s taking out all the hydraulics just when they are needed the most. With or without structural damage directly caused by such a failure, the shuttle will go into uncontrolled tumble and breakup.
A third scenario is fatigue failure. I don’t feel this is likely, but if so we can kiss our manned space access goodbye.
I give almost zero credence to ideas of terrorism being involved. Ten years ago predictions were for the loss of one more shuttle during the space station construction, just by pure probability (“If it’s not one damn thing, it’s another”). We all prayed we’d continue winning on the dice toss but ultimately knew we’d roll snake eyes.
The only hope is for the crew compartment to remain intact and presurized. If it did, if it was through the re-entry interface and if it was not in a high speed (high G) tumble, a bail out by one or two of the crew at lower altitude is concievable… but unlikely.
I have very, very little hope of survivors. But miracles do happen so keep praying. They need all the help they can get.
MORE: I’ve found that Rand Simberg is on the road and racing home to blog on this. He’ll be worth listening to as he worked on the Shuttles at Palmdale when they were built.
MORE: Chatted with Rand. He’s in SF, not going home until tonight (his time). We agree on the most likely scenario and ordering of failure modes. He blogged it before we talked. Great minds think alike.
On this day in 1986, the space shuttle Challenger was lost during boost. Dick Scobee, Mike Smith, Judy Resnick, Greg Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe, Ron McNair and Ellison Onizuka died in the breakup and crash of the spaceship.
May their souls rest in peace and guide those who work to carry on their dreams of the high frontier.
On this day in 1986 Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnick, Dick Scobee, Michael Smith, Greg Jarvis, & Christa McAuliffe lost their lives in the Challenger space shuttle (STS 51-L).
Look here for an independant view on the reliability of the shuttle done by Richard Feynmen after the loss of the Challenger shuttle. I believe that he was asked to do this as part of the official investigation, but when it turned out to be so damning, they refused to use it in the report.
On this day in 1967, Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee died in a fire during an all up test of Apollo Capsule 101, later renamed “Apollo 1” in their honour.
May their souls rest in peace and guide those who work to carry on their dreams of the high frontier.
I’ve been meaning to write a little about Bigelow Aerospace since before Christmas but just never could get around to it. There always seemed to be some Earth shattering events of war or liberty lost to soak up my limited writing time.
I’ll state right up front that I am not a disinterested party. The space community is incestuous beyond belief and everyone knows everyone else or a friend of theirs… or something. You would be hard pressed to find two people with more than one degree of separation. And so it is with myself. I’ve known the VP of Bigelow for over a decade, since back when in his own words “he drowned astronauts for a living”. Greg Bennett was one of the EVA planners at NASA Houston Manned Space Flight Center back then, and involved with dunking suited astronauts in the big tank they used for mission training. He was the founder of the Artemis Project of which I also became a part. And when I started my own company, the commercial side of the project got a sliver of ownership and Greg a board seat in it.
So I’ve bared all. Now for the interesting parts. Bigelow intends to kick start space tourism. He’s put $500M of his own money on the line, and there is little risk he won’t carry through because his low profile fortune was earned from Budget Suites of America, a company wholly owned by he and his wife. Decision making is rapid and final. He can plan in terms of decades.
Space was his dream from when he began his business career some thirty years ago. He is now in a position to actually do something. Unfortunately for those on the outside, this total control means he doesn’t have to publish information. He is playing this venture quite close to the chest because he can. I know most of the people named in one of the links below and I know of their travails. I do not blame him for doing his work behind guarded doors.
I do not know “Mr Big” and I am not one to pump old friends in high places (ie Greg) for proprietary information. All I can say is, Bigelow Aerospace are up to some interesting things in their desert version of the “Fearing Island” compound. You will want to read this and this to learn just about everything there is about the venture in the public domain.
Glenn Reynolds put me on the trail of this one: EMP weapons.
I personally don’t know what all the fuss is about. New Scientist published an article a year or three ago which shows how to build one of these in your garage. Perhaps getting things right for targeting from a moving cruise missile and accurately controlling the output energy are the special part… but the main concept is dead easy.
If you are interested, go dig it up yourself. I’m not going to tell you how.
Once WWIII is over with… perhaps.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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