Jan. 28th 1986 Challengr tragedy
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I cannot believe 20 years have passed since this event. I was in college taking a poli sci class when the news hit. The Prof had a tv rolled in so we could watch the news of the event.
I also remember watching the first shuttle launch afterwards. The countdown took forever as it was paused a few times. I kept shouting "LIGHT THE FUCKER UP!"
The next shuttle that blew up occured on the first Saturday of February which is also the date of the BRR bicycle ride. We were doing a wake and bake and noticed that all the tv channels were showing the same image. Consequently when the next shuttle launched I was with the same group of bike riders in the middle of Ragbrai. We were fortunate to have slepted in a house instead of a tent and were able to watch the launch.
The shuttle is a 1972 Ford. It really needs to be replacedomething more reliable, safer, cost effective and more useful.
i was sitting in my 6th grade class when the principal's voice came over the intercom, asking all teachers to come to the teachers' lounge immediately. when our teacher returned, she had obviously been crying and she told us the news. we spent the rest of the day watching coverage on NBC.
i had the pleasure of watching the last shuttle launch before the columbia disaster: the november, 2002, launch of endeavour, from my balcony. it was a perfectly sunny day and it was probably the most beautiful thing i have ever seen.
I believe I was sitting around the TV with my cousins and aunt-who's-a-year-older-than-me at my grandparents' house, watching the shuttle launch. And then of course, the image of the big cloud with the rockets shooting off to the sides is burned in everyone's memory who saw it. A horrific thing, and it really makes me wonder now whether shuttle missions are really worth it 
I remember we were in class watching it for our "current events" lesson. As soon it happened, 24 kids started howling and screaming, and the teacher was running was from classroom to classroom telling everyone else. We got let out early as a result. One of my few memories of elementary school.
On the upside, it did fuel my scientific interest, because I went head first reading about space flight and visiting the JSC NASA campus in town.
When the last one happened, I was actually out in the country waiting with my telescope for its arrival. And then we got news of the breakup over Texas, and it was very ...stupid.
Wish they got the money they needed, and the innovation I know they've got going on in their labs to implement it without the red tape. Shouldn't have to fund space through private donations, oughta be something all the people would be interested in enough to get funding secured through us.
Melly as ever your wisdom shines out.
Shuttle itself is badly overdesigned anyway......but just when I thought the lesson had been learned.....I find out the spent 20 billion on the ISS and had NOT ONE THING to show for it. Russians were laughing their bolox off, that was more than tey offered to build the fucking thing for.
LOL What happenned to Gene krantz and the mad fucks that put men on the moon :(
Steve Campbell wrote: Melly as ever your wisdom shines out.
Shuttle itself is badly overdesigned anyway......but just when I thought the lesson had been learned.....I find out the spent 20 billion on the ISS and had NOT ONE THING to show for it. Russians were laughing their bolox off, that was more than tey offered to build the fucking thing for.
LOL What happenned to Gene krantz and the mad fucks that put men on the moon :(
Tragic as it is for anyone who were families to those on board those 2 flights, as one fellow NOOLer has said in here already the technology is still very early 1970s....I think NASA was also conducting frantic searches via the internet and computer fairs to find 8086 motherboards and microchips(long since made redundant by IBM or whoever used to make them)to keep the onboard systems going....and yet there's NO shortage of cash to keep the heathen terrorists(said in sarcasm BTW) from the foothills of Afghanistan, Iraq(or whichever Muslim country the US-Israeli axis sees as the next "threat")out of the White Supremacist, gun toting Judeo-Christian land that claims to be able to teach everyone else what "democracy" really means(also said with some sarcasm but a heavy tinge of regret as well because it could be a slippery slope my own country could be heading down as well...)
Sher[gold]GOLD[/gold] Six wrote:
Steve Campbell wrote: Melly as ever your wisdom shines out.
Shuttle itself is badly overdesigned anyway......but just when I thought the lesson had been learned.....I find out the spent 20 billion on the ISS and had NOT ONE THING to show for it. Russians were laughing their bolox off, that was more than tey offered to build the fucking thing for.
LOL What happenned to Gene krantz and the mad fucks that put men on the moon :(
Tragic as it is for anyone who were families to those on board those 2 flights, as one fellow NOOLer has said in here already the technology is still very early 1970s....I think NASA was also conducting frantic searches via the internet and computer fairs to find 8086 motherboards and microchips(long since made redundant by IBM or whoever used to make them)to keep the onboard systems going....and yet there's NO shortage of cash to keep the heathen terrorists(said in sarcasm BTW) from the foothills of Afghanistan, Iraq(or whichever Muslim country the US-Israeli axis sees as the next "threat")out of the White Supremacist, gun toting Judeo-Christian land that claims to be able to teach everyone else what "democracy" really means(also said with some sarcasm but a heavy tinge of regret as well because it could be a slippery slope my own country could be heading down as well...)
shane really. all i'm trying to do here is to remember one innocent school teacher.
the most overrated day in american history. just reminded me that i am getting close to 30 yrs old.
Sher[gold]GOLD[/gold] Six wrote: and yet there's NO shortage of cash to keep the heathen terrorists(said in sarcasm BTW) from the foothills of Afghanistan, Iraq(or whichever Muslim country the US-Israeli axis sees as the next "threat")out of the White Supremacist, gun toting Judeo-Christian land that claims to be able to teach everyone else what "democracy" really means(also said with some sarcasm but a heavy tinge of regret as well because it could be a slippery slope my own country could be heading down as well...)
don't forget to add britain to that axis, as they invaded iraq as well. a fact that seems to be forgotten quite often.... and, erm, vanuatu? were they in there? or was it another south pacific island?
as for the shuttle: one 'problem' is that you could stick a pencil through the hull of the shuttle. it's made of lightweight material that is coated with a protective shield that withstands heat. unfortunately, if something hits the hull pieces break off, just like they would if one were to hurl a rock at a piece of styrofoam.
i'd like to thank our channel 9 local news space coast correspondent for demonstrating the 'pencil through hull' experiment after the columbia disaster.
melly wrote:
And then we got news of the breakup over Texas, and it was very ...stupid.
Wish they got the money they needed, and the innovation I know they've got going on in their labs to implement it without the red tape. Shouldn't have to fund space through private donations, oughta be something all the people would be interested in enough to get funding secured through us.
---such a tragedy for the families, such betrayal too, eh? read gov't.s shoch at how?why? anger emptiness.the $that they have, the technology that they had..parts they shouldN,t be using. shit happens, this shouldn't ve. the pencil through the styrofoam demonstration was a kicker. that and watching the shuttlecam pan over astonaut go out in space suit(!) to attempt to repair it with what, scotchtape?
o- we don't really need this styrofoam cooler we've got the spacedust in we'll just tape it... the issue of public funding for this and to send athletes to the Olympics while.. night you all.
Ronald Kirsch wrote:
Sher[gold]GOLD[/gold] Six wrote:
Steve Campbell wrote: Melly as ever your wisdom shines out.
Shuttle itself is badly overdesigned anyway......but just when I thought the lesson had been learned.....I find out the spent 20 billion on the ISS and had NOT ONE THING to show for it. Russians were laughing their bolox off, that was more than tey offered to build the fucking thing for.
LOL What happenned to Gene krantz and the mad fucks that put men on the moon :(
Tragic as it is for anyone who were families to those on board those 2 flights, as one fellow NOOLer has said in here already the technology is still very early 1970s....I think NASA was also conducting frantic searches via the internet and computer fairs to find 8086 motherboards and microchips(long since made redundant by IBM or whoever used to make them)to keep the onboard systems going....and yet there's NO shortage of cash to keep the heathen terrorists(said in sarcasm BTW) from the foothills of Afghanistan, Iraq(or whichever Muslim country the US-Israeli axis sees as the next "threat")out of the White Supremacist, gun toting Judeo-Christian land that claims to be able to teach everyone else what "democracy" really means(also said with some sarcasm but a heavy tinge of regret as well because it could be a slippery slope my own country could be heading down as well...)
shane really. all i'm trying to do here is to remember one innocent school teacher.
Admittedly, twas a bit of a rant, but moneys spent on the US's own WMD could have been diverted to save the innocent lives of those souls on both missions. Not to mention other innocent lives lost as a consequence of other aspects of US foreign policy.
Sher[gold]GOLD[/gold] Six wrote:
Ronald Kirsch wrote:
Sher[gold]GOLD[/gold] Six wrote:
Steve Campbell wrote: Melly as ever your wisdom shines out.
Shuttle itself is badly overdesigned anyway......but just when I thought the lesson had been learned.....I find out the spent 20 billion on the ISS and had NOT ONE THING to show for it. Russians were laughing their bolox off, that was more than tey offered to build the fucking thing for.
LOL What happenned to Gene krantz and the mad fucks that put men on the moon :(
Tragic as it is for anyone who were families to those on board those 2 flights, as one fellow NOOLer has said in here already the technology is still very early 1970s....I think NASA was also conducting frantic searches via the internet and computer fairs to find 8086 motherboards and microchips(long since made redundant by IBM or whoever used to make them)to keep the onboard systems going....and yet there's NO shortage of cash to keep the heathen terrorists(said in sarcasm BTW) from the foothills of Afghanistan, Iraq(or whichever Muslim country the US-Israeli axis sees as the next "threat")out of the White Supremacist, gun toting Judeo-Christian land that claims to be able to teach everyone else what "democracy" really means(also said with some sarcasm but a heavy tinge of regret as well because it could be a slippery slope my own country could be heading down as well...)
shane really. all i'm trying to do here is to remember one innocent school teacher.
Admittedly, twas a bit of a rant, but moneys spent on the US's own WMD could have been diverted to save the innocent lives of those souls on both missions. Not to mention other innocent lives lost as a consequence of other aspects of US foreign policy.
as was seen by the above evidence on hull design, o-rings, foam breaking off from the booster rockets, etc. something was probably going to wrong with the shuttle in any case. it would seen that that design has some fundamental flaws.
can't get the MEN vCancer out of my mind, came back to the computer. RonaldKirsch didn't the shuttle also hit a pigeon or a bird on take-off? truly,there was a black splotch that couldn't be effectively identified and the theory was that it damaged the craft's casing in some way.
JW wrote: can't get the MEN vCancer out of my mind, came back to the cumputer. RonaldKirsch didn't the shuttle also hit a pigeon or a bird on take-off? truly,there was a black splotch that couldn't be effectively identified and the theory was that it damaged the craft's casing in some way.
i'm glad you enjoyed the gig.
i'm 100% on all the details. it may well be possible that a pigion or other bird damaged the hull, but the main theory is still that it was foam from the booster rockets, which to my knowledge NASA is still having problems with that problem.
anyway can we get back to remembering the lives lost. i was only responding to sherg's comments that with more money, the problems may have never occurred, or would have been fixed.
oh - if only I could've gotten over there... no, here in Vancouver,BC it's simply 9:40p saturday. sunday afternoon for you? the chunk of foam may have gotten loose because a bird knocked it off on the take-off. all the high resolution pics showed a splotch get wacked way out of the way. millions of dollars, hundreds of hours and an airport bird is responsible for ruining the integrity of the shuttle? beautiful country you're in by the way. hope that you're feeling better and that the weather is kind. 'night gotta zip out. JW.
JW wrote: oh - if only I could've gotten over there... no, here in Vancouver,BC it's simply 9:40p saturday. sunday afternoon for you? the chunk of foam may have gotten loose because a bird knocked it off on the take-off. all the high resolution pics showed a splotch get wacked way out of the way. millions of dollars, hundreds of hours and an airport bird is responsible for ruining the integrity of the shuttle? beautiful country you're in by the way. hope that you're feeling better and that the weather is kind. 'night gotta zip out. JW.
no arguments with you bird theory. it does seem a bit silly that a bird could cause a loss of hull integrity.
i didn't know where you were, as i can't open your profile. almost 5pm on sunday lazy afternoon watching the cricket and the tennis.
a lovely warm afternoon, and we are expecting a nice thunderstorm again today and tomorrw. i hope it rains, as i was a bit slack in watering the garden this past week.
thanks australia is a great place, despite what we may sometimes say. everybody should come and visit at least once.
i am feeling much better all round. i seem to be slowly getting over this grief thing. my mother died some 5 months ago. i am much more relaxed now.
Spaceship One is a much better design. It does not require heat tiles for re-entry. Rutan need to make it much bigger for the stuff the Shuttle does.
Rhutan is THE man.
He has his Xprize money now, so we'll see what comes next.
They should give HIM Nasa's budget, he'd build them a lunar AND martian base for that.
Dont want to go too far into shuttle technicalities, but NASA faked the tests on the carbon leading edge panels. FWIW there is also some evidence that columbia was struck by high alt lightning JUST before it broke up.
As for columbia, I seen a documentary in which the guy in charge of such things directly TOLD them, based on the contractors specs, that the launch would go wrong..... he said he came home to his wife and she asked "good day at work" to which he replied "well, they're gonna launch tomorrow and kill 7 astronauts but apart from that"
:( Tie to start looking to the Cninese for the human future guys :(
well the question is what exactly do you need a shuttle for? sure it looks cool. the Russians are still using the same old technology they used 40 years ago to transport both people, satellites, and supplies for the iss.
We could see it with the naked eye in South Florida. I remember walking in between classes in the 6th grade when it happened and we all looked up and saw it. But we were so far away from it and it seemed so small that we all thought it was just the launch, maybe the after-burners. It was about 15 minutes later that they told our class. Another class had been watching it on TV. Very sad day indeed.
Ever see the drawing of the Shuttle with the USSR's spacestation in it? Military applications.
Since Old Blue has chucked in data from sources better than my gob, I'll only add this......
Conceptually, ie from the point of view of NASA geekdom... The shuttle was always intended as a stopgap on the way to a single-stage-to-orbit vehicle, it was designed to be reusable so that when the basic airframe tech became available, all the other things needed for a reusable ship where there. How successful it's been in that i dunno, but it has ceratinly fulfilled most of it's real world mission roles.
It is indisputably the most complex vehlicle man has ever, or very likely WILL ever contruct. It's over designed, over engineered and over complicated. Add in basic fuckwittedness (RON: the O-rings performed to spec, they were not faulty, NASA ran them oldside their temperature tolerances), like ignoring results that didn;t fit in the data capture parameters (that's how the carbon carbon panels on columbia ended up so weak) and you have a waiting nightmare.
They also broke Von Braun's GOLDEN RULE..... Never put a human being aboard a solid rocket. they cannot be controlled, once lit they just fucking GO, and the fuel is fully combustable at all points in the system.
on the subject of it's fragility...... until we stop using controlled hydrogen explosions to life people to space, ships MUST be light and light really means flimsy. possibly not QUITE so flimsy but then again, the shuttle takes some fucking abuse.....I seen a pic of a windscreen cracked right thru ( without failing) by a flake of paint in a different orbit (closing speed could be anything depending on the angle, but both objects would be travelling at about 17,500 MPH in their own orbit))
And to whoever slagged them for taking tape out.... bite me...the russians kept mir up there for YEARS with fuckin gaffer tape and vodka, they set fire to it, bust the electric supply and fucking rammed it with it's own supply module and it lived. If it can't be fixed with gaffer tape, a hammer, vice grips and WD40...it has no business in a life critical role ! :D
Seriously tho....tape is good, running repairs are good, that's how we learn to live out there.
twist wrote: Ever see the drawing of the Shuttle with the USSR's spacestation in it? Military applications.
WANK...."here dave, your mate mike who does the conceptual art.... get him to do one of the shuttle doing battle with the ruskies, gotta be worth a few billion"
As some of you may know, my job is assembling and testing space hardware. You should see the amount of tape, tin foil and velcro I handle on a daily basis.
I once spent a fairly boring shift with some guys from Goddard Space Flight Centre (the NASA engineering wing) on a spacecraft thermal vacuum test in The States. We were talking about Challenger, and though I don't think it was ever officially announced, the belief is that it wasn't the explosion that killed the astronauts, but the impact with the sea. The explosion was at the rear of the vehicle and the cockpit, relatively intact, continued onwards and downwards for a further 90 seconds. :(
There is a documentary on Channel 4 on thursday at 9.
I heard that too, so it must have come out at the time, probably a single mention on the beeb I managed to cath cos I'm sure I aint heard that bit of the tale in any subsequent doco. I also remember them ringing the cockpit (which was an escapecell of sorts anyway if I recall) on screen and zooming in and it was pretty much intact.
Old Blue wrote: As some of you may know, my job is assembling and testing space hardware...
EASILY the coolest post of the year!
yup u gotta admit it, it's a hell of an opening line to a post, or a date :D He nealy had ME swooning :D
Note to self.....never try to bluff old blue or blind him with science :D
Steve Campbell wrote: Since Old Blue has chucked in data from sources better than my gob, I'll only add this......
Conceptually, The shuttle was designed to be reusable & it has ceratinly fulfilled most of it's real world mission roles. go people to dream... slates and granites if tapped along a grain can split cleanly but withstand stupid amounts of force if hit squarely. also the synthetic fibres that are being used now are fibreoptic thin and stronger than anything around...
how the carbon carbon panels on columbia ended up so weak) and you have a waiting nightmare.
on the subject of it's fragility.. And to whoever slagged them for taking tape out.... bite me...-bite - tape and vodka, they set fire to it, bust the electric supply and fucking rammed it with it's own supply module and it lived. If it can't be fixed with gaffer tape, a hammer, vice grips and WD40...it has no business in a life critical role !
right with you, hi Steve, on that one. add 3inch or whatever the plastic coated wire is called over there and you should be able to repair most anything!
Seriously tho....tape is good, running repairs are good, that's how we learn to live out there.
bingo. an editing bonanza on this quote if it worked. it was just the way that the televised planning went. well...we could fix it with tape or something, or leave it, er wait, the world is watching.
Steve Campbell wrote: yup u gotta admit it, it's a hell of an opening line to a post, or a date :D He nealy had ME swooning :D
there was post by a smart Angel in the regional food faves thread a while back along the lines of --& don't call me yummy--a close second to blowing the techie fields away with 'I work on spaceships.'
really should be weekly/monthly quote prizes.
