DamagedGoods

...and must have been going pretty damn fast by that time. I heard that it was "determined" that this incident didn't cause any damage to the shuttle. I'm probably just armchair quarterbacking here, but I can't imagine something striking the craft during launch and not sending someone out to look or otherwise actually inspecting that section once in orbit.

If the vehicle was actually damaged, and that damage caused today's tragedy, it would be sad to discover that somebody decided to skip an actual inspection because it might impact a timeline or something. If I recall correctly, that's why the Challenger was launched despite it being so cold that day...it "looked bad" for the timeline slip again.

Whatever the cause, it's a sad thing.

TollHouse

WTF??

Obviously I must be upset and reading this wrong. No one could be that much of a heartless fuck. Can they?

Anyway, this is very, very sad news. My thoughts are with the families of the victims.

Undercurrent

That's not the way I heard it. There was consideration that O-rings might fail more frequently in cold weather, and NASA personel considered the historical records on (noncatastrophic) O-ring damage from previous missions, and the pattern in the data did not indicate and significant relationship between temperature and frequency of O-ring damage.

The problem was, the only data they considered were shuttle missions for which there was O-ring damage. If data for missions where there was no such damage were included, the relationship between damage rates and temperature became visually and statistically clear.

(These data were presented as a case study in a statistics course I took, which is how I know of them.)

Shuttle engineers are very aware that they are playing with the lives of real people on a giant experimental device loaded with explosive materials in an extreme environment. I'm sure that the risk due to people cutting corners is dwarfed by the risk of an honest mistake, and both are dwarfed by the risks inherent and acknowledged in being strapped to a frikkin' rocket.

HumanisTim

You know, if NASA allowed that N*SYNC guy to go into space, he could've been part of that mission.

Sorry for rambling. I'm just thinking several thoughts at the same time.

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I think he was supposed to go up with the Russians. Either way this a major tragedy. I hope it does lead them to hopefully spend more and get better equipment.

Totalitarianist

Ugh! I was not therein speaking of the people inside, but the shuttle itself! Goodness! Yes, what happened to the people inside was not a desirable event and all; however, I was talking about the space shuttle itself. Quite a lot of money went into it. What I meant was, if it were some other company other than NASA that had all that cash put to waste, I might care. Nothing against the people in the shuttle.

Jimmy Higgins

I like the US media. They're so dumb.

You have this streaking object across the sky and they say the shuttle had "exploded" early on. Well, if it had explode, why were the multiple pieces flying parallel to where they should be flying perpendicular.

The shuttle tore itself apart. My guess is that something fell off the bottom of the shuttle, perhaps a ceramic plate or two. They were claiming a tire pressure problem in a tire. No big deal was made about that, however, from where I'm sitting, those ceramic tiles should be shielding virtually ALL the heat. That there was a pressure issue in the tire, which is obviously housed inside the plane at that altitude, means heat was getting in. Something snapped and broke. That led to more breaks and deteriorations. Sadly, the astronauts may not have died very quickly. It may have taken a few seconds for it all to happen.

Hopefully this will be resolved quickly and that NASA can get back on their feet. MAP's data on the CMB is coming out on February 6th, or was going to come out.

Thoughts are with the families.

DamagedGoods

Undercurrent,

Thanks for clearing that up; I wasn't aware of all the circumstances around the o-ring failure.

Certainly, riding a big heavy vehicle from orbit back to the ground is a risky thing, and I suppose some accidents cannot be prevented because we don't know everything. I just hope that it wasn't the result of somebody cutting corners, or even of an honest mistake.

Nickle

The local news here in north Texas mentioned that. They showed the footage of Johnson space center as they were traking the shuttle. The crew mentioned the tires, then communication ended.
Also, apparently, the shuttle was pretty visible as streaked across the sky to the south as it was still coming in at a low angle. I was asleep; my roommate woke me up.

Very sad.

DamagedGoods

The NASA guys just answered this question in their press conference - there was no way for them to actually perform an inspection. I guess this is just one of those things that comes with the territory - if the vehicle is damaged during launch, there may just not be anything that can be done about it.

Abacus

Not dumb.

The shuttle was travelling at approximately 12,000 mph (18 times the speed of sound!) when the problem occured. The fact that an explosion occured doesn't mean that this velocity goes away. Suppose a powerful explosion blew the different pieces of the shuttle apart at a relative speed of one or two-thousand mph, for example. A couple thousand mph is still small compared to the initial 12,000 mph it was travelling at.