Ares I-X Rocket's Test Launch

Beeker

The Columbia could not have made it to the ISS as stated before. Not enough fuel to change its orbit to that of the ISS.
They could have powered down and waited in the hope that NASA could launch a rescue vehicle in time. Atlantis was already being prepared for the next flight, so they could have sped that up and got her into space within about 20 days. Could Columbia have lasted another 20 days? The jury is still out on that one. More importantly what if the foam problem crippled Atlantis as well? Now you have two damaged orbiters in space!

Their best chance was a controlled reentry which favoured the port wing. By tilting the orbiter to have the straboard wing take most of the reentry heat and loads you might but yourself a few minutes. You would still have significant damage to the orbiter but hopefully not enough to destroy her. By keeping the plasma to a min from the damaged area of the port wing, Columbia could have made it through the max heat of reentry but may not have been able to land as the landing gear would have been destroyed inside its port wing well.
Fly out over the ocean low and in level flight and then bailout using the Shuttle escape system. Parachuting out the side hatch using a pole to guide the astronauts away from the orbiter. The orbiter would then fall unmanned into the ocean.
It would have been a long shot but better to have tried than to have done nothing.

Azelfafage

Malty_T wrote: »

Everyone here will admit that the shuttle had it's flaws, but to say it's the most badly designed machine in history is absurd.

Any engineering project has to concentrate hard on the weakest link in the chain.
The weakest link will break the chain.

The first shuttle was taken down by a slight frost on the launch pad.
This disabled the infamous "O-rings"......and killed 7 people.

Tha car in your driveway wouldn't be disabled by a slight frost.

The second shuttle was taken down by foam falling on to it's wings at hypersonic speeds.....this killed 7 more people.

ANY decent design would have prevented such childishly simple things from causing catastrophe.

The foam STILL falls off the horrible thing...and flies right at the wings.

The design is utterly flawed.

I wouldn't go up in it.

.

Azelfafage

Forgot to mention something.

When the very first shuttle was launched it it took it's time leaving the ground.
It was slower off the launch pad than had been predicted.
As if there were a few tons of extra weight on it.

Then it dawned on them.
It was the thick white paint on the external tank.

The first tank was white.

See it here:
http://video.google.com/videosearch?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&channel=s&hl=en&source=hp&q=very+first+shuttle+launch&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=MtLqSp6BJ4re-Qbc2fDoCw&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CC4QqwQwAw#


Every subsequent Shuttle flight had unpainted external tanks.

Penny Pinching.

That is why the tanks are that orangy-brown colour.

That paint would almost certainly have contained the infamous flying foam for a crucial few minutes.

And saved lives.

.

Beeker

Azelfafage wrote: »

Forgot to mention something.

When the very first shuttle was launched it it took it's time leaving the ground.
It was slower off the launch pad than had been predicted.
As if there were a few tons of extra weight on it.

Then it dawned on them.
It was the thick white paint on the external tank.

The first tank was white.

See it here:
http://video.google.com/videosearch?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&channel=s&hl=en&source=hp&q=very+first+shuttle+launch&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=MtLqSp6BJ4re-Qbc2fDoCw&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CC4QqwQwAw#


Every subsequent Shuttle flight had unpainted external tanks.

Penny Pinching.

That is why the tanks are that orangy-brown colour.

That paint would almost certainly have contained the infamous flying foam for a crucial few minutes.

And saved lives.

.

White tank was used on both the first and second launches. White paint was removed because it was cosmetic and saved not money but weight. Every gram you save in launch weight increases your upload cargo weight. Would the paint have prevented the foam loss? I don't think so but it may have helped.

Azelfafage wrote: »

When the very first shuttle was launched it it took it's time leaving the ground.
It was slower off the launch pad than had been predicted.
As if there were a few tons of extra weight on it..

This is not true.

Azelfafage

Beeker wrote: »

This is not true.

It is.

It looked ok to the naked eye.

It was the computers that spotted the slightly slower than expected acceleration.

The heavy polymer covalent-bonded heat-resistant paint was removed.

"To maximise the payload".
.

Beeker

Azelfafage wrote: »

It is.

It looked ok to the naked eye.

It was the computers that spotted the slightly slower than expected acceleration.

The heavy polymer covalent-bonded heat-resistant paint was removed.

"To maximise the payload".
.

I have never come accross any reference to this. Can you direct me to the source?

jumpguy

ynotdu wrote: »

Malty-t aw C'mon that Video is like a work of fiction almost!
The specs for a shuttle would NO way have even allowed for a transfer of Astronauts,or anything like an extension of suggested time to launch supplys to the 'stranded Astronauts,no amount of powering down even on day one would have allowed for another Shuttle Launch in time to save them.even if it got there in time there was no available hardware to transfer SEVEN Astronauts to another Shuttle that would still have had to get a GO for launch as strict as any other{Like NASA was going to lose two crews instead of one? It must be an excerpt from Discovery channel documentry{that channel gloss's over what suits it}

The bits about entering the atmosphere at different angles is ridiculous. The left wing would probably still fail, and I'm unsure if any undamaged side can take all the heat. Also, there's a very small leeway at what angle a shuttle can enter the atmosphere with it's nose (too acute and it'll just bounce off the atmosphere, too obtuse and it'll burn).
The bailout at 40,000 feet...well...if the shuttle made it to 40,000 feet, it would be out of the worst of re-entry and they'd probably be able to land the shuttle anyway.

The rescue mission is actually a more reasonable possibility. It's be incredibly, incredibly dangerous, with all the unplanned EVAs, shuttle use, and the unplanned shuttle launch. As said though, a successful rescue mission would've been a massive achievement for NASA. A failure would've been a massive blow.


EDIT: Just saw your post Beeker, it's an incredible long shot...if they made if through and somehow the hydraulic systems survived, they might have a chance. But chances are that wouldn't be the case. It'd improve their chances, but I dunno if they'd have survived.
As for a rescue mission, the foam problem would be huge, but if Atlantis launched with its own shuttle repair kit, to fix Columbia, then you'd have Columbia functioning and Atlantis. If there was such extraordinary bad luck that Atlantis was fatally damaged, they could repair Atlantis, and if they had time, Columbia, and landed both orbiters. Again, in theory it's okay, practically it'd be incredibly risky.

refusetolose

some great pictures of the launch here

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/10/launch_of_the_ares_ix.html

jumpguy

More the the Ares launch, the booster was apparently damaged on impact with the water - two of the three parachutes failed to deploy.
Link

The booster used on the Ares 1-X test rocket on Wednesday was damaged when it fell back into the ocean, the US space agency (Nasa) says.

The recovery team sent to retrieve the stage from waters east of the Kennedy Space Center found a large dent in the side of the booster.

Nasa said the damage resulted from failures in the parachute system.

The Ares 1-X was a demonstrator for the vehicle Nasa plans to use in the next decade to launch astronauts into orbit.

Wednesday's two-minute sub-orbital mission was intended to help verify design assumptions so that when the final vehicle is built, the engineers can be confident it will fly as expected.

Once the first-stage booster had completed its burn, it separated from a dummy upper-stage and all the elements fell back to Earth.

Nasa expected the simulation stage to be destroyed, but engineers wanted to inspect the booster.

It had a parachute system to slow its descent towards the ocean, and it now appears two of the three chutes malfunctioned.

The booster would have hit the water harder than expected, causing the dent later discovered by recovery divers.

Ares managers said they were not too concerned by what had happened because the booster was never going to be used a second time.

"Don't play this too much," said Bob Ess, the 1-X mission manager.

"The parachute thing was like 'Hey, look at that'. We're not worried about that. There's no investigation. There's no unusual thing we're doing. We're just going through our usual post (flight) tests," he was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.

The parachute system would be studied to determine why it had not worked properly, he added.

Beeker

jumpguy wrote: »

EDIT: Just saw your post Beeker, it's an incredible long shot...if they made if through and somehow the hydraulic systems survived, they might have a chance. But chances are that wouldn't be the case. It'd improve their chances, but I dunno if they'd have survived..

I take your point that it would have been a long shot! But the orbiters are capable of reentry favoring one wing over the other. While it is true that the reentry angle is critical {40 degrees} and they must remain within a narrow corridor there is room for maneuver within that narrow corridor. In fact this has been tested during early flights in the 80’s when they were testing the limits of the orbiters during reentry to find the max heating over the vehicles. So it could have been done.

jumpguy wrote: »

As for a rescue mission, the foam problem would be huge, but if Atlantis launched with its own shuttle repair kit, to fix Columbia, then you'd have Columbia functioning and Atlantis. If there was such extraordinary bad luck that Atlantis was fatally damaged, they could repair Atlantis, and if they had time, Columbia, and landed both orbiters. Again, in theory it's okay, practically it'd be incredibly risky.

The problem with this is, they had no "repair kit". It simply did not exist at the time. Even today they only have a very basic tile repair kit and still nothing to repair a hole in the wings reinforced carbon carbon {RCC} leading edge.
There may have been a chance to rescue with Atlantis but time was against them to get her up there.

Azelfafage

Beeker wrote: »

I have never come accross any reference to this. Can you direct me to the source?

I remember it well Beeker.

The heavy "paint" (condom is a better word) was designed to keep the foam in place.

The NASA admisistrators later thought that it was mere "decoration",weighing the Shuttle down.

I am not making this up.

I'll get back to you when I dig up some documentary evidence.

.

Beeker

Azelfafage wrote: »

I remember it well Beeker.

The heavy "paint" (condom is a better word) was designed to keep the foam in place.

The NASA admisistrators later thought that it was mere "decoration",weighing the Shuttle down.

I am not making this up.

I'll get back to you when I dig up some documentary evidence.

.

That would be great, Thanks!

ynotdu

Anytime i ever asked the answer i got as to why STS-1 and 2 ET's were painted white and others not,i always got the answer that the paint was merely cosmetic.Here is a short extract from a Wiki page that looks for no more sources/citations.
Standard Weight Tank

The original ET is informally known as the Standard Weight Tank (SWT). The first two, used in STS-1 and STS-2, were painted white to reduce solar heating and cryogenic boil off. Because this did not turn out to be a problem and to reduce weight, Lockheed Martin ceased painting the external tanks beginning with STS-3, leaving only the clear primer over the now-trademark rust-colored insulation, saving approximately 272 kg (600 lb) of weight.[2]
The full article is at this URL.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_external_tank.
Sorry if this seems to be taking sides but it is the true facts we all want is'nt it? and like spaceflight itself there will always be a lack of certainty about almost everything,otherwise we would be just reading unchallenged accounts of everything.

Azelfafage

"Were painted white to reduce solar heating and cryogenic boil off."

Oh yeah?

Thats what the managers thought.

Previously they thought that the O-Rings which brought down Challenger were unimportant too..

Previously..............

The Tolkiol enginners who designed the solid rocket boosters screamed down the phone "Don't launch."

NASA launched.

EvilMonkey

Azelfafage wrote: »

"Were painted white to reduce solar heating and cryogenic boil off."

Oh yeah?

Thats what the managers thought.

Previously they thought that the O-Rings which brought down Challenger were unimportant too..

Previously..............

The Tolkiol enginners who designed the solid rocket boosters screamed down the phone "Don't launch."

NASA launched.

Did this come up in the Columbia investigation? Did they recommend painting the tank again? If not why not? The foam problem still exists as far as I'm aware.

Beeker

EvilMonkey wrote: »

Did this come up in the Columbia investigation? Did they recommend painting the tank again? If not why not? The foam problem still exists as far as I'm aware.

To determine whether a coat of paint might prevent foam from shedding requires a better understanding of what causes the foam to fall off in the first place. Most people probably assume that the foam separates from the tank because the flow of air rushing past rips it away. This type of separation is called an adhesive failure because the foam does not properly stick to the bare aluminum surface of the tank. However, NASA research has found that very little, if any, of the foam comes off because of adhesive issues.
The problem is instead caused by a cohesive failure. In other words, the foam itself does not stay together. This cohesive failure is caused by voids created inside the foam as it is sprayed onto the tank. These voids create pockets of air trapped within the foam. Since the voids are formed at sea level, the air inside them is at sea level pressure. As the Shuttle climbs into orbit, the external atmospheric pressure continually decreases. This difference causes the relatively high pressure air trapped inside the foam to expand outward ripping off chunks of foam in the process. Further worsening the problem is the heat generated by friction between the thermal insulation of the tank and the air rushing past it as the Shuttle accelerates to high speeds. This effect heats up the air pockets within the foam raising the pressure and further encouraging the voids to rupture. This phenomenon is often referred to as "pop-corning." Since the problem lies deep inside the foam rather than at its surface, an outer coating of paint would do little to stop this process. NASA records support this conjecture since the first two missions flown with a painted External Tank suffered just as much foam loss as those with an unpainted tank. Indeed, it is more likely that an extra coating on top of the foam would end up creating an even bigger problem by adding chunks of paint to the debris threatening the Orbiter.

Azelfafage

When NASA ruined a machine,and seven lives, by their complete incompetence the smartest man in America was dragged in by President Reagan to sort NASA out..


You didn't get smarter than Richard Feinman:

http://www.fotuva.org/feynman/challenger-appendix.html

.

..

Turtwig

Feynman

ynotdu

Azelfafage wrote: »

When NASA ruined a machine,and seven lives, by their complete incompetence the smartest man in America was dragged in by President Reagan to sort NASA out..


You didn't get smarter than Richard Feinman:

http://www.fotuva.org/feynman/challenger-appendix.html

.

..

Azelfafage When You say NASA You are talking about a broad spectrum of people and subcontracters.
The 'suits' often did just worry about their own ass.
The same cannot and should not be said said about the engineers including subcontractors who had to make the most of the funding available to them.

The engineer who held out to the last when the 'suits' at NASA 'DEMANDED' a GO despite the fears about the O rings lost his job six months later anyway.! after he went home his wife noticed he was 'not himself' when she asked him why he replied "I think i just voted to kill the Astronauts" To this day he regrets and is haunted that he went against his instincts.He admitted that he had his fingers crossed for the launch and expected an explosion if it happened to occur on ignition,but it must be said it was by no means a 'certainty' the O-rings would fail it was just that they had never been tested at the extreme cold conditions that occured at launch day.

Also it must be said the Astronauts are proably the wisest of all about any rocket that launch's them into Space{if us joe soaps can spot design flaws then i'm sure they can/could too}Despite that they make an 'informed' decision to fly,When their 'gamble' works out they get to see a sight that just over a thousand people in history have seen,the Earth from Space!!!!!

give it a rest will You?You could drop a rubber band into freezing water to demonstrate what happened to the O'ring allowing leakage and torched the external tank,as a matter of fact that was what the chairman of the Challenger investigation board done to illustrate what happened to the general public.

You know You have not got a monopoly on Anger about the loss of the Astronauts lives on Columbia and Challenger.
Sure while we are at it why not mention the loss of the Apollo 1 crew? Lost their lives from a spark in a 100% Oxygen Breathing athmosphere and a cumborsome hatch that could not be 'blown' but needed more tan two minutes to open,that was fixed and in less than seven years Eagle landed on the Moon.
It was the luck of the draw.

Turtwig

Getting this thread back on topic:p

NASA vid's on their youtube channel shows the problem with the chutes quite nicely (and I gotta say this vid is cool:)).

Azelfafage

The easiest way into space is to keep the heavy lifting equipment well away from delicate human bodies.

Build enormous boosters to propel tons of equipment into space at energies which would flatten a human body.

Five minutes later launch humans in a smaller more human friendly craft.

Then we start building in space.

Eezy Peezy.
.

Beeker

Azelfafage wrote: »

The easiest way into space is to keep the heavy lifting equipment well away from delicate human bodies.

Build enormous boosters to propel tons of equipment into space at energies which would flatten a human body.

Five minutes later launch humans in a smaller more human friendly craft.

Then we start building in space.

Eezy Peezy.
.

Spot on! Now if only we could get the money!

ynotdu

well the Constellation programme was conceived to do just that.
Engineers not getting enough money to make spaceflight safer:eek:
am i having a de ja vu?;)

Azelfafage

The Hubble Space Telescope can can last another 1000 years.

(The optics are always there.)

Shuttle goes........Hubble goes.

.

lord lucan

Azelfafage wrote: »

The Hubble Space Telescope can can last another 1000 years.

(The optics are always there.)

Shuttle goes........Hubble goes.

.

Yay,Lets keep the Shuttle!:D

Beeker

lord lucan wrote: »

Yay,Lets keep the Shuttle!:D

Yeah...yeah...yeah....:D:D:D

ynotdu

It seems the Ares 1-y launch has been cancelled to save money for the actual Ares 1 test launchs though.

wish obama would make it Clear what he has decided though{rumours are rife}
It suggests he will make it clear on thanksgiving day which i believe is the 3rd week in November. http://www.universetoday.com/2009/10/29/whats-next-for-the-ares-rocket/

ynotdu

After all it was an Irishman that got America off its Ass about Space;)

Imagine that within less than seven years of that speech America achived what goal was set by its president!
If the Political will, the funding and the public will is there NASA can do ALMOST anything

So come on Barack,Look at the long term!!!!!

Stargate

Good Morn ynotdu

LL you all packed and ready to roll Love to be going with ya !!

" Thanks Beeker " haha

Off topic , wonder has anyone else seen this >>>>>

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055728831

Stargate

ynotdu

Stargate wrote: »

Good Morn ynotdu

LL you all packed and ready to roll Love to be going with ya !!

" Thanks Beeker " haha

Off topic , wonder has anyone else seen this >>>>>

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055728831

Stargate

Stargate how DARE you link me to the paranormal thread?

Does this mean You and all the people in the 'peoples republic of Cork' are finally going to be exposed as Aliens as the nation suspects you's are?:eek::D