Television Space Shuttle Columbia disaster or Space Shuttle Challenger disaster - Which shocked you more?

[mozfonky]

Not necessarily. I believe one of the current theories is that the module they were in, got blown away from craft when it exploded, and they might've actually been alive for the plummet to wherever the fuck they crashed down at, or at least until they lost consciousness from the g forces of falling at ten million miles an hour.

Ok, well, they lost audio after on of the crew said oh no. Maybe they had to suffer through the descent. The kind of situation where you're life flashes before your eyes.

 

[Natural Order]

Must be a lot of old people voting here....I'm 45 and Challenger happened when I was 8. Remember it happening but parents likely turned off and made some bs up.

Columbia happened in 2003 so it was much more shocking imo as an adult, as you understood it all when it happened.

Edit - but Challenger is certainly an event more people remember as it was on takeoff, not reentry.

 

[Pliny Pete]

The single person who, in the subsequent investigation of the entire Columbia tragedy, received the most blame was a senior NASA or JPL manager named Linda Ham. (this is all by memory).
Linda Ham was a high-up NASA official and there were numerous requests made to senior NASA people to get a U.S. government high-resolution spy-satellite to take detailed photos of Columbia in orbit as the engineers had SEEN the foam block hit the left wing on ascent and wanted photos to see IF there was any damage to the wing/. What, if anything, could have been done had they discovered the 6 to 10inch hole in the carbon-carbon of the left wing..... nobody is too sure but Atlantis could perhaps have been launched on a rescue mission.

Linda Ham was the principle person who refused to grant the requests for in-orbit hi-res photos of Columbia's left wing and she got basically HOOFED after the investigation. She was moved to a completely different desk job as far as I can remember. She basically totally ignored in-orbit shuttle photo requests and said "it's foam, it cannot harm the carbon-carbon leading edge of the wing, we've had foam strikes before, this is nothing new" or words to that effect. If she had said "yes ok" to the satellite-photo requests they could have known the shuttle was mortally damaged and re-entry impossible and death assured for all the crew if they attempted re-entry. Shuttle Atlantis was being prepped for the next mission and could, potentially, have been rush-prepared and launched to rescue the 7 astronauts.

There's a 400page PDF document issued by NASA called "Columbia Crew Survival Investigation Report".
I downloaded it and read it a few years ago. Spaceflight & astronomy etc has been a long-time interest of mine for decades.

Could you imagine what an amazing story that wouldve been if they actually were able to launch a shuttle rescue mission and bring everyone home safely
Its literally a Hollywood movie, wouldve had the world enraptured and couldve led to a whole new era of national pride in the space program, which wouldve probably led to buckets and buckets of new funding for all of NASA

The astronauts dying is a tragedy but what a huge missed business opportunity this also was

 

[Quadtavius Tuck]

Sherdog is literally dying!

Maybe if they stopped banning all the fresh young talent we'd be golden but here we are eating soup with boomers tsk tsk

 

[Substance Abuse]

Challenger I would say as it was at *relatively* low altitude (70 or 80,000ft) and plenty of video footage of the tanks exploding and the SRBs careening off on their own. I remember watching it well in 1986.
-- Technically speaking the Challenger shuttle did NOT explode (in fact neither shuttle exploded at all), it broke up due to aerodynamic forces. The main H2 Hydrogen tank ruptured after the hot gases escaped near the base and all the remaining H2 ignited in the presence of Liquid O2 and that was the massive explosion on video. Fuel tank explosion, which obviously was Loss of Vehicle and end of mission. The Shuttle instantly tumbled and broke up at it was going so fast and it couldnt hold together (obviously was prob v damaged to say the least from the H2 tank going bang...) Crew capsule stayed intact all the way to the surface of the Atlantic where it impacted at 207mph and killed everyone from the impact. Most or all of the crew are believed to have been alive and even conscious on the 4minute trip down to the sea surface. In fact 2 of the emergency airpacks had been activated MANUALLY by hand (Judy Resnik did that...) and the amount of O2 consumed when the found the Crew capsule was consistent with crew members oxygen use for the 4mins (approx) it took to fall to ocean surface. So minimum 2 crew members were alive and possibly conscious.

Columbia was less of a shock i'd imagine to most people as by 2003 the Shuttle launches were regarded as routine and somewhat "dull" to the general public (not to me). Plus Columbia broke up (again it did not explode, it broke up as it lost hydraulics and attitude-control and tumbled at high spin rates) at extreme altitude of 200,000ft so video of the Loss of Vehicle was far less dramatic, visually.

The single person who, in the subsequent investigation of the entire Columbia tragedy, received the most blame was a senior NASA or JPL manager named Linda Ham. (this is all by memory).
Linda Ham was a high-up NASA official and there were numerous requests made to senior NASA people to get a U.S. government high-resolution spy-satellite to take detailed photos of Columbia in orbit as the engineers had SEEN the foam block hit the left wing on ascent and wanted photos to see IF there was any damage to the wing/. What, if anything, could have been done had they discovered the 6 to 10inch hole in the carbon-carbon of the left wing..... nobody is too sure but Atlantis could perhaps have been launched on a rescue mission.

Linda Ham was the principle person who refused to grant the requests for in-orbit hi-res photos of Columbia's left wing and she got basically HOOFED after the investigation. She was moved to a completely different desk job as far as I can remember. She basically totally ignored in-orbit shuttle photo requests and said "it's foam, it cannot harm the carbon-carbon leading edge of the wing, we've had foam strikes before, this is nothing new" or words to that effect. If she had said "yes ok" to the satellite-photo requests they could have known the shuttle was mortally damaged and re-entry impossible and death assured for all the crew if they attempted re-entry. Shuttle Atlantis was being prepped for the next mission and could, potentially, have been rush-prepared and launched to rescue the 7 astronauts.

There's a 400page PDF document issued by NASA called "Columbia Crew Survival Investigation Report".
I downloaded it and read it a few years ago. Spaceflight & astronomy etc has been a long-time interest of mine for decades.

While I appreciate the information, both of these posts are incredibly fucking depressing.

 

[Doughie99]

While I appreciate the information, both of these posts are incredibly fucking depressing.

Sorry, and I agree it can be quite depressing to hear about the reality of what happened in these two cases.

It's just 2 tragic samples of the harsh reality of what is essentially corporate failure by NASA in both cases. It's the sadly-too-frequent human tendency to cut corners and 'get to the finish line, everything will be ok, everything worked last time, we'll be fine this time'.

In aviation it's a recognized condition and is called "Get-There-Itis" or, psychologically speaking it's 'Plan Continuation Bias'.


Here's a bit about it, ironically from a study by NASA in 2004 :

plan continuation bias, which is an unconscious cognitive bias to continue the original plan in spite of changing conditions — and it can be deadly for general aviation pilots.

Plan continuation bias was identified in a NASA Ames human factors study from 2004 which analyzed 19 airline accidents from 1991 to 2000 that were attributed to crew error. Out of those, almost half involved plan continuation bias.

The problem is in how it can manifest itself. The study offered that it becomes stronger as you near completion of the activity (e.g., approach your destination). It essentially impedes pilots from recognizing that they need to change their course of action and, because it’s unconscious, it often goes undetected.


text extract from :

Protect yourself from ‘get-there-itis’ — General Aviation News

generalaviationnews.com

 

[GearSolidMetal]

In February 2003 I was a Senior in High School, but I can't remember anything about the Colombia Disaster.

Freakin weird, I know.

 

[ralphc1]

The single person who, in the subsequent investigation of the entire Columbia tragedy, received the most blame was a senior NASA or JPL manager named Linda Ham. (this is all by memory).
Linda Ham was a high-up NASA official and there were numerous requests made to senior NASA people to get a U.S. government high-resolution spy-satellite to take detailed photos of Columbia in orbit as the engineers had SEEN the foam block hit the left wing on ascent and wanted photos to see IF there was any damage to the wing/. What, if anything, could have been done had they discovered the 6 to 10inch hole in the carbon-carbon of the left wing..... nobody is too sure but Atlantis could perhaps have been launched on a rescue mission.

Linda Ham was the principle person who refused to grant the requests for in-orbit hi-res photos of Columbia's left wing and she got basically HOOFED after the investigation. She was moved to a completely different desk job as far as I can remember. She basically totally ignored in-orbit shuttle photo requests and said "it's foam, it cannot harm the carbon-carbon leading edge of the wing, we've had foam strikes before, this is nothing new" or words to that effect. If she had said "yes ok" to the satellite-photo requests they could have known the shuttle was mortally damaged and re-entry impossible and death assured for all the crew if they attempted re-entry. Shuttle Atlantis was being prepped for the next mission and could, potentially, have been rush-prepared and launched to rescue the 7 astronauts.

There's a 400page PDF document issued by NASA called "Columbia Crew Survival Investigation Report".
I downloaded it and read it a few years ago. Spaceflight & astronomy etc has been a long-time interest of mine for decades.

I remember the debate well. If they had found the damage, what do they do? If Atlantis could have been launched in time, should they do it? They have one damaged shuttle in orbit, would they have risked having two without a fix to the problem? It would be reckless to launch again knowing what had happened. It was 2 and a half years before the next flight and NASA made certain that they had backup flights ready.

This was the debate years before when Congress decided, over NASA's objections, that a reuseable system should be developed to save money. There was much talk of the risks of re-entry with such a large vehicle.

 

[Doughie99]

In case anyone's interested, here is a quite good 53mins documentary on Youtube of the Columbia shuttle's accident and what went wrong etc :

 

[volodya]

Must be a lot of old people voting here....I'm 45 and Challenger happened when I was 8. Remember it happening but parents likely turned off and made some bs up.

Columbia happened in 2003 so it was much more shocking imo as an adult, as you understood it all when it happened.

Edit - but Challenger is certainly an event more people remember as it was on takeoff, not reentry.

This. I was 23 I think and slinging used books on ebay. Parts from the crash like immediately showed up for sale, I remember that quite clearly.

 

[HHJ]

I was 6 yrs old and in the hospital for surgery when the Challenger disaster happened. It did affect me a bit. Space exploration facinated me as a child.

 

[HHJ]

Looks like we might be getting a disasters tournament up next.

 

[Doughie99]

I'm pretty good at remembering details from even a few decades ago. Anything to do with science and space / numbers / data and stuff like that. I even learnt Pi (3.14.....) to 50decimal places when i was about 15yrs old and still remember it and can recite it to 50 decimal places today (a long time later...).

 

[Cyrano200]

Maybe if they stopped banning all the fresh young talent we'd be golden but here we are eating soup with boomers tsk tsk

Gen X, thank you.

And I love soup......

 

[Doughie99]

I remember the debate well. If they had found the damage, what do they do? If Atlantis could have been launched in time, should they do it? They have one damaged shuttle in orbit, would they have risked having two without a fix to the problem? It would be reckless to launch again knowing what had happened. It was 2 and a half years before the next flight and NASA made certain that they had backup flights ready.

This was the debate years before when Congress decided, over NASA's objections, that a reuseable system should be developed to save money. There was much talk of the risks of re-entry with such a large vehicle.

it's simple -- they'd have launched Atlantis with 2 people aboard (minimum staffing, 1 pilot and 1 commander) to go get the 7 stranded astronauts. Bolt a couple of extra seats to the floor and go frigging launch.

This is the same policy as the USMC : No Man is Ever Left Behind, no matter what.

You go and get the guys on your team, the risks and the costs are irrelevant.
If they're alive when you get them, then good. If they're dead when you get them, then you get them anyway, and treat the remains with the same respect and reverence.

At NASA, there is an unwritten rule that every astronaut will do their utmost to spend every minute on-board to serve NASA and JPL and the US govt (by extension) as well as they can, and in return there is an agreement that NASA will do everything that they can to bring every man and woman back safely once they step foot aboard a NASA vehicle. It is essentially a large family.

When things go bad, there is untold levels of mortification and sense of dereliction of duty amongst those left still serving.
This is the way it is, and the way it should be.