We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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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.
Sometimes the lads at NASA are slow learners. Back in 1989, George Koopman of AMROC offered to replace the dangerous Solid Rocket Boosters (SRB’s) of the Space Shuttle with a safe, throttleable hybrid version. NASA wasn’t interested and not long after George’s tragic death in a car accident, AMROC folded.
But never fear! Fourteen years later, NASA has discovered hybrids! Better late than never I suppose.
Why, you may ask, am I making such a big deal about a hybrid replacement for the SRB’s? They fixed all the problems on the Shuttle after the Challenger didn’t they?
No. They did not. Not because they didn’t want to, but because there is one problem inherent in the STS design which can’t be fixed without a big change: SRB’s cannot be shut down. Once those candles light, there is no survivable abort until they have burned out and SRBSEP has occured. (That’s “Solid Rocket Booster Seperation” in laymanese). You can’t do an early SEP either. I’ll try to explain why.
The current SRB’s are basically very large skyrockets. So large they have to be built in segments (with O-ring sealing gaskets in between the bolted together sections) because quality control on pouring the fuel/oxidizer mixture inside would be a nightmare on something that big. The stuff must be perfectly regular inside and have no voids (bubbles). There is a shaped void down the centerline which must be of the right shape. The SRB’s are ignited from the top and since the mixture contains both the fuel and the oxidizer, once they start burning, there is no stopping them until the gunk is all gone.
There is a way to stop the thrust however; there are explosive charges that blow the endcaps at an appropriate time so that dropped SRB’s don’t go flying off on their last legs somewhere they shouldn’t; opening the tube can also act as a brake. The recovery chutes are up there as well.
→ Continue reading: Light that candle!
The stories are circulating. President Bush will announce backing for the NASA Prometheus Project during his January 28th State of the Union Address. This is an effort to design and build an advanced, nuclear based rocket engine for manned solar system missions.
It is a major step forward for those of us who have spent our lives fighting to open the high frontier. My preference is for everything to be commercial and private, but I recognize there is simply no way on Earth this kind of propulsion system can be privately built in the political reality we live in.
If built, it suddenly makes the Moon an economically feasible place to do business and Mars a place that is reachable for settlement within our life times.
Given what I know of some of the people whom the Bush administration brought in for space policy, I expected good things. Even though I have been aware of such ideas being floated for over a year now, I was not prepared for goodness on this scale.
I intend to buy one of them a pint the next time I’m in DC.
I recently had an email chat with Paul Blase, the CTO of TransOrbital, and he kindly provided me permission to publish his description of a winter night’s launch in Baikonur. I’ve known him for many years because we’ve both been involved with the Artemis [Lunar Settlement] Project, and my company (Village Networking Ltd) is also a proud member of the Artemis Group of companies. However I will be the first to admit that a small Linux, internet and software consulting and development company in Belfast, which barely (and I do mean barely!) makes ends meet is not nearly so interesting as TransOrbital. I’ll leave the rest to Paul. I had just asked him about O-rings in Russian winter…
The Dnepr is silo-launched, so environmental problems are minimal. Being an ICBM, though, they can launch the thing into a blizzard if necessary. Fortunately the night was very clear. At the launch last week it was -30 C with a nice breeze from the North. I had very warm boots and an insulated coverall. Even so, we all spent a lot of time in the tea-and-coffee trailer. Perhaps 60 people there, including the Italian launch team and the Kosmotras and Baikonur reps. (The Saudi professor got sick and went home, the German and American teams went home after the payload capsule was sealed and didn’t stay for the launch). Rather neat: it was dark so that we couldn’t see the silo proper, even with the full moon. They announced “liftoff” (they don’t use a countdown, just tell us the time left at about 15 second intervals) and suddenly this light appeared about 50 ft in the air. The sound didn’t hit for 20 seconds (the viewing stand is 7 km from the silo); not loud enough for a Shuttle launch, but definitely a rocket going off. The light soared away to the East and the night was clear enough that we could see it for a good 2 minutes, and even see the first stage cutoff and separation. They need to work a bit on their anouncer’s patter – their updates were mostly along the lines of “all systems functioning well”. It hit orbit and deployed the payloads at 915 seconds after launch, at about 5 second intervals.
Paul Blase
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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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