space shuttle columbia crash

i just caught a news bulletin and it appears that the space shuttle columbia has exploded during re-entry over texas.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/2716369.stm

 

It's all over the news. I must say, a welcome relief from all That Iraq bullshit. however people lost lives in this. Lets see what went wrong. Hal?

 

I think it has something to do with an error in the left engine apperantly there was an explosion there, or whatever i dunno.

 

Maybe they should have used something newer than the oldest shuttle in the fleet. Something built in the mid 1980's is NOT going to last forever.

 

Hey i was build in the middle of the 1980's, and i think i will work for some time still.

 

Nothing lasts forever, but the mere age of a shuttle alone is not going to tell you a whole lot about its condition. The shuttle Challenger had been commissioned as a space-worthy vehicle fewer than four years before it blew up. Perhaps we should await the findings of the investigators before jumping to any conclusions.

That said, NASA has long been working on a replacement for the shuttle. The problem as always is that it takes so much time to develop and perfect these things, that they can often be seen as obsolete when they're finally finished.

 

World of difference Canis. The Challenger blew up because of a leak in the fuel line (the cold conditions had caused the rubber to crack) and that was preventable, because they could have postponed the launch until they'd done a full safety check. Columbia blew up on re-entry, not take off, so there's not a whole lot that could have been done other than ensuring that the space shuttle could actually stand the rigours of space travel again.

Oh, and passing a certification four years beforehand isn't exactly a seal of approval. If a fuel line can crack overnight, what do you think can happen in four years?

 

You are all wrong, I think CNN already discovered the pretty obvious reason:

 

Hahaha!

I hate cnn
:thinkof:

 

CNN, Euronews and Skynews are the only channels I watch these days. I only have around 20 minutes of tv time a day, so I rather watch that than search for new Britney Spears songs on the music channels.

 

I havent heard that she has come with any new videos recently, a shame realy.

 

CNN are obviously retarded. My friend recommends the BBC news. If there's one thing the British can do, it's make channels differentiated only by number! Oh, and news.

 

I recently heard that there was a crack in the heat shield of Columbia. It is probably just a rumor, however. I don't know of anything that could have possibly cracked it now that hadn't during all the rest of the time it has been exiting and entering.

 

As of today, the problem looks like damage to one of the tiles on liftoff. Either that or W will find a way to blame Sadam. I think the problem is Texas. Either that or CNN. 18 times the speed of light, my goodness NASA is better than I thought.

Jinxed, it is too bad that we, here in the USA, can't get the news sources you can. Even with our 100 chanell + packages. But we do get over a dozen different shopping chanels. :x

 

I can't believe that no one has stopped CNN for announcing that garbage about 18+ the speed of light! If that was true, it would have hit the earth in less then a millionth of a second! And when it did hit, there wouldn't even be a single atom left to analize; it would have all been vaporized!

 

I didn't say it passed a certification test four years prior to blowing up, I said it was certified as a space-worthy orbiter at that time. Before joining the shuttle fleet Challenger was a "high-fidelity structural test article", and no I don't know what exactly that is. Something about measuring the effects of extreme stress and pressure on various vehicle designs. I certainly didn't mean to imply that the shuttle hadn't been inspected in four years; the shuttles are constantly being checked, repaired, and improved.

As for what we could have done about Columbia, NASA had been looking at the left wing for two days prior to reentry, but it was concluded that no danger existed. Heat tiles fall off fairly regularly due to impact from micrometeors and other space debris, so a missing tile by itself wouldn't have raised too many eyebrows. As a last resort, the shuttle could have docked with our worthless piece of crap space station until a rescue shuttle (from us or the Russians) could be arranged.

Regardless, the fact remains that none of us here knows for certain what went wrong with Columbia, and the mere fact that the shuttle fleet is getting on in years may or may not be totally irrelevant. It seems reasonable to await the results of the investigation, no matter how much fun we might have speculating.

 

You think the International Space Station project should be trashed??

I thought it was a good idea! An expensive one, yes, but a good one once it is completed.

 

The space station that we're building was approved by Congress because it was the cheapest design that was presented to them. (Don't even get me started on the superconducting superconductor.) Unfortunately, it's also the design least favored by the scientific community because of its small size and extreme limits in terms of research potential. If we're going to build a space station we should do it right. And we shouldn't do it with the Russians, who are just using it as a means of commercial profit and foreign (i.e. US) aid for their pathetically underfunded space program.

What I'd really like, and what the folks at JPL are starting to talk about again, is to go back to the Moon. Build a base there, use it as a launching pad for interplanetary travel, maybe build a spiffy new observatory.... *drool*

If it weren't for Johnson and Vietnam we'd have people stationed on the Moon now. And if it weren't for Johnson we'd have Mission Control in California where it belongs, instead of Texas where it just provides jobs for that bastard's home state.

Yeah, I'm old and grumpy, what of it.

 

Aye, that would be good, wouldn't it? Having a station on the moon would be the best way to launch space shuttles efficently. With nearly (if not no) atmosphere on the moon, it would take very little fuel to blast off, which takes up a huge solid-fuel rocket here on Earth.

As for the signal delay (because of the distance), we could launch satelites into space around Earth that would take radio signals meant to be sent to the moon, encrypt them, and then send them to either satelites orbiting the moon, or just a base on the moon by laser. It would then be decrypted and sent to wherever it had to go on the moon by radio wave.

The main problem is how it is just boiling hot on the light side and freezing cold on the other. I think that a "controlled enviroment" could be established using a green-house-like dome. Then, after awhile, NASA could, maybe, build an artificial atmosphere on the moon. I know it would be expensive and all, but the moon isn't all that big (well, ya, it is big but not BIG, if you catch my meaning). It could be done. It would take awhile, but it could be done. Then the atmosphere would keep the heat in enough that plants could be planted on the soil on the moon. It must be VERY fertile there, because of how there has never been anything to take out all of the minerals.

 

I'm new here, yipee! Anyways, refering to your comments on the speed of the shuttle, yes it does go that fast, it uses the effects of gravity as well as the engines. It is only about 12,500 mph (it slows down on re-entry), and the heat tiles absorb the heat from the friction, all in all it takes about 15-20 minutes for it to land (I went to space Academy! Woohoo!).

About moon colonies, they have not done this because they cannot land shuttles and than have them lift off without a launch surface (their building a horizontal take off into the next shuttle, by the way) so they would have to build a launchpad which would take a loooong time, and by the time they were done, either their air would have run out or their muscles would have atrophied too much. Also they cannot plant anything on the moon due to high levels of radiation and almost no atmosphere.