Abort??

[TDTURBO]

A 1-pound ball bearing will do allot more damage than a pound of foam. The amount of KE is irrelevant since we don't know how this force was spread out. I think there is allot of stuff they are not telling us, like the possibility of the foam being encased with a hardened shell. If it were just foam, which I doubt it was, then I can't see how this could damage anything even at a delta V of Mach 1. Since the "foam separated close to the wing, I doubt the delta V would have been close to Mach anyway. Something doesn't add up, it wasn't just foam that fell off.

 

[TDTURBO]

More info is starting to ooze out, now they are saying the "foam" was coated with ice. I can believe that a block of ice smashing into a tile was the cause, but no way foam alone. The media is also saying that it hit the wing at 1500mph.

Bullsh1t!

The shuttle was maybe only going that speed at the time, like Deftone points out, the difference in speed between the wing and foam is to short for that to happen.

I think this has happened before, ice slamming into the shuttle; they just got lucky until now.

Just like the O-ring debacle, it will become obvious that shortcuts, budget constraints, ignoring advisory committee suggestions and beaurocratic red tape are to blame once again.

If only we could learn from history, how soon we forget.

 

[Singlecoil]

...and like Challenger, this was a January launch. Anyone know what the temp and weather was at launch time?

 

[ATR-DRIVR]

Just watched fox news and they were showing a video taken from arizona when the shuttle was still in the dark. It shows something coming off and trailing behind as it falls for quite a while. This was when Columbia was either over CA or AZ at the time. Long before Texas. Additionally, the report stated that there might have been a collision between Columbia and either a meteorite or space debris prior to the de-orbit burn. In the video it is clearly seen that something fairly large has come off.....
Keep your thoughts with them....

just another ATR driver

 

[TDTURBO]

Wo! Now thats something I can believe, space debri would be a likely suspect as well. When you think about it, that would explain allot. They have been warning for years of the possibility that this could happen, if it did, how they going to fix it? They would have to make the outer skin of the shuttle bullett proof or clean up the debris. It looks like big problems on the horizon for NASA.

 

[EagleRJ]

The California video doesn't necessarily suggest space junk. It's probably one of the first tiles to come off, before high temperatures breached the shuttle's skin, and before there was enough drag to give the autopilot problems.

The shuttle may have been hit by space junk while in orbit, but any impact large enough to cause that kind of damage would probably have been heard by the crew. The shuttle gets hit all the time by microscopic particles. Several years ago, a paint chip hit one of the windshield panes and gouged a pit into it. It's possible a larger piece caused the tile damage.

I think we're going to see an end to the tile-based heat shields. They're just too complex and too fragile. We've made enough advances in materials technology to go to a system with larger carbon or ceramic sheets.
As a short term fix for the Shuttle, I can see NASA going back to an ablative coating, like was used from Mercury through Apollo. They could apply it right over the top of the tiles before each flight, and it would both protect them from damage and stabilize any that come loose. It will add several thousand pounds to the empty weight, but it will be worth it.