Off Topic - Space Shuttle

[mikew]

Way off topic here, but in case anyone else has an interest in this subject, did they see the Horizon program on Channel 4 last night?

Sad to think that corporate spinelessness cost 7 people their lives, when all they were trying to do is push back the boundaries a little.

Don't want a debate about how much the project costs etc, cos we've probably heard it all before, but for those that are interested, found a nice site all about the Space Shuttle and the missions, in particular, check out some of the photo images taken by crew members whilst up there,

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/home/index.html

After all these years, I still think it is an incredible feat of engineering when you consider that its' predessor, the Saturn 5, was a simple throwaway one-way ticket.


regards

Mike

 

[derek kelly]

What a waste of lives it would never have happened if they had just taken a cab to area 51.

 

[Samster]

Saw it just as it started and hit record to watch at a later date, got hooked on it after 5 mins and watched the lot

What got me was that even I could understand that these O rings wouldn't function as well at such low temperatures :bang:

 

[Centennial Man]

I studied this at Uni as part of an engineering reliability module. The most staggering fact of all isn't that the O-rings failed, it was that they were known to pass at low temperatures ie the NASA officials knew that there was a pretty good chance of gas by-passing the seals and producing an ignition source. Oh, and how did they know this? It had happened on a previous launch(es)

In truth there were several non-mechanical causes, each cascading towards a decision to launch. The PR machine had to be satisfied, the engineers responsible for the boosters were pressurised into launching, there were poor Quality Assurance measures in place for refurbishing the recovered boosters, etc, etc. The really sad thing is that each of these non-mechanical causes were well known and documented, but it took the death of 7 astronauts to make NASA change the system.