Let Us Not Forget...

[DTinTX]

17 years ago the space shuttle Columbia broke apart over Texas killing all crew members.  I remember I was sleeping in that morning, my kids were 3 and 6 at the time.  The oldest woke me up saying the space ship crashed..  I was a little confused at first! 

I guess I always remember the anniversary of this because she broke apart over Dallas, then continued her path across Tyler, my home town, before finally resting in Nacogdoches, my Alma Mater...  Ax'em Jacks!

Of course this post wouldn't be complete without a nod to the Professor and the gang right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW-8yCKwhBE
   

[El Barto]

Sadly I slept through the whole thing. Given my fascination with such matters hearing it would have been quite meaningful to me.

I do remember my initial reaction, though. Just up, fixing coffee, shaking the cobwebs loose, I open a browser and the first headline is "Space Shuttle Disintegrates Over Texas." I said to myself "eh, that's unusual," and moved on to the next story. It was a good 5-10 seconds later that something clicked "hey, wait, what was that? They're not supposed to disintegrate." 

[King Postwhore]

I was in class when I found out.

[TAC]

My son was born on 1/30, so we were in the maternity ward when that happened. I'll never forget that.

[TAC]

I was in class when I found out.

Class? Let me guess. 11th grade was the hardest 10 years of your life??

[Stadler]

Does it make me a bad person that I have no idea?   Feb 1, 2003, I would have been in Atlanta, it was a Saturday, so I might have been home or at my MBA class.  I don't know.

[TAC]

.

[romdrums]

I had gone over to my parents house to help my Dad pick up some furniture and he had the news on the TV.  All I could see were these streaks of debris flying through the air like a meteor.  Then to find out it was Columbia, I was pretty shocked.  My Grandpa worked for NASA, and he had been able to get us in to Kennedy Space Center for the launch of STS-5, which was Columbia's fifth mission, back in late 1982.  So, Columbia was always my favorite of the Space Shuttle fleet. 

[T-ski]

34 years ago the Challenger exploded after takeoff as well.

Ms. Hetzers algebra class was stunned.

[Stadler]

.

Is that a "You're a dick" period?  Or a "Class for you too?" period?  Or a "I need a keyboard" period? 

It's not that I don't remember it - I do very much (I had friends that were on the debris recovery team, from my old company that had an EPA contract that was used).  I just don't remember EXACTLY where I was when I learned.

Now, CHALLENGER is a different story; I was in my dorm at Uconn, New Haven Hall. 

[Northern Lion]

Memories can get fuzzy with time even with the event being important to you.  I have always been a fan of the space program, but I don't remember where I was or what I was doing at the time either.  Looking at the date, I do know my wife and I just got married a little over a month earlier.  So I was either figuring out this whole married thing or I was "distracted" .

[The Walrus]

I remember being in my district's 'gifted' class in sixth grade that day, we were talking about it. I think we watched something on the news about it as well but I can't remember. I distinctly remember the day though because my teacher respected us enough to talk to us about it as if we were adults, despite only being 11-12 years old. Believe I had just turned 12 when it happened.

[TAC]

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Is that a "You're a dick" period?  Or a "Class for you too?" period?  Or a "I need a keyboard" period? 

 

I actually posted something along the lines of...."Is this where you come in and mention other tragedies had more of an impact?"

But since I had just busted your chops in the parental thread a minute earlier, I thought it would be a bit much for a Monday morning.

[Stadler]

.

Is that a "You're a dick" period?  Or a "Class for you too?" period?  Or a "I need a keyboard" period? 

 

I actually posted something along the lines of...."Is this where you come in and mention other tragedies had more of an impact?"

But since I had just busted your chops in the parental thread a minute earlier, I thought it would be a bit much for a Monday morning.

I'm not THAT much of a curmudgeon.  I would only have said that if someone tried to tell us that "this was the greatest tragedy that ever occured in our space program!" or something hyperbolic like that. 

[eric42434224]

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Is that a "You're a dick" period?  Or a "Class for you too?" period?  Or a "I need a keyboard" period? 

 

I actually posted something along the lines of...."Is this where you come in and mention other tragedies had more of an impact?"

But since I had just busted your chops in the parental thread a minute earlier, I thought it would be a bit much for a Monday morning.

I'm not THAT much of a curmudgeon.  I would only have said that if someone tried to tell us that "this was the greatest tragedy that ever occured in our space program!" or something hyperbolic like that. 

Why is it hyperbole to say that?

[El Barto]

When Challenger broke up my teacher explained it in terms of why one of the teachers was running around in hysterics. Not so much about what actually happened.  "OK, everything's cool, she's just running around because the space shuttle blew up." 

[vtgrad]

For Columbia I was driving home from VA Tech that Saturday after having left work... one of the only times I can remember listing to the radio the entire trip home from Tech (the other time was 9/11).  It was a gorgeous Sat morning in SWVA, not a cloud in the sky.

For Challenger, I was 5 and it's one of my first memories... watching it live on TV with my mom and asking her why the sky had smoke in it (I also had a clean pair of my dad's underwear on my head; mom was doing laundry  ).  Later on I studied the "O-ring" failure portion of the disaster and turned it into a regional winning Science Fair project (froze O-rings to different temps at different speeds and then rapidly warmed them up at different speeds; rings cracked every time).  Challenger could have been avoided imo.  I really don't remember what the issue was with Columbia.

[El Barto]

For Columbia I was driving home from VA Tech that Saturday after having left work... one of the only times I can remember listing to the radio the entire trip home from Tech (the other time was 9/11).  It was a gorgeous Sat morning in SWVA, not a cloud in the sky.

For Challenger, I was 5 and it's one of my first memories... watching it live on TV with my mom and asking her why the sky had smoke in it (I also had a clean pair of my dad's underwear on my head; mom was doing laundry  ).  Later on I studied the "O-ring" failure portion of the disaster and turned it into a regional winning Science Fair project (froze O-rings to different temps at different speeds and then rapidly warmed them up at different speeds; rings cracked every time).  Challenger could have been avoided imo.  I really don't remember what the issue was with Columbia.

The same as Challenger. A different part failed, and one disintegrated at the beginning of the trip rather than the end, but in both cases it was simply a failure of NASA culture and an unwillingness to see inherent dangers. NASA has a tendency to think that the more times something doesn't kill them the safer it is. This causes people to die.

[Stadler]

I can't remember the gist of it now because I missed the first class - to my eminent chagrin - but my first assignment in a "Statistics and Decision-making" class revolved around the o-ring issue.   

[MoraWintersoul]

Believe I had just turned 12 when it happened.

I had just turned 12 when Steve Irwin died. I grew up on wildlife shows, I hope I never have a birthday worse than that.

[El Barto]

I can't remember the gist of it now because I missed the first class - to my eminent chagrin - but my first assignment in a "Statistics and Decision-making" class revolved around the o-ring issue.

Yeah, for a bunch of eggheads those guys a NASA have a really rough time with statistical analyses. That failure really was striking when it came to the two shuttle disasters. At the same time, it's easy to see how these failures happen. The people making the busine$$ decisions aren't the ones making the safety decisions, and they all have their own deadlines and pressures. And in the end the money people tend to be above the technical people. One of the recommendations of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board was the creation of a upper-level position reconciling those two departments. Somebody who could try and bridge the gap. Since NASA is pretty much out of the manned spaceflight business now there's no telling if that ever happened.

I've got a documentary somewhere about one of the two Thiokol engineers who were screaming bloody murder about the whole thing. He did the public speaker circuit for a while, and his premise was pretty much based on his refusal to sign off on the launch and being both the hero and the outcast as a consequence. I'll see if I can find it and send it your way. One of the reasons the two shuttle disasters fascinate me so much is that they're as much people-problems as technical failures, and business culture within NASA was such a huge part of it.

[TAC]

I'd be interested in that too, Bart.

[Cool Chris]

Remember seeing this on the news that morning, for some reason recall I went for a morning walk/jog with my roommate, which we probably did 3 times the whole time we lived together. Was newsworthy to me as I didn't even know there was a shuttle in space at the time.

Recall when Challenger exploded they wheeled in a TV to my 4th grade classroom and we watched the news for the rest of the day, which I gotta say we found pretty boring. A discussion with the teacher would have been more educational, with her being able to provide context, answer questions, etc...

NASA has a tendency to think that the more times something doesn't kill them the safer it is. This causes people to die.

We've talked about this before, but this is essentially my parenting style. The kids are doing something and the missus says "Hey, they could get hurt doing that" and I reply "they've done it 100 times and haven't hurt themselves, what are the odds they get hurt on the 101st time?" 

[vtgrad]

I can't remember the gist of it now because I missed the first class - to my eminent chagrin - but my first assignment in a "Statistics and Decision-making" class revolved around the o-ring issue.

Yeah, for a bunch of eggheads those guys a NASA have a really rough time with statistical analyses. That failure really was striking when it came to the two shuttle disasters. At the same time, it's easy to see how these failures happen. The people making the busine$$ decisions aren't the ones making the safety decisions, and they all have their own deadlines and pressures. And in the end the money people tend to be above the technical people. One of the recommendations of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board was the creation of a upper-level position reconciling those two departments. Somebody who could try and bridge the gap. Since NASA is pretty much out of the manned spaceflight business now there's no telling if that ever happened.

I've got a documentary somewhere about one of the two Thiokol engineers who were screaming bloody murder about the whole thing. He did the public speaker circuit for a while, and his premise was pretty much based on his refusal to sign off on the launch and being both the hero and the outcast as a consequence. I'll see if I can find it and send it your way. One of the reasons the two shuttle disasters fascinate me so much is that they're as much people-problems as technical failures, and business culture within NASA was such a huge part of it.

I'd be interested in that doc as well; I'd forgotten the similarities between the two incidents. 

From a personal perspective (and a human perspective as well) I do truly hope that the occupants of Challenger and Columbia had no idea what was happening... the atmospheric break up of Columbia gave me terrible thoughts of what survivors of the initial break-up may have seen/experienced before they died. 

[Dublagent66]

I didn't remember the exact date, but I'll never forget what happened.  Just like the 1986 Challenger disaster. 

[El Barto]

I can't remember the gist of it now because I missed the first class - to my eminent chagrin - but my first assignment in a "Statistics and Decision-making" class revolved around the o-ring issue.

Yeah, for a bunch of eggheads those guys a NASA have a really rough time with statistical analyses. That failure really was striking when it came to the two shuttle disasters. At the same time, it's easy to see how these failures happen. The people making the busine$$ decisions aren't the ones making the safety decisions, and they all have their own deadlines and pressures. And in the end the money people tend to be above the technical people. One of the recommendations of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board was the creation of a upper-level position reconciling those two departments. Somebody who could try and bridge the gap. Since NASA is pretty much out of the manned spaceflight business now there's no telling if that ever happened.

I've got a documentary somewhere about one of the two Thiokol engineers who were screaming bloody murder about the whole thing. He did the public speaker circuit for a while, and his premise was pretty much based on his refusal to sign off on the launch and being both the hero and the outcast as a consequence. I'll see if I can find it and send it your way. One of the reasons the two shuttle disasters fascinate me so much is that they're as much people-problems as technical failures, and business culture within NASA was such a huge part of it.

I'd be interested in that doc as well; I'd forgotten the similarities between the two incidents. 

From a personal perspective (and a human perspective as well) I do truly hope that the occupants of Challenger and Columbia had no idea what was happening... the atmospheric break up of Columbia gave me terrible thoughts of what survivors of the initial break-up may have seen/experienced before they died.

To get to the core of why they're both the same accident you should read Feynman's appendix to the Rogers Commission's final report. He explains NASA's tendencies towards bad reasoning in several different areas. Then watch any documentary on either of the mishaps and you'll see the same faulty logic in play over and over and over.

The Thiokol engineer I was thinking of is named Al McDonald. If you search YT for Al McDonald Challenger you'll find a variety of vids of him telling his story in various lengths ranging from 10 to 60 minutes. He actually crashed a public portion of the Rogers Commission and absolutely torpedoed a NASA witness with dramatic results. That very much changed the course of the investigation. For a broader overview there's an excellent doc produced by a PBS station in Jacksonville called A Rush to Launch, and it's largely centered around McDonald. While it covers the whole shebang, Al makes up a huge portion of the content. He essentially tells the same story you'll see in any of the YT videos (the man's got it down to word for word at this point) but also includes other sources and data.

As for the nuts and bolts, NASA's own video investigation unit put together the best explanation for what actually happened that you'll find. It doesn't discuss any of the causes, but simply and concisely explains exactly what happened. The nature of the accident was actually quite different than what people assume based on simply watching the blowup video.  https://youtu.be/MKG4bvZGWag?t=904

The folks aboard Columbia, at least the ones on the flight deck, were aware that something was going wrong, but not necessarily enough to spook them. It was just becoming difficult to pilot as airflow was disrupted over the starboard wing. When the shuttle rotated beyond its aerodynamic stress limit it broke apart and they all hypoxia'd out PDQ. The amount of time for terror was quite brief. The Challenger crew's fate is much less understood. It's possible that some of them survived the whole way down to the big splash, almost 3 minutes later. The likelihood is that they lost consciousness almost immediately. There were signs that some of them took action to access O2, but their suits were incapable of keeping them alive in that situation. While NASA passed along a great deal of information about Columbia's crew survivability, it's fairly tight-lipped about Challenger's, though.

[Cool Chris]

I bookmarked A Rush To Launch but the length and my short attention span conspired against me to ever get around to it.

The Challenger crew's fate is much less understood. It's possible that some of them survived the whole way down to the big splash, almost 3 minutes later. The likelihood is that they lost consciousness almost immediately. There were signs that some of them took action to access O2, but their suits were incapable of keeping them alive in that situation.

I remember reading that very recently, and was quicked shocked at the possibility, or just the fact that I had not heard that it was a possibility before. Didn't they also base that on the positioning they found the crew members in, thinking some of them switched places after the explosion to try and manually figure out a way to survive? Am I imagining that?

[El Barto]

I bookmarked A Rush To Launch but the length and my short attention span conspired against me to ever get around to it.

The Challenger crew's fate is much less understood. It's possible that some of them survived the whole way down to the big splash, almost 3 minutes later. The likelihood is that they lost consciousness almost immediately. There were signs that some of them took action to access O2, but their suits were incapable of keeping them alive in that situation.

I remember reading that very recently, and was quicked shocked at the possibility, or just the fact that I had not heard that it was a possibility before. Didn't they also base that on the positioning they found the crew members in, thinking some of them switched places after the explosion to try and manually figure out a way to survive? Am I imagining that?

They knew the crew cabin survived the breakup intact, as they followed it on the video right up until it passed through a vapor trail, so it was always a possibility. I'm not aware of any of them switching places, but I know they had to shuffle around a bit to active the supplemental air packs for one another. One person in particular had his switched on, which would have required another person to manually activate it. Those airpacks wouldn't have helped them in a sudden depressurization, though. The likelihood is that they were aware that they were truly fucked, but probably not for the full 3 minutes it took to descend. It really depends on whether or not the cabin depressurized, and since it smashed into the water at 200+MPH, there's no sure way of knowing.

Really, the most telling thing is the lengths NASA has gone through to limit information about their fate. There's a 400 page appendix to the CAIB describing the Columbia's crew's fate. Yet they've done everything they could to limit information about Challenger.