I'll never forget the thump I heard at the door, sleeping off a cheap-beer hangover in the living room of a buddy's apartment in Lubbock, Texas that Sunday morning. I don't remember if I got up off the couch to see who was there, but an hour later I turned on the TV, and then got that sick feeling when it became apparent what that thump at the door earlier really was.
That was a real bummer. Dave Brown was a mission specialist on that flight and was a Naval Aviator and physician. I knew him rather well as I was an Air Force F-16 Pilot-Physician at the same time he was doing a the same job flying Talons at Pax River before he went on to NASA. Great guy, and it was a huge loss to our country losing that crew.
I was attending a plastic model show at a high school where the televisions mounted overhead happened to be on, though for most of the day no one was watching. Then the room got eerily quiet..... I still find it an odd coincidence that all of America's manned-space disasters happened within calendar days of each other: Apollo 1 - Jan. 27th Challenger - Jan. 28th Columbia - Feb. 1st
I'm still baffled by NASA's decision to not even do an EVA to inspect for damage. Even more than that, they stymied requests to have other DoD methods (I assume imaging from satellites) employed to photograph it for evaluation. I get the "ignorance is bliss" argument. I also get that they may not have been able to do anything about it, if damage was found. So, why bother looking at all? It strikes me as putting one's head in the sand and hoping for the best, though, when they could have tried. Maybe for the best, but if I had been on the crew, I would have no choice but to accept that re-entry was going to be a problem (anytime you take on a dangerous mission, you have to assume some risk, I imagine). I would, however, have appreciated the opportunity to maybe speak with my family before beginning the process. And, obviously, from the point the damage was identified, the mission would have been terminated and all resources and effort allocated to figuring out how to get them back safely instead of allowing everyone to think everything was just fine up until it wasn't. When we do complex, dangerous things like this, there will be casualties. Every astronaut must understand that. They were brave to go, but shuttle missions became "routine" to the public. I'm sure a LOT more goes on behind the scenes than we see, but we have just come to the expectation that all will go as planned, and the crew and shuttle would return without incident. Hopefully, we've learned something from their loss, but I wonder what, now that the shuttle program has come to an end. CW
I had no idea. I still think of Chafee, White and Grissom. I was glued to the TV for any coverage of the program.
Two of the crew had ties to Lubbock - Willie McCool was a high school athlete here and Rick Husband grew up in Amarillo but graduated from Texas Tech with a degree in Mechanical Engineering.
I was in bed and heard a sonic boom here when she reentered. I remember thinking the Taco F-16s were active awfully early to be making sonic booms so early. Found out later what the real cause of the boom was. Note that even if they had done an EVA to inspect for damage, they had no provisions for repairing the damage. Not exactly a duct tape kind of repair to replace or repair a piece of thermal protection system (TPS) leading edge. Difficult to make much gentler of a reentry than the one they made, so there would not have been much they could have done. Not enough oxygen onboard to wait for another Shuttle that was possibly dangerously rushed into readiness. Go to ISS until the Shuttle could be repaired? Not sure they had enough OMS propellant to go that high (~250 nm). Unfortunate chain of events.
It was my understanding that they could have attempted a jerry-rigged solution (e.g. frozen ice bag in the leading edge and cover it with titanium patch). Maybe it would have worked. I think the odds were probably low, but they wouldn't have been any lower than having done nothing. Yes, tough choices, indeed. CW
I remember that day like it was yesterday. I was in west Orlando and looking forward to hearing the booms and couldn't believe what I saw on the tv. Seeing the video of the flight deck during re-entry is very eerie. I'm glad the following mission over 2 years later had no issues even though it too had debris break off the external tank during launch.
I believe their logic was that they had foam hits before, and got through it. Sort of like the "O" ring failures prior to losing Challenger. Too bad you have to lose a vehicle, and crew before NASA takes any action. There were probably some Titanium parts in the crew compartment that could have been used as a patch. Or perhaps the Atlantis launch could have been moved up to effect a rescue/repair.
Titanium cannot take reentry heat rates and heat loads in the leading edge location. Maybe better than nothing, but not much.
I believe the maximum wing temp during reentry is 2,900 F. Titanium melts @ 3,000 F. They got down to 200,000 ' before the ship broke up. Wing surfaces would have already been cooling by then. A Titanium patch may have worked.
I wonder if NASA ever developed a way to deal with this after the fact... if they had a 'repair kit' onboard...
I believe so. After the loss of Columbia, an EVA visual inspection was required on all flights. And there were on board repair kits to replace lost tiles, etc.
Spicedriver- If titanium worked, they would have used it instead of TPS tile, which is much more expensive and harder to maintain. At least Shuttle level technology TPS. We have much better (and tougher) TPS now, like that fitted to the X-37B. Titanium cannot hack a mach 25 reentry in a critical area like a leading edge or even a windward surface. It was the total heat load that ate through the structure, the heat rates integrated over a time period. Peak heat rate on that reentry was around 45 BTU/ft2sec. Bad things happen well before melting point is reached.
The ceramic tiles are obviously superior to Titanium, with regards to heat dissipation, and light weight. That's not my argument. My argument is that a Titanium patch would have been far superior to a 16" hole in the wing. The shuttle broke apart when plasma entered the hole, and melted the Aluminum (1200 F melting point) airframe. I would have argued for a Titanium airframe in the original design as well.
