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  #1  
Old 01-27-2023, 08:51 PM
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Earl Earl is offline
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Default Apollo 1/Challenger 51L/Columbia STS-107 Anniversaries

It is that time of the year when NASA and many of us space types pause to remember the loss of the crews listed in the title of this post.

Apollo 1, lost 56 years ago this evening; Challenger 51L, lost 37 years ago tomorrow morning; and Columbia STS-107, lost 20 years ago come February 1, which I think is next Wednesday. I really, really cannot believe this year will mark 20 years since we lost that crew.

The cost of exploration is, sadly, not always calculated just in dollars; sometimes it is much, much more expensive than that. And knowing that some of these losses could possibly have been avoided makes the losses even more difficult to accept.

Still, each of those crew members knew the hazardous potential involved in space flight and boldly stove forward into that ‘final frontier’ in spite of the dangers involved.

In God’s care we commend their souls and pray for continued support and peace for the families each left behind.

Ad Astra!

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Old 01-28-2023, 11:17 AM
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Balloon release this morning in honor of the Challenger 51L crew at 11:38am +74 seconds.

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Old 01-28-2023, 12:30 PM
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Wowwwwww.
20 years since Columbia ???
Time sure passes fast.
I remember exactly where I was when the Challenger disaster happened, Columbia not so much.
Every time I see the Challenger explosion, it still sends chills down my spine.
Same as the 9/11 attacks as well. Not sure why Columbia does not do the same.
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Old 01-28-2023, 02:21 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ghrocketman
Wowwwwww.
20 years since Columbia ???
Time sure passes fast.
I remember exactly where I was when the Challenger disaster happened, Columbia not so much.
Every time I see the Challenger explosion, it still sends chills down my spine.
Same as the 9/11 attacks as well. Not sure why Columbia does not do the same.


Columbia broke apart on re-entry over Texas at about 9am eastern on a Saturday morning, February 1, 2003. Good chance you may have still been in bed.

I had just turned on the TV and had come back into the room and heard (actually, forgetting that Columbia was returning to earth that morning) the CBS commentator (Bill Harwood, I think) say that Columbia was about a minute behind in being acquired by radar in Florida. Knowing how precise timing is in ANY aspect of spaceflight, especially re-entries and such, it was obvious then that something was terribly, terribly wrong. Within a few minutes of that, they were showing amateur footage of Columbia breaking up over Texas. My heart sank and I basically collapsed on the edge of the bed.

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Old 02-01-2023, 11:11 AM
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NASA remembers the Columbia crew (and other crews) on the 20th anniversary (today) of the loss of Columbia over Texas.

Link: https://www.nasa.gov/specials/dor2023/

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Old 02-02-2023, 07:07 AM
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The Columbia Space Shuttle Disaster

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmi_NeVRx1s
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Old 03-18-2023, 12:04 AM
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I wasn't even hatched when Apollo 1 fire happened. I was in high school (freshman) when Challenger happened. I skipped school that day to hip up the cotton fields and get the land broke up for fertilizer and pre-emerge herbicide application ahead of planting a couple months later... GORGEOUS day, sunny and northerly breeze-- we'd gotten the same cold front a few days before that sorta glanced by us but raged into Florida and dropped the temps well below freezing on the Shuttle pad... the front came through dry, which was unusual for us, and so it was dry enough to work in the field (finally) so that's why I cut school to work in the field and get them broke up and broke open, so they could dry out faster. I was humming along in a 22 acre field in front of my parents house around 11-12. Dad drove the pickup down and pulled off the side of the highway, I came out of the end of the field, turned around, started into the next set of rows, and shut her down for lunch. Hopped the ditch and got in the pickup and we went to Grandma's house for lunch. Dad was working nights and got up for some lunch, then planned to take a nap before getting up for work on the night shift at the nuke plant. He told me as we rode to Grandma's that "the shuttle blew up" and I was skeptical and didn't believe it. Dad never particularly cared about the space program and I figured "oh he saw it on TV and when the boosters come off there's all that smoke from the separation motors, he probably saw that and thought it blew up". Well, when we got to Grandma's, her little 17 inch color set was playing in the front room where her chair was, and sure enough all the newscasters on all the channels (all three of them LOL were announcing the shuttle blowing up, with endless replays. I had bought a top-loading VCR the previous fall with my crop money, so I popped in a new tape set it on slow record and turned it on, and flipped on the 27 inch monster TV in the living room, grabbed some lunch, and we watched the talking heads for about an hour... they were all chalking it up to the SSME's at the time, it was a few days to a week or so before any whispers of the SRB's started.

By the time Columbia had happened, I was married and in Indiana visiting the inlaws... we were at my MIL's and we had our niece and nephews (her sister's kids) over and I used Grandma's computer to pull up a bunch of stuff about the shuttle mission, tracking the shuttle on J-Track 3-D and some other websites about the mission, NASA vids, etc. We tracked it over a few days while we were there, which was a bit unusual for us because shuttle missions were rather boring by then. We got home from our visit a day or two before they landed. That morning I got up and flipped on the local TV and the local weatherman at Channel 2 NBC in Houston had broken in and was showing the radar tracks of the broken up shuttle debris cutting across from DFW over the Piney Woods toward Louisiana. The reports of the shuttle being late had perked their interest, and they'd been prepping the noon weather report and saw the tracks on radar, and knew something was up. Wasn't long before the images from folks in the DFW area across East Texas started showing up, with the contrails of the debris flying over, fireballs trailing smoke, etc. and not long after that debris being reported raining down all over East Texas in small towns and rural areas.

Thing was, ALL THREE crew loss disasters were avoidable. Apollo 1 had SO many issues even the trainer didn't work, and Gus Grissom hung a lemon on it one day. Apollo 1 had SO much rework done on it that the cables were frayed from wear of workers crawling in and out of it, and the thing was practically coated in velcro inside for holding things in orbit so they wouldn't float off. There's a picture you can find online that Gus and Ed and Roger took, one of the "crew photos" they often took in their blue suits or space suits holding a model or whatever... the three of them were in blue jumpsuits sitting around a table, praying over a model of Apollo 1. They gave a copy of that photo to "Stormy" Harrison Storms, the guy in charge of North American Aviation who was building the Apollo 1 spacecraft. Rather prescient as it turned out. The higher-than-atmospheric pressurized pure oxygen environment of Apollo 1 made it a bomb on the pad, which is what incinerated it when some wiring sparked. BUT it all came down to a bad case of "go fever" and overriding obvious problems that posed a threat to safety to "keep on schedule" rather than slow down and fix it right. The Soviets suffered a similar fate with Soyuz 1 that killed Vladimir Kamarov.

Challenger's O-ring issues with the SRB's were well known. One previous shuttle flight had returned with a basketball size hole burned in the side of the SRB casing from an o-ring failure, fortunately late enough in flight that the booster burned out before it developed too far for the shuttle to handle, and fortunately pointing AWAY from the huge hydrogen external tank. IIRC that occurred at 53 degrees. NASA knew the existing O-ring field joint design flexed and was insufficient, and had a new design "in the pipeline" which would require all new SRB segment casings, but they were slow rolling it due to cost. They CHOSE to keep flying on the existing casings with the existing insufficient design, and let "go fever" and political and program concerns about keeping to schedule override their safety concerns... they gambled nothing would happen, and were wrong, and 7 folks died because of it. It was decided "everybody was at fault so nobody was at fault" and the matter quietly closed, ruining a few guys careers and barely affecting others, and the changes quietly made and things went back to usual.

Columbia too was due to a well-known concern that happened on several previous flights. Foam had been breaking off the tank since the first launch, and tiles had been popping off early on, and foam strikes damaging tiles, either shattering them in place, or sometimes knocking off tiles completely. One foam strike on a previous flight knocked off a row of tiles which resulted in the hot reentry plasma burning a hole in the orbiter's aluminum belly-- fortunately in a non-critical area with no critical wiring or plumbing behind it. Again NASA chose "no harm no foul" over "what if this had been somewhere critical and burned through "XYZ" or whatever" and kept flying. Columbia just happened to get the "magic bb" when a foam strike to the left wing leading edge took out a critical RCC panel, allowing the hot plasma on reentry to burn through the wing and its numerous flight controls and sensor wiring, before taking out the tires and finally the main spar itself, the shuttle lost a wing and tumbled and broke up at Mach 20-ish...

This time there was no REAL fix... the shuttle couldn't fly without the foam on the ET and the foam could never be 100% guaranteed not to come off and hit the shuttle. Steps were taken to work around it and keep flying, such as going only to ISS or having a standby rescue shuttle for the remaining Hubble mission, heaters in place of extra foam in some spots, etc. to prevent ice/frost formation. But the basic root of the problem would remain. Shuttle was also approaching 30 years old as a system, and 40 years old as a design, and was going to need a MAJOR retool to keep flying beyond 2010 which would cost billions... so the decision was made to retire it, and rightfully so.

What's sad is that it took the deaths of 14 people and the loss of 2/5 of the shuttle fleet to figure out that the shuttle was deeply flawed and had outlived its usefulness. Apollo was corrected and flown out and prematurely IMHO retired, mostly because of money and NASA managers figuring sooner or later they'd lose a crew on a Moon mission and not get them back, particularly after the harrowing Apollo 13. They'd learned their lessons well though from the sacrifice of Apollo 1's crew in the pad fire, and flew the Apollo out with complete success, even in a deadly situation on Apollo 13. Shuttle had to experience the same sort of "safety third" attitudes that led to two avoidable disasters.

Later! OL J R
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