Challenger - Countdown To Disaster

I feel a quote from Armageddon is quite fitting right now...

"At NASA we don't take risks. We double up on everything!"

Pfff!

I liked the second by second breakdown they did of the events unfolding toward the end. I've seen numerous programmes on Challenger before but none were as detailed and clear as this one.
 
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I read about the whole Challenger disaster years ago when I read the flight recorder account in my Black Box book.

I wont type out the lot, just the last few lines, if it's any interest to anyone:

T+60 Smith: Feel that mother go. Woohoo. Thirty-five thousand, going through one point five. [altitude and velocity report, 35,000 feet, 1.5 Mach].

T+1.05 Scobee: Reading four eighty-six on mine [routine airspeed indicator check].

T+1.07 Smith: Yep, that's what I've got too.

T+1.10 Scobee: Roger, go at throttle up. [boosters at 104%]

T+1.13 Smith: Uh Oh.

T+1.13: LOSS OF ALL DATA

End of tape.

:(
 
toy_soldier said:
Off topic but how come your avatar is the wise guy one and your title is hitman? Ive seen a couple like this :confused:
It's from when we had a huge chairty post donation. All people who donated got to keep their avatars and privelages such as MM. I had around 1300 posts when I donated, hense the wise guy one.
 
"There was a television movie, Challenger made in 1990 about the disaster. [5]. At that time, it was made against the objections of the astronaut's families"

That sucks!

Also sucks that I missed this....
 
The_Dark_Side said:
the Shuttle wasn't the vehicle the designers wanted.purse strings dictated what we (the world) ended up with.

surely you mean for the first time? ;)

/sits back with popcorn and soft drinks.

Hehe, well aren't the Chinese Space Agency going back to the moon? Personally I think within my lifetime I will see a small outpost on the moon, nothing big, just a few people, and if not people, remote observatories and the like.

I hope, but then I've been reading too much science fiction :)
 
VaderDSL said:
Hehe, well aren't the Chinese Space Agency going back to the moon? Personally I think within my lifetime I will see a small outpost on the moon, nothing big, just a few people, and if not people, remote observatories and the like.

I hope, but then I've been reading too much science fiction :)

Apparently they will be sending a probe into lunar orbit to get some flashy pictures of the moon. :) They'll be the fourth I believe.
 
Several thoughts on the Shuttle...

The shuttle is and always will be experimental, its only the public that with their limited attention span regard things as routine. For the thousands of engineers each flight is full of things that go wrong and need fixing/improving. Getting into space is not easy, we've only been doing for a farly short time.

Reagans speech was one of the best speeches i've ever heard.

The shuttle design was always a compromise and in many ways was a disaster waiting to happen. The C4 program went into it briefly but NASA had to get additional funding from the Airforce/CIA so it was build to retrieve satilites and bring them back to Earth, although this has never been done. They also build a "Secret" launch facility (might be at Vandenburg). It also neeeded the ability to "fly" off track so it could land elsewhere in case it had sensitive stuff on board. This meant wings, and a larger payload and essentially became a cargo tug. It also looked cool and bought into the publics idea of a space plane.

The newer designs they are coming up with now go "back" to the Apollo era, mounting the crew capsule on the top of the rocket, and having seperate rockets for cargo.

Even though spaceflight is dangerous if i got the call i would be on it liek a shot.
 
Space Travel will never be safe - i think 1 in 100 is pretty good - even 1 in 60 isnt bad.

You're talking about strapping people to a giant firework fill with lots of explosives, then igniting one end. Then surving in space for a week or so, exposed to massive temperature fluxes, then ploughing back through thousands of degrees of re-entry heat and landing an unpowered glider weighing about 100 tons.

Its never going to be risk free....
 
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