Don't know what to say about it other that probably what has been said already, but I couldn't help but think back to 3rd grade as I watched Challenger unfold in Sister Pachomia's class at St. Leo's grade school. When I got home, I remember my mom crying. She's a 4th grade teacher, and I think Christa McCulla was too. I will say this..... the knowledge we gain from space exploration justifies the dangers. NASA will identify what went wrong, fix it, and we will move on. That is what Columbia, Challenger, and Apollo 1 would want. We can discuss this, but I will request it locked if anyone gets immature or just stupid. Let's be adults and give this topic the respect it deserves.

STS-107
STS-51L

Together forever in a common bond...... advancement and benefit of humanity.

 

I'll start out by mentioning the role of haste and cost-cutting in all three disasters. The Apollo 1 capsule was considered a lemon by crew and engineers. It had a lot of problems, but NASA management didn't want to go to the expense of having it redone, or take the time to do so. Back then we were in a race to the Moon. The o-rings that failed in the Challenger disaster were known to be out-of-spec, but were not replaced because Morton Thiokol would have had to eat the cost, and the launch would have been pushed back. Now we're finding out that the main fuel tank used for the STS-107 flight was considered obsolete...

 

As mentioned above, i really font know what to say except god bless the soles of who's lives were tragically lost on december 1, 2003. So much goes through your mind when you see those images on tv or in pictures, or in real life. Man, imagine what was going through their minds when, whatever you want to call it, had happened. i really dont know what to say, but i felt like i had to say something, my heart goes out to their Family & Friends. God Bless Them.

 

The former Dean of the School of Business where I went to college is the brother of one of Morton Thiokol's head engineers for the booster rockets that were on the Challenger. In one of our classes he used this as an example on making business decisions and how bad decisions and ignoring good sound advice can cause disasters. The night before the Challenger was to lift off his brother was on a conference call with two other MT engineers and a bunch of MT bean counters talking with officials at NASA. To date no space shuttle had been launched in the such cold temperatures and NASA wanted to know the risks of launching in the cold. His brother, along with the other two engineers, pleaded with NASA not to launch the next day because the O-Rings were known to be brittle at low temperatures and they feared a fuel leak. The engineers were asked to leave the room and it was the bean counters and NASA that decided to launch...ignoring the recommendations of the experts that built the rocket. Why did they decide to launch? NASA was under preasure from congress as to where all the money was going in the space program, Challenger had been delayed almost a year from its original launch date. MT was under preasure from competitors who wanted to build cheaper rockets and did not want to jeopardize their relationship with NASA. Had they delayed the launch would have been put off by more than a month. We all know the results.

 

Like they say at the FAA: change only comes after the body count.

 

Still, even though we've had these three tragedies, that's three in how many attempts? Since Columbia's inaugural mission in 1981, there have been 113 attempted missions with that design of vehicle alone, with two unsucessful missions. The "bean counters" will privately take pride in a 98.2% success rate. Of course, you cannot put a number on human life. I guess that's what the powers that be get paid to do...... remove their emotions from business decisions (sound familiar? "It's not personal Sonny, it's strictly business"). In a way, you can almost justify the psychology of it, because if they worried all the time, we'd have never stepped on the moon yet. I think we can all agree that it goes against every rule in every book ever written for a human to be in outter space. So in that vein, the element of danger has to be with every flight. But that's what this country is founded uppon..... finding answers to questions never thought possible. Adventure into the unknown. Advancing the human race. In my opinion, astronauts are no different than our armed forces. When called upon, they put their own lives at risk to protect and advance our civillian life. They are heroes.

 

98.2% is a pretty lousy success rate. Even if the missions weren't man-rated, it would suck. Maybe you forgot to factor in the capital losses. Save a penny on Monday, lose a million dollars on Friday--that doesn't make good business sense.

 

There has been evidence to show that sometimes NASA is a little hasty with "getting the launch" underway... I think they should slow down and do it right, perhaps there are too many people that want stuff done in there lifetime and sometimes forget whats important.

 

Against what standard? Is anything more attainable? You, yourself might be "reaching for the stars" with anything higher in such a risky endeavor.

David Liske

 

NASA has its own specifications for man-rated equipment, that is equipment that's rated to carry human beings into space. IIRC the standard is "5 nines" (99.999%), or one failure in 100,000 as an acceptable failure rate.

It's not like we don't posess the technology to make spaceflight any safer--we do. The only thing that's causing these failures that result in loss of human life has been people who decided to cut corners. The Apollo 1 capsule had faulty wiring that the vendor failed to repair; the Apollo 13 oxygen tank heater was damaged, and the vendor failed to replace it; the Challenger solid booster had temperature limitations that the vendor failed to alert the launch team of. IMHO there's no excuse for putting human life unnecessarily at risk, especially when it's to save a buck.