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The soccer ball that survived the Challenger explosion

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Re: The soccer ball that survived the Challenger explosion

#61

Post by ddoolin »

mncharity wrote: post #48

> The failure allowed heated, pressurized propellants to leak out onto the external fuel tank, causing catastrophic structural failure. Seventy-three seconds into its 10th flight, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart, killing all seven members of its crew. It was 11:39 a.m. Sigh. It's perhaps silly of me in an age of Bush, Obama, and Trump, but I'm saddened to see this line repeated yet again, 30 years on. Perhap…

Or, given the overall tone of the piece, she didn't feel it necessary to go into those details. I'm sure there are plenty of other details that also went glossed over. Your own tone implies they're lying for a possibly nefarious reason -- what is it? If I'm right, it might be more accurate to point out how she failed to mention the engineer's warnings to NASA and other supervisors about the high risk of failure of the gasket(s), as that, to me, makes them look markedly worse than the astronauts surviving the breakup.

I'm sure it's harrowing to have 2 and a half minutes to contemplate your inevitable death and try fruitlessly to stop it (and even for us to read about it) but I don't think it's nefarious to leave that bit out so much as some degree of respect to the families.

Re: The soccer ball that survived the Challenger explosion

#62

Post by kjs3 »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #18
sidlls wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing, the smells and sounds, and how my teacher rushed to turn off the television we were all watching the launch on once it was clear what was happening. Kids crying, not understanding what was happening, the feel and look of the carpet, wall decorations, everything. It's the most vivid memory of childhood I have. I don't think I'll ever forget it. I couldn't…

> how my teacher rushed to turn off the television we were all watching the launch on once it was clear what was happening It’s funny, this is what causes trauma... if you interrupt the stress reaction and try to make it go away, you hold onto it. If animals are allowed to go through their full stress cycle, they forget the trauma.

Because humans behave like animals.

Re: The soccer ball that survived the Challenger explosion

#63

Post by b1c837696ba28b »

madrox wrote: post #34
runciblespoon wrote: post #7

"the solid rocket boosters ignited and somewhere in the right booster, a 0.280-inch-wide O-ring failed due to the cold." The 'solid rocket boosters' being constructed in segments because they had to be transported by rail from Utah. They had to be constructed in that state as part of the deal to get the politicians to vote in the finances.

The post hoc ergo propter hoc going on in this comment and its responses are wild. The O-ring failed because it was a bad O-ring, and no one in positions that matters appreciated it was a bad O-ring. Politicizing it into a witch hunt to make congress look bad doesn't do anyone favors. It just feeds existing rage.

There is a book, "Challenger: A Major Malfunction: A True Story of Politics, Greed, and the Wrong Stuff". There is also Feynman's report. Recommended reading!

Re: The soccer ball that survived the Challenger explosion

#64

Post by kjs3 »

mncharity wrote: post #48

> The failure allowed heated, pressurized propellants to leak out onto the external fuel tank, causing catastrophic structural failure. Seventy-three seconds into its 10th flight, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart, killing all seven members of its crew. It was 11:39 a.m. Sigh. It's perhaps silly of me in an age of Bush, Obama, and Trump, but I'm saddened to see this line repeated yet again, 30 years on. Perhap…

If any of the crew had actually survived the whole event, maybe you'd have a point. All I can get from your response is the deep desire for tragedy porn that at least some of the astronauts lived long enough to hit the water. Frankly, the distinction is sick.

Re: The soccer ball that survived the Challenger explosion

#65

Post by jedberg »

blahedo wrote: post #53
jedberg wrote: post #6

> You may not know it, but you carry some of his words with you in your own earthly exploration, printed in every U.S. passport. This whole article was fantastic, but this was the coolest part for me. To learn that his quote is on every passport. I've never read the quotes on my passport before, but now I have.

I agree. It's on the biometric passports but not the previous generation, on p28 (and is abbreviated from the full quote printed in the article): "Every generation has the obligation to free men's minds for a look at new worlds ... to look out from a higher plateau than the last generation." --Ellison S. Onizuka The background on that page is a palm tree and a silhouette that might be Diamond Head, but the facing pag…

> but the facing page is a space scene (not to scale)

Sorry, but that made me laugh. Now I kinda want to see it to scale. :)

Re: The soccer ball that survived the Challenger explosion

#66

Post by awad »

rconti wrote: post #13
jedberg wrote: post #6

> You may not know it, but you carry some of his words with you in your own earthly exploration, printed in every U.S. passport. This whole article was fantastic, but this was the coolest part for me. To learn that his quote is on every passport. I've never read the quotes on my passport before, but now I have.

As much as I hate the ESPN sports complex, everything I've seen from the ESPN documentaries has been fantastic.

What about the ESPN sports complex do you dislike?

Re: The soccer ball that survived the Challenger explosion

#67

Post by joering2 »

ridgeguy wrote: post #59

On Challenger's last day, I had met very early that morning with a couple of angel investors who signed a funding commitment for my first company. Went home, watched Challenger explode. An hour later, angel investors called to say "never mind". Watching Challenger blow up hurt worse. Especially in following months when failure analysis showed it could have been avoided by launching within the allowable temperature wi…

They probably did you a favor by not being forced to deal with them down the road.

Unless you were as an engineer directly on Challenger O-Rings, I don't see any reason why anyone would cancel their financial commitment toward a startup project, because of this obvious tragedy.

Re: The soccer ball that survived the Challenger explosion

#69

Post by rconti »

awad wrote: post #66
rconti wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I hate the ESPN sports complex, everything I've seen from the ESPN documentaries has been fantastic.

What about the ESPN sports complex do you dislike?

Primarily the feedback loop of cable companies "having to" carry ESPN/ESPN2/etc at vastly higher rates than any other network on television, resulting in the ability to bid up TV rights for all major sporting events. As long as the rights are expensive, the network will be expensive, and vice versa.

I generally enjoy sports, but don't care about the endless commentary and talk shows that populate ESPN 24/7, nor do I like the fact that their properties drive up everyone's cable bill by $20-$30 per month, an order of magnitude more than any other network.

It's one of the primary reasons I don't have pay TV; I wish I could allocate my pay TV dollars to the programming I find more valuable.

Re: The soccer ball that survived the Challenger explosion

#70

Post by Gibbon1 »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #55
nashashmi wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it wasn't warning fatigue then. It might be overthinking fatigue. I guess missions have gotten delayed before for so many reasons and this time they just got tired of "doing it again."

This is a well studied problem, it wasn't overthinking, it was "go fever", specifically in the form of "Normalization of Deviance" [1]. Morton-Thiokol and NASA set criteria for safety margins on the Shuttle system. And the Shuttle kept on violating those safety margins again and again. Instead of grounding the fleet or studying the problem further or attempting to ameliorate the problem the safety margins were loosen…

> that a Shuttle loss was a 1 in 100,000 probability

I'm not sure how anyone could say that with a straight face.

Serious events happen with commercial aircraft at a rate of about 1 in 1M. Figure that a rocket is inherently 100X more dangerous. And that the lack of repetitive experience with rockets bumps the risk another 1:100. Meaning you build a lot of aircraft and fly them all the time you get good at knowing where the design holes are. Also consider that each serious failure when mitigated improves the odds of the rest of the fleet. You don't get that when you're only flying a dozen flights a year.

Est risk: 1X10-6 X 100 X 100 gives 1% chance of loss.

Notable the Apollo program flew 15 flights 3 had serious failures[1][2] and 1 near loss event (Apollo 13). For consideration the Saturn V was a well tested conservative design which the Shuttle was not.

[1] Apollo 6 and 13 had early engine shut downs due to failures of the S-II engines.

[2] Apollo 12 lightning strike took out the command module computer.

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