OH NO! SHUTTLE EXPLOSION!

POWERED by HONDA

POWERED by HONDA

Legendary Member
Joined
14 April 2001
Messages
2,326
Location
Sandy Eggo, CA
This is the 2nd time I wake up to tragedy on the news! (9/11 was the other) The space shuttle exploded during approach!!!

My thoughts and prayers are with the friends and family of the crew members and all others involved.

I can't believe this crap...
 
And its really close to home here also.. my prayers go out as well
frown.gif
 
Sad, yes. However, it is no different than an airliner crashing into the mountains on the other side of the world, and nobody posts about that here. Everyone will die, how, nobody knows.
 
I saw the re-entry over the SF Bay Area. The Oakland hills were fogged, so I drove to El Cerro Road in Alamo where I had seen it last time. Found a gap in the clouds and voila! Most impressive.

Driving home at 6:00 AM, I was joking with my family how we would get home before they did. Little did I know...

I sure hope those people still orbiting in the Space Station aren't stranded too long while the engineers figure out what happened. My guess is that something went wrong in the attitude control, which is critical during re-entry. These days, one can't dismiss the possibility of terrorism, which at 200,000 feet would have to be sabotage rather than a missile.
 
people are going nuts over here at work...yes on saturday. I work for a Gov. contractor...some very very sad news. I always follow the space program with much enthusiasm...saw the Challenger live as well, but this is too sad.

Hangs head...silence

I pray for their souls and families.
 
Any loss of human life is tragic. In addition, this is definitely another significant setback in the space program. I hope the scientists are able to determine what happened, and how to prevent it in the future.
 
My thoughts go out to all the families etc... this is truly a terrible thing.

I have to go into work now as we (the newspaper) are putting out a special edition to cover this tragic event..
 
Very sad indeed. News article summarizing the incident:

-----------------
Columbia shatters on re-entry; crew presumed dead

HOUSTON, Texas (CNN) --In a shower of flaming debris, the space shuttle Columbia, with its seven-member crew, shattered about 38 miles over east Texas Saturday morning as it headed toward Kennedy Space Center in Florida to land.

All seven aboard -- six Americans and Israel's first astronaut -- are presumed dead.

Flags at the White House and outside NASA headquarters were lowered to half staff in tribute to the crew.

NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe met with the astronauts' family members at about 11:30 a.m. ET, according to a NASA spokeswoman.

Shuttle commander Rick D. Husband, Pilot William C. McCool, Payload Commander Michael P. Anderson, Mission Specialists David M. Brown, Kalpana Chawla and Laurel Clark and Israel's first astronaut, Ilan Ramon, were on board.

President Bush was briefed at Camp David before cutting short his stay and returning to the White House.

The Bush administration was preparing to convene a "domestic event" conference among all domestic and military agencies that may be involved in the next step.

No indication of terrorism
An administration official said the shuttle's altitude made it "highly unlikely" that the shuttle fell victim to a terrorist act. FBI also were quick to discount the possibility of foul play or terrorism. (Full story)

"We have no information at this time that indicates that this was a terrorism incident," said Gordon Johndroe, press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security. "Obviously, the investigation is just beginning, but that is what we know now."

Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge went to the White House shortly after hearing the report.

Television news crews and amateur videographers who hoped to see the shuttle streak towards the landing site, instead saw trails of flaming debris as it broke into pieces.

In Nacogdoches, Texas, police reported "numerous pieces of debris" both inside the city limits and in Nacogdoches County.

Sowell said officers and city and county employees were being dispatched to stand by the debris until the arrival of FBI and NASA representatives. The debris field is believed to be very large.

Residents as far east as Shreveport, Louisiana, reported seeing and feeling an apparent explosion.

"As we seen [Columbia] coming over, we seen a lot of light and it looked like debris and stuff was coming off the shuttle," Benjamin Laster, of Kemp, Texas, told CNN.

"We seen large masses of pieces coming off from the shuttle as it was coming by," Laster said. "The house kind-of shook and we noticed a sonic boom ... and then we seen a big continuous puff of vapor or smoke stream come out and then we noticed a big chunk go over."

Search-and-rescue teams from the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, area were alerted and residents were urged to stay away from any possible debris from the shuttle, which may be hazardous, said NASA public affairs officer James Hartfield.

NASA officials at the Johnson Space Center in Houston said they last had contact with the shuttle about 9 a.m. EST, and it had been expected to touch down at about 9:16 a.m. EST.

Steve Petrovich, a police officer in Palestine, Texas, said he heard "a rumble and boom" at about 8 a.m. CDT (9 a.m. EST).

Amy Townsend, of Carthage, said she heard a loud boom that shook her house. She said there were two or three loud noises that lasted about a minute and that she saw a cloud of smoke outside her house.

Don Farmer of Lufkin, outside of Dallas, said he heard loud noises that sounded like dynamite exploding, and he thought it was an aircraft breaking the sound barrier.

Dozens of people, including several officers, reported seeing "a ball of fire," Bowie County Sheriff's office dispatcher Jodine Langford said. "They saw it go out and then break into pieces," she said. (Witnesses' reports)

Officials said no tracking data were available.

The Israeli Embassy in Washington has dispatched a small team to Florida to be with Col. Ilan Ramon's wife, four children and his parents, a spokesman for the Israeli embassy told CNN.

Ramon's family members had traveled from Israel to watch the planned return of the shuttle to the Kennedy Space Center Saturday morning.

Ramon's father was at a television station watching the unfolding coverage. Ramon, 48, took part in the 1981 bombing of the nuclear reactor in Iraq.

Former Senator John Glenn, who was the first American to orbit the Earth and returned to space at age 77, told The Associated Press that he had he met Husband while he was training for his 1998 mission. He said he was watching the landing on television with his wife. (Full story)

House Democratic leaders, who were holding a meeting in Pennsylvania, ended the session with a prayer for the seven astronauts.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those on board," House Democratic Leader Nacy Pelosi told The Associated Press. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the American people who place so much hope and who associate themselves with the courage and the bravery of those who venture into space."

Columbia is the oldest of NASA's shuttle fleet, first launched in 1981. It was on its 28th mission. The shuttle underwent an extensive, 17-month overhaul that began in September, 1999.

It rejoined the shuttle fleet in February, 2001 and flew its first mission after the upgrades in March, 2002.

Regards.
 
As an addendum to the above, Time magazine posted some plausible reasons as to why the shuttle may have broken up:

Time Magazine Excerpts:

----------------------
'Aerodynamics May Explain Space Shuttle Breakup'

TIME science correspondent Jeffrey Kluger examines the possible causes and consequences of the Columbia disaster

Seven astronauts, including the first Israeli in space, were lost Saturday when the space shuttle Columbia broke apart in the skies of Texas. The incident occurred at an altitude of some 200,000 feet, shortly after reentry and 15 minutes before Columbia had been scheduled to land at Cape Canaveral. TIME science correspondent Jeffrey Kluger explains some of the possible causes and consequences of the accident:

TIME.com: What are the possible scenarios that could have caused this disastrous accident on the shuttle's reentry into the Earth's atmosphere?

Jeffrey Kluger: There are three possible scenarios that explain this event. The first, which I believe is the likeliest explanation, would be an aerodynamic structural breakup of the shuttle caused by it rolling at the wrong angle. Remember, after reentry, the shuttle is descending without power, which means astronauts at the controls can't compensate for a loss of attitude by using the engines, they can only do so using the flaps. And that's extremely hard. Astronauts describe piloting the shuttle on reentry as like trying to fly a brick with wings. It's very difficult to operate, and even more so to correct any problems.

A second explanation might be a loss of tiles leading to a burn-through. (The shuttle is covered with heat-resistant tiles to protect the craft and those inside it from burning up in the scorching temperatures caused by the friction of reentry.) But I think that explanation is unlikely, because the tile-loss would have had to have been quite substantial for that to become possible. You'll hear a lot in the next few days about things falling off the shuttle during liftoff. But it often happens that they lose a few tiles, and I'd be surprised if it happened on a scale that could make an accident of this type possible.

The last option is some kind of engine failure leading to fuel ignition. Although the main tanks are mostly empty, there should still be fuel left in the maneuvering tanks. But probably not enough for an explosion that could have caused this breakup.

And just in case anybody was wondering, you can almost certainly rule out terrorism as a cause. This incident occurred well above the range of shoulder-fired missiles. And it would probably be easier to sneak a bomb onto Air Force One than to get one onto the shuttle.

TIME.com: So is reentry the Achilles heel of the shuttle program?

JK: No, the Achilles heel has always been liftoff, and the dangers posed by massive fuel load involved. Reentry has, of course, always been a difficult part of the space program. But this is, in fact, our first fatal accident on reentry. Apollo 13 is remembered as our most difficult ever reentry, but the ship and crew survived. The Soviets lost a crew on reentry in 1970 after an oxygen leak that caused the cosmonauts to suffocate on the way down. Reentry is a very difficult process, but the Russians mastered it in 1961 and we did the same a few years later.

TIME.com: Are shuttle crews trained to respond to the scenarios you've described?

JK: Yes, they're trained to deal with loss of attitude on reentry, and a range of other emergencies. But astronauts are not trained to deal with situations that result in certain death, because that would be a bit like training for what you might do if your car went over a cliff — in some situations there simply isn't anything you can do. One irony, though, is that NASA hadn't trained astronauts to deal with the sort of quadruple failure that occurred in Apollo 13, because they assumed that such a scenario would result in certain death. But the astronauts survived.

TIME.com: What are the immediate implications for the space program of Saturday's disaster?

JK: Following the precedent of the Challenger disaster in 1986, it's unlikely that NASA will undertake any further shuttle missions or any other manned space flights for the next two years. One immediate problem, though, is the International Space Station, which currently has a crew of three on board. They might consider one further flight to bring that crew home — the other option would be for them to return aboard a Russian Soyuz craft, which isn't the most comfortable or the safest ride. Beyond that, however, the space station is likely to be left unoccupied for a long time. NASA won't want to use the shuttle again until it can establish the cause of today's accident, and fix it. Now that we've lost two shuttles out of a fleet of five, it's even conceivable that the shuttle won't fly again. The shuttle was built as a space truck, and then the International Space Station was built to give it something to do. Both programs are likely to suffer as a result of this disaster.

Regards.
 
I was watching CNN coverage and Dan Rather (sp?) was taking phone calls from viewers when debris were starting to be discovered on the ground. A moron supposedly named Mike Wells was beginning to describe what had happened... then he says something like "the debris look like Ba Ba Bui's teeth." This is an apparent crank call. Dan didn't know what was happening yet so the moron said on live television "you are an idiot!"

I can't believe people would make prank calls during something like this... what the hell is wrong with people these days?
 
Our good friends in Iraq claim it's God's retribution. You have to love their relational prowess.

AndyVecsy wrote:
.... it is no different than an airliner crashing into the mountains on the other side of the world, and nobody posts about that here. Everyone will die, how, nobody knows.


Andy, I am surprised you feel this is no different than a passenger plane crash. If that were true you could take that contention one step further and say that many more people die in car crashes than in plane crashes and nobody posts about it on NSXPrime. The importance of a tragedy like this is not only about the loss of human life. The space program is symbolic of our country, hence one of the reasons the Air and Space Musuem is the most popular musuem in the country. Additionally, it seems that significant news events are frequently posted on the forums.

[This message has been edited by Sig (edited 01 February 2003).]
 
If it was CNN, it wasn't Dan Rather. If it was Dan Rather, it must have been CBS.

I'm also surprised at Andy's sentiments. Yes, all life is precious, but to say these deaths are no different than any air accident is off the mark in my opinion.

-Jim
 
Man, Just another Tradgedy. My heart goes out to Victims and their Families. I truly beleive the best way to mourn is to laugh, So here is a Song picking on you 747 Winged Civics out there. Enjoy.

Yo, VTEC, let's kick it,
Rice rice baby, rice rice baby
Allright, stop, collorborate and listen,
Rice is back with a brand new invention,
Chopped springs hug tha road tightly,
6 inch exhaust tip flows loud nightly,
Will it ever stop? Yo, I don't know,
Hit my neon lights and I'll glow,
Too tha extreme my car looks like a candle,
And tha paint looks like it was done by a vandal,
Dance, I got a speaker that booms,
This ain't a car, it's a mobile sound room,
Bass, listen to the melody,
If it was louder, yo it would be a felony,
Love it or leave it, you can't gain way,
With my Type-R sticker I'll lose you any day,
If there's a problem, yo I'll solve it,
Check out my rims while my front drive revolves it,
Rice rice baby, rice rice baby

Now my suspension is jumpin,
My bumper hits tha ground, but who cares, I'm bumpin,
Quick to tha point, I ain't fakin,
Fryin Camaros like a pound of bacon,
Burning em, cause I'm quick and nimble,
You can't fade me and my VTEC symbol,
Cause you're a poser in your souped up 5.0,
I'm gonna roll, hey where's that 5.0,
Rollin, in my 2 point 0,
Leaning to tha right so I can shift on tha go,
The girlies all say hey you,
But could I see? No, cause the spoiler blocked my view,
So I kept on, pursuing to the next stop,
The girls looked hot wearing their bikinis,
I saw a few chumps driving stock Lamborghinis,
Jealous, cause I'm driving mine,
I'm ready punks, so watch for my nine,
You lookin at me funny, I'll cap you next time,
If there's a problem, yo I'll solve it,
Check out my rims while my front drive revolves it,
Rice rice baby, rice rice baby

Take heed, cause I'm a Honda poet,
Acura's on the scene in case you didn't know it,
My exhaust tip created all the bass sound,
Rumbles enough to put holes in tha ground,
Cause my rides style is reeeeeeeeeeeeal,
With an exhaust tome you can feeeeeeeel,
2 foot spoiler wit a 6 inch exhaust tip,
Yo, it's a helluva concept,
So fast, all tha eights say damn,
If rice was a drug, I'd sell it by tha gram,
If there's a problem, yo I'll solve it,
Check out my rims while my front drive revolves it,
Rice rice baby, rice rice baby

------------------
"So your Honda Civic has 1.6 Litres, Yet my Mountain Dew bottle has 2 Litres."
 
My heart goes out to their family and friends.

I was standing next to Challenger, close enough to touch it, just over a year before it exploded. My b-day is Jan 27th, the following day I always say a silent prayer for those who risk going into space.

NSXaholic wrote:
A second explanation might be a loss of tiles leading to a burn-through. (The shuttle is covered with heat-resistant tiles to protect the craft and those inside it from burning up in the scorching temperatures caused by the friction of reentry.) But I think that explanation is unlikely, because the tile-loss would have had to have been quite substantial for that to become possible.

My grandfather was one of the chief chemists with a specialty in ceramics and helped design those tiles to withstand those temperatures working for JPL, Rockwell, and Caltech that I can recall. That's how I got the backdoor access when I was younger and how I became such a "techie."

Unfortunately, he has Alzheimers bad enough to not be able to talk and can hardly recognize me or his younger brother (who takes care of him in San Jose, CA). He would have been able to break down that explanation more otherwise
frown.gif


Sunny
 
Originally posted by NSXism:
Man, Just another Tradgedy. My heart goes out to Victims and their Families. I truly beleive the best way to mourn is to laugh, So here is a Song picking on you 747 Winged Civics out there. Enjoy....

Click to expand...

Talk about bad timing!
What's wrong with you?
While I do believe in the sentiment of finding light-hearted humor in tragedy, your post is just--WRONG!

What on earth does your post have to do with the gravity of this thread?!
 
My sister's boyfriend's friend's father was on the shuttle. It's been a rather sad day.
 
well, i take some solace in thinking they all must have been satisfied, having made it into space and doing what they loved and worked so hard to accomplish.

im concerned about the future of the space program, which had already been relegated to low priority poor funding status.
 
Hopefully they didn't suffer long.

The space program WILL go on. It has to. There have been horrible things happen in other means of travel and exploration but that can't stop progress.

------------------
ALL NSX
92 RED/BLACK 5-SPEED
 
Originally posted by Jimbo:
If it was CNN, it wasn't Dan Rather. If it was Dan Rather, it must have been CBS.

I'm also surprised at Andy's sentiments. Yes, all life is precious, but to say these deaths are no different than any air accident is off the mark in my opinion.

-Jim
Click to expand...

I stand corrected. It was on CBS that this prank call happened. I was flipping between CBS and CNN and got confused.
 

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