_Columbia_: the preliminary report. (1 Viewer)

[Jack Briggs]

No, the spacecraft is accelerating during ascent, all while the atmosphere is thinning as the spacecraft makes it way toward space. Reentry is completely the reverse scenario: A spacecraft traveling at 17,500 mph must brake itself in the heavy atmosphere as it descends. Doing so heats the atmosphere surrounding the spacecraft to the point where it turns into plasma (at 3,500 degrees F).

 

[Jeff Gatie]

Speed of exit from the atmoshere would be slower than the speed of reentry, so heat caused by friction would be much less. Also, exit from the atmosphere would mean the heat would decrease as the atmosphere got thinner (all other things, speed etc. being equal). Reentry would mean increasing temperatures as the atmosphere got thicker (until the speed bleeds off, that is).

Oops, Jack got to it before me (glad I got it basically correct).

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

What frustrates me most about the space program is that the public seems to expect NASA to be able to perform miracles and make an inherently dangerous activity safe, while at the same time, the administration keeps lopping its budget down to nothing. Space travel will never be completely safe, especially using antiquated technology like the shuttle with a rocket propelled take off. There will be losses, and they will be catastrophic.

The only way to help prevent these types of accidents is not tracking down the cause of one failure, but applying the necessary funding to engineer machines that can fly into space and back with less stress being put on the fuselage.

Rather than spending billions delving into destructive Earth based activities (which I can't elaborate on here), there needs to be a realistic budget established for the space agency, in the tens or hundreds of trillions of dollars, that would not only pave the way for safer space flight, but also create millions of jobs at the same time. There needs to be a clear commitment to the future of the human race, a true world leadership role. Try doing something constructive for a change, rather than chest beating or expecting NASA to operate old machinery with a flawless safety record.

 

[Pascal A]

I remember that one of the advantages of Columbia was that it was an Extended Duration Orbiter (EDO) so it could be outfitted with more crew life sustaining commodities like water and breathing air (along with waste containment) for the two week long missions (Columbia, and later Endeavour, were the orbiters we used most often for the old Spacelab missions). I'm sure that this also figured into the payload capacity. I haven't worked on a manned spaceflight payload in six years though (I'm in GSFC), so I'm not up on what's been happening in the shuttle world.