From: Greg Burch (gregburch@gregburch.net)
Date: Sat Feb 01 2003 - 16:14:03 MST
As those of you who know me personally will be aware, I've been in shock
all day. Unfortunately, I have a trial Monday morning, so I've had to
work through my pain. A few preliminary thoughts, though ...
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-extropians@extropy.org
> [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org] On Behalf Of Damien Broderick
> Sent: Saturday, February 01, 2003 11:40 AM
> To: extropians@extropy.org
> Subject: RE: shuttle breaks up on re-entry
>
> Officials are warning anyone who finds fragments to stay well
> clear, due to `lethal toxic fumes' from unburned fuel. Well,
> hmm, that sounds implausible. Is this just an attempt to
> prevent looting/souveniring of the flight recorder etc? Might
> they have been carrying something nasty and undisclosable?
No way. There's a real reason for this, since the hypergolic fuel of
the thrusters and main OMS engines is nasty, nasty stuff. But the truth
is that most, if not all of that will have burned up in the
disintegration of the bird. I'm sure at least one of the large
secondary puffs of smoke one can see in the video is one of the OMS pods
cooking off.
On the other hand, I think your first guess was right: Warnings like
this were the first idea that popped into the NASA PAOs to KEEP PEOPLE
AWAY from wreckage so it can be examined in pristine condition for
forensic purposes, and to cut down on pilfering. The debris field is
over a hundred miles long, from what I heard driving home from the
office just now, and some of the people in that area are, to put it
mildly, not too bright.
> Swifter abandonment of the Space Station?
Not abandonment. The institutional inertia behind ISS is immense.
Abandoning it now would mean basically killing NASA as it exists today.
For better or worse, ISS is the primary work of NASA now. However, the
program will be modified. IIRC, an irony is that Columbia was the least
capable of the Shuttle fleet because it was the heaviest. I know some
of its refits over the years lightened it, though. I do know it had the
lightest work load in the ISS schedule.
> Winding down of the clunky shuttle program, finally?
Again, not any time soon. The inertia behind the shuttle system is hard
to comprehend for people who haven't seen all the pieces of the system
and the huge array of support systems developed for it. But efforts to
replace the shuttle will perforce be strengthened.
> A military satellite detected a heat spike. What exploded on board?
Way too early to tell, but the train of telemetry data indicates a
cascading failure in the left wing area, the same area impacted by what
looked like ice falling from the ET. Heat spikes are consistent with
secondary combustion/explosion of the fuel on board, especially the OMS
pods.
Many, perhaps most, of us on the list find the current status of the
manned space program to be wrong-headed. But as extropians we can all
admire the courage and vision of the people who ride rockets into space.
Losing any of them is a special loss for us. Gone are seven of the best
of the best.
Sadly, from Space City, USA,
Greg Burch
Vice-President, Extropy Institute
http://www.gregburch.net
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