back to article Shuttle Columbia's near-miss: Why we should always expect the unexpected in space

Twenty-five years ago, Space Shuttle Columbia launched the Chandra X-ray observatory and nearly ended in catastrophe. As the then-ascent flight director John Shannon observed: "Yikes. We don't need another one of those." Space Shuttle Columbia was launched from Kennedy Space Center's LC-39B on the morning of July 23, 1999. Two …

  1. Vikingforties

    Understatement there.

    Forget the "Yikes!". I'd go for a "Gadzooks!!" after that situation.

    1. Whiskers

      Re: Understatement there.

      Or even 'Crikey'

      1. Ali Dodd

        Re: Understatement there.

        Crivens?

        1. Blofeld's Cat

          Re: Understatement there.

          Zounds?

    2. Mark 85

      Re: Understatement there.

      Methins something a bti stronger like "Holy Crap" or equivalent.

      1. Mrs Spartacus

        Re: Understatement there.

        Being English, I'd have gone with "I say !" delivered with a Kenneth Williams drawl.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: Understatement there.

          Good try but the wrong actor.

  2. Neil Barnes Silver badge
    Coat

    Murphy's law:

    If it can go wrong, it will.

    Sod's law: if it can't go wrong, it still will.

    (Cole's law: chopped cabbage)

    1. Blofeld's Cat

      Re: Murphy's law:

      "Murphy was an optimist" - O’Toole’s Commentary

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Murphy's law:

      If it goes wrong it will go wrong at the worst possible time.

  3. Bebu
    Windows

    "always expect the unexpected"

    Reminded me of a remark of Prof. Geoffrey Loftus from the "Doctor in the House" TV series (not in the books) which I cannot clearly recall and was, I think, in response to one of Stuart Clark's more bizarre diagnoses.

    Something along the lines "the common is commonplace, the unusual is to be expected, the rare is as rare as rocking horse shit."

    In space it would appear even rocking horse excreta have to be accounted for. :)

  4. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    So, a new Apollo XIII in the making ?

    All these technical details could well make another gripping spaceflight story, even when you know the ending.

  5. -maniax-
    Mushroom

    That wasn't the only issue they had with the Shuttles

    NSF Spaceflight on YT posted a video yesterday that discusses this incident as well as a number of others that happened during the Shuttle program

    It seems miraculous that only 2 Shuttles lost

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZptbxaHBIA

    1. Marty McFly Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: That wasn't the only issue they had with the Shuttles

      Rocket science isn't easy.

      1. Excused Boots Silver badge

        Re: That wasn't the only issue they had with the Shuttles

        “ Rocket science isn't easy.”

        To be fair,’rocket science’, is trivially easy. ‘Rocket engineering’, though, now that’s an entirely different thing.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: That wasn't the only issue they had with the Shuttles

          I have (had?) a t shirt from NASA which has all of the important rocket science equations on it. The engineering is by comparison, an art form.

          I have a fantastic book on the scientific legacy of the spare shuttle; which once you get past the first few pages of flag waving is a thoroughly deep dive into the development of the hardware and the many missions that flew on it, warts and all. Into the Black by Rowland White does an excellent deep dive into the problems encountered by Columbia over it's whole lifetime.

          As amazing a set of results as it has produced, the more one reads about it, it is a wonder how they got away with two hull losses in it's lifetime. However, that said, the art of refining that engineering and learning from what was wrong is incredibly valuable.

          Looking at the failings of Boeing-McDonnell Douglas in particular here.

        2. david 12 Silver badge

          Re: That wasn't the only issue they had with the Shuttles

          To be fair,’rocket science’, is trivially easy.

          At the time the phrase was invented, fuel development was cutting-edge chemistry, and rocket science was the specification and characterization of rocket fuels. Rocket Science was cutting-edge science, and it wasn't trivial. It's Brain Surgery that isn't Rocket Science.

  6. Sparkus

    Soooooo

    have these lessons learned been fully incorporated into the RS-25-E engine?

  7. EricM Silver badge
    Alert

    Note to self: Schedule another review of my servers contingency plans...

  8. Gene Cash Silver badge

    Another story

    So the fix was to no longer pin defective posts, but to replace them completely, which was REALLY difficult, thus the original decision to pin them.

    Anyway, a story I've never heard elsewhere was told to me by a friend.

    The Shuttle training simulator was composed of flight-worthy instruments, displays, switches, and other console bits. Back when they were still using "steam gauges" rather than the full digital displays they got as an upgrade, one of the astronauts dropped the Shuttle into the swamp off the end of the runway. Wait, what?

    In the postmortem, it was determined an instrument had failed. And if it failed like that on a real Shuttle, we'd have a real Shuttle in the real swamp off the end of the real runway.

    I don't know the fix, but I do know they spent a lot of sweat working on it.

  9. Philo T Farnsworth Silver badge

    All the more reason to send robots, instead

    No need for life support systems, which complicate the missions to no end, and if you lose one, well, nobody ever flew the flags at half staff for the loss of a machine.

    Maybe if NASA stops wasting time, money, and effort on flying crewed missions, it might be able to afford to figure out hoe bring back the Mars samples already collected by Perserverance (and avoid contaminating Mars with human DNA as we search for life).

    1. Mr Sceptical
      Terminator

      Re: All the more reason to send robots, instead

      We need meatbags in space because latency makes it a bugger to control anything more than 200ms away (as dial up gamers will remember). Maybe quantum entanglement based Comms is the answer to that.

      And while Boston Dynamics & others are making good progress with movement, they're still a bit limited at carrying out complex operations autonomously.

      1. Richard 12 Silver badge

        Re: All the more reason to send robots, instead

        We need meatbags in space because a human's reach must exceed their grasp, or what's a heaven for?

        Humanity explores and pushes the boundaries of the possible, that's part of what makes us human.

      2. vtcodger Silver badge

        Re: All the more reason to send robots, instead

        It's hard to imagine a platform more ill-suited to space exploration than humans. Fragile. Require massive elaborate support systems for even the simplest tasks. Adequate sensors, but they cover only a very small selection of EM wavelengths. Poor and erratic recording capability. Moderately flexible, but not all that reliable.

        Aside from which, our exploration machines get smarter every year. Humans on the other hand ...

        The only thing that humans have done in space that seems to me to justify the costs and risks are the Hubble repair missions. And it won't be all that many decades before we'll have machines that do things like that adequately and less expensively.

        1. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

          Re: All the more reason to send robots, instead

          I think walking on the moon was worth it.

          Also, Hubble couldn't have been repaired unless we had experience of being in space (not saying that particular one was worth it for the effort, just that your example isn't independent of other efforts).

          1. NickHolland

            Re: All the more reason to send robots, instead

            I'm inclined to think the moon walk was worth something, too. Especially at the time, since the options of robots was very limited.

            But I'm having trouble explaining why. Most of the given reasons just don't hold up. "humans can do things machines can't" yep. Including die. If you have a limit of one probe/human landing, ok, sure, the human can do stuff not-planned at launch better. But you can just send another probe later with the lessons learned from the previous one. And probes are less likely to contaminate other places. Contamination on the moon? probably no big deal. Mars, which has an atmosphere, water, and still questions about what life may have been or might still be there -- That could be an ecosystem changing event.

            As for Hubble... What if...instead of being built to fit inside the Shuttle, it was built to fit on a more versatile rocket...put higher, and when it was found to be fatally flawed, de-orbited and replaced, or left in orbit a while to find the other weak points (i.e., gyros) to make the next version better? Each shuttle flight was very expensive, and apparently had a more than 1% chance of the death of the crew...how did the cost (including risk of loss of life) of all those supporting shuttle flights compare to just replacing Hubble? Just think of the telescope we could have put into orbit on the top of a Saturn V instead of trying to cram something into the Shuttle (and the Saturn V, it turns out, probably would have been CHEAPER!).

            I love what Hubble did...but I'm not sure it was the best way to do it. How about...instead of trying to get 30+ years out of it, we just put cheaper stuff with current tech out there, and replace it when we can do significantly better?

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: All the more reason to send robots, instead

      I can't remember which account I read it in (it might have been something in Feynman) but the rule is "you need people to get money out of politicians".

      1. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: All the more reason to send robots, instead

        On the other hand, to get money into politicians, all you need is brown paper bags

  10. vtcodger Silver badge

    Richard Feynman

    I thought it would be appropriate to mention Richard Feynman's Appendix to the report on the Challenger disaster. It's at https://www.nasa.gov/history/rogersrep/v2appf.htm" and I'll just quote the first three sentences "It appears that there are enormous differences of opinion as to the probability of a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life. The estimates range from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 100,000. The higher figures come from the working engineers, and the very low figures from management." Sound familiar?

    Anyway while looking for the URL for Appendix F, I came across this https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/3570/1/Feynman.pdf which turns out to be Feynman's informal article on how the analysis was done. It's highly perceptive and well worth reading.

    1. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

      Re: Richard Feynman

      Yes, and the low figure is the 1 in 100,000, in case anyone got confused.

      Management are usually living in la-la land. Just like most politicians.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    Wiring chafed against a burred screw head

    > A bit of wiring within the payload bay had chafed against a burred screw head

    What was a wiring bundle left so exposed that such chafing could happen. Seems a little complacent by the designers. One would have assumed the designers would have allowed for some failure modes. But then again both Shuttle losses were cause by such complacency. The O-Rings would never fail under low temperature. And foam insulation would never break off the fuel tank and strike the Shuttle wing.

    MentourNow has some very interesting videos regarding air accident investigations. One such, the captain tripped a circuit breaker with his foot, on the wall to the rear of the left seat. This wasn't noticed until later on when trying to land.

    1. vtcodger Silver badge

      Re: Wiring chafed against a burred screw head

      There's a series of one hour documentaries (OK, OK 50 minutes plus commercials) called Mayday that occasionally are shown on documentary channels like Quest. Mostly aircraft crashes, but a few train crashes and at least one shipwreck. They're very well done.

      1. martinusher Silver badge

        Re: Wiring chafed against a burred screw head

        The history of railway signalling in the UK is fascinating because it chronicles the evolution of fail safe systems during the Victorian era as a response to accidents. Murphy's Law is universal, anything that can go wrong will eventually go wrong, and as a rider to this anything that involves manual procedures will inevitably find someone who doesn't do them and invariably gets away with it -- most of the time.

        This history is actually a good background for anyone who has to design a fault-tolerant system because it reminds us that no matter how exquisitely designed we make our machinery, how detailed we make our procedures and processes, there's always someone out there who's going to screw it up, usually without realizing it until the sky falls in on them.

  12. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

    Quality control was abysmal, it seems. Boeing involved?

    BTW, a temperature being "halfway to something" means nothing, unless it's Kelvin and referenced to absolute zero. Perhaps that was the case here?

  13. StrangerHereMyself Silver badge

    Fragile

    It just illustrates that the Space Shuttle flying spaceship concept is extremely fragile and fraught with dangers. Also, there are many CRIT components the failure of which would lead to an immediate death of all astronauts.

    The Shuttle Program was conceived to make space travel seem more "airliner"-like, which is something people hoped for. We now know this was a ruse, a pipe-dream. Space travel is inherently dangerous because of the enormous energies involved. Yes, those same energies are also inherent in airliner travel, but we've managed to solve these at the cost of many human lives. Since space travel involves energies at least thirty times those of airliners it will take some time (and many more lives) to solve these problems.

  14. rompetechos

    The right stuff

    astronautix.com has a list of shuttle incidents (search the page for the "sts" word) that is absolutely terrifying. If those missions' crews were aware of the ones previous to their own, they truly had the right stuff to dare board the vehicle.

    http://www.astronautix.com/t/thehardroadtospace.html

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