How We Nearly Lost A Third Shuttle | The Story Of Space Shuttle Atlantis | STS-27
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- Опубліковано 21 сер 2020
- NASA: / nasa
The Space Archive: / @thespacearchive
This is the story of the space shuttle Atlantis on the STS-27 mission, now i know that this video is a bit different than what we usually do on this channel but ever since I was young the space shuttle has captivated me in a way that no other spacecraft has. 10 year old me was quite saddened to find out about the retirement of the space shuttle. I remember seeing the vehicles that was supposed to replace the space shuttle like the ares launch system and I just could not fathom why we were going back to a capsule from something as cool and majestic as the space shuttle. Even though the space shuttle was a product of the 1980s it looked futuristic. So yeah i have a soft spot for the space shuttle that's why I'm doing this video to look back at a little known sliver of space shuttle history.
On the second of december 1988, Space shuttle atlantis was on the pad the at launch complex 39B, ready to launch into space, but this mission was no ordinary mission, hidden in the payload bay of the shuttle was a top secret military satellite, well it was top secret at the time, now we know what the payload was, it was a Lacrosse surveillance satellite. It was part of a series of terrestrial radar imaging satellites. But at the time the existence of the satellite was not known to many and it was top secret. Secrecy was woven into this launch, the exact launch time was only made known 24 hours before the launch, all the software they used was classified. I imagine that tensions were high for this launch; this was only the second flight after the loss of the space shuttle challenger and NASA was taking no chances, They did not go ahead with a launch on the previous day as the weather was too unruly. But on the second of december everything looked good. Atlantis went through her go no go polls and all the trans oceanic landing sites were put on alert, sites ranging from airports in england to morocco to diego garcia in the indian ocean, just in case she needed to make an emergency landing should something go wrong.
At 9:30 am EST the main engines were lit and Atlantis started its journey to space. The launch went off without a hitch and the astronauts got to work. They used the space shuttles robotic arm to deploy the top secret satellite, but something went wrong and the crew had to do a secret space walk, to fix the issue, but the satellite was away and that was the end of that.
On the 3rd of december 1988 the crew awoke to some troubling news, Their launch had not been as perfect as they had thought. Review of the launch footage had shown that a bit of the Insulator on the right hand solid rocket booster had broken away and the footage also showed the debris impacting the fragile thermal protection system of Atlantis. If the heat shield was damaged there was no way that atlantis would survive the fiery re-entry into the earth's atmosphere. The crew decided to use the mechanical arm to visually inspect the thermal protection system of the TPS, they looked at the forward part of the payload bay near the nose on the starboard side, all looked well the panels were in place, nothing out of the ordinary. But when they got to the belly of the orbiter they looked on in horror. Let me quote an astronaut on board “We could see that at least one tile had been completely blasted from the fuselage,” hundreds of tiles had white scars on them indicating damage, the loss of one tile was probably survivable but they had no idea as to the full extent of the damage that their shuttle had taken. The arm could not be maneuvered to look at the leading edge of the wing, the area that experienced the most heating on reentry. Mission specialist Richard Mullane radios NASA and - Наука та технологія
You left out why it happened to survive re-entry.
The missing tile just happened to be over a steel mounting plate for a the L-band antenna instead of the structural aluminum under most others.
Steel can survive higher temperatures than aluminum, so it was sheer luck that Atlantis wasn't lost.
Just like Challenger, NASA new there were problems, but because they kept getting lucky they kept going until there luck ran out.
Sheer luck, or it was because the gaps around the steel mounting plate meant less surface area for the epoxy, meaning that tile was most likely to fail...
That's what I remembered, but looking at the STS-27 Wikipedia page, I see they call it an "aluminum mounting plate for an L-band antenna" (and show a photo of the "partly melted aluminum plate". If true, then it's not the greater resistance of steel, but instead the presence of additional sacrificial material -- sort of an ersatz ablative heat shield.
Not an elon stan. Starship may have a host of unknown problems when it becomes flight ready. Like a lack of a launch abort system. But going with steel may have been a good choice.
Then WTF didn't they bring plate steel and a plasma torch to shape and patch missing tile holes? WTF NASA?
If we had lost STS-27, we would have only lost two Orbiters.
Because losing a second Orbiter in three missions would have killed the Shuttle program completely well before the Columbia's loss.
Exactly.
You mean instead of losing the two orbiters that we did?
@@secretsquirrel87 Instead of "third" as the video states.
I think if atlantis had lost nasa had plans to build another shuttle or maybe make enterprise possible to fly in space but im not sure they had enough money for that
If by some chance the program wasn't canceled after the lost of STS-27 NASA would have taken foam strikes a lot more seriously. Columbia may not have been lost in that case.
I was 12 years old in 1969 when my parents drove from Missouri to Florida for the Apollo 11 launch. The closest we could park was 7 miles away, were you to stretch your arm full length the rocket was about 1/4" tall between 2 fingers. When it was lit, it generated a roaring fireball and sound i remember to this day. VERY impressive for a little kid. I watched history being made!
And they didn't learn from this issue and Columbia crew paid the price.
“They” as in NASA higher-ups... The engineers knew all along. They knew during Challenger as well that something was wrong. Too bad it wasn’t in NASA’s best interest to spend a little more time addressing such issues...
You think that this mission and the Colombia mission were the only ones?
This was a major problem with the shuttles
ALL THE SHUTTLES
EVEN CHALLENGER
Astronauts are fucking Ginnie pigs
Marcos A. Camacho it wasn’t really the astronauts fault. it’s the manufacturers and nasa.
Shadow 989 I think he meant Guinea pigs
“My last 60 seconds are going to be used to cus these bastards.” 10/10 this is the right response
Can you blame him tho
Yes, as the public+famailes would demand FDR+CVR recordings, and the world would know how incompetent and stupidly NASA had acted. A failure just 2 flights after challanger+nasa saying "it wasn't a problem" to the crew would have meant the end of the shuttle program and probably server backlash, with nasa loosing billions due to wavering confidence in thier programs.
Makes me really wonder if the Columbia crew had same concerns and thought process. Nearly identical situation
@@reinhart482 when I remember right the crew of the Columbia did not look for damage at the orbiter - maybe they had no robotic arm.
NASA studied the footage of the launch, and knew something happened, however they said nothing to the crew, which could not see the damage from the cockpit view.
@@simonm1447 STS-107 did not have a robotic arm, there wasn't a need for it on that mission as it was a spacehab only. Even if it did have an arm, seeing the wing would be difficult. It's why the OBSS was created.
One of the Shuttle astronauts give safety lectures. His theme was that cost and schedule over rode safety at NASA. Near the end of his talk that I attended, the event manage tried to stop his talk, explaining that he was over running the schedule. The manager was laughed out of the room and the astronaut's talk continued.
That was my experience during a meeting I attended at JSC in July 1985 as an outside advisor: The orbiter program manager was all about launch rate and not adding to the budget. I mentioned in my presentation at the end of the week that they were probably going to lose a shuttle. I'm sure he was thrilled to hear my candid thoughts, along with the pricey things I said the orbiter needed (carbon brakes to replace the overtaxed beryllium originals, a drag chute, etc) Recommendations they proceeded to ignore until they had a lot of down time... because they lost a shuttle.
@@marcmcreynolds2827 _carbon brakes_
Drum or disc?
@@Connection-Lost Everything airliner-sized (and a lot smaller -- even the smallest bizjets?) is disk brakes.
4-7 rotor/stator pairs pressing against each other have much greater contact area than for a drum design, allowing more heat transfer and at lower temperatures (though still very high) than a drum design (within which the "weak link" shoes would quickly overheat). Also, the disk design allows relatively compact packaging within a wheel. A drum of equivalent energy absorbing capability (many hundreds of millions of ft-lb for a widebody) would be some incredible diameter -- much larger than the wheel and probably even the tire. Unworkable, in other words.
The problem with the Shuttle tires/brakes was that the Orbiter design was at ~150,000 lb landing weight when the specifications/contracts for the rolling assembly elements went out. These are very long lead time items for any airliner-class project, and in the years following landing weight grew to ~200,000 lb. For a given wing area, the increase in energy needed to be absorbed by the brakes at max landing weight thus went up by about (20/15)^2. Even the best brake design, after whatever tweaking they were able to do to address the shortfall, couldn't properly handle that much additional energy. During at least one rollout, overheated brake parts were failing and being slung off from within the wheel. Not good! An affected wheel could jam/skid, for example, as once happened on a F-15 fighter jet, and one way or the other braking is reduced or lost for that wheel. The remaining three must then make up the lost energy absorption, possibly setting up a cascading failure and runway departure.
Meanwhile, the tires were similarly overtaxed. On some flights, rubber was worn off a new tire all the way to exposing cord layers (Not good!, Part Deux). That was both from the extra landing weight above the original specification, plus that NASA had wanted to make sure the KSC Shuttle runway had really good traction even if there was water on it. So they made it relatively rough in texture... too rough. They were then going to try undoing that via a heavy coat of paint, but that would have made friction iffy for wet-runway rollouts. I recommended* that they instead drag the runway with a concrete block or something -- smooth it down some. That was ignored along with my other recommendations, but later I noticed a small article in Aviation Week during the Challenger downtime saying NASA had smoothed the runway. [* My boss's idea actually, which I messenger boy'd to the meeting.]
"His theme was that cost and schedule over rode safety at NASA" - When Reaganomics costs lives. Complex machinery doesn't understand bean counters, it just fails.
@@channelsixtysix066 Lol what an idiot you must be.
"Why would we go back to capsules?"
>Proceeds to tell a story of why exactly capsules are safer than something with fragile and exposed wing surfaces
Chobittsu the problem was that the shuttle was placed to far back on the SRB making it more susceptible to falling debris and damage. They could not retrofit and move the shuttle up higher due to cost and design changes. So as is typical of the government, figured they would just role the dice and leave it.
@@JB_II Aye, the original military requirements of the program didn't jive with the eventual civilian use of the vehicle. While a fantastic design, it was ultimately not efficient enough to keep around, with the US government only sticking with it cause, as always, they have to save face even when the project is rendered obsolete. See also: SLS Program
Starship be like
Capsules may not be sexy but they are far simpler in design and have had an escape system in place since the beginning. The first two shuttle launches did have ejection seats for the two man crews but there was a high uncertainty as to how well they would work and even if it was a survivable system. The shuttles were designed to fly multiple astronauts on two deck levels. There was no way to have that ejection seat system on multiple decks so after the first two flights it was abandoned.
The original design had not an external tank but a mirrored big brother shuttle with its own wings, fully reusable, more controllable (safer), less air-polluting - and presumably less flaky. Then the budget got reduced, design "simplified" (eg SRBs with O-rings) and there was even corner-cutting on engine testing. Not good long term economic/productivity decisions let alone safety/reliability. Bean-counter syndrome.
Interesting how it was a sheer luck that saved Atlantis during this mission (the missing tile being located over a steel element insead of the structural aluminium as was the case with most of the rest of the tiles) while it was sheer bad luck that doomed Challenger. Had there not been unusually strong wind sheer at a certain altitude, the vehicle wouldn't have shook so violently that the molten-aluminium-propellant-sealing-material sludge that temporarily sealed the failed SRB joint wouldn't have been dislodged and the resulting flame directed right at the external tank wouldn't have destroyed it.
Wind S H E A R , my dear fellow . . .
@@borisratnik9032 Yes, I know, and yet I made that mistake.
We went back to capsules because hauling a giant plane into space everytime gets really, really expensive really fast. But I agree, it was a dope machine.
I mean, originally it was meant to have a cheaper refurbishment/inspection cycle before launch. The vehicle was actually reusable, but the processing was inordinally expensive.
high speed re-entry from a very high or lunar orbit is why. A delta shaped craft just can't do it.
@@JerrSpud you cant do a direct reentry, but I wager you could do what SpaceX plans to do and gradually reduce your speed until your craft can make it through reentry.
@@Timeward76 cause it's a capsule
@@Timeward76 The space shuttle could only function in low earth orbit, the heat shield (tiles) would not withstand being in deeper space. There are a multitude of other reasons it would not be possible, I suggest you check out Scott's video on the subject.
ua-cam.com/video/5mIRFxYYaC0/v-deo.html
I first read this mission story in Mike Mullane's autobiography, Riding Rockets. He was the MS responsible for the extendable arm, and was the one who called Houston to report the damaged tiles. They told them it wasn't anything to worry about, which Mullane thought "Did they think the white streaks were seagull sh*t?"
I can certainly recommend "Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut". I once very briefly met Mike Mullane, and only later bought a copy of the book and realized it had been the same person. He tells it like it is, or was, to be a Shuttle astronaut.
Excellent book!
Like #69 😀
Great book - it's part of my space library!
It's a great book. Very illustrative of the ongoing experimental/test nature of the entire shuttle program.
We almost lost several due to the O-Ring failure. Up until Challenger, the aluminum in the rocket fuel would make a seal and block the gases. It sealed in Challenger at first, but you can see the wind shear in the exhaust trail, and the nozzles swiveled to correct the course.
Every Engineer they asked about launch that morning tld them it probably wouldn't clear the tower, and it didn't. The aluminum sealed the leak until the extra stress of the course correction happened.
We were all experienced Engineers, many with PhD's, and were overruled by managers.
Sad, it did not have to happen.
I met Hoot Gibson last year, and asked him what he thought of the damage that occurred on his Atlantis flight, and he told me "My first thought was, 'we're dead'!"
Cool. I was on console for that mission.
on orbital rendezvous? you’re that jim oberg? that’s pretty cool.
i never got to see a launch in person, but my dad filmed the launch of STS-51-F. he was filming from a balcony in titusville, so i don’t think he knew about the ATO at all. would’ve just looked like a successful launch to him! were you on console for that one?
@@ExperimentIV -- Yeah... it was. We had an orbital nav crisis that my team had to solve or the mission would have landed early after payload deploy [never really any danger from that issue]. My team didn't pay attention to the tile damage concerns.
@@jimoberg3326 sounds super cool! I'll have to check it all out!
Woah, that's cool. Thank you for listing your website - will take a detailed look because it looks really interesting
Sooo here's evidence that the foam insulation COULD cause serious damage, yet when a similar strike occurred to Columbia they did not think it was a problem??
There was *a lot* wrong with the mentality of Mission Control during STS-107.
This only knocked a tile off, and damaged the other areas lightly, that foam hit the far stronger leading edge, and its potential to do that much damage was not then known. It was a surprise to them that a small piece of foam could leave a hole a few feet across on matarial they thought was indestructible. This incident wasnt as bad, or else we'd be talking about how it crashed. In engineering, when limits are being pushed to extreame's, mistakes like this will occur. Its the price of progress.
@@christianbuczko1481 The whole idea of tiles being "knocked off" should never have been acceptable in the first place. Columbia would pay the price.
When the sensors started to fail on Columbia, there were several engineers would said, "It's the WING!" They'd seen the impact, and believed the damage should have been assessed.
Colombia was a terrible tragedy, buy like challenger, totally preventable
@@rickhibdon11 many tiles had been lost in earlier missions, they got complacent. The rest is hindsight, and human nature. I just hope they learned from their mistakes this time.
I remember the details of this, a 3 inch thick aluminum plate was all that was keeping the shuttle from melting down, at the landing the plate had melted and was only about a quarter of an inch thick. There was talk in aerospace circles how close they came to losing the mission. I had friends that worked for Grumman at the time. Statisticians said they would lose 1 out of every 60 missions ? forget the exact but I think, sadly the numbers bore truth.
Back when I was in hs, my family took a trip to TX, and one of the stops we made was at the Houston Space Center. Among the exhibits in the museum/visitors center there was a real, honest-to-god, space shuttle landing simulator. It didn't require guests to complete the full landing procedure, which is a series of figure-eight turns with ever decreasing acs to burn off speed; the simulator only required guests to fly the final turn--which was made upside down--then line up on the runway, roll right-side up, and ease the shuttle down onto the runway. Done properly, the whole process took about two minutes.
Although guests were only in control for a relatively small portion of the landing, the simulator was otherwise entirely realistic--it supposedly was the very program shuttle pilot astronauts trained on--and as might be imagined, it was by far and away the most popular exhibit in the museum. The line for it snaked around the building, but like most every other person there, NO WAY was I going to miss out on a chance to fly a shuttle simulator, so I got into line for what turned out to be more than an hour-long wait for my turn (my family wasn't thrilled, but I was the moody teenager who'd been dragged along on the family vacation, so they weren't going to deny me the chance to do something for which I'd actually shown a little enthusiasm). In the time I stood in that line waiting for my turn on the simulator, I don't think I saw more than five people even manage to complete the first action to land, i.e., turn and point the nose at the landing strip. The very great majority of people gripped the stick way too tight, yanked it way to hard, and in a few seconds were spinning wildly and totally disoriented with no chance of recovery. Once an attempt to land had finished, one way or another, the simulator would give a brief description of the outcome, and every single one I saw from the people who went before me were something like, "catastrophic crash, shuttle destroyed, 100% crew fatalities." These repeated failures actually turned out to work to my advantage though, because I got many, many examples of what not to do, and it ended the would-be pilots attempts much faster, which sped up the line considerably.
When my turn finally came I had identified the main problem, which was that the control stick on the simulator/shuttle was INCREDIBLY sensitive. It's so sensitive, in fact, that it's fixed and just responds to the pressure from one's hand, like the control stick of an F-15 fighter jet (which I happen to have also flown a simulator of). So I knew to handle the thing oh so gently, which is what I did: I made the turn successfully, sloooowly rolled upright, and as softly as I could, eased it down, down, down, until the wheels touched the runway...at which point the shuttle bounced hard and smacked back down on the video tarmac. Despite my best efforts, I'd only been able to land the thing really roughly, and my final analysis said something like, "landing completed with minor to moderate shuttle damage, minor injuries to 25% of crew." So not a great landing by any means, but I was the only person I had witnessed who got the thing on the ground with killing everyone. There had been one other gentleman who had managed to get set up for the final approach, but he pushed the stick down too steeply, over-corrected, and pulled the shuttle so far off course he couldn't get back on line before he ran out of altitude. One interesting and difficult thing about landing the shuttle is that it has no thrust--all the air speee is momentum from reentery, so there's no way to power up and go around if you miss the landing the first time. It's basically a brick with little wings falling out of the sky, and you have one chance to direct it to fall in the right place. It's funny to me that I can remember all this so well many years later, but I was paying very close attention, because I really wanted to land that damn shuttle, and I did--not well, but not too bad for a teenager with no flight experience whatsoever, and a hell of a lot better than anyone else that day. I was pretty pleased with myself.
Fascinating 👍
Tl;dr
@@imadrifter kid in HS went to Houston Space Center and flew the simulator better than most. honestly worth the whole read, i really enjoyed it
Cool story. One of the very few paragraphs-long youtube comments I’ve actually read to the end.
Scott Manley described the F104 as "the plane that wanted to be a rocket"
The Shuttle is clearly the rocket that wanted to be a cargo plane. Despite the 2 tragic incidents, it was pretty successful at this
We had those F-104s exercising over our summer house back in the days. I don't miss them...
cargo planes dont cost 400 million dollars per launch.
@@CarlosAM11.5billion*
And then we lost Columbia due to -surprise!- damage to the thermal protection.
and a huge ass hole on the leading edge of the left wing
The damage was actually worse on this mission. The reason Columbia was destroyed was because its damage was on the wing, while Atlantis's damage was not on the wing. Plus, the missing tile on Atlantis was over a metal plate for an antenna, while there was nothing under the missing tile on Columbia.
Hoot Gibson has a great story about this from his perspective, and how he was prepared to tell mission control off in his final moments if the orbiter began to disintegrate upon re-entry.
Atlantis' Thermal Protection System tiles sustained extensive damage during the flight. Ablative insulating material from the right-hand solid rocket booster nose cap had hit the orbiter about 85 seconds into the flight, as seen in footage of the ascent.[1] The STS-27R crew also commented that white material was observed on the windshield at various times during ascent.[9] The crew made an inspection of the shuttle's impacted starboard side using the shuttle's Canadarm robot arm, but the limited resolution and range of the cameras made it impossible to determine the full extent of the tile damage.
The problem was compounded by the fact that the crew was prohibited from using their standard method of sending images to ground control due to the classified nature of the mission. The crew was forced to use a slow, encrypted transmission method, likely causing the images NASA engineers received to be of poor quality, causing them to think the damage was actually "just lights and shadows". They told the crew the damage did not look any more severe than on past missions.[1]
One report describes the crew as "infuriated" that Mission Control seemed unconcerned.[10][11] When Gibson saw the damage he thought to himself, "We are going to die";[2] he and others did not believe that the shuttle would survive reentry. Gibson advised the crew to relax because "No use dying all tensed-up", he said,[8][7] but if instruments indicated that the shuttle was disintegrating, Gibson planned to "tell mission control what I thought of their analysis" in the remaining seconds before his death.[1][7]
Mullane recalled that while filming the reentry through the upper deck's overhead windows, "I had visions of molten aluminum being smeared backwards, like rain on a windshield". Although the shuttle landed safely "The damage was much worse than any of us had expected", he wrote.[7] Upon landing, the magnitude of the damage to the shuttle astonished NASA; over 700 damaged tiles were noted, and one tile was missing altogether. The missing tile had been located over the aluminum mounting plate for an L-band antenna (one of six, part of the TACAN landing system), perhaps preventing a burn-through of the sort that would ultimately doom Columbia in 2003.[4][1] There was almost no damage present on the orbiter's left side. STS-27R Atlantis was the most damaged launch-entry vehicle to return to Earth successfully.[12] Gibson believed that had the shuttle been destroyed, Congress would have ended the shuttle program given that only one successful mission had occurred between his flight and the loss of Challenger.[7]
A review team investigated the cause beginning with a detailed inspection of the Atlantis TPS damage, and a review of related inspection reports to establish an in-depth anomaly definition. An exhaustive data review followed to develop a fault tree and several failure scenarios. This and other information gained during the review formed the basis for the team's findings and recommendations.[9]
Good ol' NASA trust-to-luck management... sometimes it works, sometimes... Challenger and Columbia.
"Well, it hasn't killed anyone" was the attitude by middle management to the known problems of booster o-ring burn-through and an insulation system that fell to bits each time a Shuttle launched.
Challenger was actually a result of an engineering problem but just as much a management problem. Some engineers tried to convince management not to launch due to the fact that they were worried about blow by in the srbs. However, they were ignored
@@jmstudios457 Roger Boisjoly was the Morton Thiokol Project Manager in charge the Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster production. Years ago, I saw a documentary on Challenger that featured a lot of Boisjoly's testimony. In it, he said the problem with the SRB o-rings began with the second launch of Columbia and he spent years trying to get Morton Thiokol to address the problem. I am usually reluctant to refer to wikipedia, but there is a good summary available of Biosjoly and the o-ring problems that led to Challenger's destruction:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Boisjoly
One telling part of the documentary that I saw was Boisjoly talking about the online meeting the night before the eventual launch between NASA and Morton Thiokol. NASA was under enormous pressure to launch - there had been five scrubs in five days and, furthermore, President Reagan was about to make his State of The Nation to Congress and wanted to be able to say proud things about his school-teacher-in-space programme.
So, at the meeting, NASA put so much pressure on Morton Thiokol that the company management over-rode its engineers and told NASA to launch.
Overnight temperatures at the pad had dropped below freezing point and Boisjoly and the engineers knew that the cold was affecting the o-rings. They wanted the launch delayed until the boosters and o-rings had warmed up, but NASA wasn't interested in delaying.
The rest, we know...
Caritas Care Preston UK style management
MarsFKA Boisjoly was a senior engineer at Thiokol and along with his colleagues Ebeling and Thompson desperately tried to convince the managers to recommend a no go. Boisjoly had since he examined each segment of the used SRBs of STS 51-C a year before after a burn through of a primary o-ring had occurred, been fully aware of the danger of launching in cold temperatures. This was of course before the use of joint heaters was introduced.
Wait, this happened in 1988, they knew enough THEN to know that damage was possible, they realized at landing that the damage was real, yet in 2003 when a giant chunk of insulation hit the leading edge of Columbia and the reaction was "how much damage can foam do?"!!!!! Okay, they're not excused for that one, anymore. I thought it was the first time that ever happened. If there was prior history and knowledge of the risk, then they're not excused for blowing it off.
As mentioned in another thread, find a copy of astronaut Mike Mullane's book "Riding Rockets". It's autobiographical, but it also gives excellent insights into the culture of Space Shuttle Era NASA. I highly recommend it; it's an enjoyable read.
My sentiments as well.
That was in 2003 BTW
@@jllafoy8605 Was it? Maybe I'm getting confused with "February = 2" and the year...
No matter how SpaceX makes it look safe and easy. It’s incredibly dangerous. It only takes 1 thing to go wrong and ur dead. Millions of gallons of highly flammable fuel. Traveling at supersonic speeds. Doesn’t take much to turn into a fireball.
I am British but had the honour of seeing one launch from the Cape in 1993. Awe inspiring 👍😎
If the shuttle was on top of the stack instead, this would have never have been an issue. The "piggyback" design was dangerious.
if the shuttle was on top, it wouldn't be aerodynamically stable, and by thst point you might as well just make a capsule
@@CalculusPhysics How about that launching from the back of airplane? It would work?
@@CalculusPhysics Indeed, they should have made a capsule. There's a reason no one wants a shuttle today.
Kind of telling that Hoot Gibson was the commander on this mission, and ended up being on the Columbia accident board. One of the most respected Astronauts of his generation.
This is what has become known as a "culture of deviation" - "Hey, it didn't blow up this time!"
NASA: We got lucky
NASA: Keep flying
Why they dont cover a plane with heat stuff testit
Lesson learned from STS program: Never put the crew under the debris source. Alwas put the crew on top of the debris source
Amen
Absolutely. There have been many improvements in thermal protection and structural design since the design phase of the Shuttle program but there is no feasible way to reliably protect an orbiter from even light debris impacting at supersonic relative speeds.
It should have been obvious before. Robert Zubrin said the first time he saw the shuttle he thought "They built it upside down!"
The shuttle was a product of the 1970s. They did a "lock" on the design in 1975!
I was thinking that, enterprise flew in the 70's
@@beepthemeep12 it did for aerodynamic tests in atmosphere, Enterprise was never space worthy.
Heck, the contract-to-build was signed, and there was a full-scale mockup on display before the last moon landing in 1972!
@@beepthemeep12 Boldly going where no man has gone before!
@@commerce-usa No, but the tech was "locked" by then, meaning what they were going to build was dictated by 1975-level technology. They were still feeding old fashioned floppies with coding in BASIC into the shuttles to land them almost till the end!
Sounds like a classic case of management ignoring engineering recommendations.
Nothing unusual. Management only look after management. They don't care about the engineering concerns because they cost money.
@@channelsixtysix066
Elon Musk is doing a lot to overturn that paradigm though. He is showing that the real formula for success is by focussing on engineering, not share price and marketing.
@@channelsixtysix066 There's bad management and good management, guess which you are describing.
@@dorbie - I don't see the difference. They are all suit-wearing, MBA bean counters, who have no interest in engineering principles. Management are typically sociopaths who attract others of their ilk like flies to dog shit.
@@jonfklein Musk is a showman who does nothing for STEM professions. He would do everyone else a favor if he just STFU.
Just imagine what would have happened to the shuttle program if they lost another vehicle so soon after Challenger...
It would have shut down, no more flights.
I loved seeing the shuttles go up as a kid too. I was actually watching live with my family when Challenger blew up. It was horrible! We all cried. Over the years, I have concluded that most things that are beautiful and awesome are also incredibly dangerous. We keep going towards those thing, though, because the only thing you know you have to do in life is experience it and, since you can never do so safely seeing that we all end up dying eventually, you should find as many new experiences as possible. Of course you try to do everything you can to make sure you stay alive but, if you don't, well no one stays alive forever anyway.
I Remember being in grade 3. Our teacher had us stay in for our lunch break to watch the shuttle.
So horrible.
the launch of the shuttle is nowhare as awesome as the launch of the Saturn 5 !! It literally shook the ground as an earthquake...Guess I was blessed that I was 11 years old when Sputnik happened!!! :) and 21 years old when we landed on the moon... the whole world held their breath at that moment!!!
We're contemporaries. My aunt and uncle lived in Melbourne. They watched the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo launches from their backyards!
I vaguely remember that my school let us watch some of the early launches.
These discussions are wonderful. I'm enjoying reading all the informed folks knowledge 🙂. Thanks, guys
The shuttle was actually a product of the of the 1970's and suffered severely from the endless budget cuts to NASA during the design and development phase. The complexity of it's systems and the safety issues associated with the fragile tps tiles meant that the shuttle would never be able to live up to the original design proposal that it would be able to be re-flown with just a two week turnaround. I believe one of the original plans for the shuttle was to attach a booster to Skylab so it could be saved and be used as a building block for a large orbital station similar to the International Space Station. The budget cuts and development delays meant that Skylab came crashing down long before the first shuttle flew. The cuts also killed any plans to build the station which was one of the main reasons for the shuttle, carrying crew, supplies and equipment between earth and the station. The shuttle design did shine with the high profile Solar Max satellite repair mission, the Hubble repair and the Hubble re-supply missions. The trips to the Russian MIR station and it's use in the construction of the ISS showed off it's usefulness but the bottom line was that it was still too expensive and dangerous to use.
@Meanie Panini It would have been cool but they would have needed a larger shuttle. The cargo bay of the shuttle is 15 feet wide, the main body of Skylab was almost 22 feet. The main body of Skylab was also longer than the shuttle cargo bay.
A lot of Apollo tech was used in the Shuttle.
STS-2 was originally designated Skylab Rescue. After re-boost, the shuttle astronauts would prepare Skylab for an in-space refit which Skylab was NOT designed for. Of high priority and difficulty was refueling Skylab's control thrusters, adding O2 and opening the garbage tank. STS-3,4,5,6 would complete the work. The Skylab engineers felt confident it could be done. An upgraded docking adapter would have been attached to the Apollo Docking Adapter to begin expansion of the station and to allow the shuttle to dock with Skylab. NASA was able to cost justify it because the Space Shuttle didn't come remotely close to the the Saturn V lift capacity which had been lost. Saving Skylab would save billions in equivalent shuttle launch costs. A lot of this was documented in Popular Mechanics if I recall correctly. Unfortunately, the shuttle ended up in design hell delays and solar activity caused Skylab's orbit to decay faster than anticipated. It's a fascinating what-if that almost happend.
@@trekker3468 The Shuttle-Mir/ISS docking mechanism was a 2.0 version that was based on the Apollo-Soyuz docking adapter from the 1975 mission. The shuttle's main computers for managing the launch were Skylab IBM computers.
As a product of 1980 myself, the space shuttle was and to a large degree still is, my first image when I think of manned spaceflight. To say I have a soft spot for it would be an understatement given just how prominent the STS was through most of my own life. It was not perfect, its tech was dated, we all know its 2 biggest failures and of course it has been retired, but all that aside, I think that the shuttle will always be my go-to mental image of getting humans into space.
edit: Since time immemorial space has been the realm of the gods... to me, putting humans up there, even just LEO, is perhaps the 2nd greatest thing humanity has done, right behind the invention of writing (which Carl Sagan famously stated was proof that man can preform magic).
Except it was designed in the 70's and first flew in 80's. So, not a product of the 80's.
@@ImpendingJoker I meant my birth year to show what era of spaceflight I grew up seeing firsthand. It was meant to go with what he said in the video about the STS captivating him as he grew up, not that I was a product of the same period it was designed.....
But given your nick lets humor this. My parents had been married for around a decade when I was born and I am the first child, they deliberately planned back in the early 70s to have their first child (me) after many years of marriage, so in fact, I was planned (one might say designed) to see light for the first time after around a decade of them enjoying marriage without children. They were married in April of 1971, almost a year before the formal launch of the shuttle program in Jan of 1972. So, I very much am a product of the 70s & just like the shuttle, I was delayed till the following decade, preceding STS-1 by almost precisely 5 months.
However unlike the shuttle... I still live in more than memories & photos (one might say, in more than memories and boosters :P).
The Saturn V kicked major ass. Much better than the shuttle launches.
@@ShroomKeppie If I had a time machine, watching one of those take off would be near the top of my list of things to do. Unfortunately that seems unlikely. Never got to see a shuttle launch irl either for that matter. Its a 3-4 day drive to go anywhere near a launch site for me, so I haven't seen any launch of any large rocket with my own eyes, the closest I have come are large model rockets, which are still pretty cool tbh.
We went to Cape Canaveral in 2019, where the Atlantis is now housed. I freely admit, that when they revealed it (they make you go through a process), I was literally moved to tears. I was overwhelmed by this vessel that had traveled into space 33 times, safely transporting its precious human cargo. It was moving.
But was it literally moving?
Nicely done! BTW the shuttle was a product of the 70’s. that is when it was designed and the build started. It was also planned to reboost SkyLab but got delayed. Also SkyLab’s orbit decayed more quickly than expected. Keep up the good work!
I was actually just at Kennedy Space Center last month, first time there and I finally got to see Atlantis in person, glad the shuttle and the crew made it back safely, I heard a few years ago that Atlantis had a close call and almost disintegrated on reentry but it took me almost a year after to find out which mission that was
As a child I also wondered why we are returning to capsules. As an engineer, I praise the decision 😂
If your an engineer do some research into this space nonsense and don't just believe what the tv tells you
So what happened to Columbia was inevitable and they knew it all along. It was just a matter of when. No one person is responsible persay, but this is a type of institutional blindness of the organization as a whole. The facts were there to see, but the system/ culture did not assign the appropriate importance to them. Great video. Thanks for taking the time to make me aware of something I did not know.
I absolutely love it. As i reflect, I too have followed it throughout childhood even to this day. But since retirement, I am with a heart grown heavy, missing the program, ever so dearly.
Thank You for uploading this.
Nice, I love how the quality of your films skyrocketed, you are allready my favorite aviation related youtuber, keep up the great work.
The space shuttle was a product of the 1970’s.
As I remember it and I could be wrong but, the space shuttle was first proposed and the original designs made in the late 1960's before we landed on the moon. Takes a long time to develop a complicated thing like the space shuttle.
@@BustedJunkStudio You are correct that the Shuttle originated in the late 1960s. One of the lead designers was Max Faget. There was a number of different types proposed, all of which can now be seen in a display case beside Discovery in the Udvar Hazy Center. The final configuration was the cheapest and was not initially well regarded by engineers and astronauts, mainly because of the use of Solid Rocket Boosters. They were seen as inherently unsafe for manned flight, mainly because they have no off switch and the Shuttle Orbiters had no abort and crew escape system while the SRBs were firing.
Actually, the Shuttle had no crew escape system at all - the Contingency Abort system to allow the crew to bale out was added after Challenger was lost, but it required the Orbiter to be under control and was available in a very narrow window of opportunity. All the astronauts who rode a Shuttle knew that the dice was loaded against them, but, with their eyes wide open, they went, anyway.
@@MarsFKA Actually they did have an escape system for the crew but it was removed after the first two Columbia missions. The crew cabin was originally designed to be able to separate from the shuttle and parachutes deploy but it was deemed too heavy for the system. That's a main reason why on Challenger, the crew cabin separated from the the rest of the ship almost entirely intact. If they had chutes to deploy, it's quite possible they would have lived.
@@tryithere Do you have a link to the source of your information? In reality, no Orbiter was designed with a detachable crew cabin. Columbia had ejector seats fitted for the Commander and Pilot for the first four flights, in which there were only two on board, but everyone devoutly hoped that the seats would never have to be used, as there was, like the Contingency Abort bail-out system, a very narrow window of opportunity for them to be used. In fact, had the Commander and Pilot ever had to eject while the SRBs were still attached and firing, the seat's trajectories would have carried them into the SRB exhaust plumes.
In his book "Entering Space", Shuttle astronaut Joe Allen described the seats as being "almost as lethal as the disaster they were meant to escape".
When Columbia began flying with full crews, the seats were removed to save weight.
As for Challenger's nose section detaching, the Orbiter was not designed to fly sideways at nearly 2,000 miles per hour, so when Challenger suddenly did it was not surprising that the forward section separated at the point in the fuselage where it was the weakest.
Yeah I actually just posted that before I saw your comment. (It's buried near the bottom for me.)
A lot of people don't believe it but most of this damn thing was made from designs made throughout the 1970s.. and it wasn't really updated with modern technology as time went on. It was always updated with older technology, that had been somewhat proven. It was always far from cutting edge, but it never seems like it to people looking at it.
When you're standing there next to it though you're still kind of an off the damn thing regardless of how old it is. Just like standing next to an SR-71. (
The way NASA decided to display and present Atlantis at Kennedy was incredible. The pre-show and then the way they present her gave me goose bumps. So glad I decided to spend one of my days going to Kennedy while I was down in Orlando last week.
The shuttle ended up being a lemon, but it was the coolest lemon to fly they skies.
I'm furious about this!! THE PAINT needed to be on all 3 tanks again, not leave the center orange one unpainted! It provided protection. I did work on the Atlantis and by default, the Discovery. You can see the actuator junction boxes that open the doors, albeit covered, on all the Atlantis images. My dad had worked on the doors, graphite epoxy, and the heat shield. Yes, he'd worked on the Apollos, helped save Apollo 13. But losing astronauts was like losing one of my siblings to him. Long Live Rockwell Internationals' Aerospace Engineers, for putting us on not only on the Moon, but building Two Space Stations of Peace, around the Earth! God Speed, you all!
Hoot is my late grandfather’s brother. I got to meet him one time and ask about his experiences before he was inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame. I was young but I remember him talking about this. Cool video.
He lives near Nashville and appears pretty often at the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL. I've met him a couple times there.
Let’s see....let’s launch the most highly classified satellite of the decade utilizing a spaceship manufactured by the lowest bidder. What could go wrong with that? 🤔 All kidding aside, I had the honor and privilege of having lunch with the commander of this flight - Captain Robert “Hoot” Gibson - at Space Camp when I took my daughter there in 2014. We paid extra to have lunch with an astronaut, and we were lucky enough to get picked to sit at his table. It was an awesome experience and his stories were just amazing! And a bit of trivia, he piloted the first US orbiter to dock with the Russian MIR space station back in the 1980’s. When you look at the photo, it’s him shaking the hand of the Russian cosmonaut on the station after docking.
SpaceX is currently the lowest bidder. NASA has had a lot of cost plus contracts over the years.
You are very fortunate to have this experience.
That is really cool, I bet your daughter will remember that for the rest of her life. When I was about 5 years old in 72 I got to meet Neil Armstrong. I still remember him standing there next to my dad looking down at me. I also remember when the first shuttle prototype 'The Enterprise' did it's tests on the back of a 747. I remember laying on the floor looking at the story in the Denver Post. Things like that will stick with her forever.
@@Gitarzan66 Thanks for that. If I had met Neil Armstrong it would have been something to never forget. As an adult I did meet Alan Bean who walked on the Moon on Apollo 12.
It was in June of 1995 when the Atlantis, commanded by Hoot Gibson docked with the Mir space station during STS-71.
If they had placed the shuttle atop the tank (adding one more engine at the bottom of the tank), they would never experience the falling debris issues. One design decision led to an issue that in the end caused the loss of the vehicle and its crew.
The shuttle program was such a sad experience for me, because the vehicle kept being changed from the original concept. A small, reusable launch vehicle to carry people into space was what the engineers conceived of in the mid 1960's. A two-stage to-orbit horizontal takeoff/horizontal landing design was considered the best approach, with a carrier wing lifting the orbiter to altitude. Reusability was considered paramount, as the public was expressing disgust with the disposable boosters being used.
Then Richard Nixon was elected president, and he wanted to focus as much spending on the Vietnam war as possible, so he insisted that there be only one launch vehicle for all users. This meant that the new launch vehicle would have to be able to carry payloads much heavier then the original concept was capable of, which meant much larger engines. Then the National Reconnaissance Office demanded that the shuttle be large enough to carry their satellites, which were the size of boxcars.
These changes meant that the orbiter could not carry its fuel onboard, and the external tank was added. But it was so heavy that additional thrust was needed to get it off the ground, so two liquid fueled boosters were designed to supplement the orbiter's engines. That became too expensive, so the Solid Rocket Boosters were accepted as the additional thrust. The design just kept getting more and more complicated and demanding, When the shuttle finally flew, I was amazed that it worked, as so many compromises had been made.
The orbiter was and is a fantastic space craft but the method of launching it was severely flawed all do to politics and military demands.The false promises of the space shuttle ended a lot of programs, we could have returned to the Moon or have humans on Mars. One original proposal was using a reusable winged rocket to take into orbit then return to earth like a conventional aircraft. To get funding, the military got involved and made demands to suit their needs. Larger and heavier payloads turn it into a bloated dangerous launch method.
I'm 48 and i've been a space shuttle freak since the first time i saw it. I have too many models to count🤷🏽♂️
Also a 48 year old Shuttle fan. I have built many models and had numerous posters over the years. Currently I am building the Lego version of the Discovery with my 14 year old son 🙂
It's always something with that damn thermal protection. The most complex flying machine was a damn deathtrap that happened twice.... Twice!!!
My very first speech in speech class on the Space Shuttle prior to the first launch. I was the only person watching the launch downstairs. I was screaming, "go baby go"! "Go baby go"!!!!!
"asked his crew to enjoy the rest of the mission because there was no point in going out all tensed up" Jesus imagine what that must have been like to say that sorta thing. It's a fucking miracle the Shuttle only had two fatal flights with everything I've heard about it. I know spaceflight is inherently dangerous, but the Shuttle deaths were so much so preventable.
Spaceflight is dangerous. The first few Shuttle flights had a 1 in 7 chance of loss of vehicle and crew.
Can you imagine if our cars were built with the risk value that NASA deemed acceptable in their space program? Kudos to the commander who was prepared to tell them where the Eagle shits!
i see where you're going with that statement... but... if you actually do the math, space travel, at least up until now, has been far, and i mean faaaaarrrrrr, safer than driving to the store. granted the training to operate a space craft is a tad more complicated than learning to drive (yet some people still fail badly at it, go figure, lol), statistically it is more dangerous to drive than it is to strap yourself to a bomb and fling yourself into space.
Consider also that 40% of the flyable orbiters built were destroyed in flight. That’s not a failure rate by launch...but quite sobering. NASA had knowledge of both of the issues, but failed to address them. Risk assessment always looks better on the PowerPoint.
@@frankb2995 Contrary to the original pronouncements, every flight was experimental. Otherwise funding would have never been authorized. Space is hard. At one point shuttle failure rate was purported to be between 10,000 and 1000 to 1. Reality was a bit better than 2%.
The problem is that NASA sold it AS SAFE ar a much higher rate of launch total b.s. The shuttle launch capacity only reached a fraction of intended and only got more expensive.
Are they not? The amount of recalls and class action lawsuits that come out is pretty high. But you know a blow out or a suspension failure at 65 mph isn’t gonna be a huge deal. Might be a wreck but you probably will walk away. Any failure on a shuttle is going to be a big deal do to the huge implications if there is one.
"We nearly lost Atlantis. Columbia - she'll be right."
"Nah, it'll be fine!"
Finding 8 is devastating. 14 years before Columbia.
Great job on this story!
STS-27 Mission Specialist Mike Mullane was a visitor to the Diablo Canyon nuclear powerplant a couple years ago and gave us an excellent motivational talk. He did not mention this rather harrowing tale!
A very interesting video. Your insight was very nice. Another great informational video 👍
It was not a product of the 80s, it was actually a product of the 70s. Even more impressive.
Probably because of all the budget cuts from the original design in the 70's, and the amount of passengers it takes, the Shuttle has now gone down in history as the deadliest space launch vehicle so far... So sad
The original calculation for a loss of vehicle for the shuttle was 1 in 100. After Columbia, they realized it was actually closer to 1 in 8 and we were getting very lucky. This was prefix.
I loved the Edwards Air Base landings, such a cool runway
Great video. The more you look at the Shuttle, the more you realize just how dangerous it was. NASA estimated that the chance of loss of crew post-Challenger was 1 in 90. And pre-Challenger? 1 in 9! The biggest issues with the Shuttle were, as this video highlights, the orbiter's position horizontal to the external fuel tank and SRBs (as opposed to on top of them, like any capsule such as Soyuz, Dragon, and Starliner or the upcoming Starship, which will mount on top of the Superheavy booster), which makes it vulnerable to debris; and that, if you lost main engines pre-SRB burnout, the SRBs would rip the stack apart, and there would be nothing that you could do, because you can't shut down a solid rocket engine once you've lit it. SRBs, as it turn out, are just inherently dangerous for crew. The Ares I rocket, which would use a 5-segment SRB (the Shuttle used 4-segment SRBs) as its first stage, would have a *ZERO PERCENT* chance of survival for launch aborts between 30 and 60 seconds after liftoff. For one, because you wouldn't be able to shut down the SRB, the crew capsule wouldn't be able to pull away. If the capsule somehow did manage to pull away, molten aluminum from an exploding SRB could destroy the capsule's parachutes.
For the longest time, I always wondered how it was that STS and other rockets would be launched with what we now know were well-known hazards-things that had been extensively discussed and investigated, but they went ahead anyway. Now, I'm starting to believe I know why. It's very simple. The O-rings, and the debris strikes on the re-entry surfaces? Those were not the only things. There were almost certainly a bunch of others. So I think the attitude was, simply: Hey, space is a dangerous business, and if we waited until we eliminated all the risks-I'm talking about the KNOWN risks-we would NEVER launch! Simple as that.
Let me just put it this way: At no time in my life, even when I was young and foolish, would you have ever gotten me on one of those things.
Yeah, NASA definitely had "go fever" back then. Space is still dangerous, but they've become much more risk-averse with the commercial crew program, which is a welcome change.
@@ronaldgarrison8478 I would love to see Earth from space and get a great view of the stars. Weightlessness would be fun. The rest? A bunch of B.S. I also was never interested in submarines. I would miss trees and nature.
@@m5w5 It seems only logical that any mode of transportation is much more dangerous in the early years. The Shuttle was dangerous enough, but it's been coming out, little by little, just how many insanely close calls there were with Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, and other things such as the rocket planes. It seems a miracle that no one was lost on any of those flights (the bitter irony, of course, being the Apollo 1 fire that was on the ground). There are a million things that have been learned, and which are, little by little, over time making things safer-but still far from what I would consider a safe ride!
@@ronaldgarrison8478 Because of the sheer energy required in rocket powered flight, all rocket powered flight will always be inherently much more dangerous than (say) jet or piston powered flight. That is why, despite many predictions of sub-orbital rocket powered transport systems (London to Sydney in an hour - for example), it will never happen.
Had they took seriously the warning they've gotten in 1988 and developed ways to detect TPS damage and rescue the orbiter's crew if there's extensive damage, the Columbia crew wouldn't have burned alive 15 years later.
The pissed off astronaut that was planning on speaking his mind if it came to that reminded me of when Rambo told Murdoch he was coming for him for some reason lol. I'm glad they all survived.
Man, the more I learn about the Space Shuttle program, the more amazed I am at the pure luck it had and the pure hubris of NASA. I used to think it was a majestic machine, and so cool. Now I know just how deeply flawed, not only the machine was, but mostly the system surrounding it. Can you imagine? Engineers knew about tile damage from way early on and had no plan to correct it! What a disaster the shuttle turned out to be.
Its all lies, the whirld is a big theatre
I would definitely suggest reading Mike Mullane's book "Riding Rockets", the section of the book he devotes to this STS-27 and this incident is amazing and in depth. Not to mention his time during and after Challenger.
I second the book. A great read.
Well done video. I never knew any of this information. With this knowledge I am more dissapointed that 14 years we couldn't use this experience to fix Columbia.
If I were a crew member on STS-27, I would've mutinied. Re-entering with all that damage was an unacceptable risk, and it's a miracle that Atlantis made it back in one piece.
There was not really much choice, unless they had another shuttle ready within a few days.
There was another, frightening near miss. A year before the Challenger was lost 73 seconds into its ascent, Discovery launched on a similarly cold January day. At first, it appeared to be another trouble free launch, but when the boosters were recovered from the ocean and examined by the company that built them for NASA, it was discovered that the cold had prevented the O-Rings from sealing the field joint in the right SRB satisfactorily. Further examination revealed soot and scorching around the Field Joint, worst of all, the O-Ring was only fractions of an inch away from burning through completely
And yet, they learned nothing from this.
@John Jones Rodger Bojalais one of the leading engineers at Morton Thiokol, the company that produced the SRB's for NASA desperately tried to stop the launch. He knew that as it was colder than when Discovery launched a year before, that there was a serious possibility that they would blow the external tank and take out the shuttle with it
@@SiVlog1989 Morton Thiokol
@@jshepard152 noted, I've adjusted the spelling accordingly
Small correction. The space shuttle was a product of the 1970s, not the 1980s. It was first proposed in 1969. Nixon announced its existence in 1972. It was designed and built in the 1970s. The first launch was 1981. They upgraded computers and things as it went along, built more shuttles, but it is 1970s technology.
I worked at KSC and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station for 23 years. Amazing place.
I read mullanes book, he goes into it about sweating out that reentry. Spooky.
@W Pontius yeah I’ve always thought she was a sky goddess
I have seen the post landing pictures of the underside of STS-27. There is aluminum splay all over the tile where a primary tile had come off and the re-entry plasma was melting off the inner skin underneath. It was causing the drops of aluminum to spread back along the tile behind it and damaging them along the way. The root cause of the nose cone is the same stupid negligence that caused the SRB joint seal issue. This is one reason Orion/Artemis is so far behind schedule. They are trying to design all the risk out of the platform to confront all of the contingencies. Whereas the Shuttle was never designed that way to start. I heard Hoot Gibson speak after that return trip back to Earth. He was genuinely pissed. And he was smart enough to know exactly where to look. Some would say Columbia should have been warned, but the pilot (McCool) would have done exactly what Hoot did...watch aileron trim variance. The way they see it today is that the software that controls the OMS had no boundaries, it was simply programmed to keep the orbiter as stable as possible (and it did). Telemetry showed the OMS was still trying to function in the fractions of seconds that the orbiter was breaking up. The computer was never programmed to know if the OMS was going out of normal to maintain its roll patterns. The prevailing attitude of the time was if the OMS couldn't maintain it, there was nothing that could be done. Let it roll. Same thing with Challenger. Scobee's last words were "uh oh", because he saw that the gimbal for the liquid fuel boosters were at full lock compensating for the SRB burn through. The liquid boosters were in a non-normal out of bounds condition. The OMS computer should have triggered an immediate abort and perform a sep of the orbiter...but once again, it wasn't programmed that way. It was "all or nothing".
spuwho that “uh oh” was said by the pilot mike smith, and its not OMS it’s the RCS (Reaction Control System) which control the attitude of the orbiter not the OMS engine.
@@ashokiimc By "OMS" I am referring to the overall orbiter management system, which includes the RCS, the liquid fueled engines, the SRB's etc. And yes it was Mike Smith, not Scobee that said it, thanks for the correction.
I don't think the shuttle could separate while the solids were firing. If you had a catastrophic solids problem, you lose orbiter and crew. Which is what happened.
@@webdaddy Of course it can, otherwise why does NASA perform an abort to KSC weather check prior to launch? Now it may not be able to in the first few thousand of feet because it doesn't have enough kinetic energy for a controlled flight, so they would probably end up in the drink, not the runway.
@@spuwho From Wikipedia "Once the shuttle's SRBs were ignited, the vehicle was committed to liftoff. If an event requiring an abort happened after SRB ignition, it was not possible to begin the abort until after SRB burnout and separation about two minutes after launch."
0:33 ...even though the Space Shuttle was a product of the 1980's"
Actually it was a product of the 1970's
ua-cam.com/video/Bmc9NFfhx74/v-deo.html
I've just finished reading 'Into the Black' about STS-1, they had problems with the tiles, it's worth reading. It's either luck or a series of miracles that the Space Shuttle was so successful.
Budget cuts made NASA go to a cheaper glue for the most important part for re-entry the heat shield tiles. When they switched the glue was when all the problems started.
Didn't help Columbia. No one making the decisions had to ride the STS.
The tiles didn't fall off for lack of glue. They were shattered by impact.
I know for a fact that the very first space shuttle to go through re-entry almost burned through the ablative tiles down to the skin because I saw photos taken by a Rockwell employee that never saw the light of day. Came damn close to suffering the same fate as Columbia.
That first space shuttle WAS Columbia.
This is nonsense. The tiles on the first shuttle were a guess as to placement. The black ones are designed thicker and for higher heat and are placed at regions of high aero. stress. Some tiles were ablated but none were ever close to jeopardizing the spacecraft. Black tiles were added in these areas. Later shuttles used blankets over the OMS pods and in front of the windshield. That's why you have test flights.
The space shuttle's thermal tiles were not ablative.
STS-1 was almost lost because of undercarriage structural damage during launch beneath the 3 main engines. The seriousness was not even told to Astronauts Young and Crippen. John Young stated that if he had been told of the damage, he and Crippen would have ejected once they had slowed within the atmosphere thus losing Columbia. As I recall, the public was told and focused on the missing OMS tiles, but the drama was completely elsewhere.
We went back to the capsule because the shuttle was heavy a.f. and was capable to only the low Earth orbit. It wouldn’t go anywhere beyond LEO, and it was tremendously expensive to operate. Also it was very dangerous, required total rebuilt (think D-check for airplanes) after every mission and so it wasn’t really a reusable spacecraft.
"It wasn't really a reusable spacecraft" You are so full of shit.
@@stargazer7644 that’s a mature argument ))
@@Gusto20000 Yours was an absurd argument.
@@stargazer7644 your wasn’t even an argument. What kind of society you live in, talking to people like that? Raised by dogs?
@@Gusto20000 I call out bullshit wherever I find it. I wasn't making an argument. But if you'd like one, I could point out that the Shuttle was designed for LEO. That's why it can't go anywhere but LEO. That's hardly a ding against the Shuttle. Should I bash the capsule because it can't carry an object like the Hubble into space? Or that it can't return satellites from orbit? No, I wouldn't, because it wasn't designed for that, and I have some sense. Yes the Shuttle was expensive. It was the first of its kind. It was doing something that had never been done before. That's always expensive. I could also point out that all spacecraft are dangerous. The shuttle flew 135 manned flights with 2 fatal accidents. Soyuz has flown 145 manned flights with 4 accidents (2 fatal). Nobody else has flown anywhere close to that many manned flights. So who are you comparing it to that is so much less dangerous?
I am here because of Mike Mullane's Riding Rockets, the coolest and most honest astronaut book ever written.
Geez your videos summoned a lot of cool people. It speaks volume of your content. Keep up the good work!
If you think the Shuttle looked futuristic in the 2000's, imagine how it looked to me when I was 11 (in 1981).
I actually remember this mission. I used to follow the Shuttle missions very closely, even in the days when that was not as easy as it is today with the internet.
What could possibly go wrong with a dual use aircraft/space craft, never designed to be refurbished to the extent it needed to be, run by a management team that had no concept of what is known today as CRM. I'm the boss, I'll make the decisions, no need to listen to anyone
If you think the shuttle looked futuristic in 1981, think how the moon landing looked to me when I was 12 (in 1969)!
@@charlesshreeve319 Damn, I thought I was old, but you are 12 years older still!
Apples and Oranges , I know but Harley Davidson and NASA have a lot in common.
AMERICAN COMPLACENCY !!
Negligence and a whole lot of resting on their laurels. I quit buying direct from Harley as a result of their "we're Harley , we've been around a long time we'll be here forever" .
The genius minds that put this Shuttle program together , the original build team and engineers could have never foreseen the sheer negligence and complacency in the years to come.
45 days before launch ???? at a recommended 7 (I think) . Able to withstand 100psi and it was said to only afford a 30psi impact.
I've always been fascinated by this whole program . I've always LOVED watching launches. To think that the tragedy to come could have been avoided is deplorable. Shame on you NASA.
I dunno. Shuttle's many fatal design flaws were all there at the start, built in by your "genius minds."
Aaron Curtis Like no escape system.
@@thethirdman225 right. After the Challenger disaster, they added a crazy fireman's pole thing for bailing out during reentry... I always wonder if that thing would have actually worked. The videos of astronauts training to use it make me think no.
Aaron Curtis I don’t think so either. They couldn’t be used at high altitudes or high velocities. Besides, in a major incident, there would have been no possibility of any kind of manual escape. G forces would likely have made it impossible and it would all have been over in a second. The first Shuttle at least had ejection seats.
@@thethirdman225 Indeed. I first learned about the system from the fictional account of its use in Titan by Steven Baxter (excellent novel, and prescient in a very spooky sort of way). I was like "surely that's not a real thing" and looked it up.
The shuttle was actually a product of the very late 60 early 70’s. These videos are really good. Keep up the excellent work!
I'll quote "Vintage Space": "I'm not really a shuttle fan..."
It was actually a pretty dangerous space vehicle...😥
They knew this and still allowed the Columbia to enter the atmosphere.
Could they have launched a rescue mission in time? I doubt it.
@@johnkotches8320 There was talk about it by the directors or whatever you call them but the higher ups shushed everything down. The rest of NASA including ground control had no idea about how severe the damage Columbia sustained was, the engineers merely told them that the orbiter might have been slightly damaged and to look out for minor malfunctions, so you can imagine their surprise when every single system on board started failing one after another
@@johnkotches8320 NASA did a study on this, years later. The consensus was that a rescue mission would have been difficult to pull off, but possible. The damning thing is, they didn't even try.
You and me both!! I literally almost gave up on wanting to be an astronaut as a 10 year old in 2011 because they were going back to capsules like LAME😂😭but things look hopeful...
I worked for United Space Alliance from 2005-2011. I began the week we returned to space after Columbia and worked closely with the Tile repair tools and training crews. I held some of the tiles recovered from Columbia. It was a very interested time of my life that I'll never forget. Coincidentally, I witnessed the Columbia break up and didn't realize what it was I saw until after I saw the news hours later. I'd have never in a million years thought I'd be holding some of that material in my hands just 2 years later.
I was also somewhat obsessed with the shuttles and cant believe I'm just now hearing about this. Thanks for the very well executed video!
There were a number of near misses on the shuttle that very easily could have been fatal.
Thank you for the video.😊 The STS-27 mission isn't brought up as much, so it's good to hear more about it. I think somebody should make a documentary about STS-27.
Since Atlantis and her crew nearly perished on re-entry, this is something NASA should've taken into consideration; Columbia and her 7 passengers would pay with their lives more than a century later.😥
It's also too bad that NASA didn't perform the foam impact test earlier while Columbia was still in orbit.
Great video as always, but it’s pretty apparent this time you’re more an aviation guy than a space guy. A few nitpicks and details I’d like to point out, but I doubt they’ll ever be relevant unless you’re doing another space video in the future:
-Pad 39B is a part of Complex 39, which has two pads among other equipment within it. ‘Complex 39B’ technically isn’t wrong, but it’s a misnomer and isn’t used very often.
-‘The main engines were lit’ is again not wrong, but it’s probably not exactly what you meant. Shuttle’s main engines were liquid-fueled, and so were more akin to a car or jet engine that is started, than a firework that is lit. They were activated several seconds before liftoff, as their pumps needed time to spool up. The boosters, on the other hand, are basically giant electrically-lit firecrackers whose instant ignition is the actual mark for T-0.
-Hypersonic of course doesn’t mean much in rocket science as there’s no air in space. Then again, the relevant scenario was technically at the edge of an atmosphere, so it can be got away with.
I’m only saying this stuff because I really love your content in general and how accurate it all is. I’m not criticizing this video in any way, it’s just that normally, your videos have such great little details that often makes watching them very engaging. I hope this isn’t too rude or long, as these videos always take a lot of effort and I don’t want to demean the whole thing because of such small stuff.
Great comment. Spoken by a smart human
Oh man. I was such a shuttle fanboy and grew up with it. But now learning it's shortfalls and many design compromises, I see it in a different light. Still, we learn from our failures and make design iterations in future.
It mostly was the rockets that took the space shuttle to space
Thankyou for doing this one, it just shows how close it came, and the people who designed them not recognising the problems that lead upto this. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and the shuttle did its job well, Barring the two losses of course. When it went up it was magical, and ive always thought that, nice to know the story on this one.
Houston: “ what can you see?”
Commander: “ at least one missing tile and 100 damaged tiles”
Phill Swift: “that’s a lot of damage!”
Houston: “god dam it”
Phil Swift: “ hi Phil Swift here for flex thermal protection tiles!”
Make sure nothing like that happens again? RIP Columbia :(
Video sequence from 3:33 - 5:00 is probably the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Thank you for taking time to understand and explain that near fatal failure of STS-27, I followed the development of Space Flights throughout the 1960,s until they became routine. I never knew enough about what happened to cause the failure of those flights that were lost, both on accent and reentry. It all goes to show that care must be taken to ensure the smallest detail is perfect.
You just KILLED that! Great job!
Ending was EPIC!!
The saturn 5 made the shuttle look like a toy. That was a spectacular launch.
Very informative. Good job with your research.
I remember watching the lunches from homestead Florida which is like 400 miles away. Every once in a while you can see SpaceX launches from miami. But falcon 9s interaction with the atmosphere is totally different than the sts