{"id":2421,"date":"2003-02-01T13:42:33","date_gmt":"2003-02-01T16:42:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/bb\/viewtopic.php?p=236"},"modified":"2010-05-09T18:29:03","modified_gmt":"2010-05-09T21:29:03","slug":"the-columbia-space-shuttle-accident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/2003\/02\/01\/the-columbia-space-shuttle-accident\/","title":{"rendered":"The Columbia space shuttle accident"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Only days after the 17th anniversary of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.me.utexas.edu\/~uer\/challenger\/conclusion.html\">Challenger accident<\/a>, the <a href=\"http:\/\/news.google.com\/news?num=30&amp;hl=en&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=cluster:www%2evoanews%2ecom%2farticle%2ecfm%3fobjectID%3d43642CC0%2dE52B%2d4DC0%2d86A1BC9203EBA58E\">Columbia breaks up<\/a> while landing after an otherwise successful two-week mission. All 7 astronauts are presumed dead. There were reports of a piece of thermal tile or insulation breaking up during lift-off and hitting one of the wings, but technicians concluded that this didn&#8217;t do significant damage &#8211; seems to have been a mistake. But then, they couldn&#8217;t stay up indefinitely, either&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>All principal news sources and weblogs are tracking the news. <a href=\"http:\/\/education.atu.edu\/people\/sadams\/blogger2\/\">Scott Adams<\/a> is building a list <a href=\"http:\/\/education.atu.edu\/people\/sadams\/blogger2\/2003\/02\/01.html#a423\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>By a coincidence, today I started rereading <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/0345331796\/\">&#8220;Shuttle Down&#8221;<\/a> written in 1980 by G. Harry Stine under his pen name &#8220;Lee Correy&#8221;. This book has the shuttle Atlantis making an emergency landing on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rapanui.cl\/\">Rapa Nui (Easter Island)<\/a>. Of course, in the book there&#8217;s a happy ending&#8230; Stine, who <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfwa.org\/News\/stine.htm\">died in 1997<\/a>, was active in the early US rocket experiments and was co-founder of the Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy.<\/p>\n<p>BTW <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kithrup.com\/brin\/\">David Brin<\/a>&#8216;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/055329024X\/\">&#8220;Earth&#8221;<\/a>, one of my favorite books, also features a shuttle stranded on Rapa Nui.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update:<\/strong> another coincidence: the third major disaster for NASA, the fire which <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hq.nasa.gov\/office\/pao\/History\/Apollo204\/\">killed three astronauts<\/a> inside the Apollo-1 capsule (on the launch pad) happened Jan. 27, 1967. The Challenger accident was proven to be <a href=\"http:\/\/www.me.utexas.edu\/~uer\/challenger\/conclusion.html\">related to low launch temperatures<\/a>&#8230; the Apollo accident seems to have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hq.nasa.gov\/office\/pao\/History\/Apollo204\/summary.html\">no such connection<\/a>. However, both showed a lethal combination of design failures, mechanical failures and administrative screw-ups. No doubt this happened again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Only days after the 17th anniversary of the Challenger accident, the Columbia breaks up while landing after an otherwise successful two-week mission. All 7 astronauts are presumed dead. There were reports of a piece of thermal tile or insulation breaking up during lift-off and hitting one of the wings, but technicians concluded that this didn&#8217;t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sci"],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Rainer Brockerhoff","author_link":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/author\/rbrockerhoff\/"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1q3Zc-D3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}