NASA Columbia survival report question.

Did you read the Challenger report? They decided that the SRB housing was flexing at the joints and redesigned the lips to reduce the chances of burn though.

Yes. The thing is that they had plenty of warning that things weren't right. They just ignored it, pretty much on the grounds that it didn't break yesterday, so it won't break today. Similar management complacency can be seen behind the Columbia disaster.

Managing risk seems to be a task that is frequently beyond the abilities of managers.

Sylvia.

Indeed!

...Jim Thompson

Google "cost iraq war Stiglitz"

"THE Iraq war has cost the US 50-60 times more than the Bush administration predicted and was a central cause of the sub-prime banking crisis threatening the world economy, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

The former World Bank vice-president yesterday said the war had, so far, cost the US something like $US3trillion ($3.3 trillion) compared with the $US50-$US60-billion predicted in 2003. ... Professor Stiglitz told the Chatham House think tank in London that the Bush White House was currently estimating the cost of the war at about $US500 billion, but that figure massively understated things such as the medical and welfare costs of US military servicemen.

The war was now the second-most expensive in US history after World War II and the second-longest after Vietnam, he said. "

Evidently you are as stupid as you sound.

Think again. Try Everest or "free style" (no equipnent allowed besides your limbs), I think it's called. Even McKinley is dangerous. Hell, they lose a few on the puny Northeast slopes every year.

The shuttle had o-ring erosions that weren't a problem until they were, and breakaway foam chunks that weren't a problem until they were. If I were either a NASA administrator or a shuttle astronaut, I would want to know what other problems were not yet problems.

I agree that the astronauts might, but what would an administrator do with such information?

Sylvia.

So Bin Laden managed to leverage the lives of 20 fanatics into more than 3 trillion dollars of losses and the subsequent ongoing near-collapse of the world economies. That single action somehow lured the USA into losing >3000 lives and earned it worldwide emnity in the process.

That's assymetrical warefare for you :(

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But it is a much cheaper and lighter solution than the alternatives. And even if you avoided external foam you can still have nasty chunks of water ice formed on the outside of the tank under condensing conditions that would be just as damaging. Florida is not exactly noted for its low humidity.

That is a bit unkind to it. But it was always dependent on many new technologies all working perfectly. The ceramic tiles are very impressive to see in action on test close up. Even if they were also a worrying source of single point failure modes on reentry.

The manned space mission has been reduced to going round in an orbiting tin can to no useful purpose. The ISS science program is distinctly unimpressive. The only thing the ISS project does is prevent a few Russian rocket scientists freelancing for the likes of N Korea and Iran. People in space are not especially useful any more unless you have to do something that a robot cannot.

The unmanned robotic space exploration work of NASA is extremely impressive with the Hubble Space Telescope images foremost among the better known coffee table books and calendars. The Mars and other planetary explorers have done very well too. So long as they repair and upgrade the HST before they retire the Shuttle I don't mind either way.

Too bad they can't just dust off the plans for a Saturn V. That was a really impressive launch vehicle.

It might be fun to go back to the moon at least once and retrieve one of the Hassleblads they abandonned there just to annoy the tin foil hat brigade of conspiracy freaks who claim Apollo was faked. Now we know where there is water ice in the shade of polar craters there is scope for doing something new and interesting again on the moon.

Regards, Martin Brown

That they're needed is related to the requirement for a once-round abort mode, which in turn demands a high cross-range ability, and thus a long hot period.

That once round abort requirement has a lot to answer for.

Sylvia.

Dirk B. stupid, too ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Just quoting a Nobel prize winner and former deputy head of the World Bank. But hey - you obviously know better.

No, the 0-ring probles were a known problem which was made a non-problem by management edict.

Breakaway foam wasn't a problem until the enviro-weenies infested NASA.

I'd look at management and see what else is being compromised in the interest of political correctness.

-- snip --

At least in the last 200 years no country has managed to keep the lid tight on the populace _and_ be successful on the world stage for more than a few generations. Perhaps I'm too complacent, but at some point I think the Chinese are going to look at their government and say "enough is enough" -- and the whole thing will fall apart.

Of course, that doesn't mean that a democratic China won't still be a threat to us...

Wow! A Nobel Prize? Are you sure? A Nobel Prize, and $10 will get you a bad cup of coffee.

I thought it was about half a million with a Nobel. Being No.2 at the world bank is obviously no big deal either. WTF would that guy know about costs anyway, compared to UseNuts.

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Gore would have already wasted all that on utility bills and have to sell a carbon credit to buy his coffee.