re: 15 years ago today, we lost the Shuttle Columbia

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On reentry, flames entered the wing through the hole of missing tiles and became involved with the fuel and oxygen tanks.

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I thought it caused the wing to shear away, throwing off the shuttle trajectory/ angle of re-entry...came in sideways with little heat shield protection, roasted by friction.

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I thought the way they held it together inside mission control, even though they knew the crew was gone, was incredible.

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Leroy Cain

At least some of the Challenger crew was alive all the way down to the water, if not all. They fell for like 2 minutes and had evidence of the crew still trying to save themselves all the way down.

As for the Columbia, I'm pretty sure they died instantaneously once the cockpit was breached.

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15 years ago today, we lost the Shuttle Columbia

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And we just a few days ago hit the 32 year anniversary of the Challenger crash. 32 years ago. Holy shite.

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So much false in this post

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I understand the debate over the end result of the incursion into the wing. What else is false?

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I'll always remember where I was that Saturday morning.

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What were you, like 3?

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I understand the debate over the end result of the incursion into the wing. What else is false?

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Oh just the part about what caused the accidents and what happened during them.

Just edit your post to say Challenger blew up on take off, Columbia on reentry. Then you'll be correct.

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I understand the debate over the end result of the incursion into the wing. What else is false?

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1) There never was an explosion in the Challenger disaster. The jet impingement of hot gas leaking through an o-ring on the right solid rocket booster burned through the hydrogen tank wall and the strut holding the right booster onto the main tank. The shuttle's main computers detected the change in thrust and aerodynamic loading as the hot gas escaped out of the side of the SRB and the main tank began leaking and compensated for it by gimballing the main engines. Eventually, the jet burned through the lower strut holding the right booster to the main fuel tank. The booster then rotated about the upper strut and slammed into the main fuel tank, rupturing it and venting it. Aerodynamic loads on the tank finished destroying it and the two SRBs detached from the tank and flew off on their own. The released cloud of fuel and oxidizer ignited and began to burn. The orbiter, suddenly detached from the boosters and its fuel source, lost all propulsion and with a drastically changed handling characteristics and no thrust vectoring available, the computer was unable to keep the orbiter stable and it rapidly tumbled out of control and turned into the slipstream and disintegrated due to massive aerodynamic loading. The released fuel and oxygen burned, but at no point was there a detonation or an explosion, just a fireball. The whole chain of events is well documented by telemetry.

2) The root cause of the Challenger disaster had nothing to do with the fuel tank or faulty equipment. An o-ring in the right solid rocket booster lost its "springiness" due to the cold weather and was not able to seal as well as it needed to for a safe mission. This behavior was known by the design engineers and they protested the launch due to the known limitations of the o-ring in cold weather, but NASA management overrode them. The o-ring, performing exactly as designed and just like the engineers predicted and feared, failed to seal the booster and allowed hot gas from the booster to impinge on the fuel tank and the SRB strut, weakening them and eventually leading to rapid and complete structural failure.

3) There are no recordings or telemetry from the crew compartment of the Challenger after aerodynamic loading tore it off of the rest of the orbiter. Its power source was not in the crew cabin and all power was lost when the cabling was severed as the crew compartment separated from the rest of the orbiter. In the recovered crew compartment, spring loaded, gated, and protected switches were found thrown from their flight positions and equipment was used that wouldn't be used during a normal flight. This is what indicated that at least a few members of the crew were definitely alive and conscious after the vehicle was torn apart and were trying to save themselves, but no recordings exist.

4) Ice did not cause the Columbia disaster. Foam falling off of an area near one of the attachment points of the main fuel tank to the orbiter broke a hole in the leading edge of the left wing, leading to the disaster.

5) Columbia did not explode. Progressive heating of the left wing and wheel well by superheated gas during entry weakened and deformed the structure. The orbiter's computers compensated for the aerodynamic loading until it reached the limits of what it's control systems could counteract, at which point it began to tumble and be exposed to aerodynamic loads that quickly tore it and its crew to pieces. After breakup, then debris was then exposed to extreme temperatures due to ram heating during entry.

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The anniversary of all three of NASA's losses occur within a week on the calendar.

Apollo 1 - 1/27
Challenger - 1/28
Columbia - 2/1

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I am not a smart man but I do know that if I were the boss at NASA this means a couple of weeks of the year are blocked off going forward for manned space flight.

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Part of the debris landed on a former colleagues ranch out in Texas. Never heard what he saw but it messed him up really bad.

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How does one get so messed up after seeing metal on their lawn? My spidey senses tell me you just came here to lie.