16 Years ago today...RIP crew of SS Columbia.

Each of them smarter and more ambitious than I. I once attempted to reupholster a van .

RIP.

RIP and Godspeed to them.



Obligatory O-T 4,3,4,3,4,3...., (17 years ago)

Sorry

"Lock the doors."

RIP

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"Lock the doors."

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The video is a powerful watch. Engineers at the absolute height of their profession trying to maintain their composure in the face of tragedy. I don't know how they do it.

quote:

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The video is a powerful watch.

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The weird thing is that the controllers had no good idea of what was happening. The orbiter was just gone. Telemetry was gone, radar was gone, comms was gone. From their chairs, the orbiter just kind of disappeared and they knew something VERY BAD had happened, but were still operating on the idea that there might have been an instrumentation error or equipment error that was causing problems communicating and were still trying to regain contact to bring the orbiter home.

Things get ominous when FLIGHT (in control of the mission and takes every step necessary for crew safety and mission success) asks FIDO (flight dynamics, in charge of flight profile during entry) when he expected to see the orbiter come up on radar from the landing site and the response was "one minute ago". Shuttle orbiter landings are planned to the second and they know down to the foot how far down the runway the orbiter's going to touch down. They do not come early or late. If they are off schedule, they don't come home.

When you see FLIGHT talking to Flight Ops (represents senior management and is responsible for PR, non-mission safety decisions, policy, etc.) who sits in the row behind FLIGHT, Ops had just gotten a phone call from a friend who was an off-duty NASA controller who'd seen footage of the orbiter coming down in pieces on TV and knew that the orbiter was lost (not stopped on the side of a road in Texas to witness the orbiter breaking up as I earlier thought). He immediately called his buddy in Ops and told him what he'd seen. You can see when the guy tells the woman before he calls FLIGHT over and she says "Oh, God". So, that's what Ops is relaying to FLIGHT right before FLIGHT turned around and gave the order to lock the doors. FLIGHT literally was told his friends were definitely dead about ten seconds before he gave the order and made it official for the rest of the controllers. When FLIGHT gives the order to lock the doors, that means the flight is formally ended and there is no hope to save the crew. The controllers then go into a data preservation mode to secure data, write logs and notes while memories are fresh, etc., to make sure the investigation team has as much evidence as possible to work with.

Heroes one and all. RIP.