Another question - does the space shuttle have an equivalent to a “balck box”, or voice data recorder, etc?
I don’t know if Shuttle vehicles have the equivalent of a black box. The issue to consider is still one of heat. Reentry to the atmosphere at speed in excess of Mach 18 creates frictional heating to temperatures which exceed that of the Sun, according to NASA. Following vehicular breakup, many smaller pieces are destroyed before falling to Earth. Nothing of the sort was mentioned after Challenger, so I really doubt if they are employed.
According to the NASA news conference, Orbiters do not have what is called a “black box”. They do have recorders for data and voice on board, but they are not reinforced in any way. Read this to mean that they did not survive the breakup.
In addition, NASA relies on telemetry and thus has most (if not all) of the data leading up to the breakup that would be available on an in-flight recorder.
Summarizing the press conference, they started to lose sensors on the left wing (trailing edge first, then some in the wheel well). No indications of excessive heat, just loss of sensor output. The vehicle was peforming exactly as expected and had just completed a “roll reversal” to dissipate energy when they lost contact.
There have been 18 deaths in-flight on a space vehicle. The reason I word it like that is that all deaths have been during reentry or on liftoff.
If you add in the three who died in the Apollo 1 fire, you get 21. I don’t know how many Cosmonauts have died during training, though, so I didn’t add them.
So, 18 people on space missions have died since April 12, 1961, when Yuri Gagarin made the first manned spaceflight. 18 people in over 41 years.
No, they are not, but so far as I know, the biggest difference is that Endeavor (the newest) is more capable than the others. Since we still have Endeavor, the remaining shuttles should be able to do any particular job Columbia was slated to do.
Columbia was the heaviest and most “robust” of the orbiters. That is why it was slated most often with the extended-duration science missions and not ISS construction. Since it was heavier, less cargo (station parts, supplies) could be hauled into orbit.
I believe it had also recently returned from the avionics upgrade that Endeavour received. I am not sure of that, though.
Yes, NPR confirmed the fact that Columbia had recently had an avionics upgrade. It was fitted with an “all-glass” cockpit, meaning CRT instrumentation.
Duck Duck Goose:
Nope. Because one accident just doubled the total number of fatalities of the entire shuttle program.
Clearly, we can play some games with the numbers and come up with some pretty scary statistics. For instance, it takes about 8.5 minutes to get to orbit, and (I think) about 15 minutes to land. There have been 107 space shuttle flights. That means the total time spentd going into and coming back from space amounts to 41.9 hours. Divide by two accidents, and you get a fatal accident rate of one every 21 hours. Divide by fatalities, and you get one fatality for every 3 hours of takeoff and re-entry. No other job comes evern close.
Or, you can take the total flight time of all shuttles, which is somewhere close to 1000 days total flight time. This is probably a more accurate way to judge, as lots of jobs have very dangerous moments and other times or relative safety. There have been 14 fatalities, for a fatality rate of one fatality for every 71 days of operation.
Either of those numbers is far, far higher than the fatal accident rates listed above. For example, the one cite claimed that lumber workers were doing the most dangerous job, with 122 fatalities per 100,000 workers. If we want to use that yardstick, there have been about 300 different astronauts flying on shuttles, and 14 have been killed. That’s a fatality rate of 4,666 per 100,000, or about 38 times greater than the risk lumber workers face.
Shuttle astronaut is by FAR the most dangerous job around. I suspect it’s not on those lists because those lists are probably compiled from data that doesn’t include jobs like astronaut, jet fighter pilot, Navy Seal, etc.
Do you think that in the future some kids will be able to look at ‘retired’ shuttles? Will we ever stop using these and use some other ship? I know in the original plans these would be retired and shuttle version 2 would be flying but we don’t seem to be replacing them.
There’s also the speculation that the Russkies lost some cosmonauts without telling anyone. The Master discussed it a couple of weeks ago: Were there really “Lost Cosmonauts” stranded in space?
There is no Mir. It was scuttled awhile back and burned up over the Pacific. There is still the ISS, but they are two different entities.
There was a Shuttle, Enterprise, that was built for testing purposes, but never launched. It is on display somewhere.
USCDiver
The Enterprise, built for testing purposes, was retired and is now property of the Smithsonian.
FWIW, I believe there had been investigation into using a design based on the X-15. Sort of a mini-shuttle, used for passengers instead of cargo.
There is another, Pathfinder, kept on display at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. It was used to test shuttle-crawler-pad integration. Neither craft, however, is capable of spaceflight.
There were plans to replace the Space Shuttle, but unfortunately, the most successful, the X-38 program, was scrapped a year or two ago, just months away from flight testing. Of course, there’s a huge debate over whether we really need “the latest and greatest” or whether we should stick with the 20-year tried and true Space Shuttle, but this isn’t the thread for that.
I couldn’t find any good statistics, so I’ll concede my earlier statement.
On the other hand, if you go by fatalities per mile, it’s probably not so bad.
There is a memorial that lists the names of (IIRC) 17 American astronauts who have died while in the program. Three died in Apollo 1 and seven died in Challenger. The others died in training accidents (for example, one pair crashed a T-38 into a hangar in IMC).
Not only that, the Enterprise was an atmospheric flight model. It did not and cannot go into space.
On a side note, I’m told that the reason why Revell’s shuttle model is so innaccurate relative to the ones they actually use is because the molds are based, not on the Columbia and its brothers and sisters, but on the testbed Enterprise.
Yeah, I remember when I got that model, it had four different decals: Columbia, Discovery, Challenger, and Enterprise. Needless to say, was I ever confused 
Refering back to posts up above, there is no black box on the shuttles. They are constantly transmitting all the information that would be in the black box.
Dangerous my butt. I’ll go tomorrow, if they can get another shuttle ready. I’d be scared shitless, at first, but it would be more than worth the thrill.
Anybody else?
Peace,
mangeorge
I’d go in a second.