/sci/ - Science & Math

>>16102462
I wish they had aborted and ended the shittle program right there
> After the flight, mission commander John Young was shown those videos. His reaction was severe. 'Had I known the body flap had been deflected so far off position', he told associates, 'I'd have concluded the hydraulic lines had been ruptured and the system was inoperative'. Without a working body flap, a controlled descent and landing would have been extremely difficult if not impossible. The pitch control thrusters might or might not have been enough to provide control. The shuttle might have tumbled out of control and disintegrated at very high speed and altitude ... 'I'd have ridden the vehicle up to a safe altitude', he later stated, 'and while still in the ejection envelope [the range of speed and altitude for safely firing the ejection seats] I'd have pulled the ring'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-1#cite_note-boyle-25

>>15564909
It would have been better all round if Crippen and Young had bailed out from STS-1
>After the flight, mission commander John Young was shown those videos. His reaction was severe. 'Had I known the body flap had been deflected so far off position', he told associates, 'I'd have concluded the hydraulic lines had been ruptured and the system was inoperative'. Without a working body flap, a controlled descent and landing would have been extremely difficult if not impossible. The pitch control thrusters might or might not have been enough to provide control. The shuttle might have tumbled out of control and disintegrated at very high speed and altitude ... 'I'd have ridden the vehicle up to a safe altitude', he later stated, 'and while still in the ejection envelope [the range of speed and altitude for safely firing the ejection seats] I'd have pulled the ring'.

>>15343452
>The same overpressure wave also forced the orbiter body flap – an extension on the orbiter's underbelly that helps to control pitch during reentry – into an angle well beyond the point where cracking or rupture of its hydraulic system would have been expected. Such damage would have made a controlled descent impossible, with John Young later admitting that had the crew known about this, they would have flown the shuttle up to a safe altitude and ejected, causing Columbia to be lost on the first flight.
It would have been better all round if they did this and killed the shittle program at birth

>shittle defenders
you best be trolling for (you)s

>We have told the story of how Space Shuttle went from being a simple reusable access to space pickup truck to a horse designed by a committee. One part of the design process was NASA's hope to take space access away from the Armed Services by making the Shuttle able to perform just about any mission the Armed Services wanted. The Air Force had a particular mission requirement: launch from Vandenberg, go over the Soviet Union, and return to land at Edwards AFB. This required a large cross range capability, which required wings, which dominated Shuttle design.
>As one observer puts it, "the SAOAM (that's the Silly Ass Once Around Mission) requirement was dropped by the Air Force in 1974, two years after the SAOAM (along with the volume of the cargo bay) had defined the Shuttle's design."
>All this is pretty well known, but it's worth repeating. In the course of discussion Dr. Phil Chapman, one time Antarctic explorer and former US Astronaut, said this, which I quote with his permission:

>The payload bay was bigger than NASA needed because it was sized to carry the giant Big Bird reconnaissance satellite, but the invention of the CCD array made that system obsolete by 1973. When Big Bird and "the Soviet surveillance once-around mission" went away, NASA could have saved money by starting over with a new design -- but that would have been politically embarrassing, especially as deleting USAF participation would have made it entirely clear that the mission model used to justify the shuttle was not just absurdly optimistic but fraudulent.
>NASA's need to save face in 1974 and thereafter has destroyed the dreams of two generations of space enthusiasts, cost us two shuttle crews, wasted 35 years and and several hundred billion dollars, turned the NASA human spaceflight program into a boondoggle that the public no longer supports, and wasted the opportunity to make an irrevocable leap into space that was afforded by the Cold War. Way to go, NASA.

>>15135020
''obviously a major malfunction"

>>15095275
There would be 14 people still alive