On Fri, 7 Feb 2003 15:38:28 -0600, you ("Sam Milton" <sam_milton@hotmail.com>) wrote: >I know this will be off-topic, but this will only be one post. I have been >listening for a week now as theories are bandied about, and the media >continues to try to play "gotcha" with scraps of technical information to >try to prove somehow that some of the smartest engineers in the world were >careless, or stupid, or lazy, or negligent in some way. It really leaves a >bad taste in my mouth. Couldn't agree more. And I would expand that also to some politicians and other self-proclaimed experts on the subject. >As an chemical engineer myself (but not one of the >smartest in the world), I can appreciate the complexities of the shuttle and >all of the potential malfunctions. It amazes me that these engineers like >Mr. Dittemore maintain their cool with airhead reporters (Miles O'Brien >excluded) asking questions about boundary-layer flow which they obviously Well there sure are one or two more who know what they're saying and what they're reporting on... But it's true, some of those questions are annoyingly stupid, repetitive, sometimes leading, etc. >My theory on this disaster, since everyone has one, is that either the >debris impact or some other object struck the left leading edge reinforced >carbon-carbon panels and damaged them. These U-shaped panels are attached >side by side to the front spar of the wing. I would agree to that in that it amazes me in how so many people have focussed on heat shield tiles since Saturday and tied that focus to the debris impact. I would much rather have wondered if that impact hadn't had a bad influence on the RCC in some way, such as in rupturing it a little at the wing shoulder, with that rupture getting larger during reentry, allowing a little bit of plasma in, the rupture getting yet larger and changing the airflow over the wing, the wing dissolving from there on down etc. I know this is also pure speculation, but this would explain a lot of the symptoms a lot better than that stupid "tile damage" the media is making such a fuzz about. >Today Aviation Week reported >that an Air Force telescope saw severe damage to the wing glove are of the >leading edge. I have seen the photo, and I think it's debatable if that really is "severe damage" considering its resolution (or rather lack thereof...). It shows what might(!) be missing structure in that area and a sort of (plasma?) turbulence trailing the left wing elevon area. Let's not jump to a conclusion based on a photo that mostly consists of black and white blocks. <major snip> Very good assessment, can't help but nodding while reading it. >As for the sensor loss, I don't know enough about their location or wiring to say. Some of those sensors apparently share a wiring route that goes around the left and front wheel well, closely behind the RCC area that might(!) show some damage on the aforementioned photo. I'm just not sure wether that's the precise point of impact of that piece of debris, looks to me as if that impact occured a tad bit more outboard. I'm really not sure, and I'm reluctant to speculate. CU! Markus ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Feb 07 2003 - 21:13:49 EST