Viewing Columbia's remains


Message posted by Andre' M. Dall'au on July 25, 2003 at 3:43:58 PST:

The Following article gives an interesting account about viewing the remains of the Shuttle Columbia. i was going to edit it for brevity, but didn't want to diminish the piece, so I left it alone. Sorry for the length, but it has some interesting observations and gives a enhanced appreciation for those people that fly and ride in SR-71's, the X-planes, and other sub-orbital, hi-speed aircraft we believe are currently operating.

The telephone began to ring late Saturday night as I was sitting in my
recliner reading one of the books that details the space shuttle Challenger
tragedy. I was re-reading the book titled, PRESCRIPTION FOR DISASTER, as
part of my preparation for a radio interview next month. The caller on the
telephone, was an old friend, Carson Shaffer. Carson had spent part of his
Saturday viewing the "reconstructed" wreckage of space shuttle Columbia.
The experience had a "soul deep" impact on my old buddy. We talked about
what Carson had seen in that Kennedy Space Center hangar and the
implications of the Columbia tragedy until the batteries on our phones began
to fail. Carson's description of the wreckage of Columbia was so powerful,
that I told him that he needed to tell others about what he saw. He did.
Carson provided a powerful description in an email that I have reproduced
below.

Carson is not a typical witness to the aftermath of Columbia. It is not
easy to shock or jolt this United States Air Force veteran. Carson has a
partial disability from an accident aboard a C5A Galaxy that occured during
his military career. On October 23, 1983, 243 U.S. Marines were killed when
a terrorist attack destroyed the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Lebanon.
When the crushed and mangled bodies of those Marines were returned to the
United States, Carson dutifully volunteered to help remove the slain Marines
from body bags and place them in those simple coffins that too many people
have seen draped with flags as they come off of airplanes for delivery to
soldiers families. He still has nightmares from that experience. Carson
remains a patriotic and devoted husband father and citizen of the United
States. He and his family presently reside near Cape Canaveral where his
family can stand in the yard and view all of the launches from the nearby
"Space Coast". Carson has helped me document space shuttle missions from
the Kennedy Space Center press site and we have watched launches from the
NASA Causeway as well as the VIP viewing stand. Over the years, Carson and
I both maintained a realization that spaceflight is never "routine" and that
rockets still have a nasty tendency to explode now and then. We agree that
the astronauts who ride on space shuttles deserve all of the respect and
adulation that they receive.

The stark reality of the Columbia accident is that it was the most violent
and destructive event in the entire history of space exploration. The
terrible Apollo 1 fire in 1967 killed three astronauts, but the basic form
and structure of that spacecraft largely remained intact after the accident.
The explosion that shattered space shuttle Challenger in 1986 broke the
spacecraft into large, but still relatively intact sections. The crew
compartment of Challenger was still recognizable before and after it struck
the ocean surface following that explosion. Sadly, the wreckage of Columbia
stirs up painful memories of the World Trade Center debris following the
September, 2001 terrorists attacks.

Here are Carson's words:

Yesterday, I was invited to attend the walk through of the Columbia
reconstruction project. Located inside the large white hangar next to the
SLF (Shuttle Landing Facility), the reconstruction project covers about
40,000 square feet. Buses took us to the hangar, and as we walked towards
the hangar doors, you could see several banners from the recovery crews,
signed by all the members. One in particular stood out to me, under the
STS-107 patch, saying, "She's home now." Columbia was brought back to the
spot she would have returned to, the SLF facility.

As I walked into the hangar, what first struck me was how little debris
appeared to have been collected. Even though I was looking at 84,000 lbs of
debris, representing 38% of the orbiter's dry weight, the word that came to
my mind was FLAT. No piece seemed to stand over 30" tall. Of course, there
were a few that were larger, and some pieces had been bent upon impact and
were sticking up, but overall it was FLAT (as an example for my children
when I was telling them about it, I tore up a sheet of notebook paper into
tiny pieces, spread them out on the table in the rough shape of an orbiter
and held up a model of the shuttle and compared it to the flat, small pieces
of paper). The average size piece seemed to be about 1-2 feet, square.
There were no clean edges anywhere - each side of every piece of debris held
testament to the unimaginable forces that occurred during the breakup.
Every edge was torn and ripped, without exception. Most pieces were
partially melted or showed signs of thermal damage.

The pieces were laid out on a cement floor marked off into a grid, arranged
in the outline of a shuttle. The grid was about 200' X 200'. There was a
separate area for unidentified parts (those that could not be placed on the
grid). To get an idea of how difficult this task was, here's how it worked:
A piece of debris, say a metal sheet, 2" X 5", is brought in and an attempt
is made to identify it. Think of how big the orbiter is, and how small a
2X5 piece is. Add heat damage that has changed the color, remove any clean
edges. The engineers even went to the length of measuring the distance
between rivets and searching for components that had similar rivet spacing.
What an absolutely incredible task, and these folks did it with a smile. I
doubt that I could have done nearly as well.

The cockpit inner window frames were recovered intact, and were displayed
side-by-side, as they were in the orbiter. You could look into those
charred frames and see the faces inside in your mind. I had to walk away
from the whiteboard that the astronauts children had made for them prior to
launch. Especially poignant were the "Have a great flight Dad!" and "I love
you Mom" signatures from the children.

The avionics boxes bore the scars of the incredible thermal damage that they
had undergone. On a few of the PCBs (printed circuit boards), you could see
where the surface mount components had been literally desoldered and
stripped from the board. I was told that out of all the miles of wiring in
the orbiter, only 200 feet or so had been recovered. Of the tremendous
numbers of hydraulic lines, only about 50 feet had been found. Most of the
connectors had 4-6" of wire hanging out, if any, and the rest was gone.
Everything was partially melted or at least severely burned.

The majority of the tiles were melted and looked like Styrofoam that had
been hit with a blowtorch. I learned how the workers could "read" what
happened by deciphering the laminated metals that had been deposited on so
many of the surfaces - you could especially see this on the OMS (Orbital
Maneuvering System) pods - as components melted, they were blown back and
deposited on the tile surfaces. There were layers of aluminum, titanium,
more aluminum, etc. You could read the striations in the deposits and
thereby see which way the airflow was going. This, among other data, let
them see that at one point, Columbia had been flying backwards.

All that was left of the 3 engines were a few hunks of metal, about enough
to fill the bed of a pickup truck. We saw the piece that was tracked on
radar doing mach 2, and dug a 14' deep crater when it impacted. It was
rather deformed from the impact. It was a miracle that no one was injured
from all the debris raining down. Raining is the wrong word. Screaming,
streaking, fiery, red-hot re-entry is more like it.

The round, ball like tanks (fire suppression, helium, nitrogen, O2, etc.)
were amazingly intact. It is believed that their light weight and efficient
aerodynamic structure allowed them to slow quickly and fall slowly. All 34
were recovered.

The left wing leading edge RCC (reinforced carbon-carbon) panels, of course,
had their own display. I was struck by the effort that had gone into
constructing the jigs/displays that held the parts. Each RCC panel was
encased in clear Plexiglas to allow viewing without touching, and each
display opened up, and also rotated 360 degrees in at least one axis. The
bases of the displays were even powder-coated. All in all, it was beautiful
craftsmanship. There was a total reconstruction of the left wing leading
edge, complete with wires showing where the various device data came from
(as you may know, the drop out of certain signals aided the search for the
breach location). The recovered pieces were mounted as they were in the
orbiter, and you could see where the plasma jet had burned through the
structural members and taken off the left wing at 12,500 mph. Clearly
visible were deposits of liquefied Titanium (3000 degrees F, minimum) and
aluminum (1000 Degrees F, minimum). Estimations of the temperature of the
plasma jet were about 10,000 degrees F. No material on earth could withstand
those temperatures. There is no solution for the wing itself that would
have prevented this event. The only way to prevent it is to stop the foam
impact that caused the initial damage to RCC panel #8. I got to hold a
piece of the insulative foam in my hands.

Words cannot describe the energy of the event. To look at that floor and
think that all of those little flat pieces are all that remains of a huge
orbiter is almost beyond comprehension. The forces that ripped Columbia
apart are far, far beyond anything I've ever seen. To those who state that
"effectively, due to the air density at that altitude, the winds were equal
to 200 mph on the ground", you need to take another look at that debris. It
is beyond anything I can even imagine.

I spent 2.5 hours in that hangar, and I felt like I had only been in there
30 minutes. I had all of my questions answered by the actual people who
built Columbia, and they did it with a smile, went far beyond the call of
duty, answered the same questions over and over again, and again, and again,
as new groups came in. They did it all with caring, compassion, accuracy
and total professionalism. I am honored and proud that my country has men
and women such as these.

I never had mixed engineering and emotion before, and words cannot
adequately describe my feelings. It was intense in the extreme, from both
an engineering standpoint, and the emotional. To look at all that hardware,
and have the people who built it standing there to answer your questions was
incredible. I got what I wanted: maximum engineering understanding. I had
thought that I had my emotions under control, since I was OK before, during
and after. I do know that I drank too much last night, and watched The
Right Stuff with tears in my eyes. For those of you who know me, you
understand that am not easily given to tears, but reflection of the events
of that day got me. I'm still not sure how I feel.

To those who say that "They (NASA, etc) let them die". You are wrong. No
one connected in any way, shape or form to the shuttle program would ever do
that; in fact, I am certain that everyone, without exception, would have
done anything possible to prevent the accident. I know many of them, and I
am a better person for being able to count them as my friends.

I have seen several of the orbiters from a distance, and I had always wanted
to see a shuttle closer than 20 feet, and yesterday I got my wish. What a
way to get it.

Carson


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