SCIENCE
HARDCORE UFO's: NASA's Dark Days
/ Michael Louie
02.01.06
This past week marks the anniversaries of three failed attempts in space travel, what many consider to be the dark days of NASA.
On January 27, 1967 three astronauts die after a fire on Launchpad 34 in Cape Canaveral, FL during a preflight test to launch the first crewed Apollo mission. Fire spread quickly from a short circuit in the pure oxygen atmosphere of the cockpit and escape was near impossible due to numerous design factors, including a hatch that could only be opened inward with the aid of ratchets, and a higher internal pressure that required the cockpit be vented before doing so.
February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated along with its seven crew members (including the first Israeli in space) over Texas at mach 18 (about 12,500 mph) at 207,135 feet. The oldest of a fleet of four shuttles, Columbia was a doomed vessel from the start of the mission when a piece of foam from an external fuel tank damaged the left wing of the shuttle shortly after takeoff. Last words from the crew: “Roger, but…”
And on January 28, 1986 the space shuttle Challenger split into a tangled bloom of smoke and fire approximately one minute after takeoff, taking with it seven astronauts, including a civilian (unluckily as it would turn out) chosen from a competition of 11,000. Investigators later pointed to a faulty O-Ring seal, a $900 rubber band made by Morton Thiokol, on the solid rocket booster as the cause for the disaster. The seal, engineers had warned, was unpredictable at temperatures below 51 degrees. After three cancellations the Challenger launched on schedule at a temperature of 36 degrees. Christa McAuliffe, the civilian teacher, told Life magazine in 1985, “I don’t know whether 200 miles above the earth I’m going to feel any closer to God.”
It is assumed that God just couldn’t wait those last couple hundred miles. Whose side is God on? Certainly, it could be argued, not NASA’s. The battered institution charged with the monumental task of launching cost-effective and reusable space vehicles into orbit often, from the outset, for little more than national pride and technological achievement—even though 90 percent of us can’t recall what the last successful space mission actually accomplished—has spent 20 years trying to recoup its losses from the Challenger disaster, from which many feel it never fully recovered.
On January 27, 1967 three astronauts die after a fire on Launchpad 34 in Cape Canaveral, FL during a preflight test to launch the first crewed Apollo mission. Fire spread quickly from a short circuit in the pure oxygen atmosphere of the cockpit and escape was near impossible due to numerous design factors, including a hatch that could only be opened inward with the aid of ratchets, and a higher internal pressure that required the cockpit be vented before doing so.
February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated along with its seven crew members (including the first Israeli in space) over Texas at mach 18 (about 12,500 mph) at 207,135 feet. The oldest of a fleet of four shuttles, Columbia was a doomed vessel from the start of the mission when a piece of foam from an external fuel tank damaged the left wing of the shuttle shortly after takeoff. Last words from the crew: “Roger, but…”
And on January 28, 1986 the space shuttle Challenger split into a tangled bloom of smoke and fire approximately one minute after takeoff, taking with it seven astronauts, including a civilian (unluckily as it would turn out) chosen from a competition of 11,000. Investigators later pointed to a faulty O-Ring seal, a $900 rubber band made by Morton Thiokol, on the solid rocket booster as the cause for the disaster. The seal, engineers had warned, was unpredictable at temperatures below 51 degrees. After three cancellations the Challenger launched on schedule at a temperature of 36 degrees. Christa McAuliffe, the civilian teacher, told Life magazine in 1985, “I don’t know whether 200 miles above the earth I’m going to feel any closer to God.”
It is assumed that God just couldn’t wait those last couple hundred miles. Whose side is God on? Certainly, it could be argued, not NASA’s. The battered institution charged with the monumental task of launching cost-effective and reusable space vehicles into orbit often, from the outset, for little more than national pride and technological achievement—even though 90 percent of us can’t recall what the last successful space mission actually accomplished—has spent 20 years trying to recoup its losses from the Challenger disaster, from which many feel it never fully recovered.