Photos of Columbia debris are now hitting the net. The Free Republic has a thread where people are posting the photos they find.
The news conferences with the various local 1st responders I have seen on Houston TV stations mentioned over 800 reported sites of Columbia debris with over 100 actually guarded for EPA HazMat teams to pick up. Human remains have been turned over to FBI pathologists.
There are now more reports of astronaut remains. This report is from the BBC. And this report is from ABC News.
Gregg Easterbrook of TIME takes the predictable stand against flying the Shuttle. From the article:
"Unfortunately, the core problem that lay at the heart of the Challenger tragedy applies to the Columbia tragedy as well. That core problem is the space shuttle itself. For 20 years, the American space program has been wedded to a space-shuttle system that is too expensive, too risky, too big for most of the ways it is used, with budgets that suck up funds that could be invested in a modern system that would make space flight cheaper and safer. The space shuttle is impressive in technical terms, but in financial terms and safety terms no project has done more harm to space exploration. With hundreds of launches to date, the American and Russian manned space programs have suffered just three fatal losses in flight—and two were space-shuttle calamities. This simply must be the end of the program.
Will the much more expensive effort to build a manned International Space Station end too? In cost and justification, it's as dubious as the shuttle. The two programs are each other's mirror images. The space station was conceived mainly to give the shuttle a destination, and the shuttle has been kept flying mainly to keep the space station serviced. Three crew members—Expedition Six, in NASA argot—remain aloft on the space station. Probably a Russian rocket will need to go up to bring them home. The wisdom of replacing them seems dubious at best. This second shuttle loss means NASA must be completely restructured—if not abolished and replaced with a new agency with a new mission."
James Dunnigan over on Strategypage.com gets to the practical brass tacks and makes the following point:
Despite the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia on February 1st, the Space Shuttle is still the most reliable space launcher available. It's also capable of carrying some of the heaviest loads, bringing a large crew along and, of course, landing and being reused. The Space Shuttle crew provides enormous flexibility, especially for tricky repairs or refurbishment of expensive satellites (the Hubble observatory and spy satellites.) But launching the Space Shuttle, or any other model of "booster", is inherently dangerous. These launches stretch existing technology to the limit. And when you do that, you cannot expect zero failures. The exceptionally low failure rate of the Space Shuttle is achieved with a combination of determined engineering, and lots of money. Each Shuttle mission costs over half a billion dollars.
The thing that hurts is I agree with most of what Easterbrook says in the paragraphs clipped above. Anyone who has been in the space activism movement as long, and through as many activist organizations, as I have gets into a real love/hate relationship with NASA.
The bottom line is that the NASA bureaucracy is a bigger obstacle to opening the space frontier than technology or funding. Where space activists splinter is on what to do with that insight. Almost all the roads to space for Americans lead through NASA. Where space activists stand on that road usually determines whether they are NASA haters, NASA Reformers or NASA enablers.
I am one of the NASA haters. My solution is competition. Historically it has worked. When the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) did their Clementine deep space probe (that discovered water on the Moon) and DC-X reusable rocket projects. NASA changed. "Cheaper, Quicker, Faster" space probes were a direct result of that competition. Then when the Clinton Administration killed SDIO, NASA reverted to form like a Stretch Armstrong doll.
Breaking NASA's manned space monopoly in the American government via a new American military space service is what I consider to be part of the answer. Enabling commercial manned sub-orbital markets is another piece. Creating a separate Federal regulatory regime for space that is free from the infamous Federal ITAR weapons technology transfer regulations is a third piece of what is needed.
Unfortunately, your prescription will run into the public learning curve concerning how space is supposedly demilitarized. The public thinks of space the way most Westerners thought of airplanes in 1913.
It may be true that the shuttle is the most reliable launch vehicle we have, but if that's true it's only because of the enormous sums spent trying unsuccessfully to make it safe for humans on board . . . . which it's not, really.
A statistical failure rate of 1/100 is not acceptable given the low value of shuttle operations. It might make for a fun ride, and I wouldn't turn down a free shuttle ride even at 1/100 odds, but that doesn't mean it's the right thing for the nation.
If the same money spent funding the shuttle and space station were spent more intelligently on an unmanned space exploration program, we'd have a helluva lot more knowledge in 20 years. But then if my aunt had balls . . . .
I have one quibble with Easterbrook: the Shuttle is not impressive in technical terms. Its unreliable. Its high maintenance. Its a very expensive way to put stuff into space.
Does this commentary from Instapundit@TCS make sense to anyone else:
"But what Easterbrook's critique, and his seeming enthusiasm for letting robots take over space travel entirely, miss is that space exploration is about far more than bringing back knowledge that will enrich the careers of planetary scientists. It's about paving the way for humanity's expansion into the solar system. The Shuttle may not have much of a role to play in that process. But those who criticize it need to understand that, whatever happens to the Shuttle, the process itself must go on.
America is a frontier nation, and leading humanity off this planet and into a space-faring civilization that spans the Solar System (for a start) is our manifest destiny. Americans understand that. The question isn't whether, but how. And the debate promises to be an important one."
Beyond the pejorative language about "letting robots take over space travel entirely" and "space exploration is about far more than bringing back knowledge that will enrich the careers of planetary scientists", what on earth is Instapundit's point?
I don't think that the choice going forward has to be manned versus unmanned, but the engineering costs of keeping people warm, oxygenated and fed & watered in space are extremely high. Shouldn't there be something we need live humans to do on Mars or elsewhere before we send them there?
Yes, humans have always been adventurers and explorers. But for virtually all of the adventure and exploration phase of humans on earth, there was absolutely no alternative to sending real live people - no robots, no radio communications and no cameras, automated or not, to record the trip. Now that humans don't have to go in person to explore, why should they, other than when human presence is absolutely needed?
Someone over at Brad DeLong's website found and posted the URL for Feynman's observations on the Challenger disaster:
http://www.virtualschool.edu/mon/SocialConstruction/FeynmanChallengerRpt.html
The following paragraph from Feynman is edited and "TPS" substituted for O-ring seal references:
The phenomenon of accepting for flight, TLS damage in previous flights, is very clear . . . . . The acceptance and success of prior flights with substantial TLS damage is taken as evidence of safety. But serious TLS damage is not what the design expected. The damage is a warning that something is wrong. The equipment is not operating as expected, and therefore there is a danger that it can operate with even wider deviations in this unexpected and not thoroughly understood way. The fact that this danger did not lead to a catastrophe before is no guarantee that it will not the next time, unless it is completely understood. When playing Russian roulette the fact that the first shot got off safely is little comfort for the next. The origin and consequences of TLS damage on prior flights were not understood. Damage did not occur equally on all flights and all orbiter locations; sometimes more, and sometimes less.
"These launches stretch existing technology to the limit. And when you do that, you cannot expect zero failures."
Umm, I'm thinking that these launches stretch existing '70's technology to the limit and unfortunately in 2003 that's where the shuttles still sit.
NASA delenda est, anyone?
America already has a military space service: The Air Force. You'd be amazed at how much intellectual and monetary capital is spent within the service towards our mandate to maintain, expand and exploit our space superiority. There's a guy named Dolman who wrote a book titled, "Astropolitik: Classical Politics in the Space Age" that's been getting a lot of attention recently. The guy's being compared to Mahan and inspiring some thoughtful debate about our military/political role in space.
A year or two ago, there was a lot of talk about changing our name to the U.S. Air and Space Force or the U.S. Aerospace Force. Some of the fringe elements who are really into the space aspect of it floated a proposal to change our ranks to "Spaceman, Spaceman 1st Class, etc.", but that obviously didn't find much purchase.