Winds of Change.NET: Columbia: Grief, and Guesses

February 5, 2003

Columbia: Grief, and Guesses

by Joe Katzman at February 5, 2003 4:13 PM

Aziz Poonwalla is better known in the blogosphere for his political postings, as well as his comments on matters Islamic in "Shi'a Pundit".

His theory about the cause of Columbia's accident, however, reveals a keen mind for technical matters as well. The way he marshalls the evidence is impressive, and though it's still early days it wouldn't surprise me if Aziz turned out to be right. Go read it for yourself.

Then read "Israeli Grief", where Mr. Poonwalla shows a sense of class to match.

President Bush delivered a strong performance himself at the memorial service yesterday. If you didn't watch the streaming video, do. It was a good speech, and President Bush was on the verge of crying the entire time. In some ways, I think it revealed more about the man than anything else we've seen so far.

UPDATE: Reader Eric points us to persuasive information that makes Aziz' theory seem unlikely. NASA has apparently concluded the same thing - see the comments for full details and a link.

In other news, Israeli Col. Ilan Ramon's body (or at least parts of it) reported found.

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Comments

#1 from Eric at 3:53 pm on Feb 05, 2003

As I mentioned over at Shi'a Pundit's site, I WILL be surprised if his theory of a landing gear door failure is correct.

Consider: the wheel well door fails, either falling off or burning thru. This would expose the landing gear to the 2000 degree outside temps, yet the sensors in the gear, wheels, brake lines, etc, don't show any signs of that temp increase.

Yes, they do show an increase in temps: 30-40 degrees in five minutes. But when they fail, they don't show any signs of temp increase (according to NASA, they just stop working). I'd think that they'd show some sort of VERY rapid increase before they melted completely if that's what happened to them... though I could be wrong.

I tend to agree with NASA (I'm sure they're thrilled to hear that, too... sarcasm, anybody?) that what we're seeing instead is a burnthru somewhere else on the left wing, raising the overall temps in the wheel well and the side of the fuselage.

The image that comes to mind is a model of the Orbiter, with a butane torch applied to the left wing, until it melts a hole thru and is shooting thru the top of the wing. I'm guessing that the wheel well, and the whole wing, would heat up from that, as well as the side of the fuselage. It would also account for the yawing to that side, which is probably what ultimately killed the the Orbiter.

The uncontrolled (or more correctly, undercontrolled) yaw to the left exposed too much of the "low strength" heat shielding tiles to the high-temp heat of re-entry, weaking the Orbiter, and then... well... we know what happens next.

Alas.

#2 from Eric at 3:57 pm on Feb 05, 2003

Oh, forgot to say:
Until NASA's news conference this past Monday, I agreed with Aziz Poonwalla's idea of the landing gear bay burnthrough. At that news conference, NASA themselves said "that's probably not what happened, because the data doesn't support it," then proceeded to lay out why it doesn't.
go to: http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts107/030203link/
for more info on that press conference.

#3 from G.Haubold at 9:59 pm on Feb 05, 2003

Eric: Wouldn't undercontrolled yaw to the left have given a little protection to the damaged tiles by putting the right wing somewhat forward of the left wing? Of course, it hardly matters in the overall chain of events.

BTW, anyone know what to make of the report in the British paper that Ramon's father says NASA told the families that the crew probably knew for 60-90 seconds that something was going wrong? I'd think from the increased left wing drag and computer controlled adjustments that the crew would have noticed, but then NASA says stuff such as the adjustments were well within prior reentry history?

#4 from markm at 12:05 am on Feb 10, 2003

Has NASA checked it's records yet to find out who gued the tiles onto that area? Ahmed, maybe?