PB666

Right and there are many more examples. The Concorde essentially had no abort system once airspeed reached 180 m/s it was committed to fly. But more specifically to your point there were a bunch of very popular aircraft that crashed just after takeoff because of combinations of bad weather and bad engines or other problems, and it was realized that there was no way to safely take-off if more than two issues are a problem, one being the weather. So sensors were placed around airports to detect windsheer. Your car doesn't have an abort system either, if you are driving down the road and a patch of Ice is on a bridge, you go to fast, . . . . . . .there are no ejector seats in cars. Your motor boat does not have an abort mode, that is really something about reading the conditions (seamanship), if there is a huge log in front of your boat and you don't see it, that's it, over the bow you go. All of these have one thing in common, don't launch a mission when conditions are bad. Around here they have a call 'shelter in place' and that means if you are not in immediate danger, stay where you are at, its safer than traveling. The issue with challenger was just that. But in the case of Columbia that abort mode really would have not helped them, because they had to know the shuttle was critically damaged to abort. They did not. I think we should worry less about abort modes and focus on under what circumstances abort mode would be more important than other safety issues.

That's the question of the thread, its an open question and it really depends on the targets. Its not a single point metric. For an ION drive system at least in the first 20 years or so, you are completely dependent on Earth for gas (Argon or Zenon). For hydrolox potentially you could be getting both from dirty roids. Where would you put your space factory if you could build one? and why? Is the DSG a place where you would place it? would you put in an EM la grange point. I see the moon basically as an object you have to avoid will burning to escape. Yeah, yeah, I know the moon is a target for some folks, but I really can't get into the ISRU farming of the moon. If there is water someplace, then that place should be kind of obvious. With regard to ION drive and oberth-like effects.....how do you increase power and increase acceleration to take advantage of these. Oberth and highest ISP simultaneously . . . . . . .there are all kinds of conflicts in a system. I suppose if I were to have a majic wand I would say that I had a jar, I put all my ISP in that jar and then blasted out at the periapsis. Batteries provide some benefit but again one has to model, will the battery achieve fuel savings (in Energy production) enough to justify the added mass?

But likewise, I have been in similar situations were you are a safety officer planted between the institution (who you know is lying for prestige reasons) the director who wants to expedite some project and save money, the end user who just wants to proceed. And I have sat at discussions were alot of 'false representations' were flying around from all sides. I had a general philosophy at the end of my career, beware of institutional types coming around bearing gifts, that's frequently a prelude to a major compromise of performance or 'ethics'.

Because you have been misrepresenting the science in every step of the discussion. BTW not all risk is catastrophic, abort to orbit or RTLS or another base is also factored into that risk.

Well, then you should know that value exist outside of material cost, there is prestige, power and reputation at stake.

Once again you did not read the report. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20110008208.pdf Yep, and its hard to explain because the design is far simpler than the SSME. Most of the original patents on the RL-10 have expired, but I understand the nozzel of the b-2 is made of some-kind of special plastic or something.

You've never worked in an institution. They were not worried about the cost of making the booster (they are US contractors), they were worried about the booster being the cost of launch delay's and more importantly had they aborted launch, there was a possibility with a loud enough critique that the boosters would have to have been removed and rebuilt. There would have been a situation they could not control in which scuttlebutt might have gotten out informing NASA that once temp drops below 40'F the boosters have to come off. This management decisions impinged deeply into safety engineering. There was something like 7 engineers at MT that opined 'don't launch'. . . .they got overridden.

An engineer or safety officer is a more or less an advanced technician, they are not managers. Asking an engineer to be a manager and make economic decisions creates a conflict of interest. Most institutions, even the more respected don't consider that a conflict of interest, and in 1985 those words would be laughed at. I have to take the side of the engineers, and the point is that they expected STS-51L to blow up on the launch pad, they expected it and it didn't and they thought that somehow they had dodged a bullet. You get a sense of this that 51L had two fault to destruct modes, one is on the pad (the grease did not fill in the hole) or in flight (grease fills but then is pushed through). So it really doesn't matter in the long run if the orbiter breaks up from aerodynamic forces or gets blown to smithereens on the launch pad. The designation criticality I is something a manager uses, it lacks the detail needed to determine if the critical structure was robust enough under any circumstance to fly. The engineers believed that a situation developed over time whereby a design they thought they could trust could no longer be trusted under many operational states, and they were awaiting disaster. One has to wonder what MT had done had the blow hole was on the other side and the system limped to booster separation and aborted to say Spain or LEO. Would have they then said no . . you cant fly this anymore. . .too dangerous. Suppose the end of the booster had broken off and had been lost in the Atlantic. And then what, just say it separated on landing . . . .even though you expected it to blow up on launch pad. MT moved the two most critical engineers to other parts of the company and initially tried to blame one of them, but the report exonerated them. It was an attempted coverup, obstruction of justice . . no charges there were filed either. No culpability. Its institutional culture that caused it, file the RICO on them if its institutional. You have to back a little bit away from the incident once you know that the culture of the institution was the primary cause of the accident and then look at the culture and argue the case. What are all the what ifs. If one what-if is that he you can blow up any time during the first 90 seconds of flight aerodynamic forces or not, then that's it, that's what it is. Then you need to go to the design chain of command and ask, why did we choose this and why are we still using it. . . . . .And why isn't critical information being passed. The report itself did not go far enough, they did not criticize the OMB for making the decision, they did not offer a bypass stance allowing for procurement of alternative boosters, and worse MT was not held negligent and its company officials walked away without a scratch, basically.

The challenger report and the following observations of SRBs retrieved from the Atlantic that penetration of the O-rings by sea water was not rare. The challenger was unlucky in the sense that the burn through pointed right at the 12 strut. That was what caused rapid progression. Following the accident investigation MT was to report any unusual activity with the O-rings, prior to that there was not a priority on reporting unexpected behavior. I believe in one report they found that the seat for the O-ring had not been properly seated because it was not properly cleaned. http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1986/12/10/morton-thiokol-getting-off-easy/ https://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/researchernews/rn_Colloquium1012.html X . So basically it was not just temperature drops, but windsheer could cause the joint sections to roll and open up a gap (gaps with hot gas instantly degrade the rings causing blow through. According to the experts at MT it was the low temperatures that opened the O-rings that grease later sealed (they expected challenger to blow up on the launch pad) but then a wind sheer rolled the joint and the heat and the roll allowed the grease to push through creating a blow hole. But this is old hat, why is SLS using essentially the same type of booster?

27027 was the lowest Earth orbit maximum . . .and its one of those stats that in detail is not that meaningful. It also never had 11 people either. In my mind you only need a pilot and two engineers for what ever you want to build, unless you are building 24/7 then you need 6 engineer/technicians and 1 pilot. It will fly, most likely, then be mothballed.

If they had used LFRs instead of SFRBs this would not have been a problem, IMO. There is always going to be risk in space flight, you just don't want to take stupid risks.

See my long read, I replace Tater's design flaw with a design oversight. They did not consider the issue of ice formation on the foam as seriously as they should have, the shuttle functioned because of this for a comparable safety issue I will refer you to this article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Comet IN this case it was a small oversight in the structure that no-one foresaw that overtime crippled a very decent piece of technology. It was way ahead of its time, but that comes with trade-offs with regard to trail blazers.

See my long read, NASA could have built a new version of the shuttle with carbon-fiber, lowering its mass, they could have redone the computer system lowering its mass. The three SSME could have been replaced with smaller engines and a couple of redundant common turbopumps and done say nine engines in which they never rebuilt engines, use the shuttle 10 times, then evolve a new shuttle. The problem is that you can't evolve anydirection under slow guidance. Its worse than that on most runways you will run off the ends above 170 kts. Thats essentially the Concorde problem, runways are 2.2 miles long at their longest and once you break 175 kts you are in full commit no matter the craft. But yeah you can run the 747 into the dirt and the stress will likely LOAF the craft.

It was retired after it completed its primary (1970ish) objective to build a space station, the intangible cost of the accidents hurt its survival. There are two issues, we wanted to support RSA by providing them the crew contract. And there was the management issues. In terms of miles flown, despite the speed of an orbiter, a 747 outperforms, particular when we consider miles traveled in non-inertial reference planes, because these are the miles that age vehicles. The 747 for instance cannot land with a full load of fuel, the V land is too high and the descent angle is too great for its gear. It certainly had better performance than some 1920 and 1930 era commercial aircraft.

I don't know about your pickup truck but mine can't carry 11 people and 27,000 kg. But i get the point it tried to do to much, which at times is good, but most of the time it was under-performing its intended function. You don't have to like its stasis in light of the way everything else is evolving, it should have been a matter that the public had more concern. In a way the shuttle is a victim of its success. The ISS completion is a jump the shark moment, in that it did occomplish its design goal, and we have to remember that the ISS was not waiting on the shuttle, the shuttle was waiting on the ISS. But what nailed its coffin closed was the fact that it had not evolved. ON the day the ISS was completed there should have been a radically evolved shuttle design working . . . .its all management stuff. But the problem is . . . in hindsight. . . .not the shuttle. The problem is that the system that denied the shuttle its rightful evolution is still around, its still making the same stupid decisions. NASA does pretty well on its small space ventures like the New Horizon and Messanger probes. But the problem the big stuff, like Orion, that stuff is even more problem riddled than the shuttle. For the complexity that the shuttle was relative to 1975 it evolved and was performing quickly (relatively speaking a magnitude faster than Orion), but I see some of the same mistakes of the shuttle going into SLS. And its going to take a company like SpaceX to kick NASA and its contractors in the balls and a tell them that they have to evolve. They have settled into a DoD/NASA sofa and they don't want to risk getting out of that, but they will at somepoint be kicked.

Lets break this down into its components and then solve the problem. But instead of looking just at challenger lets look also at columbia. 1. What caused the incidents 2. What caused the loss of orbiter 3. What caused the loss of life 4. Cost of system and cost of system failure. 1. The logic here is that component failure creates risk that propagates through the system, as we see the shuttle challenger that once a serious problem in one part of the system occurs, it can at a point in time evolve rapidly. Design issues. Shuttle was designed to be the primary replacement to the Apollo mission The plan was drafted in 1969 (49 years ago) to be a system of reuseable spacecraft (Phase A). The primary intended use was to support a space station and ferry 4 crewmembers back and forth to space with about 10 kT of payload. Early in the projects evolution it was realized that the project would be difficult to fund, but the DoD stepped forward offered support indicating it could be used as part of its operations, also. At the onset we see we have a problem in the infrastructure, even before the shuttle is built, that if ground services are not extended, then there would definitely be backlogs and slowdowns. Again this was not the shuttles fault, congress authorized the shuttle but failed to authorize the support structures. - Political problem one. This caused backlogs in the launch and this would eventually push one launch into another shuttles launch forcing the second to move its window to the 'edge' (challenger). This was 1971 and they did not have access to all the facilities (computers guidance satellites) and materials we have today. But at some point in time this could have evolved . . . it didn't (Political management issue). So we see why the cargo bay was extended. The wider bay did benefit the Hubble program and the ISS. But we can see how the NRO has leveraged itself into the process. So now we have for a civilian Launch system the Air Force, NRO, and the office of managment and budget getting their fingers into really what is an engineering issue. This was poor decision making, it you are building a sytem to be used 1000s of times, you pay the extra development costs. - Management issue Rather than go with the widely tested Rocketdyne F-1 type rocket the decision was made to go with a virtually untested form of booster. It should be noted that despite the SRBs inherent design flaws and limitations is a very similar version has been chosen for use on SLS. - management problem is ongoing. Can Nasa/Admin/Congress be trusted to select manned launch vehicles at all? b. the external fuel tank and the cause of the Columbia disaster. The second issue was the insulation and Ice issue on the ET. The ET's issue are of a different nature. The shuttles very high ISP (a good thing) was provisioned by liquid gasesof molecular hydrogen and oxygen. The original design was to have H2 and O2 on board the orbiter, but this compromised the payload capability. So it was moved to the external tank. The ET is now one tank, its 3 tanks, 2 tanks inside the visible ET. This is attached to the orbiter. The ET design was all about getting the percent of weight in tank relative to fuel to the lowest possible, conservation of gases was not a major theme at the time (seventies and gas was 20 cents a gallon). Most of what tater has said about the tank is correct with regard to an inherent flaw, but as we will see its not a fundamental flaw as much as it is a design oversight. So first, let us look at the design. For the cost of the SR-25s to be justified they need to provide the majority of acceleration, they are one of the few vehicles were the engines operate from launch to orbit, of the 9000 dV required to reach orbit, the SSME provide about 3/4ths of the acceleration, not powerful enough to provide lift off and vertical momentum, once these are provisioned the SSME carry the orbiter up. And pretty much as an isolated system they have only had two incidences on was qualified as an abort to orbit at a lower orbit 51-F. There are two areas of the ET design that bring questions. The first is for fuel loading, when you add cryogenic gases (which I have done so many many times) you have an outgassing that is much larger in volume than the gas you put into the system. The gas hits the edge of the vehicle and it boils and at first the gas comes back warm but quickly evolves to a very cold gas as the entire system cools. So as the gas reaches the air you get nuclei (that which forms snow) and it gets over everthing, your gloves, the sides . . . . .Ice. As the wind blows the 'snow' can melt and refreeze into chunks of ice which can fall and hit the orbiter or the struts on the SRBs during flight, both are bad. So the solution is to move the fills on the slope of the ET that faces away from these, if Ice forms here and falls it falls away from the axis of the ET-Obiter interconnect plane. The second issue is ice that forms around the top of the foam and the foam itself. There are two issues. The first one is this what is the limit of foam that can be placed on the ET that in flight would never strike the shuttle. If we look at the tank about 80% of the ET can be covered with foam and never risk hitting the orbiter. So it doesn't necessarily involve covering all of the foam, just some of the foam, or likewise it means moving some of the foam inside the shuttle. THere are problem with doing this and maintaining function. As an aside we are talking about significant vehicle evolution something that should have occurred in the 90's and 00's i. That the SLWT was the only tank rated to reach ISS with PL and crew, which means weight is added. ii. That the ET may have to be reshaped slightly to improve the insulation and reduce ice. OK so this problem as discussed in other posts is that having a 6-11 capacity is not required, in the worst possible situtation if you had 4 crew on the shuttle 3 ISS could evacuate to soyuz and 3 to shuttle resulting in 4 to 7 crew compliment. Updated computers to govern almost all aspects of flight and lower crew numbers and reduction in weight could have allowed the ET to add weight and safely mediate the ice issue on the orbiter side. But the shuttle really does not need to go to the ISS, it need only to reach an orbit where things can be assembled and the under their own power move to a higher orbit. Orbiters, for instance now can be made with carbon-fiber. So now having the weight we need where do we apply it. To mitigate the ice issue you need a barrier between the foamed tank and unprotected part. This can be done by bolting into the shell of the ET a section of carbon fiber about 3 or four inches wide (the insulation on a typical N2 tank is about an inch and half). And on top of this you would have foam but at the terminal you would have Al-Li composite. The internal struts likewise would have CF intermediates as they penetrate. The new more ovoid cross section tank would have insulation between the liquid storage tanks and the ET wall. In the wall you would, toward the top have a very simple serpentine wire heater that kept the metal above the melting temperature of water. This is only needed at the top below which was not needed as the ice would not likely impact the orbiter below a certain distance. These are relatively minor design changes, overall the tank is the same, you have an additional 4 inches material on the orbiter side inside the tank, the fuel tanks are slightly shifted and more elliptical, the insulation could be done by an aerogel or other light weight insulation, about the same mass as the foam, all you need is the carbon-fiber expansion brackets that run the length of the tank on both sides and the intertank heat-transfer blocks built into the struts. Again you would never see these. 2. Preventing orbiter loss. Even if we fail to consider loss-of-life, since the orbiter is a reusable vehicle, economically we want to depreciate it over its life (which in accounting should provides the capital for its future replacement). This means that as we use an orbiter its function provides a cost basis to provide for its own replacement through earning and savings. In government talk some aspect of each mission is cycled back into the fund to replace the capital equipment that makes the mission possible and this way costs are divided over time. In business risk of failure is an added insurance cost which increases cost and we don't want to do this. Under two circumstances, as mentioned the loss of orbiter is result of launch damage. That revolves around two issues. First, the loss of the challenger is blamed entirely on the SRB, badly designed for manned space flight and badly implemented. The SRB should not be used and oddly the OMB should have forseen the trouble with the SRB and opted for more developed LFRB. As stated repeated the type of failure that the Morton-Thiokol 4 sealed SRB produces is unacceptable and its launch restrictions are unacceptable in manned space flight, and oddly they are being used on the SLS. There is no way to attenuate a faulty SRB in flight, .Management oversight of SRB use should be rigorous to a fault. The second issue is shuttle-tiling system and again we have two situations, 35000 tiles needed to be replaced, but 35000 of the tiles damaged were not critical, but one or two on the columbia were and the orbiter disintegrated. Again this is an issue of evolution from 1975 to 1983 the learning curve was pretty steep, this does not mean that learning stops. The shuttles heat resistant skin could have evolved overing both lower weight and increased resilience to damage. Above we see that the ET could have been improved to prevent damage. Again we see a circumstance that while in flight damage was noted, the damage could have been surveyed at ISS and crew members could have stayed on the station along with orbiter while a resolution to the problem was found. Again a shuttle could bring back eleven and the orbiter could have been moved to another location while solutions were found. But once again we had a management failure. Orbiters will not last forever and eventually flight stresses will overcome them, so its almost better to retire and evolve orbiters after 10 or so flights rather than to take risk with older orbiters. 3. Preventing loss of life, this almost entirely shows itself to be a management issue. Don't fly the any craft outside of the design tolerances of its composite parts. Again if a tile can withstand a force of impact of 200 lbs at a foot, then you don't expose the tile to 2 pounds traveling at 100 mph. Every part has a tolerance so its simple enough to decide, does this situation create an excessive deviation from design parameters, then the simple answer is don't launch. The SRB problem and ET problems can be mitigated by component evolution. The question is that if it can evolve should it have evolve. So the concept to design phase was 1968 to 1975ish. That was 40 to 50 years ago, how much has your phone changed in 40 to 50 years, what about your car, your house. Everything you do has changed in the last 50 years. We cannot argue that fixing the shuttle's structure is not a good thing. The first flights of the shuttle were a pioneering engineering feat but then who travels around in Connestoga wagons now-a-days. We would be all easting at Lake Tahoe DIY take out . . .Donner, party of 5. The loss of life problem is tied to the fact that it should have evolved more rapidly. The replacements should have been notably more evolved than the first, the shuttles should have been retired after 10 flights under the condition that new shuttles were evolving toward some futuristic goal. And every major component of the complex system should have been treated as its own launch vehicle and the critiques that go with a more simple analysis. One of those goals would be greater safety. The shuttles ET facilities and assembly facilities should have been doubled in capacity and again we should have hired contractors to help get those LFBs to RTLS once their mission was complete. So then to the loss of life question, by what the shuttle did and by 1968-1980 standards the shuttle was pretty fantastic system. But then if we argue, as Tater so aptly put, a system that repeatedly experiencing the same life threatening safety issue since day 1, then we should not look at the system in say 2000 with the same enthusiasm as we do in 1985. Of course we don't, who should? But the problem is that the fed is neither a scientist or an engineer, almost all appointments are political and that in-and-of-itself is a design compromise. But that's the nature of the beast, its up to people and organizations to insist on that evolution, its not a fault of the shuttle that it did not evolve to become more safe, its a fault of the people who were responsible for caring for the STS. 4. Cost of mission and cost of failures. The cost of failures cannot be underestimated. Both instances were intangible liabilities on the shuttle and space program in general. Not only they lead to cost overruns and costly delays. Challenger cost the program about 2 man-hour years. But the challengers failure can be rooted into a decision made by OMB 10 years previously and it was a bad decision. So of OMB is an oversight watchdog, who then watches the watchdog? Again the engineers on the program should have been more emphatic, because ultimately they will be harmed. The cost of missions is debatable. The problem in the design and use we have to consider also alternatives and their repertoire of functions. So there are metrics. You have a vector state on an elliptical in space, you need to send 3 men to and from that vector, do you need a shuttle . . . .no. You have a vector state on an elliptical in space, you need to send supplies do you need manned space flight . . . no. You have a vector state on an ellipitical in space and you need need to send supplies, 3 men, and retrieve experiments and waste and return to earth do you need a shuttle, it might be useful. You have a vector state on an elliptical in space and you need to add a structure to it and you need men to help do this . . .its a little more useful, but computers have replaced this function (e.g. biglelow pod). Over time the cost function of the shuttle has increased because the alternatives either have increased performance or decreased cost . . . this is the way the system should evolve. You have a concept state in space and you want to build on that concept (usually something bulky are heavy) do you need a shuttle a. you can insert a reference structure in space without a shuttle. b. manned extensions of that space require a facility, shuttle was the only provider. The current replacement is vaporware. c. manning of the extension does not require shuttle You have a valuable asset in space that needs tending or collection and it is not in the plane of the ISS, you need the function of the shuttle. So that we can see that benefit to cost ratio of the shuttle has declined over time, but its still present, there is still benefit to some of its functions that are not (or have not been) replaced. Some of NASA's new projects are talking about throwin 30 billion dollars into space, but its mostly vapor ware and the plans change every 6 months but there is little hardware to show for it. There is also a cost associated with any progressive society for not evolving or advancing, there is an intangible benefit to the non-redundant functions of the shuttle, and that is why it should not have been cancelled until its suitable replacements had been completed. As it looks to me, these replacements are not near-future, they are only waving hands. And if by some miracle they do appear . . . .SpaceX.

Part of that cost was created by stupid management decisions and impositions by the government on the program, decisions that were best left to engineers, not politicians and political bean counters. Lucky for spaceX they only have to report their performance and capability to the government, and, simple-mindedly, the government can choses a contractor of the lower costs. When politicians and management start overthinking issues the problems and cost go out the roof. Elon (his hand on his wallet) has to decide whats in the best interest, he has a vested interest in learning, Spiro Agnew has no vested interest in learning what NASA needs, he was just a corrupt politician that was forced to resign, and then his boss was forced to resign and that all went into the stupidities in the space-shuttle ET and SRBs.

Given the number of people place in space its par with the next best launch system, albiet soviet/russian design. But I don't know what world you live in, I live in the world that exists, and in that world putting 103 people in space with the loss of 101 is in the realm of what space flight's risk are. Could have it been better. . . . .see other posts. But before you condemn the design the issue that you need to parse out is how many astronauts did the politicians kill and how many did the design and safety engineers kill. The challenger was a two-fold management failure. It was the Nixon's White house office of budget and Management that decided to go with the SRBs to save development costs (which is silly for a high use vehicle) and it was the NASA admin that decided to launch outside of the SRBs operation window. You can't really pin those 7 deaths on the shuttles design, it was if the managers went into the crew cabin and threw into a grenade and cold heartedly left. You cannot blame the pilot of a 747 for crashing a plane if the manager of the airport doesn't inform him that there is a giant hole in the runway, can you?

worse than tedious it hatred wrapped in revisionist thinking and generally bad logic.

It was a fundemental design flaw in the ET, not in the overall design, I will address this elsewhere.

Mostly true, while it did not fulfill its full envisioned missions it did fulfill other missions.

Really, your judgement is not clouded, 134 successful launches, 1 launch failure judged to be a management issue, one reentry disintegration. 100s of successful astronauts placed into space Dozens of complete science mission, built the ISS, the most productive science platform in the history of mankind (and including a platform repair 2 upgrades and life extension). The most capable launch vehicle ever built (7 people into space, up to 11 back from space, 4.8 x 18 meter cargo bay, 27,000 kg to LEO, a science laboratory, an observatory, capable of launching multiple satellites at once, capable of repairing satellites - including returns science satellites, capable of recycling itself and the satellites that it captures). If you have for comparison something that has better performance than ^^^^^^ then you might have credibility on whose judgement is clouded, and it you don't . . . . . . . I live in the world that exists, not in some fantasy world where you can pretend that something better exists and then compare that with reality and opining about realities flaws. Lets see what happened in the wake of the shuttle . . . . . NASA has no manned launch system, the manned launch system that is under contract is rampant with cost overruns, has not anywhere near being tested, it only useful a limited number of manned operations, its incredibly expensive, to be launched on the most expensive launch system that exist, alot of QC issues in that system. Meanwhile, no in space repair capability (except ISS and almost nothing is in its elliptical). No ability to assemble platforms in space, no ability to do manned science missions outside of the ISS. And also 7 years after the fact no gateways, no manned missions to celestials, no replacement of shuttle with more evolved systems, just vaporware. With all its various flaws and weaknesses at its core the shuttle could do things no other platform could do, and it made other tasks (like assembly in space) easier. What has happened is the most capable launch system ever built has been replaced with vaporware, because management could not be made to resolve problems, avoid risk and insist on evolution. Thats what it is, the reports conclusion was management issue, the foam/ice issue was a management issue, the SRB issue was a political issue. Its amazing that the shuttle did not have more incidences, but the facts speak to its accomplishments.

The radiation from an RTG would go unnoted in any ocean, there are constant leaks of radon from the ocean floor.

The only viable solutions would have been to kill main engine and release the main tank allowing the booster to carry the ET away.

And that is bull _____. The 12 strut failed (dont talk here if you are not going to read the report), it means that now the booster is lost half of its breaking force and almost all of its resistence to torque. Coming close to the end of the burn, the force delivered to the ET was approaching maximum and it tore into the tank and hit the orbiter, thats only one solution, it could have just broken free and hit anything in its pass, it could have broken free and at the same time ignited the top of the booster deflecting off the ET, and hit something 50 feet above the orbiter The report basically says this at the beginning, there are somethings we can answer by examining the ground state an sensors other with the analysis of the materials, but there are many questions that cannot be answered to satisfaction do to the lack of index reporting. And again, had the hole been a little bit another direction and caused a rip in the ET along the joints, the forward strut might have also given. , its a tempest. THe report basically says this, we looked at everything we could look at, from the orbiters components and child components, to the tank to the engines, no fault could be found in any of the systems other than the damage that the SRB caused, its seems political, but tracing the burn marks on the wings, the tiles on the core, timing of gas releases, . . . . .the tempest was moving very rapidly from one state to the next within essentially 1 second the 12 broke it forced the ET into the orbiter it slammed into the tank and then hit the orbiter and at that point everything disintegrated.