Looking Back on Challanger

What is the most complex accomplishment of our government in the past 50 years? To me this is a "no brainer". The ability to put human beings in space and return them safely home, as President Kennedy first proposed in the mid 1960's is easily the correct answer. We, the United States of America through NASA have now done this hundreds of times.  All of this has not come without great risk... and tragedy.

NASA has made errors in design and judgment. There have been three occasions which led to death and disaster are February 21, 1967, when three astronauts will killed on the Launchpad while conducting a live test of Apollo 1. The second failure was on January 28, 1986 when the space shuttle Challenger exploded during launch killing all 7 astronauts on board. The most recent NASA disaster was when the Columbia exploded on re-entry killing all 7 astronauts on board on February 1, 2003.

On a mathematical scale alone the percentage of our success reaching into space is impressive. However percentages when considering human lives is an entirely different consideration. Each of these three disasters were caused by human error and each time started with problems in system design followed by arrogance by those making decisions even when the design flaws were brought to their attention.

So much of what we do on a daily basis and how we make decisions can be learned by reflecting on these 3 NASA disasters. NASA's space program is in a slow down period at this time because the space shuttle program has been retired after 20+ years of missions and although the new Orion program promises a return to the moon and then Mars it will take longer then it otherwise should, primarily because of our slumping economy and the non-committal of society in general.

This weekend I watched the new Discovery Channel movie, "The Challenger Disaster" which was excellent. Although there is some "dramatic license" with the telling of this true story it is well worth your time if you want to learn more about that space shuttle disaster. This is the Discovery Channel’s first dramatic feature film, The Challenger Disaster, staring Bruce Greenwood, William Hurt and Brian Denney.

The film is based around Richard Feynman’s investigation into the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster that killed all seven astronauts during liftoff.

Based on Dr. Feynman’s book What Do you Care What Other People Think, the film will follow Feynman’s efforts to discover the cause of the shuttle's explosion and expose the truth behind the disaster.

The Challenger Disaster premièred on Saturday November 16th The Science Channel and airs throughout the month. I recommend everyone check it out.

I have not read the book "Truth, Lies and O-Rings: Inside the Challenger Disaster" by Allan J. McDonald but it sits on my Kindle in the on-deck circle. This book has received excellent reviews and is now considered the best account of what went wrong with the Challenger. If you are interested in learning more check it out.

 

NASA Seeks Your Help

On Tuesday, June 18, 2013 NASA announced an Asteroid Grand Challenge that solicits the public’s help in proposing asteroid-wrangling strategies for the agency’s Asteroid Initiative.

"NASA already is working to find asteroids that might be a threat to our planet, and while we have found 95 percent of the large asteroids near the Earth's orbit, we need to find all those that might be a threat to Earth," said NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver, in a press release. "This Grand Challenge is focused on detecting and characterizing asteroids and learning how to deal with potential threats. We will also harness public engagement, open innovation and citizen science to help solve this global problem.".

Throughout recorded history there have been hundreds of Earth impacts with many of these occurrences causing death and destruction. Of course the one we are think of is the one that took out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. There is some recent evidence that perhaps it was actually a comet that ruined everything for the dinosaurs, but even if was a comet - it was big - and it was from space.

NASA seems too be on edge about asteroid strikes these days - and with good reason. Here are just some of the recent events if you missed them:

1908 - This is one of the most infamous events in modern times. The explosion of an asteroid of Siberia, Russia destroyed 80 million trees in a remote region.

1913 - A ship was destroyed when it was struck by a meteorite while sailing between Sydney and South America.

1954 - The first recorded case of a human being injured from space rocks occurred on November 30,  in Alabama.

1972 - A meteorite which ranged in size from a house to a car was filmed over the Rocky Mountains. Luckily the rock was reduced in size enough as it travelled through the atmosphere (photo below), otherwise the impact could have been a Hiroshima type event.

2000 - A fireball exploded over the city of Whitehorse in the Canadian Yukon lighting up the night sky. The space rock that exploded was estimated to weigh about 180 tons.

2007 - On September 15, a chondritic meteor crashed near the village of Carancas in southeastern Peru near Lake Titicaca, leaving a water-filled hole (photo below) and spewing gases across the surrounding area. Many residents became ill, apparently from the noxious gases shortly after the impact.

2007 - On October 7, a meteroid labeled 2008 TC₃ was tracked for 20 hours as it approached Earth and as it fell through the atmosphere and impacted in Sudan. This was the first time an object was detected before it reached the atmosphere and hundreds of pieces of the meteorite were recovered from the Nubian Desert.

2013 - On February 15 an asteroid entered Earth's atmosphere (photo below) over Russia as a fireball and exploded above the city of Chelyabinsk during its passage through the Ural Mountains region. The object's air burst occurred at an altitude between 19 and 31 miles  above the ground. About 1,500 people were injured, mainly by broken window glass shattered by the shock wave.

These are just a small amount of the countless documented collisions between space debris and the Earth. The problem we have is that NASA's mission has been seriously damaged by recent cuts to it's budget. In addition there are actually some things that NASA could do if a space rock was observed hurtling toward our planet, however there simply is not the money to monitor the space in a way that we should be, especially considering we are living in the 21st century and that we landed on the Moon 44 years ago.

You can learn more about NASA's Asteroid Initiative here.

More News Coming on New Life Form

--http://twitter.com/cdmann/status/12189669785608192'>William Mann (@cdmann) has shared a Tweet with you:

"cdmann: More on “new” bacterium from Cali's Mono Lake! “Arsenic and Meaning of Life,” 1 – 3 pm ET (18:00 GMT) on NASA TV http://go.nasa.gov/ax5PCk"
--http://twitter.com/cdmann/status/12189669785608192

How many astronauts is too many for NASA?

Goodbye Space program

I know this is not exactly "tech news" but I just has to get this off my chest. As our nation's economy continues to limp along and wars rage on just about every continent, one of our nation's premier organizations has been getting stripped of it once great shine by politicians who refuse to see beyond their own term in office.

Just think, back in 1968 and 1969 even as the Vietnam war was engaged, college campuses exploding with protests and leading politicians being gunned down our nation remained committed and capable in directing it's limited scientific resources & energy to going to the moon. Today with technology exploding all around us, our nation has had to resort to canceling the space shuttle program while at the same time canceling future man space exploration. That is unless the Russians are willing to let one of our astronauts hitch a ride on one of their spacecraft (for a price of course).


I was 5 years old when our nation first landed on the moon and 9 years old when our last astronaut, Gene Cernan left the moon (Apollo 17). Unless something drastically changes, I will probably never get to see another human being in deep space and I fear for our children as well. What has happened our nation's vision of being the leader in exploration? Exploration and personal growth provides people with something to be proud of. Being a truly unified nation is much more then war and taxes.

To learn more about the fate of many of our astronauts check out the following article.
NASA: How many astronauts is too many for NASA? - OrlandoSentinel.com