Comments by "GH1618" (@GH-oi2jf) on "" video.

  1. Columbia did have a data recorder, known as the Orbital Experiment Support System. It was unique to Columbia and contained more data than were in the telemetry. It is easy to look this kind of information up — there is no need to express uninformed and incorrect opinions about things easily found online.
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  2. The space capsules were small, capable only of carrying a crew of one to three and a small amount of equipment. The shuttle was a space truck, which had to carry a lot of heavy equipment. Had the orbiter been designed to to discard most of the orbiter and return the crew in a capsule similar to the Apollo Command Module, it would have been far more expensive. The Saturn V of the Apollo missions was discarded after launch, but there were not many missions. When the shuttle worked, which it almost always did, it was an amazing system.
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  3. I don't think there was any possible way of saving it. The leading edges of the wings were vulnerable. They should have been tougher.
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  4. The Columbia loss was not caused by missing tiles. The leading edge of one wing fractured.
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  5. correct
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  6. Columbia was not capable of docking at the space station.
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  7. The loss of Columbia was not due to loss of tiles.
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  8. I think they took it seriously, but were being professional throughout. There was nothing that ground support could do.
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  9. The leading edge of the wing on Columbia fractured when struck by a piece of detached foam. The engineers did not think that was possible, so I call that a failure.
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  10. The critical damage wasn’t to the tiles, but to the leading edge of a wing, which is a specialized structure made of carbon.
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  11. They will get back.
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  12. The shuttle has to have high speed to be in orbit. There was no fuel on board the shuttle after reaching orbit, except for the small amount i thrusters used to change orientation, and the retro rockets used to begin descent. The high kinetic energy of the shuttle had to be transferred to the atmosphere as the shuttle descended through it in a controlled way.
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  13. "Tragedy" does not mean "unpredicted."
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  14. A T-38 makes sense to me. NASA had been using them for a long time. The astronauts who were jet pilots flew tham routinely. Why do you think they would be less safe than UPS overnight?
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  15. No, that could not have been done in time. Columbia was doomed when the leading edge of the wing broke.
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