Great write up Bill. Pass this on to our system engineers.
--------------------------------------
Steven St.Laurent
C4I System Engineer
Engineering Branch, PSD, MCTSSA
MARCORSYSCOM, U.S. Marine Corps
Office (760) 725-2506 (DSN Prefix: 365)
"Information learn is power for the intellectual mind...".
-----Original Message-----
From: William H. Hiatt III [mailto:william@hiatt.net]
Sent: Tuesday, February 04, 2003 5:16 PM
To: dakota-truck@dakota-truck.net
Subject: RE: DML: RE: RE: Way OT: Shuttle Columbia breaks up on re-entry
Sorry to post this all here, but I want to clear everything up:
Challenger was actually the first orbiter to start being built and was
originally used for testing (Hence the OV-099) (Orbital Vehicle 0 for
test and 99 being the OV number). It was later converted to be a shuttle
used for space missions.
Enterprise (OV-101) soon followed, and was mainly used for landing
testing (dropped off a Nasa 747) and vibration testing. Last time I
checked (which was awhile ago!) it was in storage in Dulles waiting for
the new section of the Air & Space Museum to be put on display. It was
tossed around to replace Challenger, however it was too heavy and was
never space worthy, and the cost to retrofit it was higher than building
a new one (Endeavor)
Pathfinder (which was never assigned an OV number) isn't actually a
space shuttle. It is just a full scale mockup of the space shuttle used
for fitment tests and to test the width of the doors in the OPF and VAB.
Pathfinder was later loaned to the Japanese and put on display. Today it
is on display at Spacecamp
Columbia (OV-102) was the first one to go to space. On it's last
mission, it could NOT go to the space station for numerous reasons,
mainly it was in the wrong orbit and it did not have the docking collar
installed at the time. Many misconceptions are that Columbia was too
heavy to go to the space station. It was recently upgraded and they
shaved roughly 9,000 pounds from it to be light enough to install the
docking collar. It was scheduled to go to ISS in an upcoming mission.
Atlantis/Discovery/Endeavor (the three space worthy shuttles left) are
able to go to the ISS (Providing the docking collar module is installed)
About the Columbia tragedy. I have heard people (mainly news anchors)
say "It is possible it was terrorism. No, this is total b/s.
1) A SAM really can't go 40 miles straight up. Trust me
2) Terrorists can't even hit a plane 500 ft. up (remember, they tried a
month or so ago), let at alone 200,000 ft.
I have heard others say "Why didn't they go to ISS"?
1) They didn't have the docking collar with them
2) They where in the wrong orbit, and the shuttle didn't have anywhere
near enough fuel onboard to reach it and change orbits.
3) Even if they COULD have got there, they didn't have the docking
collar.
4) They were probably too heavy to get there even if they could, as they
had the new SPACEHAB module installed (To give them more room to run
there experiments.
Hope this helps.
My thoughts and prayers to all the families involved with the Columbia
tragedy
William
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Feb 06 2004 - 11:45:49 EST