𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗹𝗮𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗻𝗼𝗻-𝗦𝗙𝗦 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿𝘀: This video was primarily made on the game called "Spaceflight Simulator", and since the game is 2D, some details might not be a hundred percent accurate in portraying the events that occurred. I understand that some of the viewers are concerned about the privacy and dignity of the fallen astronauts as well as their families. But I would like to take note that the families of the crew of Columbia pushed for the release of more information regarding the accident. A Flight Surgeon during the STS-107 who is also working as a family liaison during the Columbia Accident Investigation Board said the following: "In discussion with the Columbia spouses we were entirely unified in our desire to ensure that all the lessons learned from this mishap be applied to prevent this type of accident from happening again. As sensitive as this issue is, it is essential that the facts related to crew survival be disseminated to ensure the next generation of spacecraft are afforded the maximum protection." While the statement may refer to the release of the 2008 Columbia Crew Survival Investigation Report (CCSIR), this also applies to this video. The families wanted as much information to be disseminated about the accident as possible, including simulations (which was done on this video), as long as the media showing the remains of the astronauts are not shown. "Although we grieve deeply, as did the families of Apollo I and Challenger before us, the bold exploration of space must go on. Once the root cause of this tragedy is found and corrected, the legacy of Columbia must carry on for the benefit of our children and yours." - Statement from the Columbia families read by Evelyn Husband, wife of Commander Rick Husband on February 3, 2003, two days after the disaster.
I wouldn't worry about it too much. Those people that are upset are unfamiliar with how mishap investigations happen and why they're deliberately made public. For any that might not understand why it's important that all the details are public, it's because it's literally the only way aviation safety gets better. Every rule there is for aviation and space flight exists because someone died and it's viewed as not only a technical responsibility to inform the public, but a matter of morals for a lot of aviation safety experts We owe it to those who died to make the swiss cheese model as dense as possible so these things don't happen in the future.
You're not off the hook. Did you speak with the families yourself? You're exploiting this for clicks just like everyone else is. And you did one of the worst versions of what happened that I've seen here.
@@charleskavoukjian3441 The point is a good one, however. This content seems to have been churned out for clicks, and doesn't offer any new insight, information or anything that hasn't been pored over thousands of times before. There's nothing new or unique. From an educational point of view, there are far better videos from years ago that provide far better detail.
I worked for a subcontractor of NASA in the late 90s, most of our work was with the ISS and the NBL ISS mock up. The back and forth with NASA was mindblowing. I remember getting off a conference call with NASA engineers, our engineer, and our company's owner and I looked at them and said "How has the Challenger been the only disaster on these guys watches?"
The flight director and probably everyone in Mission Control that morning were aware of the foam strike on the left wing. Potential damage to the shuttle had been discussed for the entire duration of the flight. The instant those sensors in the left wing began registering abnormal conditions, those people knew without a doubt what was causing it. There was damage to the left wing due to the foam strike. What they didn't know was there was a hole the size of a suitcase in the leading edge of the port wing. The first sensor to go offline was nothing less than a confirmation that sensor had been destroyed and the shuttle was doomed. What an awful realization that must have been.
@@MrGreenStellar For who? Who was going to benefit from NASA and all the space shuttle missions? Not the everyday people of earth that paid for it thats for sure.
The two most haunting comms of the whole Space Shuttle era… Challenger: “Challenger, go at throttle up”…(static..) “Roger.Go at throttle up…”….😢 And with Columbia: “Lock the doors.”😢 God bless them all🫡💕🇨🇦
The chilling thing is, upon seeing the launch replay, and seeing that piece of foam hit the leading edge of the wing, they were "dead" from that moment on...
They could have kept everyone up there until they bought them back like they are doing with the boink crazy capsule. why does it work for boink but not NA MD? PS there were repair modules to be added to the station that LM omitted and pocketed the cash. Like the all weather solid rocket boosters they held back on. Why did they do that $$$$ ?
ZoeSummers1701A I hope English wasn't your first language. There's nothing funnier to me than someone incorrectly correcting someone else's grammar. Try reading that again, toots.
Why do you put spaces in front or your punctuation? Is it for the same reason you don't spell words out? You're just lazy and it's a byproduct of some autocorrective feature you have on your phone or something? It makes you look _really_ stupid. :)
I live in East Texas, & witnessed the wreckage of Columbia fly over my house while going out to my car. It was like a flaming ball of rainbow colors traveling extremely fast headed eastward in the sky. I wondered what it was, then heard on the radio that Columbia had been lost. I cried uncontrollably, & prayed for those dear souls and their families. God bless them! 🙏🏻🇺🇸
I was in Dallas that day going to Flight Safety to get a Type Rating in a Falcon 10. I stood in the parking lot and was stunned as I could see pieces coming off as it broke apart. Sad day for all.
It is surreal to hear the dispassionate calls between flight and the crew as the machine is systematically being destroyed by enormous forces inflicted on the airframe. You can tell that the commander knows what’s happening - thermal sensors going one by one, tires one by one. No turning back, straight into the blast furnace. Those poor souls.
In both the Columbia and the Challenger disasters, NASA had prior knowledge of the problems that ultimately led to the loss of each shuttle and crew. "Fingers crossed" is no way to run a space program. This is real life, not the movies.
They would have known about the tire pressure issues and from that moment at the very least it was going to be a bad landing. Sadly I have zero doubt that they knew what was coming even if it was only for a few brief moments before the catastrophic breakup. We know at least some emergency procedures were performed (like the emergency air supply controls that we know were activated) so it wasn’t instant for them. My only solace is that (unlike Challenger’s crew) they got to live their dream of going to space before it all ended.
It is amazing that no inspection of the tiles was allowed after the launch incident. The crew requested it and ground control flatly refused. I agree with other comments that this disaster may have been avoided had an inspection been done.
the old excuses that it was "just another foam strike" and "nothing could be done anyway" are both false. there were many very concerned about it at the time. the more you dig into it the more one name keeps coming up... Linda Ham.
@@billballbuster7186 I'm not sure they could get another shuttle up there, before their supplies ran out. They had to write code for each shuttle mission and stack the rockets after prepping the boosters, engines, etc.
When the shuttle disintegrated, the explosion or sonic boom, shook my whole house. When I went outside I could see multiple flaming pieces going across the sky. I instantly knew that it was the shuttle and that something went terribly wrong.
I went to college with a guy who came over from NASA which was facilitated by United Space Alliance. They did all the work on the shuttles and this guy was there for a long time. He said flat out, "if you knew what went on behind the bay doors, you'd never step foot on that thing" The company was dissolved in 2019 and I'm glad the program was retired.
RIP Rick Husband (1957-2003) William C. McCool (1961-2003) Michael P. Anderson (1959-2003) Kalpana Chawla (1962-2003) David M. Brown (1956-2003) Laurel Clark (1961-2003) and Ilan Ramon (1954-2003)
How? Once the foam had struck the leading edge of the left wing 81.7 seconds after launch the orbiter was doomed. What was it to do? Stay up there? In terms of prevention, yes the accident was a result of a design flaw in the launch vehicle stack which placed the orbiter in a prone position and with no escape mechanism. Could it have been prevented? Yes, by redesign of the ET. Post tragedy, foam insulation was removed from the bipod fro future missions.
In a recent documentary, on e expert characterized the NASA mentality perfectly when it came to the insulating foam breaking away in earlier missions. He described the clear warning signs were there all along, but over time, the rigid schedule drove all else. He called it "the normalization of deviance" in the data. Truer words were never spoken!
There is nothing unique to NASA in this regard. It occurs in countless industries, missions, scenarios, etc. It didn't fail last time (or ever) due to that. This is a human being thing where you have perfect clarity after the fact and a disaster has already occurred.
engineers on the ground with NASA knew, they were reviewing film of the takeoff for two weeks. Their concerns that there was damage to the shuttle were ignored and suppressed by those in charge because they didn't want to hear bad news.
In his excellent book, "Riding Rockets," astronaut Mike Mullane says that everyone in the astronaut corps was scared silly of the shuttle; it had 10,000 ways to kill them. No one said, "I'm not getting in that thing!" They all wanted a seat. RIP, Columbia crew.
Thank you for mentioning this! Somehow, the SOLE reason these astronauts died is ALWAYS omitted. It wasn’t just bad luck. It was reckless decision-making.
I vividly remember NASA official Ron Ditimore (not sure of name spelling) scoffed when asked by the press did foam impact at launch case several damage to the shuttle wing. He’s said that could not have cause severe damage. After NASA simulated the foam strike, we never saw or heard from Ditimore again. I’m not an engineer. When I saw the actual strike in slow motion I became very worried.
They knew about the wing hit on launch and there was nothing anyone could do. The hope was that it would be OK. When the temperature sensors started going haywire, they knew it was probably bad and when the tire pressure failed, they knew it was over.
This accident was 100% preventable, all NASA had to do was send up another shuttle with a replacement ceramic tile to replace the damaged one. It wouldn't have burned up on re-entry. Same as the Challenger accident, that was also 100% preventable. Just had to wait for warmer weather and the o rings sealing the SRBs wouldn't have failed.
It was a large, nearly one foot wide, hole in the leading edge of the left wing. A repair patch was theorized but no one was certain it would work. Also, launching a shuttle with only 10 days notice (about how long the astronauts had food oxygen and water remaining for) was virtually impossible.
"All this stuff that keeps failing - do you think it means anything?..." "Probably not. By the way, a ton more things just burned up" "Really?.. I mean....could that be important?" "Nah, I'm sure it's fine"
Hey, at least it was environmentally safe! At some point in the Shuttle’s history, the adhesive used to secure the insulation to the external tank was switched to something more environmentally “friendly”, and it was KNOWN to not adhere as well. They knew about the danger it posed, and sacrificed seven human lives in order to virtue signal. 21 years later, it still makes me angry. 😡
The foam that struck the left wing came from the bipod ramp and not the bipod itself. The foam strike was definitely not downplayed. It was noticed immediately that this was a much larger than normal strike and it needed immediate attention. Three requests were made by NASA technical members to management to ask the Air Force if they had space assets that could image the shuttle while in flight. All of those requests were ignored by NASA management! The rest is history as we know it.
And the only reason that they knew of all of these sensors going offline, is that out of all of the shuttles, ONLY Columbia had a complete suite of sensors from nose to tail. NASA saw no need to install them in all of the shuttles. Plus, you're not actually hearing all of the communications between the flight director and the other systems monitors. This has to do with security at NASA. A man that I know who was one of the systems monitors said that it went from relative calm in the building to frantic bedlam in less than a minute, you can't hear all of the phones suddenly beginning to ring as calls began coming in about 1 minute before LOS, to a number of station alarms going off through Mission Control & several other rooms in the building.
The saddest and most infuriating part of this is the 'just keep pushing through the checklist' no matter the cost attitude. It's like 'summit fever'. That massive beurocratic machine just kept pushing for biz as usual, despite them knowing the likely outcome. They saw the missing and damaged tiles. What did they think would happen? They should have ferried them down on soyuz, even if it took several trips and another month in space. Its mind-boggling that nobody was even charged with negligence at the least. Why they allowed the entire crew to board despite knowing the possibility of breaking up, instead of just a minimum crew is mind-boggling as well. It's a lesson on how not to handle extremely high risk and dangerous situations and how risk could have been mitigated, but wasn't.
"Normalization of Deviance" as spoken by astronaut Mike Mullane. He's right on the money. All the bureaucratic pressure on and amongst NASA admins to push launches and ignore a another problem.
Maybe if the US govt gave NASA more money instead of spending all their money bombing children with drones they wouldn't be so penny-pinching as to avoid replacing O-rings or checking for broken tiles.
I really wish they had sent Atlantis up to save them since she was already on the pad for her next mission. If this was the NASA Mission Control from the 60s/70s they would’ve attempted it, those men and women were built different
NASA was never concerned about astronaut safety during the space shuttle program as evidenced by losing 14 astronauts. Absolutely unacceptable and both losses were because astronauts' lives were cheaper than fixing the problems.
One of the benefits of a space walk would have been a vehicle "walk around' before reentry, just to check the heat resistant areas of the hull and wings. this should have been SOP for all shuttle flights.
My education is aerospace science. I worked for General Electric with NASA contracts, and also Fairchild. I never like the shuttle. I never trusted it. We should’ve stuck with expendable, rockets and capsule returns. The shuttle never delivered what it promised. It was never even close to budget. The fact that there were two fatal accidents is all the proof we need.
Actually I think there were risks associated with it that were catastrophic and while it's definitely true that it had potential hazards I don't think anyone really anticipated it either time. It operated successfully most of the time.
@@christopherfoote4643 it was always on the edge. Worst aspect, it did not have a method to get away from the solid rockets. If a launch went wrong everyone was dead, The Apollo had an exit sitting on the launch platform all the way up, and liquid rickets you could shut down. The Shuttle was dangerous.
Too many moving parts. Powered by a controlled explosion. No escape system. An amazing machine, but one that was tried to be too advanced and not practical enough.
Can you do the same for the failed Starship 3rd flight that broke up during re-entry. Looked like the heat shield was just peeling away and that lead to the loss of craft
Not really the cause, Starship IFT3 seemed to be rolling out of control on entry which caused unprotected parts of the ship to be exposed. We cannot really assess the effect of losing some of the heat shield tiles until we have a working attitude control 🤷
One of the NASA reconstructions I saw showed a slow steady roll rate building up as it went out of control (the rolls are about the velocity vector and at the entry angle of attack they looked more like yaws). The crew was still alive then and I suspect they would have been getting all sorts of tones and C&W annunciations as the flight control system was saturated trying to correct the errors.
read the report. early on the ship pitched suddenly. there was a snapping effect. the pullback harnesses all failed resulting in broken necks for some, severe trauma for the rest. additionally all of them were faced with the capsule tearing open just aft of the upper deck chairs.The flight surgeons said the immense sensory overload from the windblast would not have resolved before final LOC. In other words, they never knew what happened. The Challenger... that is a different(classified) story
Flight Control knew they were speaking to people in the last minutes of their lives. This is hard to watch. Submarines subjected to great ocean pressures are cylindrical for a reason. Re-entry capsules are conical for a reason. A re-entry vehicle shaped like an extreme delta-wing aircraft is a crapshoot.
Or maybe, when you identify a problem in your design, you spend the money and time to correct it BEFORE a catastrophe. NASA knew full well well about foam strikes damaging reentry tiles. They had several close calls. And yet they did Nothing whatsoever to eliminate the issue, and rejected the idea of developing a means for astronauts to inspect and repair re-entry shielding damage in flight. They HAD EVA capabilities. They could have put a Camera on the Canadarm to enable in flight inspection. And something as simple as a glue on patch of carbon carbon fabric with phenolic resin would have made the leading edge damage survivable. But like with a lot of things, the fact that they had not lost a shuttle, YET, made them complacent. Modern airliners are examples of complicated and unwieldy contraptions that have a multiplicity of potential failure points. And every fatal failure has resulted in changes to how we make them and operate them to the point where they are dramatically safer than driving. no reason at all why a spaceplane can’t be made more robust and safer. It just takes the will to do so.
The flight director has full responsibility For the clearance for the return flight. He should never have authorized the return flight. He should have publicized the supervisor's refusal to take photos. Otherwise he would have had to resign.
I remember watching the Columbia launch, and I remember reporting of the dislodged insulation possibly damaging the wing of Columbia. Maybe it's the Mandala Effect, but I remember being worried about them making it back before we ever heard about the apparent disintegration of Columbia on re-entry. I honestly feel like we knew about that piece of insulation possibly damaging the forward wing of the landing craft before they tried reentry.
The most shocking detail I ever heard about this was a farmer whose farm was approximately in the area where debris would likely fall in. He found something grizzly in the middle of a field -- a human heart. What happened to those bodies for something like a heart to end up outside the body, severed completely, to land in a field? The spinning bits of wreckage must've acted like a blender to the bodies amidst it.
The astronauts’s bodies would have been torn apart by blunt force trauma because they were still travelling at about 12,000 miles an hour and they were still nearly 40 miles above the ground. The crew stood no chance at all of survival. At least it would have been mercifully quick.
Not that they would have been able to do anything about it, but it sounds like, unless the people assessing the situation could guarantee there was going to be a catastrophic failure, the decision makers didn't want to have to consider options. There was no thought process of exploring possible options, just in case the damage was bad.
NASA ignored major issues not only on Columbia but Challenger also. Their ignorance led to the unnecessary deaths of 14 people. May they continue to RIP in the heavens
It’s amazing how long the orbiter lasted with a hole in the wing before the catastrophic failure. It’s also amazing, and extremely heartbreaking, how the flight director inferred the failure from such a small amount of information, presented so calmly and professionally by the others.
No, the hole in the wing would not have been an issue in space. There is no pressure on it and no heat. It would have stayed that way pretty much forever.
All the controllers had been briefed about the debris hit during launch. NASA does not leave anything to chance, they reviewed and re-reviewed every possible result it might cause. So as things started to go south they all knew that it meant the shuttle was coming apart. They just hoped it would hold together long enough. It did not.
Crew safety was never a big concern for the makers of the Space Shuttle. Those big companies made so much money that a lost Shuttle did not affect their price to put a Shuttle into space. Why NASA did not attempt a rescue is what is so sad to me. The video of the blast off was clear that something, a block of foam, broke off and struck the Columbia. A roll over near Hubble could have assessed the damage, and Atlantis being on the pad could have been brought in as a rescue mission.
Atlantis wasn't on the pad, it was in the VAB being prepped for STS 114 (7 flights after Columbia. They could have rushed the prep to get in into space as a life boat, but it wasn't anywhere close to being ready to go. Also, Hubble wouldn't have helped, its lens is designed to focus on very very distant objects, not something as close as an shuttle in Earth orbit.
@@rmill344 Not to mention tracking an object going 17,000 mph in close proximity. It is a good thing YT commenters are not at the helm of our space agency. Lol.
If you ever get a chance to visit NASA in Texas, do it. When you see the older rockets and all the other displays, you realize how incredibly courageous all of the astronauts really were. Perhaps a little crazy too.
I remember first hearing the sonic boom and then shortly after seeing the debris spread across the sky from up in Minnesota. I felt sick from wondering the horror those astronauts experienced for some time after that terrible day. Watching this gave me those feelings all over again. RIP to those 7 brave souls. Shame on NASA for knowing about the ice particles causing damage to the bricks that can be replaced with a space dock at the I.S.S. but sending the only shuttle up for this flight incapable of docking. I remember being angry about that fact and that Columbia was going up because I knew that if she was damaged with ice particles she wouldn't be coming back. To NASA's credit I was pleased to learn that they wouldn't risk Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore's lives returning them on the possibility that Boeing's Starliner was broken and incapable of a safe return. I also hope to see them safely back on Earth in February 2025! Yes, Starliner returned to Earth safely but Suni and Butch are also safe on the I.S.S. (better safe than another catastrophe) with more than enough to keep them busy; as I believe there are 80+ science experiments being conducted by all those that are up there per day and there's plenty of food - YEAH!
You saw it in Minnesota? Yeah right! I didn't know Minnesota was in the South. Also, it wasn't Ice particles! It was foam insulation breaking off the main tank. You knew this was a problem while watching the Shuttle Launch? Bullshit! No one outside of NASA new about the foam strikes. As far as I.S.S., have you ever noticed that Columbia never went to the I.S.S.? That's because Columbia could not reach the ISS. It was too heavy! Columbia was the first shuttle that was created and launched into orbit. Columbia was the shuttle that made history, which was why its loss was more impactful. All the other Shuttles had refinements that help to lighten them and gave them greater boost into higher LEO orbit. But Discovery, Atlantis and Endevour were the only Shuttles capable of getting high enough to reach the ISS.
Shame on NASA for NOT learning the lessons of Apollo 1 & Challenger. It’s completely unacceptable that NASA did NOT launch a rescue mission with all of the Space Shuttles in the NASA Fleet. GOD Bless our fallen astronauts 💫 and their beautiful families 💖 🇺🇸 💙 🇮🇱 💝 🇮🇳
How would a rescue mission have helped in Challenger? Rockets cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Maybe NASA should have used all their technology to create their own money instead of relying on Congress to appropriate it.
If I'm being honest, I don't know how people weren't charged with a crime. They KNEW the foam struck the wing but did nothing. Didn't even bother to turn a camera or something to look. That hubris and arrogance cost the crew their lives, and that is unacceptable to me
Because there had been foam strokes before and most weren’t dangerous. They didn’t know it would cause that much damage. And in that specific area. Granted there was a previous mission with damage that the crew feared would cause re entry loss of craft so it should have been fixed much earlier
NASA used a flawed computer modeling program to calculate the risk. It repeatedly underestimated the damage potential of that type of impact. It wasn't until they built a test mockup and fired foam out of a special cannon at the mockup did they realize their mistake , the impact blew a hole in the wing heat tiles dooming the ship.
I kind of expected a downward view that would show where on the wing the desentigration started and how it spread to other areas. Im sure they have a pretty good idea of how that transpired. This just wasn't much to write home about visually.
The debris hit Colombia at between 430-575 MPH! Something most people don't know is that even if the orbiter had stayed together more, once they lost tire pressure the crew would have had to bail out before landing. The shuttle cannot survive landing with flat tires.
The problem was on the left side, but you showed the right side. Showing the left side with arrows to point out the sensors as they failed would improve the animation. Otherwise it's pretty good.
I did not know the foam piece was as large as was estimated. I still have difficulty understanding why either an engineer or a post flight assessment team from previous missions were never sufficiently curious or motivated enough to create a real test or even a simulation of a piece of foam striking the airframe. When I look back at the Cold War Space Race and the lengths NASA and USAF engineers went to, to analyze and test both every imaginable scenario, as well as all observed phenomena, it’s clear that that level of aggressive initiative, and determination, and independent analysis, by both dedicated individuals and teams, had been swapped with bureaucratic inertia and complacency within the NASA of the 80s. The fault lay not only with NASA, however. Congress also imposed serious burdens on NASA, putting severe limitations on the agency with such a high priority placed on cost cutting, perpetual interference and oversight (oversight of cost controls, that is). Congress forced NASA to settle on a design based on perceived affordability rather than a properly designed Shuttle program. This re-prioritization led to a compromised system that Congress felt was acceptable, even though it was criticized by the space industry at the time for being insufficient for its mission - as well as, as proven, unsafe. Congress bears responsibility for creating an atmosphere of bureaucracy fatigue and a lowering of the morale of the agency, which led directly to the reduction of NASA’s culture of safety as well as the feeling of complacent indifference. When NASA engineers and dedicated administrators are constantly being reined in and second guessed by appointed bureaucrats, it is amazing the Shuttle Program was as successful as it was, upon researching the complete backstory and program background.
Really you could summarize it by noting that NASA was given a blank check from the President and Congress back in the Apollo days. This was due to their being a space race and it being a matter of national security. Russia has already launched an orbiting satellite and put the first man in space. It was not just a matter of national pride. The US did not want Russia controlling the space above our country. Remember this was coming off the cold war and nuclear arms race, which was still happening. The NASA budget percentage of the overall federal budget peaked at over 4% in the 1960's. Today it is less than 0.4%. Spaceflight was never safe, and NASA through the 1980's and 2000's never was provided enough funding to beat down risks to a lower level.
11:39, time of liftoff the same time Titanic struck the iceberg. Granted this launch was in morning and Titanic at night but if you’re superstitious enough you get the idea. RIP to the astronauts
I remember that day, I was at work and all the news stations out of Orlando broke in to regular broadcast to say "NASA can`t find the shuttle, They Lost contact and the shuttle never came in for landing" it was like that all day! I think it was the next day that they started admitting there was an accident. Living there and watching them go up you never think that those people may never make it home....
My friend Navy Captain Laurel Clark nee Salton died on the Columbia. What a bad a$$ woman. Prior to becoming an astronaut, she was the Submarine Squadron 14 medical officer at Holy Loch, Scotland. I had the privilege of having lunch with her most days. I also had the privilege of teaching her how to shoot trap; probably the best student I ever had. She was awesome.
I remember being a kid in grade 6 seeing it strapped on the back of a 747 flying over our school in Toronto in '84 and being in awe. Then again, in grade 8, when this happened, watching live with my whole class. I didn't know these brave adventurers, but I remember crying and being in disbelief when they died. Regans speech will always stay with me.
@@ta2joe13- What you probably saw was the test orbiter Enterprise, which never flew in space. Back at the time frame you're talking about, NASA was pretty regularly sending Enterprise out on flyover tours in the U.S., Canada and Europe, riding on top of one of the shuttle carrier 747s. I saw it during an air show flyover about a year before you did. There wouldn't have been any need to fly Columbia, Challenger, or Discovery (the 3 operational orbiters at the time) over any part of Canada. Enterprise spent a couple of decades displayed at the Smithsonian Air & Space facility near DC, and was swapped out with the retiring Discovery in 2012. Then sent to the aircraft carrier Intrepid outside of New York City where it's now displayed. It was George W Bush who eulogized Columbia in 2003, and Reagan who spoke after the Challenger loss in 1986.
I read a very detailed report about the disaster many years ago. The report included a highly detailed and technical breakdown of what happened to the crew during the breakup, and it was very morbid and disturbing, but also very interesting. According to the report, they died from extreme G forces first, as the shuttle rolled and pitched violently, out of control. The report describes the likely situation of the G forces ripping their upper bodies from the seatbelts and tearing their bodies apart. Then the cabin was breached and extremely high temperature plasma entered the cabin at 12,000mph, vaporizing their bodies, but they would have already passed away by then. With some internet searching and a little patience, you may be able to find that original report and read it for yourself, it was awful to read like I said, but interesting.
They were aware of the damage in fact there was a picture of the crack to the edge of the left wing. This crack was large, there is no way they should have returned. Go back to the space station and wait for a rescue mission of sorts or in space repairs?
From what I understand, it wasn't possible to go to the station from their mission parameters. I wish that was possible. It was a death flight once they took off.
They were not in the orbital plane and inclination of the space station. It takes an enormous amount of energy to change orbital inclination that they did not have.
They sleep just fine all the way to the bank. Space shuttle program: $200 billion waste of taxpayer dollars. Nasa managers and contractors made HUGE windfalls NASA: No taxpayer dollar left unwasted
*All these brilliant hindsight scientists in the comments* . Yes, yes, you've got it all figured out. If only you were in charge of the space program everything would have worked perfectly.
That repeatedly „Columbia - Houston… UHF ComCheck…“ was hard to bear as well. Things will keep to go wrong sometimes, though. Nobody can guarantee for 100 % safety, even not Musk.
I was on a JRTC training course at Ft Polk LA. Our training was paused and we were briefed about the disaster. We were also briefed if we find any debris that looked suspicious or could be from Columbia to not touch it and to report it immediately.
So the highest parachute jump has been 128K. From this video the shuttle broke up at 150K. I really believe that a parachute system with a strengthened crew compartment really could have saved the crew on this one. Find Gregg Easterbrook's very prescient editorials on the Space Shuttle.
@@LisaMedeiros-tr2lz You might be right. But it would not have to deploy immediately until 130K feet. Also note that the front part of the shuttle where the crew were strapped in survived intact after the breakup as you can see here. What I'm saying is this failure mode could have been predicted and planned for. The crew compartment could have been hardened and flight suits pressurized. Especially after a very similar incident in 1988 with shuttle Atlantis and the Challenger disaster. It's a question of engineering and nothing else. Obama ending the shuttle program was a very smart and overdue decision.
At Mach 12+, any parachute would've been destroyed with the rest of the shuttle & cabin. Also can't deploy when tumbling uncontrollably. The g-forces alone before breakup would've been enough to render them all incapacitated anyway.
@@callmeshaggy5166 at some point the crew compartment would have a terminal velocity. Besides that the shuttle was a bad design from the get-go. Gregg Easterbrook wrote some amazing prescient opinions about that!
@@metatechnologist your parachute drop comparison doesn't work for the reasons mentioned above. Felix reached nearly 900mph, about a dozen times slower than the shuttle cabin at breakup, and he even still he didn't deploy any parachute until he was well into the lower atmosphere. Deploying a parachute at such high speed would either A) destroy the parachute, or B) kill whoever it's attached to from g-deceleration.
What gets me is how, with sensors and alarms all over the shuttle covering every possible malfunction, the ground crew seemed absolutely clueless about what was really happening.
@@SBT300 I love how everyone wants to insure they knew what happened in every accident known..it's like you want them to know before they died, they have to know or you lose sleep..
𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗹𝗮𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗻𝗼𝗻-𝗦𝗙𝗦 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿𝘀:
This video was primarily made on the game called "Spaceflight Simulator", and since the game is 2D, some details might not be a hundred percent accurate in portraying the events that occurred.
I understand that some of the viewers are concerned about the privacy and dignity of the fallen astronauts as well as their families. But I would like to take note that the families of the crew of Columbia pushed for the release of more information regarding the accident.
A Flight Surgeon during the STS-107 who is also working as a family liaison during the Columbia Accident Investigation Board said the following:
"In discussion with the Columbia spouses we were entirely unified in our desire to ensure that all the lessons learned from this mishap be applied to prevent this type of accident from happening again.
As sensitive as this issue is, it is essential that the facts related to crew survival be disseminated to ensure the next generation of spacecraft are afforded the maximum protection."
While the statement may refer to the release of the 2008 Columbia Crew Survival Investigation Report (CCSIR), this also applies to this video. The families wanted as much information to be disseminated about the accident as possible, including simulations (which was done on this video), as long as the media showing the remains of the astronauts are not shown.
"Although we grieve deeply, as did the families of Apollo I and Challenger before us, the bold exploration of space must go on. Once the root cause of this tragedy is found and corrected, the legacy of Columbia must carry on for the benefit of our children and yours."
- Statement from the Columbia families read by Evelyn Husband, wife of Commander Rick Husband on February 3, 2003, two days after the disaster.
I wouldn't worry about it too much. Those people that are upset are unfamiliar with how mishap investigations happen and why they're deliberately made public. For any that might not understand why it's important that all the details are public, it's because it's literally the only way aviation safety gets better. Every rule there is for aviation and space flight exists because someone died and it's viewed as not only a technical responsibility to inform the public, but a matter of morals for a lot of aviation safety experts We owe it to those who died to make the swiss cheese model as dense as possible so these things don't happen in the future.
You're not off the hook. Did you speak with the families yourself? You're exploiting this for clicks just like everyone else is. And you did one of the worst versions of what happened that I've seen here.
Lol they should grow up and realize the world isnt always sunshine and rainbows. People die, get a helmet
@@outerrealm😂 you probably got 5 vaccines and 3 boosters while wearing a mask alone in your car.
@@charleskavoukjian3441 The point is a good one, however. This content seems to have been churned out for clicks, and doesn't offer any new insight, information or anything that hasn't been pored over thousands of times before. There's nothing new or unique. From an educational point of view, there are far better videos from years ago that provide far better detail.
The one thing you never want to hear from mission control... "lock the doors".
Nor would you wanna be the Chief Flight Director who would have to say “Lock the Doors” during your watch.
I worked for a subcontractor of NASA in the late 90s, most of our work was with the ISS and the NBL ISS mock up. The back and forth with NASA was mindblowing. I remember getting off a conference call with NASA engineers, our engineer, and our company's owner and I looked at them and said "How has the Challenger been the only disaster on these guys watches?"
@Curbjaw that’s the government for you
The flight director and probably everyone in Mission Control that morning were aware of the foam strike on the left wing. Potential damage to the shuttle had been discussed for the entire duration of the flight. The instant those sensors in the left wing began registering abnormal conditions, those people knew without a doubt what was causing it. There was damage to the left wing due to the foam strike. What they didn't know was there was a hole the size of a suitcase in the leading edge of the port wing. The first sensor to go offline was nothing less than a confirmation that sensor had been destroyed and the shuttle was doomed. What an awful realization that must have been.
The Columbia disaster is so sad..
@@MrGreenStellar For who? Who was going to benefit from NASA and all the space shuttle missions? Not the everyday people of earth that paid for it thats for sure.
The two most haunting comms of the whole Space Shuttle era…
Challenger:
“Challenger, go at throttle up”…(static..)
“Roger.Go at throttle up…”….😢
And with Columbia:
“Lock the doors.”😢
God bless them all🫡💕🇨🇦
The chilling thing is, upon seeing the launch replay, and seeing that piece of foam hit the leading edge of the wing, they were "dead" from that moment on...
They could have kept everyone up there until they bought them back like they are doing with the boink crazy capsule.
why does it work for boink but not NA MD?
PS there were repair modules to be added to the station that LM omitted and pocketed the cash. Like the all weather solid rocket boosters they held back on. Why did they do that $$$$ ?
I remember standing on the stern of my boat in Sabine Pass, Tx. Just happened to look up and see what looked like a meteor breaking up in the sky.
U could see it way down there ?
Was it lo on the horizon. ?
Saw.
ZoeSummers1701A I hope English wasn't your first language. There's nothing funnier to me than someone incorrectly correcting someone else's grammar. Try reading that again, toots.
Why do you put spaces in front or your punctuation? Is it for the same reason you don't spell words out? You're just lazy and it's a byproduct of some autocorrective feature you have on your phone or something? It makes you look _really_ stupid. :)
@@eamonia hope is a theological virtue
"Lock the doors" gives me chills to this day. I'll never forget
I live in East Texas, & witnessed the wreckage of Columbia fly over my house while going out to my car. It was like a flaming ball of rainbow colors traveling extremely fast headed eastward in the sky. I wondered what it was, then heard on the radio that Columbia had been lost. I cried uncontrollably, & prayed for those dear souls and their families. God bless them! 🙏🏻🇺🇸
I was in Dallas that day going to Flight Safety to get a Type Rating in a Falcon 10. I stood in the parking lot and was stunned as I could see pieces coming off as it broke apart. Sad day for all.
It is surreal to hear the dispassionate calls between flight and the crew as the machine is systematically being destroyed by enormous forces inflicted on the airframe. You can tell that the commander knows what’s happening - thermal sensors going one by one, tires one by one. No turning back, straight into the blast furnace. Those poor souls.
In both the Columbia and the Challenger disasters, NASA had prior knowledge of the problems that ultimately led to the loss of each shuttle and crew. "Fingers crossed" is no way to run a space program. This is real life, not the movies.
Yeah, they knew the tiles were falling off and allowing heat in. Fingers crossed though.
A friend of mine was in queue to be a mission specialist, before the Challenger disaster. He knows what went on with this disaster, and it's very sad.
13000 to 17000 mph. Just the speed alone, while going through the atmosphere, is insane.
They would have known about the tire pressure issues and from that moment at the very least it was going to be a bad landing. Sadly I have zero doubt that they knew what was coming even if it was only for a few brief moments before the catastrophic breakup. We know at least some emergency procedures were performed (like the emergency air supply controls that we know were activated) so it wasn’t instant for them.
My only solace is that (unlike Challenger’s crew) they got to live their dream of going to space before it all ended.
you are confusing facts between the 2 events(and both made it to space)
One of the Astronauts lived my neighborhood at the time. I didn’t know him but our kids were friends.
It is amazing that no inspection of the tiles was allowed after the launch incident. The crew requested it and ground control flatly refused. I agree with other comments that this disaster may have been avoided had an inspection been done.
the old excuses that it was "just another foam strike" and "nothing could be done anyway" are both false. there were many very concerned about it at the time. the more you dig into it the more one name keeps coming up... Linda Ham.
What could they have done?
I doubt they had tools to repair the wing in space.
@@charlesvan13 Well they could certainly have got another Shuttle up there, maybe other options.
@@billballbuster7186
I'm not sure they could get another shuttle up there, before their supplies ran out.
They had to write code for each shuttle mission and stack the rockets after prepping the boosters, engines, etc.
When the shuttle disintegrated, the explosion or sonic boom, shook my whole house. When I went outside I could see multiple flaming pieces going across the sky. I instantly knew that it was the shuttle and that something went terribly wrong.
This is absolutely TERRIFYING to watch. May the crew of STS-107 rest in peace 💙
I went to college with a guy who came over from NASA which was facilitated by United Space Alliance. They did all the work on the shuttles and this guy was there for a long time. He said flat out, "if you knew what went on behind the bay doors, you'd never step foot on that thing" The company was dissolved in 2019 and I'm glad the program was retired.
What’s behind the bay doors
@@Kage4554 Lots of half-assed, shoddy work
Disgusting@@scaleworksRC
RIP
Rick Husband
(1957-2003)
William C. McCool
(1961-2003)
Michael P. Anderson
(1959-2003)
Kalpana Chawla
(1962-2003)
David M. Brown
(1956-2003)
Laurel Clark
(1961-2003)
and
Ilan Ramon
(1954-2003)
I still say whoever made the decision to let them go for re entry needs to be held accountable. I really believe it could have been prevented.
How? Once the foam had struck the leading edge of the left wing 81.7 seconds after launch the orbiter was doomed. What was it to do? Stay up there?
In terms of prevention, yes the accident was a result of a design flaw in the launch vehicle stack which placed the orbiter in a prone position and with no escape mechanism. Could it have been prevented? Yes, by redesign of the ET. Post tragedy, foam insulation was removed from the bipod fro future missions.
I saw one of the main engines dug up at Fort Polk, LA. When it impacted the earth is splashed mud up to the top of mature longleaf pine trees.
In a recent documentary, on e expert characterized the NASA mentality perfectly when it came to the insulating foam breaking away in earlier missions. He described the clear warning signs were there all along, but over time, the rigid schedule drove all else. He called it "the normalization of deviance" in the data. Truer words were never spoken!
There is nothing unique to NASA in this regard. It occurs in countless industries, missions, scenarios, etc. It didn't fail last time (or ever) due to that. This is a human being thing where you have perfect clarity after the fact and a disaster has already occurred.
@@LisaMedeiros-tr2lz Plausible, but I was narrowing focus on NASA's culture.
engineers on the ground with NASA knew, they were reviewing film of the takeoff for two weeks. Their concerns that there was damage to the shuttle were ignored and suppressed by those in charge because they didn't want to hear bad news.
Could anything have been done?
"Lock the Doors"
NASA's worst nightmare just realized...
In his excellent book, "Riding Rockets," astronaut Mike Mullane says that everyone in the astronaut corps was scared silly of the shuttle; it had 10,000 ways to kill them. No one said, "I'm not getting in that thing!" They all wanted a seat. RIP, Columbia crew.
Kinda like getting soldiers to volunteer for a likely one-way combat mission. Most will say "Yeah, I'll go".
hearing "lock the door" in horror movies : 😨
hearing "lock the door" in a space shuttle :☠️
The adhesive used to fasten the foam was substituted for a different adhesive with less volatile more 'earth friendly' solvent. Yay great decision.
Thank you for mentioning this! Somehow, the SOLE reason these astronauts died is ALWAYS omitted. It wasn’t just bad luck. It was reckless decision-making.
says the mouthbreather with an IQ of 26
I vividly remember NASA official Ron Ditimore (not sure of name spelling) scoffed when asked by the press did foam impact at launch case several damage to the shuttle wing. He’s said that could not have cause severe damage. After NASA simulated the foam strike, we never saw or heard from Ditimore again.
I’m not an engineer. When I saw the actual strike in slow motion I became very worried.
The videos people took on the ground showing pieces coming off the shuttle as it headed for the landing was chilling.
Anyone fired or faced criminal negligence charges? No, didn’t think so.
None were punished for gross negligence.
They knew about the wing hit on launch and there was nothing anyone could do. The hope was that it would be OK. When the temperature sensors started going haywire, they knew it was probably bad and when the tire pressure failed, they knew it was over.
This accident was 100% preventable, all NASA had to do was send up another shuttle with a replacement ceramic tile to replace the damaged one. It wouldn't have burned up on re-entry. Same as the Challenger accident, that was also 100% preventable. Just had to wait for warmer weather and the o rings sealing the SRBs wouldn't have failed.
It was a large, nearly one foot wide, hole in the leading edge of the left wing. A repair patch was theorized but no one was certain it would work. Also, launching a shuttle with only 10 days notice (about how long the astronauts had food oxygen and water remaining for) was virtually impossible.
@@Lethgar_Smith Everyone thinks everything is so simple when they don't understand anything with detailed knowledge lol
"All this stuff that keeps failing - do you think it means anything?..."
"Probably not. By the way, a ton more things just burned up"
"Really?.. I mean....could that be important?"
"Nah, I'm sure it's fine"
Jesus ..this was a hard watch....
RIP 🙏
I couldn't imagine the fear of the astronauts as the shuttle broke apart that high in the air.
Hey, at least it was environmentally safe! At some point in the Shuttle’s history, the adhesive used to secure the insulation to the external tank was switched to something more environmentally “friendly”, and it was KNOWN to not adhere as well. They knew about the danger it posed, and sacrificed seven human lives in order to virtue signal. 21 years later, it still makes me angry. 😡
The foam that struck the left wing came from the bipod ramp and not the bipod itself. The foam strike was definitely not downplayed. It was noticed immediately that this was a much larger than normal strike and it needed immediate attention. Three requests were made by NASA technical members to management to ask the Air Force if they had space assets that could image the shuttle while in flight. All of those requests were ignored by NASA management! The rest is history as we know it.
Nearly as chilling as the disaster was the buck-passing that started before the debris hit the ground.
And the only reason that they knew of all of these sensors going offline, is that out of all of the shuttles, ONLY Columbia had a complete suite of sensors from nose to tail. NASA saw no need to install them in all of the shuttles. Plus, you're not actually hearing all of the communications between the flight director and the other systems monitors.
This has to do with security at NASA. A man that I know who was one of the systems monitors said that it went from relative calm in the building to frantic bedlam in less than a minute, you can't hear all of the phones suddenly beginning to ring as calls began coming in about 1 minute before LOS, to a number of station alarms going off through Mission Control & several other rooms in the building.
Stockton Rush must have glued those tiles on
Yeah, no kidding.
The saddest and most infuriating part of this is the 'just keep pushing through the checklist' no matter the cost attitude. It's like 'summit fever'. That massive beurocratic machine just kept pushing for biz as usual, despite them knowing the likely outcome. They saw the missing and damaged tiles. What did they think would happen? They should have ferried them down on soyuz, even if it took several trips and another month in space. Its mind-boggling that nobody was even charged with negligence at the least. Why they allowed the entire crew to board despite knowing the possibility of breaking up, instead of just a minimum crew is mind-boggling as well. It's a lesson on how not to handle extremely high risk and dangerous situations and how risk could have been mitigated, but wasn't.
"Normalization of Deviance" as spoken by astronaut Mike Mullane. He's right on the money. All the bureaucratic pressure on and amongst NASA admins to push launches and ignore a another problem.
RIP Columbia we will never forget you.
I went to high school with Rick Husband. Many years later I became friends with McCools father.
It would be nice to see a representation of the shuttle from above, below, and front during the reentry.
Gut wrenching. I can't imagine what it was like for the ground crew.
don’t know what happened but I was watching the stars and behind the trees was a fiery pulsing effect going towards the ground
Nasa in both lost shuttle disasters simply tossed a coin on these peoples lives.
Maybe if the US govt gave NASA more money instead of spending all their money bombing children with drones they wouldn't be so penny-pinching as to avoid replacing O-rings or checking for broken tiles.
I really wish they had sent Atlantis up to save them since she was already on the pad for her next mission. If this was the NASA Mission Control from the 60s/70s they would’ve attempted it, those men and women were built different
NASA was never concerned about astronaut safety during the space shuttle program as evidenced by losing 14 astronauts. Absolutely unacceptable and both losses were because astronauts' lives were cheaper than fixing the problems.
One of the benefits of a space walk would have been a vehicle "walk around' before reentry, just to check the heat resistant areas of the hull and wings. this should have been SOP for all shuttle flights.
@@davidmurray5399 Thanks, Captain Hindsight! You're a lifesaver!
Shuttle era NASA dident care about safety. Almost lost Atlantis two flights after challenger by same way Columbia was lost.
Uh no
My education is aerospace science. I worked for General Electric with NASA contracts, and also Fairchild. I never like the shuttle. I never trusted it. We should’ve stuck with expendable, rockets and capsule returns. The shuttle never delivered what it promised. It was never even close to budget. The fact that there were two fatal accidents is all the proof we need.
Actually I think there were risks associated with it that were catastrophic and while it's definitely true that it had potential hazards I don't think anyone really anticipated it either time. It operated successfully most of the time.
Interesting. Appreciate you sharing your expert input on the bigger issue. Sounds like we need more folks to take these concerns seriously.
@@christopherfoote4643 it was always on the edge. Worst aspect, it did not have a method to get away from the solid rockets. If a launch went wrong everyone was dead, The Apollo had an exit sitting on the launch platform all the way up, and liquid rickets you could shut down. The Shuttle was dangerous.
You worked for 'generally electric'.....mkay.
Too many moving parts. Powered by a controlled explosion. No escape system. An amazing machine, but one that was tried to be too advanced and not practical enough.
Can you do the same for the failed Starship 3rd flight that broke up during re-entry. Looked like the heat shield was just peeling away and that lead to the loss of craft
good idea
This already exists, in much more detail
They even have fluid dynamics models on the fuel/O2.
Not really the cause, Starship IFT3 seemed to be rolling out of control on entry which caused unprotected parts of the ship to be exposed. We cannot really assess the effect of losing some of the heat shield tiles until we have a working attitude control 🤷
Starship designed to survive re-entry even with multiple loss of heat tile, the roll cause the RUD (RCS failure led to the starship destruction)
One of the NASA reconstructions I saw showed a slow steady roll rate building up as it went out of control (the rolls are about the velocity vector and at the entry angle of attack they looked more like yaws). The crew was still alive then and I suspect they would have been getting all sorts of tones and C&W annunciations as the flight control system was saturated trying to correct the errors.
read the report. early on the ship pitched suddenly. there was a snapping effect. the pullback harnesses all failed resulting in broken necks for some, severe trauma for the rest. additionally all of them were faced with the capsule tearing open just aft of the upper deck chairs.The flight surgeons said the immense sensory overload from the windblast would not have resolved before final LOC. In other words, they never knew what happened.
The Challenger... that is a different(classified) story
The worse thing is that they knew it was damaged, but NASA's leadership prevented any actions to asses the extent of the damage
That is the fact tho they new it was damaged (the o ring) it was also to cold
Srry that was challenger mb
There was nothing they could do
Yes, the Commander of the crew was sent a message stating that there was no problem or concern
@@camdenself541 how about deleting the comment and apology?
NASA definitely knew they weren't coming home
Flight Control knew they were speaking to people in the last minutes of their lives. This is hard to watch. Submarines subjected to great ocean pressures are cylindrical for a reason. Re-entry capsules are conical for a reason. A re-entry vehicle shaped like an extreme delta-wing aircraft is a crapshoot.
Or maybe, when you identify a problem in your design, you spend the money and time to correct it BEFORE a catastrophe. NASA knew full well well about foam strikes damaging reentry tiles. They had several close calls. And yet they did Nothing whatsoever to eliminate the issue, and rejected the idea of developing a means for astronauts to inspect and repair re-entry shielding damage in flight.
They HAD EVA capabilities. They could have put a Camera on the Canadarm to enable in flight inspection. And something as simple as a glue on patch of carbon carbon fabric with phenolic resin would have made the leading edge damage survivable.
But like with a lot of things, the fact that they had not lost a shuttle, YET, made them complacent.
Modern airliners are examples of complicated and unwieldy contraptions that have a multiplicity of potential failure points. And every fatal failure has resulted in changes to how we make them and operate them to the point where they are dramatically safer than driving.
no reason at all why a spaceplane can’t be made more robust and safer. It just takes the will to do so.
If they were giving 1/113 odds in your favor at the craps table, you'd bankrupt the casino.
Most sad video I've ever seen. My condolences to their families and friends.
The flight director has full responsibility
For the clearance for the return flight. He should never have authorized the return flight. He should have publicized the supervisor's refusal to take photos. Otherwise he would have had to resign.
He was promoted after this.
NASA: No taxpayer dollar left unwasted
I remember watching the Columbia launch, and I remember reporting of the dislodged insulation possibly damaging the wing of Columbia. Maybe it's the Mandala Effect, but I remember being worried about them making it back before we ever heard about the apparent disintegration of Columbia on re-entry. I honestly feel like we knew about that piece of insulation possibly damaging the forward wing of the landing craft before they tried reentry.
The most shocking detail I ever heard about this was a farmer whose farm was approximately in the area where debris would likely fall in. He found something grizzly in the middle of a field -- a human heart.
What happened to those bodies for something like a heart to end up outside the body, severed completely, to land in a field? The spinning bits of wreckage must've acted like a blender to the bodies amidst it.
don't be a fool. Everything that was biological was burned
@@8MWm3e4b Yeah, don't be a fool! Nah nah nah!
@@8MWm3e4bNot true.
The astronauts’s bodies would have been torn apart by blunt force trauma because they were still travelling at about 12,000 miles an hour and they were still nearly 40 miles above the ground. The crew stood no chance at all of survival. At least it would have been mercifully quick.
Not that they would have been able to do anything about it, but it sounds like, unless the people assessing the situation could guarantee there was going to be a catastrophic failure, the decision makers didn't want to have to consider options. There was no thought process of exploring possible options, just in case the damage was bad.
There were no options. Reread your first sentence to find the answer.
NASA knew the shuttle would never get home
If they didn’t lose consciousness they def knew they were dying. We know a few were conscious for like a min after losing signal.
NASA ignored major issues not only on Columbia but Challenger also. Their ignorance led to the unnecessary deaths of 14 people. May they continue to RIP in the heavens
It’s amazing how long the orbiter lasted with a hole in the wing before the catastrophic failure.
It’s also amazing, and extremely heartbreaking, how the flight director inferred the failure from such a small amount of information, presented so calmly and professionally by the others.
No, the hole in the wing would not have been an issue in space. There is no pressure on it and no heat. It would have stayed that way pretty much forever.
@@jamesthompson3099
I know that. I mean that it lasted a long time during reentry.
All the controllers had been briefed about the debris hit during launch. NASA does not leave anything to chance, they reviewed and re-reviewed every possible result it might cause.
So as things started to go south they all knew that it meant the shuttle was coming apart. They just hoped it would hold together long enough. It did not.
45 seconds before LOS, from the spacecraft: "Feeling the heat"
Crew safety was never a big concern for the makers of the Space Shuttle. Those big companies made so much money that a lost Shuttle did not affect their price to put a Shuttle into space. Why NASA did not attempt a rescue is what is so sad to me. The video of the blast off was clear that something, a block of foam, broke off and struck the Columbia. A roll over near Hubble could have assessed the damage, and Atlantis being on the pad could have been brought in as a rescue mission.
They would never have okayed Atlantis for such a mission - for various factors.
Atlantis wasn't on the pad, it was in the VAB being prepped for STS 114 (7 flights after Columbia. They could have rushed the prep to get in into space as a life boat, but it wasn't anywhere close to being ready to go. Also, Hubble wouldn't have helped, its lens is designed to focus on very very distant objects, not something as close as an shuttle in Earth orbit.
@@rmill344 Not to mention tracking an object going 17,000 mph in close proximity. It is a good thing YT commenters are not at the helm of our space agency. Lol.
Actually NASA as a whole
If you ever get a chance to visit NASA in Texas, do it. When you see the older rockets and all the other displays, you realize how incredibly courageous all of the astronauts really were. Perhaps a little crazy too.
This channel is super underrated
I remember first hearing the sonic boom and then shortly after seeing the debris spread across the sky from up in Minnesota. I felt sick from wondering the horror those astronauts experienced for some time after that terrible day. Watching this gave me those feelings all over again. RIP to those 7 brave souls. Shame on NASA for knowing about the ice particles causing damage to the bricks that can be replaced with a space dock at the I.S.S. but sending the only shuttle up for this flight incapable of docking. I remember being angry about that fact and that Columbia was going up because I knew that if she was damaged with ice particles she wouldn't be coming back. To NASA's credit I was pleased to learn that they wouldn't risk Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore's lives returning them on the possibility that Boeing's Starliner was broken and incapable of a safe return. I also hope to see them safely back on Earth in February 2025! Yes, Starliner returned to Earth safely but Suni and Butch are also safe on the I.S.S. (better safe than another catastrophe) with more than enough to keep them busy; as I believe there are 80+ science experiments being conducted by all those that are up there per day and there's plenty of food - YEAH!
You saw it from Minnesota when it broke up over Texas?
You saw it in Minnesota? Yeah right! I didn't know Minnesota was in the South. Also, it wasn't Ice particles! It was foam insulation breaking off the main tank. You knew this was a problem while watching the Shuttle Launch? Bullshit! No one outside of NASA new about the foam strikes. As far as I.S.S., have you ever noticed that Columbia never went to the I.S.S.? That's because Columbia could not reach the ISS. It was too heavy! Columbia was the first shuttle that was created and launched into orbit. Columbia was the shuttle that made history, which was why its loss was more impactful. All the other Shuttles had refinements that help to lighten them and gave them greater boost into higher LEO orbit. But Discovery, Atlantis and Endevour were the only Shuttles capable of getting high enough to reach the ISS.
Bro did not see it from minnesota 💀💀💀💀.
@@ethanjensen1445 obviously
I was so excited for space going into Jr year of high school then this happened. Truly a sad day for humanity..
Shame on NASA for NOT learning the lessons of Apollo 1 & Challenger. It’s completely unacceptable that NASA did NOT launch a rescue mission with all of the Space Shuttles in the NASA Fleet.
GOD Bless our fallen astronauts 💫 and their beautiful families 💖 🇺🇸 💙 🇮🇱 💝 🇮🇳
How would a rescue mission have helped in Challenger? Rockets cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Maybe NASA should have used all their technology to create their own money instead of relying on Congress to appropriate it.
👍I've written many comments to this effect and I agree.
They really issue is no redundancy of systems. If another shuttle is there in a week, they assess then take best option
If I'm being honest, I don't know how people weren't charged with a crime. They KNEW the foam struck the wing but did nothing. Didn't even bother to turn a camera or something to look. That hubris and arrogance cost the crew their lives, and that is unacceptable to me
Because there had been foam strokes before and most weren’t dangerous. They didn’t know it would cause that much damage. And in that specific area. Granted there was a previous mission with damage that the crew feared would cause re entry loss of craft so it should have been fixed much earlier
Rarely are swamp monsters punished - the swamp monsters protect each other.
NASA used a flawed computer modeling program to calculate the risk. It repeatedly underestimated the damage potential of that type of impact. It wasn't until they built a test mockup and fired foam out of a special cannon at the mockup did they realize their mistake , the impact blew a hole in the wing heat tiles dooming the ship.
Even IF NASA knew the severity of the foam strike, and I have my doubts they did, what were their options? Call for an Uber?
Amen.
I kind of expected a downward view that would show where on the wing the desentigration started and how it spread to other areas. Im sure they have a pretty good idea of how that transpired. This just wasn't much to write home about visually.
Reformulation of the external fuel tank foam insulation to make it "environmentally safe" without doing extensive adhesion tests led to this disaster.
God please tell me that isn't true!
The debris hit Colombia at between 430-575 MPH!
Something most people don't know is that even if the orbiter had stayed together more, once they lost tire pressure the crew would have had to bail out before landing.
The shuttle cannot survive landing with flat tires.
stupid nasa, should have used runflats
The problem was on the left side, but you showed the right side. Showing the left side with arrows to point out the sensors as they failed would improve the animation.
Otherwise it's pretty good.
Really? Not much better than the Apollo animations from the 60's
It's not an animation. It was made in a game called spaceflight simulator
I did not know the foam piece was as large as was estimated.
I still have difficulty understanding why either an engineer or a post flight assessment team from previous missions were never sufficiently curious or motivated enough to create a real test or even a simulation of a piece of foam striking the airframe. When I look back at the Cold War Space Race and the lengths NASA and USAF engineers went to, to analyze and test both every imaginable scenario, as well as all observed phenomena, it’s clear that that level of aggressive initiative, and determination, and independent analysis, by both dedicated individuals and teams, had been swapped with bureaucratic inertia and complacency within the NASA of the 80s.
The fault lay not only with NASA, however. Congress also imposed serious burdens on NASA, putting severe limitations on the agency with such a high priority placed on cost cutting, perpetual interference and oversight (oversight of cost controls, that is). Congress forced NASA to settle on a design based on perceived affordability rather than a properly designed Shuttle program. This re-prioritization led to a compromised system that Congress felt was acceptable, even though it was criticized by the space industry at the time for being insufficient for its mission - as well as, as proven, unsafe.
Congress bears responsibility for creating an atmosphere of bureaucracy fatigue and a lowering of the morale of the agency, which led directly to the reduction of NASA’s culture of safety as well as the feeling of complacent indifference. When NASA engineers and dedicated administrators are constantly being reined in and second guessed by appointed bureaucrats, it is amazing the Shuttle Program was as successful as it was, upon researching the complete backstory and program background.
Really you could summarize it by noting that NASA was given a blank check from the President and Congress back in the Apollo days. This was due to their being a space race and it being a matter of national security. Russia has already launched an orbiting satellite and put the first man in space. It was not just a matter of national pride. The US did not want Russia controlling the space above our country. Remember this was coming off the cold war and nuclear arms race, which was still happening. The NASA budget percentage of the overall federal budget peaked at over 4% in the 1960's. Today it is less than 0.4%. Spaceflight was never safe, and NASA through the 1980's and 2000's never was provided enough funding to beat down risks to a lower level.
Gosh, they must have been terrified. They knew they were going to die.
As the original Apollo astronauts feared: spam in a can with no access to controls.
11:39, time of liftoff the same time Titanic struck the iceberg. Granted this launch was in morning and Titanic at night but if you’re superstitious enough you get the idea.
RIP to the astronauts
I remember that day, I was at work and all the news stations out of Orlando broke in to regular broadcast to say "NASA can`t find the shuttle, They Lost contact and the shuttle never came in for landing" it was like that all day! I think it was the next day that they started admitting there was an accident. Living there and watching them go up you never think that those people may never make it home....
My friend Navy Captain Laurel Clark nee Salton died on the Columbia. What a bad a$$ woman. Prior to becoming an astronaut, she was the Submarine Squadron 14 medical officer at Holy Loch, Scotland. I had the privilege of having lunch with her most days. I also had the privilege of teaching her how to shoot trap; probably the best student I ever had. She was awesome.
I remember being a kid in grade 6 seeing it strapped on the back of a 747 flying over our school in Toronto in '84 and being in awe. Then again, in grade 8, when this happened, watching live with my whole class. I didn't know these brave adventurers, but I remember crying and being in disbelief when they died. Regans speech will always stay with me.
@@ta2joe13- What you probably saw was the test orbiter Enterprise, which never flew in space. Back at the time frame you're talking about, NASA was pretty regularly sending Enterprise out on flyover tours in the U.S., Canada and Europe, riding on top of one of the shuttle carrier 747s. I saw it during an air show flyover about a year before you did.
There wouldn't have been any need to fly Columbia, Challenger, or Discovery (the 3 operational orbiters at the time) over any part of Canada.
Enterprise spent a couple of decades displayed at the Smithsonian Air & Space facility near DC, and was swapped out with the retiring Discovery in 2012. Then sent to the aircraft carrier Intrepid outside of New York City where it's now displayed.
It was George W Bush who eulogized Columbia in 2003, and Reagan who spoke after the Challenger loss in 1986.
Yet she lacked an ounce of common sense. All that for nothing.
I always wondered if the crew was conscious of the shuttle beginning to disintegrate around them.
I read a very detailed report about the disaster many years ago. The report included a highly detailed and technical breakdown of what happened to the crew during the breakup, and it was very morbid and disturbing, but also very interesting. According to the report, they died from extreme G forces first, as the shuttle rolled and pitched violently, out of control. The report describes the likely situation of the G forces ripping their upper bodies from the seatbelts and tearing their bodies apart. Then the cabin was breached and extremely high temperature plasma entered the cabin at 12,000mph, vaporizing their bodies, but they would have already passed away by then.
With some internet searching and a little patience, you may be able to find that original report and read it for yourself, it was awful to read like I said, but interesting.
@@trevorjameson3213 Metal way to go
They were aware of the damage in fact there was a picture of the crack to the edge of the left wing. This crack was large, there is no way they should have returned. Go back to the space station and wait for a rescue mission of sorts or in space repairs?
From what I understand, it wasn't possible to go to the station from their mission parameters. I wish that was possible. It was a death flight once they took off.
They were not in the orbital plane and inclination of the space station. It takes an enormous amount of energy to change orbital inclination that they did not have.
I hope Linda Ham and her team of other upper managers never get a wink of sleep again.
They sleep just fine all the way to the bank.
Space shuttle program: $200 billion waste of taxpayer dollars.
Nasa managers and contractors made HUGE windfalls
NASA: No taxpayer dollar left unwasted
Linda Ham still works for NASA. 42 years on taxpayer funded payroll.
RIP to everyone who died..
I just found your channel and I love it! Don’t stop! At some point, I would love to see you do and analysis of the Apollo one disaster.
*All these brilliant hindsight scientists in the comments* . Yes, yes, you've got it all figured out. If only you were in charge of the space program everything would have worked perfectly.
If only your mother would swallow.
I was outside and saw it breaking up. I didn't know what it was. I remember thinking oh shit..
no more haunting words as "lock the door"
That repeatedly „Columbia - Houston… UHF ComCheck…“ was hard to bear as well.
Things will keep to go wrong sometimes, though. Nobody can guarantee for 100 % safety, even not Musk.
I was on a JRTC training course at Ft Polk LA. Our training was paused and we were briefed about the disaster. We were also briefed if we find any debris that looked suspicious or could be from Columbia to not touch it and to report it immediately.
So the highest parachute jump has been 128K. From this video the shuttle broke up at 150K. I really believe that a parachute system with a strengthened crew compartment really could have saved the crew on this one. Find Gregg Easterbrook's very prescient editorials on the Space Shuttle.
Parachute. Lol. Those don't work very well when you are going 17,000 mph.
@@LisaMedeiros-tr2lz You might be right. But it would not have to deploy immediately until 130K feet. Also note that the front part of the shuttle where the crew were strapped in survived intact after the breakup as you can see here. What I'm saying is this failure mode could have been predicted and planned for. The crew compartment could have been hardened and flight suits pressurized. Especially after a very similar incident in 1988 with shuttle Atlantis and the Challenger disaster. It's a question of engineering and nothing else. Obama ending the shuttle program was a very smart and overdue decision.
At Mach 12+, any parachute would've been destroyed with the rest of the shuttle & cabin. Also can't deploy when tumbling uncontrollably. The g-forces alone before breakup would've been enough to render them all incapacitated anyway.
@@callmeshaggy5166 at some point the crew compartment would have a terminal velocity. Besides that the shuttle was a bad design from the get-go. Gregg Easterbrook wrote some amazing prescient opinions about that!
@@metatechnologist your parachute drop comparison doesn't work for the reasons mentioned above. Felix reached nearly 900mph, about a dozen times slower than the shuttle cabin at breakup, and he even still he didn't deploy any parachute until he was well into the lower atmosphere. Deploying a parachute at such high speed would either A) destroy the parachute, or B) kill whoever it's attached to from g-deceleration.
Slight correction: the video of the crew is during reentry, not before it. You can see the plasma clearly out the windows.
Very early beginning of the reentry, I believe.
You can mainly see the flashes from the attitude control thrusters bursting.
Advanced visual recreation courtesy of Space Shuttle Project on NES.
What gets me is how, with sensors and alarms all over the shuttle covering every possible malfunction, the ground crew seemed absolutely clueless about what was really happening.
Same mentallity that lauched the Challenger...Gooooooooooo$$$$$$$$$$$$
they knew
This was my takeaway too. Sensors failing left and right and no one says a thing.
They knew, they just couldn't do anything.
@@SBT300 I love how everyone wants to insure they knew what happened in every accident known..it's like you want them to know before they died, they have to know or you lose sleep..
I hope they didn't suffer
that a good recreation, maybe not the best recreation of the shuttle but one of the best recreation of that disaster in sfs