I'd like to help (if possible) by doing some file-archiving work; are applications being accepted? 'Cuz they should be, judging by this news.

Nope, forget about it, we don't visit the archives anymore.

Dare i ask wtf the heading means?

Umm... perhaps there should be some news about the space shuttle? you know, the one that just EXPLODED? rather than post humorous news almost five hours after it happens...

This isn't a general news site though. Cnn.com or msnbc.com do a much better job of covering that.

I know that, but there WAS news story on here about the September 11th tragedy.

Well... *everyone* had a story about that. Not to just disrehard those who died today, but there were less of them, and the explosion isn't a clear terrorist attack (well, yet, anyway).

they say likely no terrorist missile could reach it
i say "ever heard of a ss-n-20 MIRV"?

No kidding. Plus, what if it was sabotaged by the maintenance people before launch so that the heat shield was damaged? Wouldn't the effects of that only show up on re-entry?

Actually, the heat shield was damaged, but they are saying it happened when a loose piece of foam hit the left wing during liftoff.

Yeah. That's what they want us to think... MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...
Stupid 40 character limit per word...

Cause, its true...

I dont think it is a terrorist act, myself.
And if it was, I HIGHLY doubt it was a missle attack, it would have been a bomb on board, or sabotage to one of its systems, by an maintence crew member. But, I dont think it was, the Challenger came down, and that wasnt terrorism, not all horrible things are terrorism.

Lets not start pointing fingers, that will never get us anywhere.

Glod Bless the victims of today.

.........."Glod"?

Do you mean "God"?

ever heard of religious freedom? lol

He's being politically correct;)

Yeah, I doubt it was a terrorist attack also. Maybe the craft had some sort of error, or the conditions were bad or something.

Ah. I didn't know that.

c'mon, it's FOAM!!! soft FOAM!!! you can't rip tiles away with FOAM. you can scrub them, but not rip them out!!!

Frozen foam.

...with the momentum of a cannon ball.

Exactly.
Take a snow ball... and shoot it out of a rail gun. That's about the equivalent.

And before you kids start complaining about how rail guns don't exist, I know for a fact that they do. I've seen one. There's a gigantic one at my school. They once fired a penny out of it, directly into the side of a rocky hill. At their best estimates, it's somewhere a few miles back in the ground. It shot out at something like 13,000 MPH, or around mach 18. Nearly the same speed as the shuttle.

The one on the page in the 'web page' link goes about 200 m/s, or around 447.4 MPH. Built out of raw metal. It's not technically a *real* railgun (there's no magnetic element), but it operates on similar physics.

Ah, one problem with my analysis: The whole 'snowball out of a railgun' thin would be on re-entry, not on takeoff.

What is a rail gun and how does it work. Be as technical as you like

I think they mean like styrofoam...

There is no 'heat sheild'. The covering of the entire shuttle is made of ceramic tiles that are incredibly advanced. If you heat up a tile untill it is red hot, then wait for about 15 to 30 seconds, or when the edgeds turn grey again, you can pick the tile up by the edges. There can be tiles missing and the shuttle will still be fine upon re-entry. In other words, there would have to be a lot of tiles missing for the shuttle to burn up. Either something went extremely wrong do to simple wear and tear over the years, or it was sabatoge.

>>i say "ever heard of a ss-n-20 MIRV?

Don't you think that NASA would have seen anything such as a missle on radar? Or at least have noticed its launching?

Besides, I don't think one of those would be able to even hit the shuttle ... they're designed to go up and hit the ground far away from where they were launched, not intercept aircraft.
In all likelihood (sp?), it was a mechanical malfunction.

I'd like to see someone successfully aim a missle at an object 200,000 feet up in the air going mach 18.

The thing goes in a straight line. (Imagine turning even one degree at that speed. You'd get torn to pieces.) All they would have to do is interpolate the trajectory out a few hundred miles and fire.

Well I'm not sure at what altitude, speed etc the maneuver is done at, but some time during re-entry they fly the shuttle in a S-shaped path in order to slow it down. It takes 15 sec to complete.

Vertical S or horizontal S?

Horizontal.

I've been to space camp, and I forgot all of it. :-p

As someone said a few days ago, everyone wants to got into space when they were young. I've been to a few in my time and I really only remember some technical specs or trivia.

You should tell that to your ABM guys. They've been trying to do that for many years - to stop ICBMs. The last news I saw about it said they hadn't done it yet...

Easy in theory (you can probably write a program on a TI calc to do it, even), but a hell of a lot harder in reality.

Yeah... what with all the crosswinds, friction with the air, etc. In theory it could be done by any simpleton with a calculator, but in practice, reality tends to screw it up.

You know, life would be so much easier if reality didn't keep messing it up.

Yep, reality screws everthing up. I've actually seen a TV thing like Dateline or something that showed how they use a very high speed machine gun of sort to try and take them out. It stopped about 30% or something. Thanks to reality and extremely high speeds that the bullet and the ICBM are traveling at I would say that that is pretty acruate. BTW what does ICBM stand for anyway?

Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile

The reason I said that you'd get torn to pieces by turning 1 degree at mach 18 is this: imagine what would happen to a car that was driving in a race - let's say the Indy 500, for example - at speeds upwards of 200 MPH if it were to suddenly turn at a 45 degree angle. It would probably flip over, catch fire, explode, etc. etc. All that nice stuff. Now, multiply that by 63 times. That's about mach 18.

Thats only do to friction of the tires on the ground and the momentum of the race car. It is entirly different for the shuttle that really only deals with air friction.

Nevertheless, air friction at nearly 13000 MPH is incredible. Enough to tear the flesh off your body, at the very least. If it didn't explode, it was probably torn to pieces.

People tend to get confused when talking about the physical properties of gases. Since we tend to be low-speed beings, we aren't used to the concept of air being able to damage something. When you're moving at 13,000 MPH, air can be a very destructive substance. Think of what would happen if a person going 200 MPH suddenly slammed into the ocean. They'd probably break every bone in their body, despite the fact that the ocean is a liquid. The speed of a moving body has a great effect upon what happens to it when it enters a medium.

Me, too. I'd like to see them try to do the same thing at something goin' Mach 1.

lol Americans. You (we;() can't accept that our mechanical components could ever fail. Our high school principal compared it to 9/11. It wasn't clear terrorism, and so few died. The comparison is foolish.

As to terrorism allegations for the Columbia, while I'll agree that it isn't impossible, I think it is highly unlikely. First, why bother? You could kill many more people elsewhere. Second, while there are weapons that COULD have destroyed it, it is unlikely that terrorists would possess them or decide to use them.

Finally, I'd like to criticize people in general. We cry about the 3,000 in 9/11. 30,000 die in car crashes a year. So why is this so much worse? This world is all out of proportion.

3000 people died within two hours on 9/11, and the entire nation was watching. Car accidents are spread out over the course of a year, and very people witness them first-hand on the news (because they are so common). The density of death was much greater on 9/11.

sorry to say it, but seven people died. I know, in their respect, yes, but think of all the people dieing of AIDS or malnutrition, which probably could be aleiviated if USA took its money out of space and put it towards those who have none. There! Ha! If we all put our efforts into calculators (cheaper thanb space shuttles and fuel) and the poor, we could all be happy. I do respect the fact that they are dead, and that we should not write them off...

calc.org already has a news article on the Space Shuttle explosion!

calc.org isn't the same as ticalc.org

...being the fact that ticalc.org out-matches calc.org in every way?

True. ticalc.org is so much better. Keep up the good work, dudes!!!
d:-)

Yeah, the only thing we need is ARCHIVERS! ;)

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Magnus, if you guys need archivers, I have scads of free time. I'd be glad to get right on it.

and why should they trust you?

Because they know that if they don't, I will bomb their house.

I KID!

I JcN!

And how many lives have been saved due to the medical advancements that came from the space program? It is much to early to cut the line and say that we have learned all that we are going to learn.

would be nice if some of these medical advancements would get to the people who need them, we could probably help the world more by shipping medicine and food than by developing more of it for companies to sell to the highest bidder.

your view here is correct, sort of. People do end up getting the advances. And the people who need it most could get it, if our healthcare system weren't so freaking messed up. HMO's are the real problem, not anything but them. They have taken advantage of people, and inconcievably high numbers of deaths, because the won cover stuff. Our health-care system is completely flawed.

Then you should be arguing about the patent system or Bush's retarded tax cuts.

-Samuel

His tax cuts actually make sense to me. Did you know that the top 5% of incomes pay more in taxes than the other 95% of the country? I think that they are working hard, and shouldnt have more money taken away from them than any one else. It would make more sense if they changed it so that everyone payed the same percent. Rather than having some bum who does nearly nothing pay 15% and the hard working entrpenuar paying 51%. That is messed up.

I completely agree.
People constantly overlook the millions of positive things that the space program has brought the human race. Not to mention shutting it down would be a huge set back for the economy, as it pours millions of dollars back in, maintains our satelites, and basically, is too important to shut down. Lest we forget the cosmonaut still up there in the International Space Station.

Does anyone know if russia has a reusable craft for itself? Or do they still use stage rockets, or do they go up with us? I cant remember...

They use Soyuz capsules, which are one-time use. It's a Soyuz that's currently serving as the ISS's lifeboat.

ya.
One mistake with mine, three people up there, not just one cosmonaut.

...except that the Soyuz capsules have had many more problems in the past than space shuttles (i.e. there is a Soyuz craft in orbit with a dead body in it from an accident over 30 years ago)

Oh yeah, I heard about that.

Someone should do a news article on Phil being sick *cry*

I heard about a lot of things, not the least of which being the fact that TIcalc.org is not going down if the world implodes, explodes, or just plain plodes (not to mention ending, which pales beside temporal dilation (which would not really do much (but sounds cool anyway))).