Good work, Ken. When I'm here at work I never have time to do the math. I really feel that Occam's Razor is in play here. NASA keeps talking about a "missing link", but it sure looks to me like the root cause was the foam strike. Go hit something with a piece of foam, hard enough to disintegrate the foam into a bazillion pieces, I'll bet you could do some serious damage. C. --- Ken Warner <KillerKen@killerken.com> wrote:
According to this article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2730981.stm
the foam hit the shuttle's wing at 750 ft/sec (228 m/s). If you do the math that's 511 miles/hour ((750 ft/ s * 3600 s/h) / 5280 ft/mi). Even a glancing blow to the wing at that speed it would seem logical that some damage may occur. Yes, it did reduce the force of the impact because the shuttle is going somewhere around 2500 mi/hr at 80 seconds into the flight. At that speed the shuttle was going supersonic, not trans-sonic.
Ken
-----Original Message----- From: utah-astronomy-admin@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:utah-astronomy-admin@mailman.xmission.com] On Behalf Of Roen Hale Sent: Tuesday, February 11, 2003 10:20 AM To: utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Today's NASA Briefing
Doesn't the fact that the foam panel and the shuttle are travelling in the same direction at the time of impact reduce the force at time of collision? Roen Hale
----- Original Message ----- From: "Chuck Hards" <chuckhards@yahoo.com> To: <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Tuesday, February 11, 2003 9:50 AM Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Today's NASA Briefing
You don't need to add mass via water or ice. People (engineers included) seem to forget that the shuttle was probably close to trans-sonic when the foam broke loose. It carried incredible energy moving that fast. I have no credibility problems with plain old foam damaging tiles or structure.
C.
--- Joe Bauman <bau@desnews.com> wrote:
I agree. What if enough rainwater soaked into the foam that when it froze because of the liquid hydrogen, it was much heavier and much more solid than 2 1/2 pounds of foam insulation? -- Joe
Joe Bauman science & military reporter Deseret News bau@desnews.com (801) 237-2169
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