20 Things You Didn't Know About Living In Space

Originally posted by Valhall
Oh, and one more thing, please don't talk like you know exactly when the Challenger crew died. It makes you look silly.

If they had survived everything else that happened to them, they would not have survivied the impact with the ocean.

Now who looks silly?

If they had survived everything else they would have died on impact.

Let's go one further...maybe they survived everything else AND the impact and drowned!

To answer your question - you do.

No one knows when they died or what killed them. Could have been injury during the shuttle disintegration, could have been asphyxiation, could have been the tremendous g-forces they endured during the post-accident trajectory, could have been the 300 to 600 g impact forces when they hit the water. And odds are some of them probably died at every step along the way from what I just listed. No one knows.

Originally posted by COOL HAND

What?

Didn't you see the link that was provided?
They can only use it at purely subsonic speeds. The suits are not designed to handle a supersonic slipstream.

Cool,

I never said it would work. In fact, I think I blatantly showed my astonishment at the whole concept. The "pole" is an astonishing example of how stupid things get put in place in order to appease nervous-nellie congressmen and citizens.

It was directly invented to show "there is a possible escape method for the crew" if another orbiter is in distress after congress said there had to be one following the Challenger disaster.

I'm not making this stuff up - trust me.

P.S. I think my facetiousness at saying "sticking it out of the shuttle at Mach fill in the blank" during ascent escaped you. The response to the congressional mandate to come up with a way the crew could evacuate if another problem occurred on a shuttle launch involved 1.) aborting the launch, and 2.) using the "pole". But the reason I'm being facetious is that that is very disingenuous...the Challenger disaster happened during the "canned" closed-loop portion of the launch - so the whole bill of goods of abort to horizontal and deploy the pole, well, it wouldn't happen next time a Challenger like incident happened either.

Hope that clarifies my tongue in cheek. The pole is silly...but it makes the citizens feel better.

[edit on 11-7-2007 by Valhall]

Originally posted by Valhall
No one knows when they died or what killed them. Could have been injury during the shuttle disintegration,

Nope, the cabin remained intact until it splashed into the water.

could have been asphyxiation,

Nope that would have been hypoxia based on the altitude it was at when it broke up.

could have been the tremendous g-forces they endured during the post-accident trajectory,

Nope, some of them were still able to activate their emergency breathing system.

could have been the 300 to 600 g impact forces when they hit the water. And odds are some of them probably died at every step along the way from what I just listed. No one knows.

It was not 300-600gs, that is crazy. There would have been no cabin wreckage recovered at those kinds of g-forces.


"After vehicle breakup, the crew compartment continued its upward trajectory, peaking at an altitude of 65,000 feet approximately 25 seconds after breakup. It then descended striking the ocean surface about two minutes and forty-five seconds after breakup at a velocity of about 207 miles per hour. The forces imposed by this impact approximated 200 G's, far in excess of the structural limits of the crew compartment or crew survivability levels. "

I believe I've already said this myself

" the cabin remained intact until it splashed into the water. "

But that doesn't mean it wasn't structurally breached or that all the astronauts came through the disintegration unharmed. Yes, I know that SOME of the astronauts deployed their oxygen tanks.

I also know that SOME of them did not. But also remember that they could only deploy the tanks, there was no attached oxygen supply system anymore after that.

And the 300 - 600 was from memory. I'm okay with saying 200. I think it was estimated at around 300 g, but again, I'm going from memory.


[edit on 11-7-2007 by Valhall]

reply to post by Solarskye



I thought that the "long trip to mars" problem has been solved by using ION engine based space craft.
I read an article about it and it gave me the impression that this wasnt a future development but something that they are already beginning to implement into crafts with future missions..

reply to post by Kr0n0s


From what I've heard ion engines are great for probes and cargo spavecraft that don't require a time table to get there, but humans need to get there faster. That's why they're looking into nuclear rocket engines. I really hope they find or stumble onto something better than the ion or nuclear myself.

Mission To Mars

Edit to say that this mission to mars needs and hopefully will be a world involvement, not just Nasa. Our planet is going to Mars not Nasa. So hopefully with everyone working to solve the problems of going to Mars, we'll get it done as a planet.



[edit on 11/7/2007 by Solarskye]