wales@ucla-cs.UUCP (02/05/86)
A comment on a recent posting, and then a few questions of my own.
In article <977@burl.UUCP> rcj@burl.UUCP (Curtis Jackson) writes:
My father was intimately involved in the shuttle program on the
safety end of the business for about 8 or 9 years. He called
the director of flight safety for the SRBs in Florida shortly
after the explosion and was told that the pilot knew there was
a problem and had made the decision to jettison both the SRBs
and the ET and abort back to ground, but that the thing exploded
before he could accomplish any of this.
This means that there had to be air-to-ground audio traffic on
this matter, but we never heard any.
If Curtis can expand on this at all, I would welcome more info. As it
stands, though -- and with all respect to both Curtis and his father --
I find the above account all but impossible to believe, because it seems
(to me, at least) to directly contradict the "NASA select feed" video
coverage which we have all seen time and time again by now.
Specifically, there was what appeared to be a totally routine exchange
between Mission Control and Challenger only seconds before the explo-
sion -- providing no time at all for any additional air-to-ground com-
munication of the type Curtis's father said he was told about.
The following transcript of the last few seconds of the flight is taken
from the replay of the NASA select feed shown over the weekend on CNN.
The timestamps are derived from my Sony VCR's time counter, and should
be accurate to within one second. (They would have been much more accu-
rate if the NASA feed had showed the mission time at some point, but all
I had to go on was the last few seconds of the oral countdown.) I take
full responsibility for any errors in this transcript, of course.
1:04 ANNOUNCER: Engines throttling up. Three engines now at 104%.
1:06 MISSION CONTROL: Challenger, go at [or "with"? -- hard to tell
for sure what he said] throttle-up.
1:09 CHALLENGER: Roger, go at [or "with"?] throttle-up.
1:10 [NASA select feed changes camera angles to show a long-range
closeup of the port side of the vehicle.]
1:12 [Vehicle is consumed in a fireball. A prolonged, irregular
burst of static is also heard.]
1:14 [NASA select feed changes back to the original camera angle.]
1:15 ANNOUNCER (oblivious to what has just happened): One minute,
fifteen seconds; velocity, 2900 feet per second; altitude, 9
nautical miles; downrange distance, 7 nautical miles.
Note particularly the timing of the "go at throttle-up" exchange. I
assume this was totally routine; there seems to be absolutely no indi-
cation at this point that either Mission Control or the Challenger crew
thought anything was wrong.
The explosion happened about two seconds later. Even if the problem had
been noted immediately after the go-ahead for throttle-up, there would
hardly have been even enough time for someone to say "Houston, we have a
problem". Certainly not enough time for any discussion about exactly
what was wrong or what should be done about it. And -- if such a report
of impending trouble came from the shuttle -- no opportunity for Mission
Control to keep said report from going out over the select feed.
Further, as has already been mentioned, it appears that no abort pro-
cedure of any kind is currently available to the shuttle crew until
after the SRBs have been completely used up -- in this case, they still
had almost a minute to go. (Of course, considering the inevitable con-
sequences of an accident such as the one which befell Challenger, a
shuttle crew with advance notice of imminent disaster during the first
minute or so of flight would surely have had nothing at all to lose by
trying something -- *anything* -- even if the chances of a safe abort
had been hardly better than nil.)
Now, my three questions regarding camera angles:
(1) Why did NASA switch camera angles for their "select feed" at 1:10
(right after the go-ahead for throttle-up, and just before the
explosion)? Was this something they would be doing anyway, because
of throttle-up? Or was it just coincidence?
I guess I've watched so many TV drama shows that I subconsciously
*expect* to seeing the suspenseful stuff at just the right time and
from just the right camera angle. But this wasn't a TV drama show,
and there wasn't any script.
(2) A couple of days ago, NASA released long-range pictures of the
vehicle from the other side. These pictures, as we all know by now,
showed a flame coming from the side of the starboard SRB about 15
seconds before the explosion.
(a) Was anyone watching this camera feed in real time? Or was it
just going onto film or videotape for later analysis and rou-
tine archival?
(b) If someone *was* watching this feed in real time, why was it not
apparent then and there that something was gravely amiss?
(3) Where were the cameras which supplied the long-range picture feeds?
(In airplanes? On board ships? On the ground, but several miles
away from the launchpad so as to get a better angle?)
--
Rich Wales // UCLA Computer Science Department // +1 213-825-5683
3531 Boelter Hall // Los Angeles, California 90024 // USA
ARPA: wales@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU -or- wales@UCLA-LOCUS.ARPA
UUCP: ...!(ucbvax,ihnp4)!ucla-cs!walesrcook@uiucuxc.CSO.UIUC.EDU (02/09/86)
I believe the long-range feed that we all so just before the explosion was
from the chase-plane/vehicle. (could be wrong, but i'm pretty sure)
Rob Cook
UUCP: {ihnp4,pur-ee}!uiucdcs!uiucuxc!rcook
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