In 1957 the Soviet Union put up Sputnik. Science and visor Vannevar Bush figured out what to say about our slacking program. Astronomer John Hagen supervised the deign of the Vanguard’s rocket, technically far superior to the Soviet boosters. It launched and blew up on the pad. Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson said, “How long, how long, O God, how long will it take us to catch up with the Russians satellites?” We did catch up. We hired an East German scientist Warner von Braun, the father of German’s V-2 rockets, and put him to work. He rigged up one of his Redstone missiles and launched the U.S. satellite Explorer. (Cohn & Harwood)
Many Factors contributed to the break-up of the Columbia.
The 24,000 tiles that protect the shuttle from the soaring temperatures of re-entry have been trouble from the start. The fact that the accident occurred at the point when the ship was at its hottest (3,000 F) immediately raised
Investigators will be looking at everything from a loss of insulation tiles to an explosion in the fuel tanks to a structural failure in the ship itself. This flying machine with more than 2.5 million parts, even a 99.9% reliability level would still leave 2,500 things to go wrong. However long the investigation takes it will start with an examination of the last 45 minutes of the Columbia’s life. “We spent a good amount of time reviewing the film of the launch and analyzing what that might do,” said shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore. “From our experience it was determined that the event did not represent a safety concern.” But that was before the hinky data started coming down from that same left side of the ship in the final seconds of the flight. Now the film that already got an once-over is going to be looked at a lot more closely. Other less likely scenarios will be examined too: a meteor or space debris could have s
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