Talk:Space Shuttle Columbia disaster

Semi-protected edit request on 9 December 2023

Under "Cause", change "Damage to the left wing's edge" to "Damage to the left wing's leading edge" 100.11.106.65 (talk) 00:48, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: no reason given for the proposed change. M.Bitton (talk) 18:58, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

The change should be made, because that's what happened. The foam strike put a big hole in the RCC (Reinforced Carbon Carbon) panel on the left wing’s leading edge. This is covered extensively in the CAIB report and there's plenty of video of the test made during the accident investigation. 71.219.70.239 (talk) 03:25, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Hey there @71.219.70.239, I'm not too involved with this particular discussion, but I'll point out that this Wikipedia article extensively covers the root cause of the disaster including the extent and location of the damage, and that the phrase "leading edge" is used four times in the article already. If you'd like I suppose you can put the words "leading edge" in there a few more times, just as long as its not too much. SpacePod9 (talk) 20:30, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Pictures of reentry / disintegration

Why are there no photos of the re-entering debris anywhere in this article, especially as the infobox photo, which is often the very first thing most readers look at in a Wikipedia page after the title? There are no pictures like the "Apache" photo (see STS-107#Re-entry) or any others of the debris of Columbia re-entering the atmosphere, which I believe like the "two-headed" explosion of Challenger (see Space Shuttle Challenger disaster), is the most iconic and memorable scene of this tragic event. Instead the infobox photo is an unrelated landing of Columbia, which doesn't initially imply to the reader that this "disaster" is any more different from a normal shuttle mission, when that couldn't be further from the truth. Is the only reason just that there's a lack of these images on Wikimedia Commons at the moment? Could this article be supplemented by pictures and figures showing the breakup from the Columbia Accident Investigation Board's reports? SpacePod9 (talk) 05:26, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Looking back at the Apache image in particular and checking those NASA reports (which infuriatingly don't cite where they got that picture), I see it's been mentioned a few times in discussions both on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, but no consensus was ever reached on whether it was truly a "free" photo or not - it's been placed on a few articles including STS-107 and Space Shuttle Columbia, but not this one. Overall it seems that folks are fine with keeping the "status quo"; I've seen that a lot on WP:Spaceflight articles, especially those that aren't about the newest or most important events. I'll raise the issue again on Wikimedia Commons, if they say it's free to use, I'll change the infobox photo and caption. If it ends up not being free, and it gets removed from the Commons, that should give grounds to use a journalist's photo under fair-use, since there would be no "freer" options available. SpacePod9 (talk) 23:08, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Update: So I never nominated that file for deletion, but I inquired about it on Wikimedia Commons' Village Pump here, and in general the consensus seems to be that the folks over there are fine with the photo. I also edited the description and added several more references to its Wikimedia Commons entry. SpacePod9 (talk) 07:25, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

I added that image to the Re-entry section of this article today. No one has yet come forward opposing its inclusion in this article, and it's been twice reviewed by the Copyright section of Wikimedia Commons' Village Pump, and they don't seem to mind having it on their site. To any future editors who do end up removing the image under copyright or other concerns, I invite you to also request the image's deletion at its Wikimedia Commons page. SpacePod9 (talk) 00:42, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 22 February 2024

Could the BBC Two three-part documentary - The Space Shuttle That Fell to Earth - be added to the Legacy section? It featured interviews with NASA employees, journalists, and the families of the crew, and analysed the cause, build-up, and response to the disaster, as well as the NASA hierarchy. It began airing on the 12th February 2024.

Thank you.

Programme Page The Guardian Review (Lucy Mangan) Financial Times Review (Dan Einav) 2A02:C7E:2839:4300:6AF:FC2B:40CF:29F1 (talk) 00:13, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

SRB Ablator

"After the mission, the NASA Program Requirements Control Board designated the issue as an in-flight anomaly that was corrected with the planned improvement for the SRB ablator." This sentence is unclear as to whether or not the "planned improvement" was made. If so, when? I think this is an important piece of context for discussion of the known design flaw that caused the disaster. SchrodingersMinou (talk) 03:51, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

@SchrodingersMinou: the Columbia accident was caused by ET foam, not SRB foam. The SRB foam was updated. The accident review source does note, however: The Board notes the distinctly different ways in which the STS-27R and STS-107 debris strike events were treated. After the discovery of the debris strike on Flight Day Two of STS-27R, the crew was immediately directed to inspect the vehicle. More severe thermal damage – perhaps even a burn-through – may have occurred were it not for the aluminum plate at the site of the tile loss. Fourteen years later, when a debris strike was discovered on Flight Day Two of STS-107, Shuttle Program management declined to have the crew inspect the Orbiter for damage, declined to request onorbit imaging, and ultimately discounted the possibility of a burn-through. In retrospect, the debris strike on STS-27R is a “strong signal” of the threat debris posed that should have been considered by Shuttle management when STS-107 suffered a similar debris strike. The Board views the failure to do so as an illustration of the lack of institutional memory in the Space Shuttle Program that supports the Boardʼs claim, discussed in Chapter 7, that NASA is not functioning as a learning organization.

I think there's room for a summary of that paragraph in the section about the SRB ablator strike. VQuakr (talk) 16:38, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

New infobox image recommendations

As a follow up to the discussion already made by SpacePod9 further up on this talk page's section, the official reel taken from the Fort Hood camera source was decidedly used, however was reverted by the user Ahecht under the reasons:

"Animations are typically not put in the infobox, since it's supposed to include "at a glance" information"

However I have yet to find any evidence outside of this being purely his, or commonly agreed upon opinion being written, that must absolutely no other options of files outside of .svg, .JPG, .PNG etc. are allowed to be used for the info-box. I shall need a citation for that regarding Wikipedia Standards of Editing.

As examples, the articles regarding Vietnam War's Operation Rolling Thunder and even US nuclear weapons tests (eg. Trinity nuclear test, New Mexico 1945) have chosen to use animation for their infobox image and have kept it that way for some time. Seeing as their page edit history has made no reversions, nor any objections in each of their respective talk-pages, I assume it can be deemed acceptable. Roboutique (talk) 17:29, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

The new file coming from a government source (PD-USGov/No Copyright concerns), and being both accurate depiction, and within the context of the article, should therefore be fine for use, unless a better alternative can be suggested. Here are sampled comparisons of the current, and proposed new infobox:

Space Shuttle Columbia disaster

Disintegration of the space-shuttle Columbia as captured via an AH-64 helicopter's FLIR gun-camera during a U.S Army training exercise outside of Fort Hood, Texas.
Date	February 1, 2003 (2003-02-01)
Time	8:59 am EST (13:59 UTC)
Location	Over Texas and Louisiana
Cause	Damage to the left wing's edge by debris from the external tank during launch
Outcome	Loss of Columbia and seven astronauts; Space Shuttle fleet grounded for 29 months and subsequently retired after completion of the International Space Station.
Deaths	Rick Husband, commander William C. McCool, pilot Michael P. Anderson, mission specialist Kalpana Chawla, mission specialist David M. Brown, mission specialist Laurel Clark, mission specialist Ilan Ramon, payload specialist
Inquiries	Columbia Accident Investigation Board

Space Shuttle Columbia disaster

Disintegration of the space-shuttle Columbia as captured via an AH-64 helicopter's FLIR gun-camera during a U.S Army training exercise outside of Fort Hood, Texas.
Date	February 1, 2003 (2003-02-01)
Time	8:59 am EST (13:59 UTC)
Location	Over Texas and Louisiana
Cause	Damage to the left wing's edge by debris from the external tank during launch
Outcome	Loss of Columbia and seven astronauts; Space Shuttle fleet grounded for 29 months and subsequently retired after completion of the International Space Station.
Deaths	Rick Husband, commander William C. McCool, pilot Michael P. Anderson, mission specialist Kalpana Chawla, mission specialist David M. Brown, mission specialist Laurel Clark, mission specialist Ilan Ramon, payload specialist
Inquiries	Columbia Accident Investigation Board