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CNN Live Today

Searching for Answers

Aired February 03, 2003 - 10:12   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Leon, there are so many ways that investigators will be looking at the data, putting pieces together on this, trying to come up with a way of solving what happened to Columbia. Incredibly complicated task, when you're talk about a space vehicle that has no less than a million parts. There are all kinds of things to consider -- tremendous amounts of speed, tremendous amounts of heat. A lot of it just boggles the imagination.
One of the ways that NASA and military get a handle on these things is they use complicated simulator systems. A company called Analytical Graphics is heavily involved in that, and they're here to help us out, helping us visualize what happened in the final minutes of the space shuttle Columbia.

Bob Hall is with Analytical Graphics. He's joining us from Atlanta.

Bob, first of all, how much data do we have to support our simulations right now?

ROBERT HALL, ANALYTICAL GRAPHICS INC.: Right now, Miles, what we're using is existing shuttle flight data. As you know, following Saturday's accident, all the flight data for this particular mission has been locked down.

O'BRIEN: So some of this is supposition, we should tell people, and some of this is taking a standard re-entry, putting in that data, and so we probably should give that caveat to our viewers before we show many of these simulations, correct?

HALL: Correct. This is actual shuttle trajectory and shuttle attitude data. It's just from a previous mission. And what we've done is gone ahead and added a speculative piece to depict the debris falling off of the ET.

O'BRIEN: All right, so let's -- as the shuttle rises from Earth, obviously tremendous amount of power is unleashed, 80 seconds after launch, it's, I don't know, at an altitude approaching 100,000 feet, what were you able to -- did you get a sense of what the trajectory would be, the path of any sort of debris that with fall off the external tank?

HALL: Yes, it would probably come from the -- up on the tank, as the recent videos that you've got have shown. And as I slow this down here, you'll see this piece starts out up here.

O'BRIEN: Yes, we can sort of see it going off there. HALL: And it's going to follow a trajectory down the wing there.

O'BRIEN: All right, and that, when you're talk about a piece of foam. Everybody thinks of foam, or a sponge they might have in their kitchen, doesn't seem like that would do much, but give us the sense of the kind of velocities that we're talking about here, and how that might cause some problems.

HALL: Well, I think it's hard to say at this point without studying the videos what the velocity would be, and obviously, there is a great deal of discussion about whether foam might be able to cause enough damage to the tiles.

O'BRIEN: And the other thing is, of course that fuel tank is filled with liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen. Liquid hydrogen is -400 degrees Fahrenheit, the coldest thing on planet. There is a lot of ice in that tank, typically. They watch for it, they don't -- they try avoid launching with a lot of ice on there, and there is lot of means they have to try to protect against that, but nevertheless, ice has struck that orbiter in the past?

HALL: That is correct. And so in that sense, this is not necessarily unusual.

O'BRIEN: But I suppose when you're talking about the meeting of ice and foam, with what is after all a fragile system, a lot depends on where it strikes?

HALL: That's true, too. If you notice here, I've highlighted -- this is the left main gear door that has been subject of much discussion on the underside of the orbiter.

O'BRIEN: And that left main gear doors, all of the doors are always a big focus of concern for NASA, because of the obvious thing, that there are seams. Now the seams on these doors, they're kind of like your kitchen oven, if you will, kind of that metal strip around there, to try keep the plasma, that hot plasma, from coming in there like a blowtorch.

If that were perturbed, if it were bent in any way by anything, whether it was ice or foam or whatever, it could create an effect where the heat gets kind of pinpointed on a certain spot, couldn't it?

HALL: Oh, absolutely. As you pointed out correctly, the door is one of the key parts of the underbelly.

O'BRIEN: One engineer told me just a little while ago, the doors are the Achilles Heel. All right, we'll be watching that.

What we know is this, we don't know if the piece of foam or ice or whatever it is, is any way linked to it. We know there is a lot of focus on it, because of where we saw the trouble began for the space shuttle Columbia. It did all sort of emanate from that left landing gear door. That's where the heat buildup was, the wires that led to the flaps which went silent there; heat sensors right through that door. If something very hot got past that door, there was nothing that could have protected the orbiter -- Leon.

HARRIS: Thank you, Miles.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired February 3, 2003 - 10:12   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Leon, there are so many ways that investigators will be looking at the data, putting pieces together on this, trying to come up with a way of solving what happened to Columbia. Incredibly complicated task, when you're talk about a space vehicle that has no less than a million parts. There are all kinds of things to consider -- tremendous amounts of speed, tremendous amounts of heat. A lot of it just boggles the imagination.
One of the ways that NASA and military get a handle on these things is they use complicated simulator systems. A company called Analytical Graphics is heavily involved in that, and they're here to help us out, helping us visualize what happened in the final minutes of the space shuttle Columbia.

Bob Hall is with Analytical Graphics. He's joining us from Atlanta.

Bob, first of all, how much data do we have to support our simulations right now?

ROBERT HALL, ANALYTICAL GRAPHICS INC.: Right now, Miles, what we're using is existing shuttle flight data. As you know, following Saturday's accident, all the flight data for this particular mission has been locked down.

O'BRIEN: So some of this is supposition, we should tell people, and some of this is taking a standard re-entry, putting in that data, and so we probably should give that caveat to our viewers before we show many of these simulations, correct?

HALL: Correct. This is actual shuttle trajectory and shuttle attitude data. It's just from a previous mission. And what we've done is gone ahead and added a speculative piece to depict the debris falling off of the ET.

O'BRIEN: All right, so let's -- as the shuttle rises from Earth, obviously tremendous amount of power is unleashed, 80 seconds after launch, it's, I don't know, at an altitude approaching 100,000 feet, what were you able to -- did you get a sense of what the trajectory would be, the path of any sort of debris that with fall off the external tank?

HALL: Yes, it would probably come from the -- up on the tank, as the recent videos that you've got have shown. And as I slow this down here, you'll see this piece starts out up here.

O'BRIEN: Yes, we can sort of see it going off there. HALL: And it's going to follow a trajectory down the wing there.

O'BRIEN: All right, and that, when you're talk about a piece of foam. Everybody thinks of foam, or a sponge they might have in their kitchen, doesn't seem like that would do much, but give us the sense of the kind of velocities that we're talking about here, and how that might cause some problems.

HALL: Well, I think it's hard to say at this point without studying the videos what the velocity would be, and obviously, there is a great deal of discussion about whether foam might be able to cause enough damage to the tiles.

O'BRIEN: And the other thing is, of course that fuel tank is filled with liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen. Liquid hydrogen is -400 degrees Fahrenheit, the coldest thing on planet. There is a lot of ice in that tank, typically. They watch for it, they don't -- they try avoid launching with a lot of ice on there, and there is lot of means they have to try to protect against that, but nevertheless, ice has struck that orbiter in the past?

HALL: That is correct. And so in that sense, this is not necessarily unusual.

O'BRIEN: But I suppose when you're talking about the meeting of ice and foam, with what is after all a fragile system, a lot depends on where it strikes?

HALL: That's true, too. If you notice here, I've highlighted -- this is the left main gear door that has been subject of much discussion on the underside of the orbiter.

O'BRIEN: And that left main gear doors, all of the doors are always a big focus of concern for NASA, because of the obvious thing, that there are seams. Now the seams on these doors, they're kind of like your kitchen oven, if you will, kind of that metal strip around there, to try keep the plasma, that hot plasma, from coming in there like a blowtorch.

If that were perturbed, if it were bent in any way by anything, whether it was ice or foam or whatever, it could create an effect where the heat gets kind of pinpointed on a certain spot, couldn't it?

HALL: Oh, absolutely. As you pointed out correctly, the door is one of the key parts of the underbelly.

O'BRIEN: One engineer told me just a little while ago, the doors are the Achilles Heel. All right, we'll be watching that.

What we know is this, we don't know if the piece of foam or ice or whatever it is, is any way linked to it. We know there is a lot of focus on it, because of where we saw the trouble began for the space shuttle Columbia. It did all sort of emanate from that left landing gear door. That's where the heat buildup was, the wires that led to the flaps which went silent there; heat sensors right through that door. If something very hot got past that door, there was nothing that could have protected the orbiter -- Leon.

HARRIS: Thank you, Miles.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com