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Interview With Bob Hall of Analytical Graphics
Aired February 03, 2003 - 13:46 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: As I said just a few moments ago, it's hard to imagine how difficult the task is when you're talking about a debris field for an aviation or aerospace accident that is unprecedented: 2,000 square miles. One way to try and get a handle on it and get a sense of how big it is, is to use some computer animation, some computer modeling. The folks at analytical graphics do just that for the aerospace and defense community.
Bob Hall is with Analytical Graphics. He has put together a computer model which can give us an idea of how Columbia broke up, and how that debris spread across the south central portions of the United States -- Bob.
BOB HALL, ANALYTICAL GRAPHICS: Hello again, Miles.
O'BRIEN: Yes. Bob, when you go about doing something like this, you've got a lot of real numbers behind it. Once again, we should caution folks to let them know we don't have the precise data from Columbia. You're using some data from previous shuttle reentries, correct?
HALL: That is correct.
O'BRIEN: All right.
HALL: Excuse me -- combined with the actual debris locations that had been reported.
O'BRIEN: OK. Why don't you give us a sense -- show us the animation and see -- and sort of talk us through it, if you could.
HALL: OK. What we're looking at here is the breakup, and what is interesting to note here is if I pan around here, you'll see that the breakup is actually far west of Dallas.
O'BRIEN: Right.
HALL: Here's Dallas right here.
O'BRIEN: And...
HALL: And because of the shuttle's velocity and altitude, the debris field scattered well downrange in eastern Texas and Louisiana. Although, as you have been reporting all morning, NASA is now finding debris to the west of the area that we've indicated out here.
O'BRIEN: And when you look at this thing, it's sort of reminiscent of some of the animations we did predicting what would happen, for example, to the space station Mir. And at that time, I remember talking about how difficult it is to really get a sense of what's going to happen to individual pieces and what pieces might or might not survive, right?
HALL: Absolutely. Depending on how these fragments break up, and what the area to mass ratio is, and what the drag is on a different piece, along with the atmospheric conditions, it's extremely difficult to predict the behavior of any individual piece.
O'BRIEN: But having said that, this general footprint which you're able to create using this data, which is real data coming from real shuttle missions, can give investigators sort of a sense of the swathe?
HALL: Absolutely. And that combined with the GPS locations from all the pieces of debris they are now going to catalog.
O'BRIEN: And where they fall is also, of course, quite relevant because it tells you sort of what failed first, or at least give you some kind of indication can it not?
HALL: It can be used in an attempt to sort of reconstruct the destruction of the orbiter.
O'BRIEN: Yes. NASA, of course, would love to get a hold of certain pieces, I'm sure, anything do with that left wheel well, the tire, that kind of thing. It's impossible, I guess, to predict where those things might land, isn't it?
HALL: I'd say that any single individual piece would be extremely difficult to predict.
O'BRIEN: Can you recall anything in the world of aviation accidents that comes close to this as far as the extent of the debris and the size of the debris field?
HALL: No, Miles. That would be hard to conjure up, especially when you consider the altitude that the Orbiter was at, and the speed it was at. It not one we're used to seeing in everyday life.
O'BRIEN: The other thing that I'm repeatedly amazed at is that no one was hurt on the ground.
HALL: That is quite amazing, especially considering it was daytime, and people were probably out and about.
O'BRIEN: By the way, that orange effect that we just saw there, what does that show?
HALL: This is going to show us the -- this is a radar image from weather radar, and what you see here is a progression over about an hour or so where the debris cloud sort of shifted to the northeast over time.
O'BRIEN: So that implies that, you know, when debris is 40 miles up, it lingers in the air for quite some time?
HALL: Especially the lighter stuff, some of the insulation pieces, the lightweight smaller pieces.
O'BRIEN: All right. Well, certainly this kind of thing is just precisely the kind of thing that people on the ground and investigators will be using to help refine their arduous search. Bob Hall with Analytical Graphics, thanks once again for helping us visualize and put a picture on what is a very tough story.
HALL: 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 - 13:46 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: As I said just a few moments ago, it's hard to imagine how difficult the task is when you're talking about a debris field for an aviation or aerospace accident that is unprecedented: 2,000 square miles. One way to try and get a handle on it and get a sense of how big it is, is to use some computer animation, some computer modeling. The folks at analytical graphics do just that for the aerospace and defense community.
Bob Hall is with Analytical Graphics. He has put together a computer model which can give us an idea of how Columbia broke up, and how that debris spread across the south central portions of the United States -- Bob.
BOB HALL, ANALYTICAL GRAPHICS: Hello again, Miles.
O'BRIEN: Yes. Bob, when you go about doing something like this, you've got a lot of real numbers behind it. Once again, we should caution folks to let them know we don't have the precise data from Columbia. You're using some data from previous shuttle reentries, correct?
HALL: That is correct.
O'BRIEN: All right.
HALL: Excuse me -- combined with the actual debris locations that had been reported.
O'BRIEN: OK. Why don't you give us a sense -- show us the animation and see -- and sort of talk us through it, if you could.
HALL: OK. What we're looking at here is the breakup, and what is interesting to note here is if I pan around here, you'll see that the breakup is actually far west of Dallas.
O'BRIEN: Right.
HALL: Here's Dallas right here.
O'BRIEN: And...
HALL: And because of the shuttle's velocity and altitude, the debris field scattered well downrange in eastern Texas and Louisiana. Although, as you have been reporting all morning, NASA is now finding debris to the west of the area that we've indicated out here.
O'BRIEN: And when you look at this thing, it's sort of reminiscent of some of the animations we did predicting what would happen, for example, to the space station Mir. And at that time, I remember talking about how difficult it is to really get a sense of what's going to happen to individual pieces and what pieces might or might not survive, right?
HALL: Absolutely. Depending on how these fragments break up, and what the area to mass ratio is, and what the drag is on a different piece, along with the atmospheric conditions, it's extremely difficult to predict the behavior of any individual piece.
O'BRIEN: But having said that, this general footprint which you're able to create using this data, which is real data coming from real shuttle missions, can give investigators sort of a sense of the swathe?
HALL: Absolutely. And that combined with the GPS locations from all the pieces of debris they are now going to catalog.
O'BRIEN: And where they fall is also, of course, quite relevant because it tells you sort of what failed first, or at least give you some kind of indication can it not?
HALL: It can be used in an attempt to sort of reconstruct the destruction of the orbiter.
O'BRIEN: Yes. NASA, of course, would love to get a hold of certain pieces, I'm sure, anything do with that left wheel well, the tire, that kind of thing. It's impossible, I guess, to predict where those things might land, isn't it?
HALL: I'd say that any single individual piece would be extremely difficult to predict.
O'BRIEN: Can you recall anything in the world of aviation accidents that comes close to this as far as the extent of the debris and the size of the debris field?
HALL: No, Miles. That would be hard to conjure up, especially when you consider the altitude that the Orbiter was at, and the speed it was at. It not one we're used to seeing in everyday life.
O'BRIEN: The other thing that I'm repeatedly amazed at is that no one was hurt on the ground.
HALL: That is quite amazing, especially considering it was daytime, and people were probably out and about.
O'BRIEN: By the way, that orange effect that we just saw there, what does that show?
HALL: This is going to show us the -- this is a radar image from weather radar, and what you see here is a progression over about an hour or so where the debris cloud sort of shifted to the northeast over time.
O'BRIEN: So that implies that, you know, when debris is 40 miles up, it lingers in the air for quite some time?
HALL: Especially the lighter stuff, some of the insulation pieces, the lightweight smaller pieces.
O'BRIEN: All right. Well, certainly this kind of thing is just precisely the kind of thing that people on the ground and investigators will be using to help refine their arduous search. Bob Hall with Analytical Graphics, thanks once again for helping us visualize and put a picture on what is a very tough story.
HALL: 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
