Flight Breakup During Test Flight Scaled Composites

Rockwell, the shuttle’s primary contractor, did not support the launch due to the possibility of ice leaving the structure and damaging the thermal shield tiles during takeoff. Their concerns were relayed to NASA, but in such a way that NASA chose to proceed with the launch [2]. Though this was eventually determined to be a non-issue in the Challenger launch, the true nature of the problems that can occur when an object strikes the shuttle during takeoff would not be learned until 2003, when the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on re-entry due to damage of a heat shield tile that occurred during takeoff [2]--[3].

Just moments after being given instructions to climb to a higher altitude “the captain stated, ‘Look at that crazy fuel flow indicator their on number four, see that?’” (TWA flight crash). Afterwards, in an investigation lead by the Nation Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) they concluded that the cause of the crash was due to the combustion of the mixture of air and fuel in the “center wing fuel tank” (TWA flight crash). It is no wonder why many people believe the cause of the crash was a fuel tank explosion. Later, the NTSB claimed that two worn down wires must have sparked in the fuel tank, exploding the whole plane (Cole 36). The NTSB also that the flammability in the central wing fuel tank, due to the hazardous mixture of air and fuel, was too high (TWA Flight 800). Based on the various tests and investigations of the crash, mechanical failure has remained one of the most accepted theories of the flight’s

Contributing to the cause of the accident was the Cherokee pilot’s interrupted radio transmission, which led to the Beech 1900C pilots’ misunderstanding of the transmission as an indication from the King Air that it would not take off until after flight 5925 had cleared the runway. Contributing to the severity of the accident and the loss of life was the

The Columbia mission, STS-107, was interesting because the public was more aware of the risk that was being taken upon re-entry. During the launch a piece of insulating foam broke away from the external tank surface, striking the left wing. In previous missions there had been evidence of this occurring which to engineers was seen as minor. In the case of the Columbia craft failure, it was more serious because the damaged section of the wing was damaged to the extent of which it allowed hot atmospheric gases to penetrate the structure of the wing, pulling it apart, rendering the craft unstable.

In 1963, Yeager was flying the experimental Lockheed Starfighter at over twice the speed of sound when the engine shut off and he was forced to abandon the spinning aircraft. Yeager's compression suit was set on fire by the burning debris from the ejector seat, which became entangled in his parachute. He survived the fall, but required extensive skin grafts for his burns.

Rodney Rocha is a NASA engineer and co-chair of Debris Assessment Team (DTS). When possibility of wing damage

On June 1, 1999, an American Airlines McDonnel Douglas DC-9-82 (MD-82), tail number N215AA, crashed the end of Little Rock National Airport in Little Rock, AR after leaving runway 4R at approximately 2350 central daylight time (NTSB, 2001). The aircraft left Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport at approximately 2240 with two flight crew members, four flight

Brashear had rigged a three-legged "spider" with grappling hooks on each leg. It was attached to the submersible Alvin, which would use it to attach parachute rigging to the bomb. The apparatus worked beautifully and the bomb was brought to the surface. At 5:00 p.m., a shift in the position of the ship that had pulled alongside the Hoist to receive the bomb caused a chain of events that almost killed Carl Brashear and seemed certainly to have killed his career in the Navy. During efforts to bring the bomb aboard, a swell caused an unexpected movement in the ship's position. The timing was catastrophic. The atomic weapon slipped from the parachute rigging and sank again, but even worse, a pipe broke loose from one of the ships and became a deadly missile. Brashear saw the pipe break. "I got all my sailors out of the way, but I didn't get myself out of the way," he says.

But then, there was a hissing noise coming from one of the connecting segments to the other capsules. Neko was on the other end of the rocket so another crew member, Ark, went to check it out. He got out of his seat inside of his capsule and went to investigate the connecting segment as the ship was basically a large hallway with all of the connectors and capsules. Once Ark got to the source of the alarming sound, it was too late. The connector blew out and it took Ark and his capsule with him. Neko screamed to the other crew members to close their capsules off from the connectors on either side, but nobody could hear his cries over the sound of the initial explosion and the oxygen flowing out of the rocket. It sounded like a plane taking off. Neko was forced to close his capsule off from the rest of his dying crew. The explosion killed 2 crew members immediately and then the harsh vacuum that is space sucked out and eventually killed the other 3, leaving only

This crash is considered to be the second deadliest aviation accident at the time in the US.

As if this was not bad enough, there was more disparaging news: a cloud of some sort was floating above the spacecraft, leading to the assumption that an oxygen tank exploded.

On 1st of February, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia exploded when it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere after finished a 16 days mission in space. All seven astronauts were dead because of this incident. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had stopped the space shuttle program for more than two years to investigate this tragedy. In the 16 days period, the astronauts did approximately 80 experiments on different categories, for example, life science and material science [1]. An investigation later has found out that the disaster was caused by a problem on the day that took off on 16th of January.

from an explosion in the oxygen tanks due to some faulty wiring that cut the spacecraft’s

The left Engine nacelle showed evidence of vertical dark residue marks or soot trails. The prop was intact, the tips were bent backwards and showed very little sign of trailing edge compression. This possibly indicates that the engine was not running during the time of impact. It was also discovered that the fuel line support bracket showed propagation cracks along the bolt holes that connect it to the firewall. It did not separate from the firewall, and the fuel line showed no signs of loss of integrity.

On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia was destroyed and the lives of all seven of its crew were lost. Within 2 hours of the loss of signal from the Columbia, a commission was formed to investigate, thanks to procedures that had been established following the Challenger disaster 17 years prior. That commission, known as the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB), conducted an extensive process of diagnosis of the causes of the Columbia disaster. The Commission's report concluded that the loss of Challenger was caused by a failure of the joint and seal between the two lower segments of the right