STS 124 DISCOVERY LAUNCH DAY UPDATES

[silent_protagonist]

Yeah right before MECO, but to me it didnt seem to be coming from the RCS, and definitely not part of the exhaust, it was coming off somewhere close to the camera..
it looked like plasma from re-entry but that doesnt make any sense at that altitude... im a little puzzled

Plasma is pretty normal. Even though your very high up, your still hitting what little air there is at orbital velocity, hence plasma.

Eyes on! I just saw the Discovery and the ET pass over head as two very distinctive, separate objects.

Lucky

 

[Andy44]

I seem to see strange flames right at MECO in all these videos. Maybe it's the way the SSME plume changes when it shuts down.

ETA: nevermind, I guess it's plasma.

 

[DaveS]

Secondary left gimbling system failure.

Probably related to MDM FA2 failure during pad processing.

 

[DaveS]

Plasma is pretty normal. Even though your very high up, your still hitting what little air there is at orbital velocity, hence plasma.


Lucky

And they're not high in altitude at MECO. MECO altitude is around 105 km which is below the Entry Interface altitude of 122.2 km.

 

[pete.dakota]

ET camera replays coming up.

 

[Whatu]

Guess that explains its. I thought they were higher up.

So the debris was indeed big... I hope everything is ok...
If for some reason, lets say the thermal shield is damaged, what will they do?
Send another shuttle? a Soyuz? a deltaglider to the rescue?

And other thing, whats gonna be the real procedure to catch iss? I guess they arent writing the iss altitude at their periapsis.. I guess they have that nailed down, but, what are they really doing?

 

[Urwumpe]

Good that they have still primary OMS TVC. The TVC system of the OMS is also no directly concern for flight aborts.

 

[DaveS]

Guess that explains its. I thought they were higher up.

So the debris was indeed big... I hope everything is ok...
If for some reason, lets say the thermal shield is damaged, what will they do?
Send another shuttle? a Soyuz? a deltaglider to the rescue?

And other thing, whats gonna be the real procedure to catch iss? I guess they arent writing the iss altitude at their periapsis.. I guess they have that nailed down, but, what are they really doing?

Soyuz only takes 3 with custom personalized seats.

LON is an option. LON is Launch On Need, rescue mission with another orbiter.

 

[pete.dakota]

It looks like there was a strike forward of the orbiter's starboard wing. It seems to strike tile and not RCC.

 

[cljohnston]

Agreed. After 123 flights, they may finally have gotten the whole "hang the orbiter off the side of a big fat cryo tank" thing down. Too bad it's right before the end of the show.

Exactly!
My Dad, who was a set designer for TV, use to say this about big projects: "About the time you get finished, you'll have figured out how to get started."

:blink:

 

[Zatnikitelman]

Wow, you go away for 15 minutes to see the air parameters in Orbiter of the debris strike and Dave is telling of huge debris and someone else tells of gimbaling failures!
I guess they'll just camp out on the ISS until they can either ferry everyone down on a series of Soyuz capsules, or wait till the next shuttle launches, and launch with a reduced crew to rescue STS-124

 

[DaveS]

Wow, you go away for 15 minutes to see the air parameters in Orbiter of the debris strike and Dave is telling of huge debris and someone else tells of gimbaling failures!
I guess they'll just camp out on the ISS until they can either ferry everyone down on a series of Soyuz capsules, or wait till the next shuttle launches, and launch with a reduced crew to rescue STS-124

Soyuz is not an option! It requires each of the crewmembers have personalized seats that molded after each crew member's own body, which none of the STS-124 crew has except for Chamitoff.

 

[Chupacabra]

???
The debris didn't seem too worrisome imo, of course nothing can be said until people from the ground say it is okay, but realistically the shuttle has been blasted by more and larger pieces of foam since STS-1. Either way, I think this doesn't merit a rescue op. (Jeez people get antsy really easily nowa'days)

On the other hand the footage was beautiful, I forget which camera it was but the camera which directly faces the shuttles starboard side on the launch pad gave a superb angle of the Stack crossing the sun.:speakcool:

 

[cljohnston]

I missed the "debris strike" the first time, cause I was checking something elsewhere, but I caught it on the replay...
Are you guys talking about that fuzzy shadow that wafts across the corner of the screen?
Didn't look like it actually hit anything.

Oh, and ditto on that one shot of Discovery crossing the sun! Byooteefull!!

 

[DaveS]

I missed the "debris strike" the first time, cause I was checking something elsewhere, but I caught it on the replay...
Are you guys talking about that fuzzy shadow that wafts across the corner of the screen?

Yes. Spaceflightnow.com has a screengrab of the debris: http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts124/080531launch/080531debris.jpg

 

[Andy44]

No camping out. The mission will proceed as normal for now. Both primary OMS gimbals work fine, and the foam strike doesn't look bad so far. Won't know for sure until they reach ISS.

About the plasma: I watched the ET cam replay and noticed that the plasma apears to form almost a ring shape around the tail of the orbiter, it's almost as if the plasma is formed by the interaction of the SSME exhaust and the atmosphere. The plume gets very wide at high altitude, so this would explain why the "ring" is so far off to the sides.

Also, before MECO you can see chunks of debris flying aft away from the tail area; I assume this is ice breaking away from the engine compartment? It also seems like there is some small debris associated with the pyros that seperate the ET and the orbiter.

All very cool-looking effects and hope to see them in the sim some day.

 

[GregBurch]

Other than that it's one more piece of evidence of the fundamentally flawed basic design of the shuttle system, I don't think this particular debris incident is going to be a big deal. I haven't heard anyone at NASA say there was an actual strike (not that they would yet), but from what I saw, I'm not at all sure there was any contact at all with the orbiter. As Urwumpe says, this happened late, so the air-induced relative V will be very small, even if it did contact the Orbiter.

 

[Urwumpe]

The ET Bolts are severed without debris leaving the bolts.

The SSMEs also loose large ice pieces after MECO.

 

[Belisarius]

It all looks groovy - I'd say there's no need for alarm on the plumes of plasma or chunks of debris front.

Urwumpe - how did the ice get on the engines? They were just burning a moment ago, now they're iced up?

 

[DaveS]

It all looks groovy - I'd say there's no need for alarm on the plumes of plasma or chunks of debris front.

Urwumpe - how did the ice get on the engines? They were just burning a moment ago, now they're iced up?

They're cooled with liquid hydrogen, the second coldest liquid in the Universe.