NASA has been told that its computer models could give a false sense of security over the safety of the next shuttle launch.
To prevent a repeat of the 2003 Columbia disaster, NASA has been using computer models to determine the maximum size of breakaway insulation foam that will not cause serious damage during a launch. But existing models are incomplete and “cannot be used to precisely determine ‘allowable’ debris”, the independent Return to Flight task group says in an interim report released on 28 January. NASA has not yet demonstrated that the mathematical models it uses for this task are rigorous, and ex-astronaut Richard Covey, the group’s co-chair, says unvalidated models can give a “false sense of risk reduction”.
“Unvalidated mathematical models can give a false sense of risk reduction”
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“We have validated the models as best we can,” says John Muratore, manager of systems engineering and integration for the space shuttle programme at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. “In the end, we can’t go out and fly shuttles at Mach 2 to fully validate them.”
