Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Space Shuttle Columbia disaster/archive2

Space Shuttle Columbia disaster

 * Nominator(s): Balon Greyjoy (talk) 18:53, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

This article is about the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003. The article's GA review was just completed. The 20th anniversary is February 1, 2023, and it has been my goal to get it to FA-status before then. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 18:53, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Comments by Hawkeye7
I reviewed this article at GA, and believe that it meets Featured Article standard. It seems like only yesterday

Image review - pass Hawkeye7  (discuss)  02:19, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
 * All images are NASA images except File:STS-107 Columbia entry imaged from ground.jpg, which is a USAF image - all appropriately licensed.


 * It's unclear to me why File:ColumbiaFLIR2003.png is a US government image given the Commons page states it was created by two Dutch pilots flying a helicopter. The source (a YouTube video uploaded by a non-official account) also doesn't provide any evidence to confirm these details, or alternate details. Nick-D (talk) 21:30, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure about this one. I'll remove it for the time being. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 12:03, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Comments from Harry
I remember this clearly. I was at school. :(
 * I remember it as well! One crazy thought to me is that back then the Challenger disaster seemed far away (I wasn't even born yet), and now the time since the Columbia disaster until now is longer than the time between the two disasters. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 22:52, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

—HJ Mitchell &#124; Penny for your thoughts? 11:27, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Is there a more illustrative image we could use for the infobox?
 * What type of picture are you thinking? Unfortunately, I'm not able to find a free image of the iconic shot of debris burning in the atmosphere. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 22:52, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Chiming in here while perusing. Might File:ColumbiaFLIR2003.png be a good option? — Arsonal (talk + contribs) — 16:05, 2 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure of the permissions for that photo; the page itself says its in the public domain, but considering that it was recorded by Dutch aircrew I don't think it qualifies as work of the US Government. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 20:55, 3 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I think your approach to the lead for the Challenger disaster is better than trying to shoehorn the title into the opening sentence.
 * Thanks! Balon Greyjoy (talk) 22:52, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
 * and deploy commercial,[2]: III–66  military,[2]: III–68  and scientific payloads.[2]: III–148 Are the payloads directly relevant? And if so can we consolidate the footnotes to avoid clutter?
 * I consolidated the refs. I don't think the payloads are directly relevant, but they do provide context on the Space Shuttle and why a large spaceplane was used. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 22:52, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
 * the sensor's data was recorded to an internal recorder Recorded to a recorder?
 * Changed to "data was recorded to internal storage" Balon Greyjoy (talk) 22:52, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
 * aileron trim changed from the predicted values from the increasing drag caused by the damage → because of the increasing drag?
 * Fixed. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 22:55, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
 * as well as still in the stowed position → or in the stowed position?
 * Fixed. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 22:55, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
 * The orbiter began to yaw to the left I've watched enough Air Crash Investigation to know what yaw is but it might benefit from an explanatory gloss
 * I added that the orbiter was turning to the left and put "yaw" in parenthesis. Does that work? Balon Greyjoy (talk) 22:59, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
 * but this was not noticed by the crew or mission control Can we use active voice?
 * Fixed. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 22:59, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Columbia's flight data recorder was found near Hemphill, It would be useful to know how far away this is from other locations mentioned. I'm aware that Texas is enormous but we don't have a god idea at this point in the article of how widely the debris was spread.
 * Added the distance from Nacogdoches. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 13:54, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * To address the problem of foam loss for the second "Return to Flight" mission Lose the scare quotes (you don't use them for the first RTF mission)
 * Removed. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 13:55, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Is there any cultural impact to mention? Books, films, documentaries, etc? This was the news event of the year and would have been one of the defining events of the decade were it not for 9/11 and its effects. It's one of those events that people remember where they were when they heard the news.
 * Added mentions of books and movies. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 14:53, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * What was the long-term impact on NASA besides the cancellation of the Space Shuttle programme? Did the disaster prompt a culture change? Has there been a deliberate move away from manned spaceflight or is that a coincidence?
 * I have not seen any sources that state the reason for the long break in crewed NASA spaceflights was the Columbia disaster. Seeing as the Constellation program was started in 2005, it's not like NASA was stopping its crewed efforts in the wake of the disaster. Regarding other NASA changes, I think I detailed the new precautions that were taken (rescue flights, ISS lifeboat, tank redesigns) and the cancellation of the program; is there anything else you're looking for? Balon Greyjoy (talk) 15:03, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Think I addressed all of your points; thanks for the review! Balon Greyjoy (talk) 16:53, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm happy. Support. HJ Mitchell &#124; Penny for your thoughts? 18:45, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Comments by Wehwalt

 * " After completing STS-107," Does the mission end at some point before touchdown?
 * Not sure what I was thinking. Changed to "During the STS-107 mission". Balon Greyjoy (talk) 15:07, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * "nearly catastrophic" maybe "near-catastrophic"
 * Changed. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 15:07, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * " It flew for the first time in April 1981" I might say "It flew in space for the first time" to let out the ALT.
 * Fixed. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 15:07, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * "which provided protection for temperatures below 650 °C (1,200 °F). " Maybe "at" for "for"?
 * Fixed. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 15:07, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * "The ET consisted of a larger tank for liquid hydrogen (LH2), stored at −253 °C (−423 °F) and a smaller tank for liquid oxygen (LOX)," You don't need to say both larger and smaller. All you are doing is establishing relative size. I'd delete "larger".
 * Deleted. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 15:49, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * "but it was stated that the ET was safe to fly.[5]: 125 " Does the source say who concluded this?
 * Changed to "but the Program Requirements Control Board decided that the ET was safe to fly". Balon Greyjoy (talk) 15:49, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * "At the time, the mission or ground crew did not notice the debris strike." I would move "at the time" to the end of the sentence.
 * Moved. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 15:59, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * "she had asked about the imaging requirement from a flight director but not the Debris Assessment Team" This is a little fuzzy what requirement? This is obviously  a  crucial  event.
 * I expanded this to explain who Ham consulted with and the basis of her decision; hope it makes it more clear. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 15:59, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * "was concerned with the potential delays that may be caused by a foam loss event." Suggest you don't need both "potential" and "may", consider ..."was concerned with the potential delays from a foam loss event."
 * Changed. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 15:59, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * "flight director Steve Stich sent an e-mail to Husband and McCool to tell them about the foam strike and inform them there was no cause for concern about damage to the TPS, as foam strikes has occurred on previous flights.[5]: 159 " has should be had.
 * Whoops! Fixed. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 16:12, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * "Soon after it entered California airspace, the orbiter shed several pieces of debris, which were observed on the ground as sudden increases in brightness of the air around the orbiter." I'd change "which were" to "events"
 * Changed. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 16:12, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Perhaps more could be said about what took place in Mission Control after contact was lost. The time the vehicle was expected to land would be useful as well.
 * There's not much more about what happened in Mission Control; they tried to reestablish communication until they learned that the orbiter broke up. I added KSC information, including the expected landing time. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 16:51, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * "The crew remains were transported for the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology at Dover Air Force Base." I would say "to" rather than "for".
 * Fixed! Balon Greyjoy (talk) 16:12, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * "worms" It would be good idea to say what they were doing there, what sort of experiment. Weren't there other animals? You mention that they would have been euthanized under the rescue procedure the review board discussed.
 * I expanded on the experiment. Regarding the other animals, there were other small animals (bees, silkworms, fish) on board for different experiments. I don't think that needs to be mentioned in this article as I'm not seeing any post-disaster information about them. Does that work? Balon Greyjoy (talk) 16:12, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * "the KSC" I think I'd get rid of the "the" (you do this at least twice). Similar "the JSC".
 * Removed. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 16:17, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * "NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe convened the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) " Is "convened" the best word? It wasn't meeting until some hours later.
 * I changed it to "called to convene" to make it more evident that it wasn't an immediate process. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 16:17, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * You use "argued" twice with respect to the board's conclusions. I'd sooner see "found" or "concluded". The board wasn't getting into a debate.
 * Changed. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 16:17, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * "As a result of the foam loss, NASA grounded the Space Shuttle fleet.[34][43]" This, I assume, refers to the 2005 mission on Discovery and not the loss of Challenger. If so, I'd add "again" to the end.
 * Added. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 16:43, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * "from its scheduled launch of July 1" no year is mentioned in this paragraph.
 * Added year. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 16:43, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * On the two subsequent missions, I think it would be useful to mention what vehicle would have been used had serious damage to the shuttle been discovered on orbit.
 * Added. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 16:43, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I would suggest deleting any of the musical tributes that can't be supported by secondary sources as trivial.
 * Happy to remove this! Balon Greyjoy (talk) 16:43, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * That's it.--Wehwalt (talk) 21:19, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Think I addressed all of your points; thanks for the review! Balon Greyjoy (talk) 16:52, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Support--Wehwalt (talk) 16:58, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Comments Support from Kusma
Great idea to try to get this ready in time for the anniversary. I'll review this more thoroughly later in the week, but I have one question that has been bugging me in the past and that I would like to see answered in the article: Why did the foam strike had such a high relative velocity? It took me embarrassingly long to figure out that this was due to drag in the still quite relevant air pressure at about 20km (essentially the foam slows down very quickly and is struck by the accelerating orbiter). In vacuum, this would have been far less of a problem. After I figured this out, I thought of looking into the sources, and pages 60 and 61 of the CAIB report explain the physics of the collision, so this can be included without OR. —Kusma (talk) 22:53, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I added a sentence in about this. Thanks for doing the bulk of work in finding the correct source, including page number, when suggesting I add information in! Balon Greyjoy (talk) 12:31, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

I can't find much to complain, but here is one comment: The sentence "When Columbia reentered the atmosphere of Earth, the damage allowed hot atmospheric gases to penetrate the heat shield and destroy the internal wing structure, which caused the orbiter to become unstable and break apart." in the lead does not seem to be repeated in the article, where the melting of the internal wing structure is only hinted at in the "Recovery of debris" section. Could you expand on this in the "Cause of the accident" section, perhaps? (Compare the "physical cause" paragraph in the p. 9 Executive summary of the CAIB report). —Kusma (talk) 21:42, 1 December 2022 (UTC)


 * I added a sentence for it; please let me know if you want me to add any more information. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 13:12, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
 * That's fine now. One more thing I'd like you to consider is whether the jargon headings "STS-114" and "STS-121" can be made more accessible to non-experts ("First Return to Space mission (STS-114)" etc.?) —Kusma (talk) 15:06, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I changed the headers to that format. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 17:17, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Support, good work. —Kusma (talk) 17:21, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the review! Balon Greyjoy (talk) 17:28, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Support from Ovinus
Will review over the next week. Seems to be of excellent quality already, so I suspect I won't have too much. I'll do some spotchecking, though. Ovinus (talk) 06:27, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
 * "aft end of the orbiter" Can't this just be "aft of the orbiter"? Not familiar enough to know whether there's a difference Ovinus (talk) 06:45, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I'd prefer to keep it "aft end" to make it clear that they are attached, as opposed to something like the SRB engines, which are aft of the orbiter but not directly mounted onto it. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 14:46, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

I have addresses your comment; please let me know if you have more feedback. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 12:47, 11 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Apologies. I'm very happy with the prose and comprehensiveness, and will perform some spotchecks in a bit. Ovinus (talk) 20:46, 11 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Sounds good, thanks! Balon Greyjoy (talk) 13:38, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Are you asking me to look at these sources? Balon Greyjoy (talk) 12:11, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
 * They're just the references I've randomly selected from. Ovinus (talk) 22:05, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

I have addressed the foam size comment. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 11:35, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
 * [13, 22, 29, 30, 40]: good
 * [50]: For the foam, sources [50] and [51] seem to say 3 inches long instead of 5 inches
 * Fixed/changed to 3 inches. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 11:11, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
 * [71, 80, 88, 90, 94]: good
 * Great! I checked five more random citations and they looked good. Moving to support. Ovinus (talk) 19:45, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Source review
Footnote numbers refer to this version. More to come. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:39, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
 * What's the logic you're using to decide when to use the publisher parameter for the web and news citations? FNs 30 & 64 have publisher; the other news citations all use work.   For the web citations I see a handful using work, but most use publisher.
 * I tend to use "publisher" over "work"; my guess is that the news citations, and some of the web citations that are using "work" are from other editors. I don't feel strongly about it, and can standardize them if you would like. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 16:13, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
 * FAC requires consistency, but (within limits) doesn't care how you achieve it. Sounds like the easiest thing would be to convert the odd ones out to publisher.Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 17:18, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:48, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
 * You have location for just one cite news -- FN 19, The Daily Telegraph.
 * Removed location. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 11:46, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
 * How are you choosing between cite news and cite web for sources like the Telegraph, the Scotsman, the Washington Post, and the Times? I ask because cite web doesn't italicize publisher, so if you use cite news and the work/newspaper parameter you're getting inconsistencies with cite web and the publisher parameter.  For example, FN 92 doesn't italicize The Scotsman, but FN 19 does italicize The Daily Telegraph.  If there's a clear rule for choosing one or the other that's probably OK but I can't see what such a rule might be.
 * I generally use cite web, but I can understand how that causes problems. I changed the articles that are from news site (CNN, NY Times, etc. and to include tech news like Wired and Space.com) to use "cite news" and use "work" over "publisher", and I kept the less-news-like sites (mostly NASA) as "cite web"/"publisher". I think it should be standardized now. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 12:03, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
 * The link for FN 1 isn't working for me; it might just be slow. If it's not working for you, suggest marking the link as dead.
 * I'm guessing/hoping it's only temporarily dead since it's a major NASA/US government document. But I marked it as dead. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 11:21, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
 * The archive links for FN 29, 40 & 70 are broken.
 * Updated the archive links; everything seems to be working now. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 11:36, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Not sure if any change is needed, but FN 65 now redirects to a different page that looks like part of the same site. The archive link still works.  If the target page is really no longer accessible, suggest marking this as a dead link, otherwise can we change the link to whatever the right page now is?
 * Weird; good catch. Marked the URL as dead. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 11:39, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I think I have addressed your points; thanks for the source review! Balon Greyjoy (talk) 12:08, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
 * A couple of stragglers from the points above -- FNs 24, 33, and 34 all use cite web and work= so are italicized. You do still have a handful of others using cite web (FNs 22, 58, 67, 87) but those are all news organizations so the formatting is consistent even though the underlying template is not the same -- those don't have to be changed. Otherwise everything looks good. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 12:13, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Changed FN 24 and 34 to use cite news/work, and FN 33 to use cite web/publisher. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 12:26, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Pass. All issues addressed. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:03, 16 December 2022 (UTC)


 * Thanks! Balon Greyjoy (talk) 14:25, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Ian Rose (talk) 20:08, 16 December 2022 (UTC)