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Shuttle Missions Will Be Monitored From Space

Posted by timothy on from the big-picture dept.

los furtive writes "According to this news article NASA has made an agreement with the U.S. military so that all future shuttle missions will be monitored by National Imagery and Mapping Agency satellites."

2 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. Re:and this will help how? by KingFoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Remember that before Apollo 13, the same might have been said about the chances of the crew's survival if a service module had an explosion, but they worked on the problem, and got the crew home alive. I'd imagine that a shuttle 'could' stay in orbit for quite a while on it's supplies if it really had to. Probably wouldn't be comfortable, but it's better to know.

  2. Re:and this will help how? by Soft · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Any number of things could have been done. Even with Columbia, knowing there was a disaster in the offing, I'd expect some creativity under pressure, if only sending up Soyuz to take them off.

    There is a limit to what creativity can do. In this case, the shuttle's orbit was not inclined enough to be reachable by Russian rockets--unless they launched from elsewhere that Baikonur, but their pad in Kourou won't be in service for years.

    One possibility would have been to launch Atlantis a couple of weeks early, but they would have to have known about the seriousness of the damage early in the mission (so that Columbia's crew could conserve power and have resources left to stretch). But this was luck (what if no shuttle was waiting?), and it would still imply to skimp a few safety procedures; gamble, one shuttle and seven crew lost, or two shuttles and nine crew?

    And in future, I expect that NASA will have a contingency plan or two availible, with fuel and supplies to implement it.

    They're speaking of scrapping all shuttle missions not going to the ISS--not that there were many--except the final Hubble servicing. In other words, don't build a safer vehicle, don't take risks, reduce our capabilities...