NASA says Columbia Rescue was Possible

nuke-alwin writes "Apparently NASA is saying that a rescue mission may have been possible for the Columbia crew. I first saw this on TV, but Chicago Sun-Times is also reporting the story. The risks would have been great, and may have endangered more astronaut's lives."

Comments

Whats done is done...

[Warthog9]

Well NASA at the time didn't think the problem was all that big of a deal to send up a rescue crew, so they didn't.

And before people start yammering about sending them to the ISS, someone give them a physics book, they couldn't have.

I hope that NASA learns something (when something falls off a vessle it usually isn't a good sign!!!) and to be a bit more catious in the future. BUT I think they should get right back up on the horse so to speak and keep going. To quote "Enterprise" (and one of their better episodes recently) "If we are ever going to explore deep space we are going to need to take a few risks" and thats the truth of the matter.

-- It's harder to fly into the sun than out of the galaxy, go figure --

Re:Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda

[smoondog]

I think the point is that if a situation like this arises again, NASA can be better prepared to face it and potentially save lives.

-Sean

Everyone assumed too much

[fname]

I never bought that a rescue mission wasn't possible. If they knew that Columbia would burn up, they would've found a solution. 1,000,000 engineers across the country, including all 10,000+ Aerospace engineers in this country would have been working on solutions. We would've figured it out, and it would have been much more clever than the limited scenario they have reightfully been exploring.

Basically, all the engineers did their jobs, but they were making assumptions about how others would do their jobs, and what the options were.

One team analyzed the foam impact. They didn't think it would be serious, but there was some uncertainty. In general, rocket engineers, especially those working for NASA and the Air Force, are paid to make conservative analyses and decisions. So, if they were operating in a vacuum, the engineers would likely have requested better test data on foam impact of different parts, and better assessment of the damage.

Now, these engineers believed that getting better foam impact test data was unlikely. So they didn't ask for it. They had already made the 1st assessment that it was OK (based on un-wetted foam hitting tiles), even though they probably knew this wasn't a conservative analysis. So they asked for photos, to improve their assessment. Someone at NASA decided photos were not necessary since the intial analysis made it look like Columbia was OK. Plus, these managers assumed that the photographs would not be helpful, but that was based on 1) capabilities of a few years ago, and 2) probably what was unclassified; could an NRO spy satellite have taken pictures? Plus, the NASA manager has it in his head that a rescue is impossible anyways, so why push the issue?

I also wonder whether the foam-impact engineers knew about the piece that detached? Probably not. I'm sure someone had all the info, but it probably sounded like, "The foam impact analysis said there was no problem. Therefore this object is probably just ice."

And the point CAIB keeps hitting on, NASA got comfortable with risks b/c they turned out to be OK. But when you aim for 99.9% reliability, it should preclude using flight history to clear anomalies until the anomaly has occured 1000 times. NASA should've always been looking at objects neat STS.

All in all, it's a tough nut to crack. It took a lot to bring down Columbia, a sequence of events that took over 2 weeks to play out. Like Apollo 1, the biggest failure was probably a lack of imagination, and not realizing what our capabilities really are. The Shuttle is a true engineering marvel, on par with the great construction projects, and light-years ahead of any Stealth bomber (which cost almost as much as a shuttle!), aircraft carrier, dumb booster or any race car. The shuttle is a global asset, and the improvements we make to it will reep rewards for decades to come.

CYA, etc

[Alien54]

Looks like a lot of the attitude in senior Nasa management is CYA, very fractionalized, and subject to infighting. This inherently leads to less of a team spirit, and less of a commitment to the guys in the sky.

The right stuff and can-do attitude of the early days has been replaced by bureaucrats. Which, as you seen, can cost people their lives. As you can see here, shuttle rescues used to be part of the nasa planning process.

Of courser there is this question as well

• The part they and other safety experts were most concerned about is a rushed launch of Atlantis, especially given the fact that it would have to fly with the known problem that foam debris from the external tank dealt a severe blow to Columbia's heat shield.

  "What's to stop you from having the same damage to Atlantis? You're basically throwing the dice," Thagard said.