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

Hrmm

[acehole]

I wonder if push came to shove, how long it would take them to prep an emergency launch for a rescue?

They could have kept the shuttle up there for 30 days, would that have been enough time to launch a rescue mission?

Re:Hrmm

[Grieveq]

It said on the news last night that Atlantis was already being prepped for a future launch and it would have taken two weeks to finish up the launch procedures.

Two shuttles in orbit would have been amazing stuff.

Re:Hrmm

[Joel_in_nola]

Redundant mission control isn't the point. They consider the Russia Space Agencie's mission control to be redundant for the ISS, and they have a few places in the US with LIMITED capabilities to support a shuttle in orbit, but, that's not where the limitation lies. Its all in the telemetry limitations. They don't have the full facilities to support full telemetry from two active shuttles and the ISS. This was initially planned in the original space exploration plan as laid out when the ISS was originally conceived and proposed, but, the evil budget monster chewed lots of this up. So, now, they can support two full feeds, ISS and shuttle, and several partial feeds (stuff like hubble, the Soyuz capsules, launch and repositioning telemtry for various smaller missions) but can't fully support two shuttles and the ISS. Now, this isn't to say that this would have stopped them from flying the mission. If Columbia had been in hibernation mode to keep as much resources for the life support systems and essential systems, it wouldn't have been broadcasting as much telemetry, nor would it all have been needed. You would, however, need every last bit of it from the undermanned rescue vehicle. IMHO, NASA could have pulled off a ship to ship rescue, but, it would have been horribly expensive, risky, and could have potentially resulted in the loss of both ships. Atlantis would have required a night launch with the same kind of external fuel tank in similar launch conditions. The rendevous would have to have been done manually as there would not have been time to build an automated routine for it. Re-entry would have been dicey as at least two of the astronauts would have had to improvise seating arrangements for the trip back, unless they intended to attempt to save Columbia by having two volunteers bring it back in with field repairs.

Do we really need to hear this?

[Mononoke]

I want to hear what they are going to do next time. I sure as hell don't want to hear that they could have done it this time, but didn't.

There are an infinite number of things we could have done. Why live in hindsight now?

and everyone said I was a fool...

[John Harrison]

When the disaster happened I suggested exactly this scenario. Send up another shuttle and use a tether to go from ship to ship. I have worked on the shuttle program and in my experience there wouldn't be a single astronaut that wouldn't volunteer for such a mission, even knowing how dangerous it could be. Of course, everyone cited Ron Dittemore and said that I was wrong, since a rescue was "impossible".

Administrators didn't want to admit the possiblity of a rescue becuase it makes the decision to not have the shuttle inspected using telescopes look even worse.

RTFA

[phillymjs]

If the Columbia crew had adopted some serious resource-conservation procedures PDQ, NASA could've had Atlantis prepped and ready to go in time to get them out alive (theoretically, anyway, since a shuttle-to-shuttle rescue is unprecedented).

However, Atlantis had already entered preparations for its scheduled March 1 launch-- if that had not been the case, Columbia and its crew would in all likelihood have been SOL. Prepping a shuttle for a launch is a tremendous, time-consuming undertaking, and it's not something you can cut corners on even if there is a "gotta get it up there quick" type situation. Perhaps they could institute round-the-clock operations via multiple shifts, but I don't know if they have enough qualified workers to be able to handle something like that.

Also keep in mind that hastily laying on a rescue launch increases the chance of something going catastrophically wrong on that mission. If NASA lost a second shuttle while trying to save the crew of a stuck-in-orbit first shuttle that would then be destroyed on re-entry, confidence in the space program would plummet. Congress would yank even more funding from NASA, and they might as well just deorbit the ISS a few days later-- maybe we could all get a free taco out of it this time.

~Philly

Re:Junk the Shuttle -- and ISS while you're at it.

[Minna Kirai]

The idea of capturing and reparing satellites is inherently absurd

Yes, it's a rare, rare satellite that would be worth a launch to repair. However, on the off chance a Hubble-situation happened, you don't even need a Shuttle to fix it. It's also possible to spacewalk from an ELV. A nice Titan IV rocket (or whatever improved version we could've made if ELV research wasn't cancelled in favor of the Shuttle) could handle a fine repair crew for 25% the cost of a Shuttle flight. (And with a safer re-entry, too)

Re:Junk the Shuttle -- and ISS while you're at it.

[s20451]

One example: the ISS (which is an utter joke compared to Skylab or Mir) was placed into a rapidly-decaying orbit not because that was a good idea (it isn't) but because the shuttle could get there.

Skylab was intended for exactly three missions, with no intention of resupply or re-use. The vehicle itself had severe problems -- one solar panel tore off at launch -- which limited its usefulness (the first mission ended up being largely wasted on rescuing the station). Mir was no picnic, either -- there was a major fire, and the collission with a resupply ship. The ISS has, so far, been comparatively problem-free.

Skylab's orbit was not that high -- roughly 270 miles -- in any case it was launched in 1973 and crashed to Earth only six years later, in 1979. The ISS's current altitude is 242 miles. I can't find any orbital data on Mir, but the space shuttle got there, too, and it didn't take more than a few years to crash back to Earth after maintenance ended.

Most of the satellites that are "launched" by the shuttle suffer from the design constraint that they have to fit into the friggin' bay AND have room for the accompanying boosters that will put them into their real orbit once the shuttle lets them out. Again, the shuttle can't go high enough for real deployment.

I don't know what you mean by "real orbit", but the shuttle deployed Hubble at an altitude of 368 miles and has visited it several times since. No current manned vehicle can go much higher than this; and none can reach geosynchronous orbit. Shuttle deployment is not a good idea for commercial satellites, but it makes sense for large, multi-billion-dollar one-shot spacecraft (like Hubble) because if something goes wrong there is an option to bring it back to Earth or do on-orbit repair.

The safety record sucks.

The claimed accident rate of one-in-400 is clearly off. The demonstrated accident rate of 2-in-113 is not atypical of comparable launch vehicles, such as Soyuz. It's even more impressive given that the shuttle system is intended to be reusable, while Soyuz is launched new each time.

It's a white elephant without a mission

Its mission has been and always will be to service the ISS.

It's very tempting to look at any complicated system that has problems, and say, "Bah, this is useless, let's start over". The reality is that experience gained using the shuttle and the ISS is crucial to the continued exploitation of space.

Space flight is a risky business and will continue to be so. There is no guarantee that a new system with untested hardware will be any safer.

Re:Oh no, it may have endangered more astronauts!

[bethanie]

That's all well and good -- I see your point. But it's not just the astronauts' lives and some equipment that will be sacrificed. It's hundreds and hundreds of hours of training and dollars invested in these people. Dollars that come largely from taxpayers. Not to mention public buy-in (both financial and political) to the value of the program

Here's some pure speculation for you: If every available astronaut would be willing to lay his life on the line to go up in attempt to rescue the others, what level of sacrifice do you think the doomed astronauts would have been willing to make to ensure that the space program would survive a [potential] disaster? Would they have wanted a rescue attempt, given the potential for failure and subsequent [we can assume] abandonment of the space program? Would they really be willing to risk their colleagues' lives in a rescue attempt?

I would never assume to have the answer to this question, but given the dedication of astronauts to the "cause" of space exploration, it's enough to give me pause to think.

....Bethanie....

Re:Possible, but not likely.

[jerryasher]

As Admiral Gehman, head of the CAIB noted, we commonly send 120 soldiers in to rescue one downed pilot.

First we had (on /. and fark) the just-say-go crowd telling us the astronauts sign up for missions, and that they're not heroes, and that because others would sign up for the same exact mission again we should not ground anything (just keep building shuttles I guess), and basically apologizing for NASA and Ron Dittemore.

Now we have the "at what risk" crowd saying that it would have been too risky, and basically apologizing for NASA and Ron Dittemore.

NASA and Ron Dittemore had 20 years and 102 flights of warning to think about tile problems, foam problems, tile repair kits, and rescue options.

Me, I'm with the I love the space program, and I think the most courageous thing a leader at NASA would do, if they are as underfunded as we imagine they are, is to fucking resign, publically, and loudly. If Ron Dittemore, holder of One of the Most Prestigious Leadership Jobs in the World really thinks the shuttle is unsafe or underfunded, then it's his job to resign. If NASA management is such that it rewards employees and managers for saying yes to everything and to always do it with smaller budgets, well, THAT IS an accident waiting to happen and one WE need to fix before the shuttle flies again.

I don't want to explain to my kids again how NASA management decisions and leadership failed and another shuttle has uh, "had a bad day" (god what a sick euphemism that ran throughout NASA).

NASA did *worse* than not even try

[Anonymous Coward]

They just read one assessment that concluded "probably nothing happened."

Then they proactively squashed any attempts to get actual pictures of the shuttle after the debris hit on launch.

I sure hope to hell we find out the name of the official who prevented the taking of photos of Columbia - because it's not enough for that dolt to have to live with tha decision the rest of his life. Everyone on the planet needs to know that he was such a fucking moron that he didn't even want to look and therefore doomed seven people to certain death.

That's the crime here - people at NASA undertook active efforts to keep themselves in the dark. That's utterly inexcusable.