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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."
This sort of thing is easy to do monthes later when we can say, "yea there was a hole and it made the wing fail".
But at the time there was only evidence of foam falling. NASA could have had a recon sat take a look at Shuttle during an orbit but what if the damage was too small to spot? They couldn't spacewalk out there and examine that point on the Columbia.
They couldn't have said "Well there might be a hole, stop everything, we'll rush another Shuttle up there and try to do a risky space transfer that's never been done and then leave a 110 ton uncontrolled craft up there to tumble back to earth on it's own."
What if they'd rushed a second one up and there was a problem because of that rush and two were lost?
It's tragic, and the energy needs to be spent on fixing the problems with the remaining three and getting replacements.
Freeman Dyson presents some interesting commentary on 'big science'; that is to say, science pursued for political rather that technical reasons. These usually turn up in the form of enormous projects that are highly visible and drain resources from other more worthy but less 'sexy' efforts. Or as in the case of NASA, the practicle abolition of alternative launch capacity since we weren't going to need it, see? The Shuttle will do it all for less, and don't tell us otherwise, if you know what's good for you. Besides, all those extra rockets in inventory can now be sold on the market cheep to gut any nascent competitors in the civilian market. Bravo! A two-fer!
d etail/-/0140 174230/qid=1053794510/sr=1-11/ref=sr_1_11/104-9657 565-9162366?v=glance&s=books#product-details
Link to Dysons book "From Eros to Gaia" ISBN: 0140174230
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/
-Me
Kinda reminds me of the movie 'Vertical Limit'. Four mountainclimbers get stranded, they send another 4 to try and rescue them, and only TWO of the total EIGHT get back alive. Gee... that was really worth it. Might as well let the original 4 die, since they were stupid anyway.
(My numbers might be a little scewed, but only a little)
Like they (NASA) said, it would've endangered MORE lives.
...
And I know this for certain: YOU sir are a slashdot
__,,..~~--== T*R*O*L*L ==--~~..,,__
(and a coward)
-Sean