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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.