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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."
Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda. Lets work on improving our space program instead of sulking over things we COULD have done better.
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?
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
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 --
What would Kirk do?
BytesTemplar.com
I'm sure many will disagree, but the cost of the shuttle program is horrendous, and NASA's insistence on using it has led to some cataclysmically stupid decisions. 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.
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.
The idea of capturing and reparing satellites is inherently absurd; most aren't where the shuttle can get 'em and the total cost of the program utterly dwarfs the expense that would have been incurred had they said of the Hubble "Well, we screwed it up...build another one and get it right this time."
The safety record sucks. After Challenger Richard Feynman put the probability of a fatal accident at one in fifty. So far, NASA's on the money and the nature of the shuttle is such that if someone dies, everybody dies.
Lest I be misunderstood, I understand the romantic and scientific appeal of manned space flight, of the visceral sense of satisfaction we can have as a species when we look up to the skies and say "We live there." I'm a strong proponent of that. I also recognize the complaints that the money spent on that is money not spent on (feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, inoculating the sick, fill in your pet cause). The manned space program is hellishly uneconomical and a great deal of that can be laid at the feet of the shuttle program.
It's a white elephant without a mission, a bastard child of a spacecraft and an airplane which like most gadgets that try to do two fundamentally different things does neither well. Its payload capacity compared to heavy-lift rockets is a joke, it's barely capable of crawling out of the atmosphere, it's presented a tremendous constraint to the rest of the space program by forcing many missions to be less than they could have been in order to be shuttle-doable, and it bears repeating that every fifty flights it kills everyone on board.
It's time to ground the shuttle fleet permanently. Space isn't going anywhere. Stop pouring the hundreds of millions of dollars into the shuttle program and pour them into a new design effort. Scrap the silly "space-plane" concept and develop a family of lifters and craft that _can_ be used for many things but don't back NASA into a corner that forces them to use it for all missions. Make crew safety an inherent feature (recognizing that there are tradeoffs and that getting out of the gravity well is a fundamentally dangerous activity). Stop throwing good money after bad on that trinity dies ISS as well, and use the collective resources of the two programs to start over. It's not true that the second design is always better than the first (see again ISS and Mir/Skylab) but you're wise to play those odds.
Let's do it over. And do it right.
There are an infinite number of things we could have done. Why live in hindsight now?
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
...when Gregory Peck was in charge of NASA. It didn't really work out too well for the astronauts.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
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.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Yes, in theory it was possible... But at what risk? How do you no the rescue ship wouldn't have had the same problem on launch? And we will never know if they spy satellites could have seen the damage on the wing...
And what of the risk of sending a crew up on a mission with zero training for that specific mission? As I understand it, they practice space walks for months ahead of time... The suggest this space walk with no training at all. And rushing another space shuttle into orbit doesn't exactly sound safe.
Sure, there is a chance they could have saved them. We could also have lost twice as many people.
Really, this just sounds like a witch hunt, and someone laying the groundwork for lawsuits.
--T
http://www.theMediaBunker.com
I don't know much about space engineering, but wouldn't it have been possible to send one of these russian Soyuz pods they use to supply the ISS ? if I remember correctly, there's also one of these things attached permanently to the space station as an escape pod that can be used if the crew needs to bail out. And even if hatches aren't compatible between a Soyuz and a space shuttle, maybe the crew can spacewalk to it ? surely it's less dicey than docking two shuttles together and risking the lives of two crews instead of just one. Oh and yes, launching a Soyuz is a fraction of the price of a shuttle launch, but that's hardly a consideration in this case.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
"If we had known the thing was going to blow up, we could have sent somebody up to get them."
Uh, duh?
rooooar
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.
I think I could handle the risking of the lives to attempt the rescue.
But sadly, and honestly, I would have disagreed with this approach due to the risk to the manned space program. Had both shuttles not returned (which was rather likely, I believe), I don't think we would have returned to space for at least a decade.
I guess that is a rather confusing/conflicting point of view.
In general, I'm still rather angry about things like the spy agencies not giving satellite time. This is where the root of the problem lies in our space program (by "our", I mean "man's", not the US's).
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
So, they are taking heat for the failure, and now we've got the idiots yelling "You COULD have saved them!!!!"...
This isn't like someone making a huge error, it's a small error. Nasa designs their parts to be probability-tolerent. IE, they build a part, test it 1000 times, figure out how many times it will fail then improve on it. They get their parts down to a 99% fault tolerency and then they put 8 or 9 of them on the shuttle to lessen the chance of them breaking.
It isn't like the crew didn't know about it and didn't take a look at the damage before re-entry and figure it was minor. Sometimes accidents just happen, miscalculators lead to deaths and we aren't perfect. But you're an idiot for saying that these people are a bunch of dumbnuts for not sending up a shuttle for every little incident.
The problem with Nasa is that they are low on funding and are run (as in, leaded by, not as in the people donig the work) by a bunch of idiots. This wouldn't have happened if they weren't going up in a 20 year old rickety tin can, and they probably do have the funding to build new shuttles they just waste so much that they don't have the recources to do so.
Buerocracy is a bitch.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
The Washington Post gives more details on two plans. The first would involve a launch of Atlantis with a four man skeleton crew to an orbit within 20-30 meters of Columbia and a transfer of the stranded astronauts using spare spacesuits. The second would have two astronauts "don the two space suits aboard their craft and attempt to patch a hole in the left wing using odds and ends, including stainless steel parts, insulation, soft tiles ripped from the side of the shuttle, an ice pack and heat resistant tape."
DO NOT READ the second to last line of the last paragraph. He snuck in a Matrix spoiler.
Dirty BASTARD! I HAVEN'T SEEN THE FILM YET!!!!
Talisman
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
I have worked on the shuttle program
...
as what, a janitor ? since you read slashdot, methink you weren't in the top decisional sphere
A) Soyuz Capsules have a maximum crew capacity of 3.
B) Soyuz Capsules have such a severe reentry and landing profile that each crewmember must have a specially designed seat liner to avoid serious injury on landing. ISS Crews take their seat liners up with them on the Shuttle incase they have to use the Soyuz docked there to escape.
C) Soyuz Capsules don't have an Airlock, they have a simple hatch. So they would have had to depressurize and repressurize the capsule multiple times for the crew transfer. No idea how many repressurizations a Soyuz capsule is rated for, nor if enough consumables are available onboard for multiple repressurizations.
D) Russia can barely build enough Soyuz capsules to fulfill their current committments. Firing off one (they would have needed 4 due to the 7 member crew and the requirement for at least 1 cosmonaut in each one) would have been technically and physically impossible under the time constraints they were operating under. Even if they DID Have 4 spare Soyuz capsules lying around, it's doubtful they would have had 4 launch vehicles available and able to be prepped and launched in rapid succession.
Inshort, completely impossible.
People really need to get a grip. These people signed up for this shit. What's with this joy of deciding FOR people "It's dangerous for you, you can't do it" instead of giving them a choice.
Ask the other astronauts, "We're looking for someone to go up to try and rescue these guys." I doubt one of them would say no, regardless of the danger. They would hope that those other astronauts would do the same for them if the tables were reversed, eh? It's part of the job. Hell, it's part of the human spirit.
It's not just the space program that they like to enforce "safety" upon, but that's been the clearest indicator recently. All the "oh no it's dangerous can't do it" anal-retentives of the world need to loosen up. Little of the research that has gotten us this far could be classified as "safe". So stop making decisions for others based on their safety.
There are stupid risks, and then there are just risks. Leave it up to the people whose lives are on the line to decide. Except, of course, if the risk is clearly a very stupid one, you might not want to waste an orbiter on it. That's fair. But to go up to save astronauts from certain death? Yeah, that's worth an orbiter.
Regardless, other posts are correct -- this is all 20/20 hindsight now. Time to move on. I just wish the lesson learned from this wasn't "Space travel is dangerous, we'd better be much more careful to the point of making everything we're trying to do only marginally useful at best", while all the people who are willing to take risks utterly blow them out of the water.
Random and weird software I've written.
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
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.
Do you really think there's someone at a high enough level at NASA (or anywhere, for that matter) who would have had the brass cajones (that's "brass balls" for you gringos) to take accountability for approving such a rescue mission? If a rescue were successful, he'd have to answer to the bean counters and outrage over having risked *two* crews. And if it weren't....
...Bethanie....
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
"What's to stop you from having the same damage to Atlantis? You're basically throwing the dice," Thagard said.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Would have, could have, should have .... come on ... going out into space means that from time to time things may go wrong. It's exploration of space, what do you expect? That it is easy? That everyone will always return home safely? Mankind has hardly taken any step 'out there' and if every accident results in such a media hype and discussions about funding and stuff, you may ask yourself where the exploring attitude of your ancestors has gone. Do the best you can possibly do to avoid accidents, you want your people to return to tell the story, but if something goes all wrong, accept that this is the price you sometimes have to pay and learn from it. It's about exploration, not about 'handling the media'. Are the media really able to understand what exploration is about in the first place?
I keep seeing posts and news reports blaming NASA for not sending out a rescue. Read the articles people, get informed! If NASA had known the problem really was as bad as it turned out you can bet they would have put every person they could find on getting that crew home alive. Remember Apollo 13? It would have been the same scenario.
... AND we could have had two damaged shuttles in the air at one time because at the time we didn't have a clue as to what went wrong with the first one.
Though, the risk taker in me says we should've tried it if we had time to make a rescue attempt.
I'm also on board with the group that says, lets make improvements and move forward. I wish they had made the decision to take long range pictures, even if they couldn't have saved the Columbia. That information could've provided the needed piece to save future shuttle crews. Though it would've torn up the American public to know we had a shuttle that was lost before the fact.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
I think a key step is being overlooked here. Before a rescue mission is considered and planned, you have to have something to rescue. Remember, nobody at the time knew for a fact that there was a problem.
From what I understood, even if the foam issue had been investigated, no damage would have been seen. Missing tiles could not have been seen by a telescope or any other long-range imaging mechanism.
The *only* way they could have determined there was a problem was with a space walk and that wasn't possible because they didn't have the equipment.
We're now talking about sending an entire shuttle up just to *check* to see if some foam hit the wing, not to rescue a shuttle with a known problem.
Is there really any doubt that yes, *something* could have been done if the outcome we now are aware of was known? Of course NASA would have tried to prevent it. But the fact remains that there was no known problem. We shouldn't be worried about whether a rescue mission could have been created, we should be worried about how could the actual damage have been more accurately assessed!
An overwhelming majority of US astronauts are ex-military types. To talk about risks...these guys would gladly bear the likelyhood of their own death if it meant the possibility of saving another. I know guys who risked their lives in combat to recover corpses - dead bodies - simply because the hunk of unrecognizable flesh they were dragging back was a fellow solider/marine/airman. If a rescue mission had been organized, and volunteers asked for, you would have had no shortage of schmoes ready to hang it out on the line.
Wouldn't NASA wait to determine the cause of the problem before launching a second crew into space? What if Atlantis gets up there and discovers "Hey, same thing happened to us...can you send ANOTHER rescue ship?". It took several weeks just to start narrowing down the cause from all the theories, and even now that they have plenty of info NASA still isn't sending shuttles up into space.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
That's where it would be handy to have a traditional space capsule on standby. Of course, given the fact they can only fit three people max, it would require three launches, or a single launch vehicle with three capsules. The capsules would then be able to dock with the shuttle to let everyone out and would then return to Earth as the Soyuz does. This is a knee jerk idea, so there are probably limiting factors that I have not taken into account.
BTW does anyone know what the minimum crew required to fly a shuttle?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Basic orbital mechanics: 1. Soyuz can't reach the orbit Columbia was in. 2. Columbia didn't have enough fuel to make it to the ISS. The only possible rescue solution was Atlantis.
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.
Thats just brilliant!
You are making the assumption that NASA knew the shuttle was going to suffer a catastrophic failure on re-entry. Other than some speculation by some NASA engineers, I havent seen any definitive proof that NASA was negligent.
Space travel is dangerous and accidents happen. I am not saying that should exclude people from taking responsibility, but it also means that we cant suggest letting people take baseball bats to men and women who lost their friends in an accident because we assume they played fast and loose with facts.
thousands may have survived the sinking of the Titanic if only the outcome had been different.....
Really now. Let's all play the "what if" game. What if they'd sent another shuttle? What if they'd looked at spy sat. images? What if a race of friendly aliens repaired the shuttle the erased the memories of those aboard? What if we could have sent Bruce Willis up there with a team of loveable hacks? You know what? None of that happened, and Columbia is still sitting in pieces. Deal with it. Establish what went wrong, do your best to ensure it doesn't happen again, and move on with the space program.
I'm just glad we've got experts in the media that can press home the fact that they're smarter than those in charge. "Hey, let's make NASA acknolwedge the fact that there was a super slim chance of possibly rescuing those poor, departed ratings....er...heros"
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
The camera idea is neat. Just toss 10 or more of those spycameras sold on so many spam mails out shutles porthole. Turn shutle around and watch from TV-set if there is tiles missing or some other damage. Cheap solution preventing this kind of disaster happening un-noticed again.
jk
Someone said 'Whats done is done'.
I agree with that sentiment. We are in the 'Find problem, fix it and move on' stage and backtracking does nothing.
However since the subject was brought up, I have the thought of how could they have known?
Okay we have said that technicaly it was feasible to rescue.
Let's say we get into a time machine and go back to Janurary and try to convince NASA that something is very, very wrong and they need to start prepping Atlantis.
Even if you could show those officials your time machine and convince them you are who you say you are they are still not going to do it without absolute proof that Columbia is in a bad, bad way.
Did we have a system available to us in Janurary to assess the damage properly?
Having an astronaut do an EVA with one of those jet packs they got is a serious step. It is very possible it would end up with the astronaut doing that 'dying' thing that they all try to avoid.
So you can't simply throw that out. Once again you have to have serious suspicions that you can back up before you go that step. I would say that is the last step before prepping Atlantis.
I remember this as a huge debate directly after the crash. I remember being thoroughly unsold on if we could have figured it out.
The Progress which was sent to ISS could have reached Columbia. Columbia was in a lower orbit, and I'm sure the Progress launch rocket was not built for a specific orbit and could have been reprogrammed for the Columbia orbit. I don't know how easily the payload could have been replaced, but if Columbia was waiting in orbit for a month there should have been time to change Progress payloads. A Progress is not built for reentry, so could only carry supplies -- although perhaps also repair parts.
The astronauts were wearing their emergency spacesuits, so everyone did have a suit. I don't know how long those can be used for EVA. Someone would have had to go look at the damage. Someone would have had to get the first batch of supplies from Progress. That first batch could include supplies for more suit time (I assume not a full EVA suit and thruster pack), so the rest of the supplies could be retrieved. Whether the supplies would have replenishment or repair equipment depends upon what was found to be needed and could fit.
ISS was too far for Columbia to reach. I'm sure Progress could not carry enough fuel to push Columbia toward ISS (whether by using Progress as a tug or refueling Columbia -- and I doubt the fuel tanks were designed for fueling in space). ISS did have its "lifeboat" Soyuz. Perhaps that lifeboat could have reached Columbia. A Soyuz probably does not have enough fuel to quickly alter orbit to Columbia, but there would have been a month to loop around the Earth and/or Moon to change orbits with minimal fuel. Another possibility would have been to have Progress bring Soyuz fuel to ISS so Soyuz could reach Columbia.
The Progress on ISS was full of trash. It could have been refilled, but probably could not reach Columbia anyway.
A Soyuz is designed for 3 people, and 7 were aboard Columbia. I'm sure if Columbia were known to be fatally damaged, all the people who could fit in a Soyuz would try to return. If a Soyuz reached Columbia, although it definitely could rescue three people I suspect that any three would prefer to risk themselves in trying to rescue others than to go in safety.
Maybe the Soyuz which was launched in April could have been launched with one of the world's rockets. Maybe the scheduled Russian launcher, maybe welded to something else.
If the onboard fuel could not reach Columbia, perhaps the Progress could have brought fuel and an extra seat for an attempt at rescuing the other 4.
There are riskier possibilities which would be less likely to succeed.
Columbia Tugboats. Columbia is heavy. The only place where it could be pushed for rescue would be ISS, which was in a higher and different orbit. Maybe geosync boosters could have helped, but I doubt there are enough available. I don't think pushing Columbia so the ISS lifeboat could reach is possible nor would it make sense, as pushing the lifeboat is easier.
Tether tricks. If there is something like a rope on Columbia, put someone on the end of it. Spin Columbia. Release to toss them toward ISS. Catch
Two reasons (off the top of my head):
- Parasitic cost vs. benefit; such an escape system would consume a lot of weight and space and compromise every mission, against the chance that they MIGHT be needed.
- Effectiveness: they would only be useful in an emergency where the crew knew there was a problem and had enough time to get the shuttle into a configuration where they might work.
Why don't airliners carry an escape pod for every passenger?
After reading most of the comments below I have to say it. If a rescue had been attempted, NASA would have needed guards to keep the Astronauts in line to apply for it. The military ones have a code of honor about not leaving anyone behind. The article stated that they would have been knocking down the doors to get the job, "and it's true". Men like John Young and Robert Crippen are still around. I met them both when the shuttle landed at White Sands, NM. I think it was the third suttle flight. They are retired but that caliber of person is still around throughout the Astronaut Corps.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
I also believe that Columbia hade VERY limited rendezvous capabilities on its own. No EVA suits and no arm. The only other possibilities for getting things to columbia were in an arian rocket that was in the early to mid stages of prep work for a launch (though, I think that is was suffering from some sort of budgetary hangup). Japan had the capability of launching a light payload in about two weeks notice. Russia is in no position to change what their progress or soyuz were going to do. China, though quite secretive, is believed to have the capability of putting a medium weight payload in Columbia's vicinity in a three week window, though, that's largely speculation. We do know fer certain that they are pressing hard for their own manned space program. It would have been a massive coup for them to have mounted a resupply mission with their first space flight. About the only other possibilities were classified military assets, but the airforce doesn't use their own facility much and likely didn't have anything prepped. I also believe that Boeing and its partners have a prototype ready to go for a test launch for their commercial program, but, it is virtually mothballed due to the global economy. Also, I believe that it is the sea launched system that I read about a while back and would have taken almost a month to get into position. In the end, there just isn't a whole lot out there to help these guys out aside from a drastic crash course in re-outfitting an ICBM, and that's just plain crazy talk.
Yah, and the descent rate is very high because the "wings" don't provide a very good Cl/Cd at the speeds and angles of attack that the shuttle flies.
Still, bailout at 10,000 feet is conceivable with the systems as they exist. The main reason for a bailout as opposed to a controlled landing is it's likely that the landing gear would fail to deploy; and at the landing speeds and loads the shuttle experiences, lacking a gear on landing would definitely be LOCV (loss of crew and vehicle).
It's too bad that there are a few things that lack computer control in the shuttle, like the landing gear (ostensibly for safety reasons). Sure, the computer flying all the way to the ground is probably a little less reliable than a human pilot; but t makes the bailout call a lot easier to make, if you know that the vehicle will try and land itself with a high probability of success.