NASA Prepares for Space Rescues

wallstreetprodigy23 copies and pastes "Space shuttle commander Steve Lindsey is preparing for a mission he hopes will never launch: the rescue of other astronauts in orbit. If a crisis arises during shuttle Discovery's planned return to flight in May, Lindsey and a crew of three could be called upon to lift off aboard sister ship Atlantis on an emergency mission that would be the first in the history of human space exploration. Rescue flights were hotly debated at NASA after shuttle Columbia broke up in the skies above Texas two years ago this Tuesday. Questions arose about whether Columbia's seven astronauts could have been saved. Because of the accident, NASA will have a backup shuttle and rescue crew ready for at least the next two flights in case another ship suffers damage similar to what brought down Columbia."

Comments

Great timing.

[Seumas]

I'm not a rocket scientist, so let me make sure I have this right:

1) Build space station.
2) Send astronauts to space station.
3) A few years later, start brainstorming a rescue plan.

Next Two?

[vbdrummer0]

Woudn't it make more sense (humanly and logically, not necessarily financially) to always have a backup shuttle ready? Sure as hell, there won't be a screwup so soon after restarting flights; NASA won't allow anything to get off the ground this early with any problems at all; it would look bad for PR. But later, like in a few years, they'll have slacked up, and something could go wrong. Hopefully, they'll have a backup flight ready to go if/when that happens.

Why not an escape capsule?

[popo]

Look at the size of the original orbital capsules. Excape capsules could be created that take up 1/2 the space, could survive re-entry, and easily fit within the cargo area. Wouldn't that be much cheaper than a sister shuttle at the ready?

Re:Why not an escape capsule?

[Migraineman]

Have a look at the orbital mechanics - you can raise or lower your orbit by changing your speed a little. That's a mostly-scalar operation. You go up and down, but stay in the same orbital plane (please forgive the obvious simplification.) Now think of your orbital path in terms of the velocity vector. Rotating your orbital plane 90-degrees, for example, requires that you reduce your vector velocity in one axis to zero, while raising the vector velocity in the perpendicular axis to the original amount. So, how much energy did it take to get your original vector velocity? That's right, the whole launch amount. So to turn 90 degrees, you'll need two complete launches worth of fuel and expendibles. That's oversimplified too, because you need to haul that two-launches-worth of booster and fuel up with you in the initial launch. The Rocket Equaiton makes that scenario prohibitive.

Similarly, hauling the rescue capsule around on every frickin' launch has similar implications. It's tremendously wasteful to haul extra weight around "just in case."

I'd propose a "tow truck" kind of solution. To pose an analogy, how often do you use the spare tire in your car? Maybe never? (Automakers won't sell a spare-less car mostly due to negative market perception.) If you don't have a spare tire, what will you do? You'll get on the cell phone and call a tow truck. (I realize you can't just pull over to the curb in space, but bear with me.) The cell phone and tow truck represent elements of a repair (i.e. rescue) infrastructure we have in place. The better the infrastructure, the less you need to haul around the materials to be self-sufficient. I'd rather see a Delta 4 Heavy (or equivalent) equipped with a Crew Extraction Vehicle (CEV.) Yep, it's a capsule that fits a crew of N in horrible discomfort just long enough to return them to earth. I'm thinking extreme Spam-in-a-Can. They wedge inside however they must. There will be rudimentary water and food aboard - think a couple of bottles of Aquafina and some granola bars. They soil their undergarments, if necessary. A shower will be waiting for them when they return. Feces washes off.

The "infrastructure" part involves doing all the pre-flight coordination with the manned mission, and would require that the tow truck could be prepped and launched within 2 days or so of declaration of an emergency. Since it's on the ground, the CEV only has one orbital insertion to deal with. It'd need to mate up with the manned mission, but that's part of the infrastructure too.

Since the CEV is unmanned on launch, it can be configured to use solid boosters. That's going to mitigate liquid-fuel handling issues. It also mitigates flight profile problems - high G-loading tends to do bad things to ugly-bags-of-mostly-water. But the meatbags don't board the CEV until it's already on-orbit, so you only have the human-friendly (re)-entry profile to deal with, right?

The Crew Return Vehicle (not to be confuced with my CEV, above) is a boondoggle. Passengers are seated in relative comfort. They get all sorts of space to move around. The CRV even has wings and a pilot. And it's supposed to be reusable. What a bunch of crap. My CEV, on the other hand, is horribly cramped and has exactly one job to do - return the crew to earth safely. Once. Period.

In writing this, I'm thinking that "tow truck" is the wrong term. The CEV is more of a taxi. We abandon the original damaged spacecraft.

Hotly debated?

[game kid]

Rescue flights were hotly debated at NASA after shuttle Columbia broke up in the skies above Texas two years ago this Tuesday. Questions arose about whether Columbia's seven astronauts could have been saved.

No, not unless rescuers were launched by a full-speed ICBM the very instant the shuttle broke up. Unless Houston can immediately get news of a wing break, this is a non-starter. Space travel is an inherently dangerous business--going into harsh atmospheres (if any atmosphere at all), lack of gravity and air pressure to keep you in shape, old and tough-to-maintain equipment in space shuttles, etc; I'm shocked there's any debate.

If I was an astronaut I'd be thinking about my two choices during any mission:

1. I return alive after a perfect launch and mission.
2. I'm fucked.

Expensive Boondoggle

[strelitsa]

Isn't this a lot like retrofitting a rusted, worn-out '89 Ford Escort with front and side airbags, chrome wheels, and Corinthian leather seat covers? Pimp My Ride is fine for MTV but should not be practiced as US space policy.

The Shuttle has had its day. Stop sinking so many dollars into this antiquated, fragile, expensive money pit and design and build a space transportation system that belongs to this century, not the last.

Twice the Problem

[Bios_Hakr]

So, let me get this right. If, by some chance, the horribly overcomplicated shuttle breaks in orbit, we'll launch another horribly overcomplicated shuttle that *probably* has the same design flawas the first?

This is a perfect example of people trying to solve a problem that does not exist.

Since its introduction, two shuttles have been lost. That's about 15 years of operation per accident. I'd take thoes odds any day. But one fucking shuttle blows up because of a freak accident and then we have to spend millions of dollars to ensure the sound-byte-informed public that it won't happen agian.

It's just like that fucking terrorism thingy. We send billions on crap while more USians died on the roads in Sep 2001 ever died in terrorist attacks.

Pull your fucking heads out and spend the money where you can actually see some return.

But...

[MavEtJu]

But who is going to rescue the people on the rescue-mission?

Re:Manned spaceflight?

[drgath159]

Bearing this in mind, what's the point in having a rescue shuttle ready for the next two flights only?

While I see your point and think this is pretty dumb to waste all this money on rescue missions that will never fly, it's needed. Why? What if the same thing happens again in the next few missions? NASA is completely fucked and would be getting a fraction of the money they get now. It would be a long time before they recovered. If something else went wrong, and two consecutive missions saw the death of astronauts, or two out of three, same thing, NASA is fucked.

This is nothing more than simply giving people a sense of security. Not really the astronauts themselves as I'm sure they are confident nothing will happen, but more for the rest of the country.

NASA can't just say, "it was a freak accident that wasn't our fault, it's not going to happen again so we don't really need to do anything." If they don't have these rescue missions planned, that's what they'll be saying.

the shuttle program from the start, in a nutshell

[HBI]

The whole thing was an overengineered government boondoggle. It didn't make sense then, and doesn't make sense now, while looking at it logically.

The motivations of the various parties are clear enough.

-NASA was politicking, they didn't want to have a situation like Apollo where the last few flights were eliminated because of changing conditions and or national boredom. A reusable craft almost demands use. They also wanted to create a consistent work environment rather than running a constant R&D shop. Government employees are not good at R&D, in general. Most R&D establishments in the military, for instance, morph into bureaucratic wastes of money over time due to the fact that government oversight doesn't lend itself to dynamic activity. If the unique, dynamic overseers of the project, those exceptional people who have drive and ambition within government, leave their posts - the project stagnates. NASA is no exception.

-The pilots wanted something aircraft-like to fly, damn the fact that it's not a useful shape for a spacecraft. That was the design spec, and safety was compromised to meet it.

-The politicians were throwing a bone to NASA and appropriated the funds based on the successful lunar missions. Oversight on this was near-nil, except for the dollar figure which was chopped in half, exacerbating the problem.

So they seized on an Air Force requirement regarding the capability to return payload from orbit, which ultimately has been used very infrequently, and used that as a justification to achieve all their other disparate goals.

They promised all kinds of capabilities such as quick turnaround which are bogus in reality. They promised cheaper per-flight costs. They promised greater safety. A lot was promised that never materialized.

Note that none of the real justifications for a reusable, aircraft shaped spacecraft had anything to do with science, advancing human exploration, or efficiency. Pretty much tells the whole story, no?

Re:Manned spaceflight?

[Tackhead]

It took a hundred flights for the Columbia failure mode to occur. There has been no other flight where an in-flight emergency occured such that rescue might be considered.
>
>Bearing this in mind, what's the point in having a rescue shuttle ready for the next two flights only?

The point is - like all Generals more concerned with keeping their stars than the welfare of the troops under their command - to fight the last war.

To understand NASA, you need to stop thinking like and engineer and start thinking like a bureaucrat or politician.

I advise reading the last Slashdot thread on "Political Software Development" while under the influence of large quantities of alcohol. (And if you're a NASA administrator and something goes wrong on your watch, re-read the thread while switching to Valium.)

Re:Manned spaceflight?

[BeerCat]

Is this reliance on a back-up plan not just another example of a lot of Western society becoming increasingly risk-averse?

During an age of exploration, deaths were treated as a hazard of the job - Amelia Earheart's disappearance did not stop the aviation industry from developing. If the same thing happened today, there would be public outcry about how to make {fill in transportation mode} "safer" (= find someone to blame when things go wrong)

Keeping with the aviation parallels, Lindbergh would probably not have been allowed to take off today - single engine, no radio, no forward visibility and so on - and yet he is (rightly) credited with pulling off an amazing feat*, rather than "doing something foolhardy and dangerous"


* being picky, the amazing part was landing at his chosen destination (Paris), rather than flying non-stop across the Atlantic, as that had already been done back in 1919 by Alcock & Brown. Or that he did it solo.

Re:Spot the problem first

[Ellis D. Tripp]

If you smacked the rabbit with a suitcase-sized piece of the foam at ~700 MPH you sure as hell could....

Re:Spot the problem first

[tftp]

You are right, actually. The foam virtually stands still in the atmosphere... but the Shuttle rams it at 700 mph (since it has an engine.) The end result is the same.

Re:Spot the problem first

[tftp]

Yes :-)

The foam decelerated because of both the gravity (things usually don't fall upward) and because of air resistance.

With regard to the latter, the foam's terminal velocity is far less than 700 mph. Throw a piece of foam from the roof and count how many seconds it takes to hit the ground. I think that the speed would be something like 10 m/s, or 20 mph - far, far less than the speed of the Shuttle.

What happened is probably this. After the foam got detached from the tank its speed dropped very fast (since it lost propulsion and instead got two factors pulling it back;) given the speed of the Shuttle, you can say that the foam got briefly stuck in the air, and Shuttle hit it as if it were really a static object. It doesn't even matter if the foam was still flying 100 mph up or was already doing 10 mph down.

BTW, NASA people know the speed of the foam for a fact, because they have the video of it falling and they know how many frames per second the camera takes. So they didn't have to guess or to simulate anything, all they needed is a calculator and some basic dimensions of the Shuttle.