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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."
If Columbia is used as an example, shouldn't NASA be looking at policies that allow them to delay a launch and/or return, and conduct a thorough inspection of the craft? From what I have read (from the transcripts), it was too late for Columbia to do anything by the time they realized something was wrong. Catching Genesis mid-air with a helicopter didn't work.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
be good practice for them and the whole world benefits at the same time
all for less than the price of a months war in Iraq
So, they assume that somehow troubles in space can be solved with a rescue mission. This is good. I think people is more incline to think that space troubles are disastrous.
Pumbaa! I don't wonder; I know.
Thunderbirds are GO!
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.
> ...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."
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?
Always having a rescue shuttle available would be useful, but which probably isn't practical, since there are now only three Shuttles.
It seems to me there is a lack of proper vision in the space programme.
We have manned spaceflight, but being used in a way where unmmaned spaceflight could be perfectly well used instead (probably at lower cost, and certainly with zero risk to human life).
Manned spaceflight *is* vital, but not for Shuttle flights! manned spaceflight is necessary to establish colonies on other moons and planets.
Humans will not really start colonizing other worlds, though, until the Space Elevator is built; then it will become practical.
I expect this to occur within my lifetime, assuming we don't destroy the planet first.
--
Toby
Hmm, I wonder if this system could also be used to rescue Russian, Chinese or even Europeran astronauts in orbit in the future, and if NASA would use it for this. This is surely the kind of thing that would be an ideal colabriative mission beteen nations.
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.
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?
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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:
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
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.
No mod points, no meta-moderating/Firehose/all the other free work Slashdot wants me to do.
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.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
Your premise seems to be that bureaucracies should act rationally. They Do Not.
Public Choice Theory demonstrates that what is "rational" to a government bureaucrat is not "rational" under the logical framework of private enterprise or individual action. The motivations are all messed up, as viewed from the outside.
The pioneers of space were expendable, to the bureaucratic mind, because creating a method of "rescue" would cost more than training new recruits and weathering the bad publicity.
The rocket scientists themselves were employed to do a job, and if they didn't like it they could seek employment elsewhere.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
But who is going to rescue the people on the rescue-mission?
bash$
Uh, if you lauch with no payload, there's no way in hell the crew weighs more than 65,300 pounds (Maximum Payload)
Recommendation One:
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If they implement everything as recommended there is no need for a rescue plan and I doubt such a plan would actually work, it seems more like a publicity stunt to reassure the masses.
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?
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
The Shuttle's return mode is as an Aircraft (glider) and as such it needs to keep its Centre of Gravity within acceptable limits.
Just adding 7 persons to the front-end of the shuttle would undoubtedly shift the C of G of an unladen craft quite a way forward. Whether this would go beyond the C of G limits I cannot say. The only obvious solution to the C of G problem would be pumping liquid stores and / or Hydrazine aft.
However, I do not believe they are intending to tackle this problem. My guess is that the first launches after return to service may only have crews of three or four, thus enabling a 'rescue' flight with a crew of three to come back with a total complement of seven.
The other issue with bringing back more than seven would be adequate seating to prevent the inevitable injuries which could occur during re-entry for an un-restrained person.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
I'am quite sure I have read something long ago that there is in fact an agreement between the various space agencies in the world that if a crew is in danger, any agency with an available spacecraft will make a rescue attempt. I might be wrong. But it would make alot more sense to have an inter-agency cooperation regarding space rescue then for each agency to have backup spacecrafts and crews ready at all time.
While a typical shuttle crew is seven, it can be flown with only a pilot and copilot. The rest are there for the non-flight bits, like seeing whether ants can learn to sort tiny screws in space. Can they come back to Earth with nine? I don't know, but it's not quite as bad as having to hold two full crews.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
The Columbia Accident Investigation Report listed one permutation of a rescue mission that could have been launched to save Columbia, if anyone had realized the true severity of the damage to her wing. According to the report, a second shuttle (I believe it was Endeavour, but it's been a while since I read the report) could have been rolled out and launched in a matter of days, skipping the normal three-month pre-launch safety checklist.
The second shuttle could have rendezvoused with Columbia and brought to station-keeping directly below her, such that the two shuttles' cargo bays were facing each other (Columbia would have been orbiting upside-down and backward relative to the ground, as is standard). Columbia's crew could then have transferred to the rescue shuttle via tether.
All of this could have been done inside the week-long window before Columbia's consumables were exhausted; after the rescue, Columbia would have been de-orbited into the ocean.
One of the things that will be mandatory on all remaining shuttle launches will be for all shuttles to be able to rendezvous and dock with the ISS, in the event something like this happens again. This was not an option for Columbia, for a couple of reasons--she was unable to boost to the ISS's altitude, and she lacked the correct docking mechanism to couple with the ISS.
Exactly where do you draw the line when it comes to the cost of saving a handful of high-profile people? (Astronauts.)
Are 7 so-so scientists really worth the tens of millions of dollars needed to launch a rescue mission?
Boy am I glad that you're not in charge of people's lives.
I've always thought that humans and cargo should launch using seperate vehicles. Big dumb boosters for cargo and small tough protected vehicles for humans. Make the human vehicle reasonable aerodynamic for atmospheric flight reasons and simple to launch. Air launch possibly? We know a lot about making small tough vehicles (war planes) and we know a lot about air launch (SpaceShip 1, X-15 etc). I was taught to never put all my items in one basket. It works in computer science, why not at NASA?
Doesn't matter how you twist it, re-entry is going to be exposed to a minimum force level of 4 to 6 g. doesn't matter if its a Soyuz or a Shuttle. An apollo capsule would be up around 9 (similar to a soyuz operating in failsafe mode on a pure ballistic trajectory). If payload surviveability is your point of measurement, what difference does a soft landing make, all that really matters is that landing impact is less than the maximum aerodynamic forces during the descent. That is basically the parameter on which they designed the parachute sizes for a Soyuz.
Then, when we do the reality check, if you haven't kept up with the news, Columbia burned up on re-entry. One of the recommendations after that, was to reduce orbiter mass for re-entry. There wont be any more big payloads coming back from space aboard the shuttle.
They never "break the hold of gravity."
When they are orbiting the earth they are still subject to the earth's gravity - what is happening is that they are constantly falling towards the center of the earth.
This is why it is referred to as "free fall." In the astronauts local frame of reference it would seem that there is no gravity. It would be the same in an elevator whose cable broke and was falling down the shaft.
Earth's gravity still has them, they are still falling, they just never hit the earth because their forward velocity carries then past it as they fall.
It is the same for geosynchronous satellites even though they are circling at a slower speed.
Physics 101 - it is interesting!
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Let me tell you the two most important things you need to know to get some idea of how staggeringly hard your proposal is to implement.
The first thing is the speeds involved. These guys are going 17,000 miles per hour. That's 7 times faster than a rifle bullet, and it weighs as much as 30 big SUVs. How do you propose to take this monster and make it "slow down a bit"? If they can't brake in the atmosphere, then need to use rocket power to slow back down to, say, 1,000 miles per hour (the speed of Earth's rotation at Florida plus a couple hundred mph) so they can land.
The second thing is even worse: the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation. It tells us how much propellant is needed to achieve a given speed change (impulse). This is not based on any particular rocket technology; it's a fundamental law derived directly from Newton's third law of motion (the equal-and-opposite-reaction one).
Tsiolkovsky's equation is calibrated to the exit velocity of the propellant. If you want your rocket's velocity to change by N times the propellant's exit velocity, its mass must reduce by a factor of e^N. In the case of the Shuttle going to orbit, N=2.7, and the "mass ratio" e^N=15.5, meaning that only about 1/15 of the vehicle makes it to orbit. The other 14/15 was rocket fuel.
If you want to deorbit the Shuttle using rockets, then you'll need to double your delta-V, because you must first go from zero to 17000, and then from 17000 back to zero. This gives N=2x2.7=5.4. However, this is too high, because you're not fighting air resistance and Earth's gravity when you're re-entering like you are when you're taking off. So let's be conservative and say it's only N=4.5. Then your mass ratio becomes 90, so the fuel tank needs to be 6.4 times larger than they already are! If you have seen the Shuttle's fuel tank, you know this is absurd.
The best thing about deorbiting in the presence of an atmosphere is that it costs no rocket fuel. However, it does have its dangers.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Have you seen the rocket boosters they use to launch the shuttles? They'd need the same boosters to slow it down again. And then they'd need way, way bigger rockets just to lift those boosters into orbit in the first place. The total amount of fuel required is staggering.
Not necessarily. Electromagnetic braking against the earth's field is possible. There are some practical limitations to the technology right now... but we've only tried it once! The biggest barrier is making it efficient enough to make a big difference in the entry velocity. The second biggest is figuring out what to do with all that energy you're creating, though since it's already high voltage a forward-pointing ion engine might be a possibility.
The third problem is resistive wire heating. If we could make a spoolable paintable superconducting wire, we could solve that easily too. Why paintable? Give it white paint to reflect sunlight and you can probably keep it at liquid nitrogen temperatures with a moderate heatsink system...
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
If the shuttle is abandoned in orbit you can bet it will be in a 120-160 mile LEO. Given the apsect ratio of the craft and the height of the orbit, you can bet the craft wouldn't stay up long. That means that NASA would have three choices: 1) boost the craft to a higher more stable orbit until something can be done, 2) perform a fix and try to land the craft unmanned, 3) de-orbit quickly so the craft wreckage lands where they expect.
1) Unless they plan to have Atlantis permanently tasked as the rescue ship, there is no way this can be done. The booster would have to already be in the cargo bay and good to go. You would prefer to not have to tell the folk in the VAB they've got 1 week plus to take out what ever payload is in the bay and replace it with the booster.
2) This one might actually be feasible. If you assume that the craft is already lost then you can try your fix and bring it down unmanned. If I remember correctly, NASA has already done some tests on completely autonomous landings. Aiming for Edwards AFB gives you lots of room to land and plenty of open area for wreckage if things don't work.
3) Unfortunately we know that NASA/JPL are all to willing to bring down currently functional spacecraft in the name of a known wreckage footprint. The main issue with this would be how long they can wait. How long could the shuttle stay on orbit unmanned and still be able to perform a realtively stable de-orbit? I'm guessing not long.
Now consider this scenario: There is an impact on the leading edge of the wing. The tiles are damaged but they don't appear to be pierced. It's a good bet the craft could be brought down safely. Will NASA have the will to take the chance of losing the crew?
Since the space shuttle was designed to bring back satellites from orbit, I don't think a few extra people would make a difference. Satellites tend to be a lot heavier than people.
Not to mention that the shuttle is so heavy that a few extra people would hardly make a difference in the overall weight.