Endeavour Rolled Out As Rescue Ship

stoolpigeon writes "The space shuttle Endeavour was rolled out to Launch Pad 39B yesterday. Space shuttle Atlantis is already at Launch Pad 39A, being made ready for the STS-125 mission to repair Hubble. We recently got a look at some behind-the-scenes photos for this mission. Endeavour is now in place to act as a rescue vehicle if there are any problems with Atlantis, once they are in space. This is the first time one shuttle has been prepared to act as a rescue vehicle for another. If all goes well for STS-125, Endeavour will move over to 39A to be used for STS-126."

Comments

Re:Tow Truck?

[stoolpigeon]

Which is exactly what you do if a tow truck breaks down.

Re:One faulty space truck to rescue another

[Chris Burke]

And the superior rescue vehicle they're going to use is...?

I mean what do you think they did when a Huey went down in Vietnam?

Re:what is it going to do ?

[v1]

If the odds of a specific problem with a shuttle occurring are 1 in 100, the odds of it the same problem occurring on TWO shuttles at the same time is 1 in 10,000, not 1 in 100.

You're taking for granted that once a problem occurs, the odds that "it could occur" are no longer 1 in 100, they are 1:1 because it HAS occurred. In other words, the odds of a double failure pre-launch is 1:10,000. The odds of a double failure, once you HAVE a single failure, is 1:100. Until the single failure occurs, the odds remain at 1:10,000.

Possible maturity evident?

[johndmartiniii]

I think that this might be a sign of increasing maturity in the process for making decisions about the space program. It seems, at least a little, a bit more reasonable to prepare a rescue option for missions like this rather than simply strapping on the cowboy boots and riding some crazy contraption out of the atmosphere with no viable hope of coming back, should something go wrong. Even if it is the same type of craft as the one that it would be rescuing, this decision shows some initiative to make the space program into a less willy-nilly operation than it might have been in the past. It is, as has been mentioned above, really the only option for some sort of fall-back plan, should something go wrong on the way up.

Good job NASA.

Re:Possible maturity evident?

[DerekLyons]

I think that this might be a sign of increasing maturity in the process for making decisions about the space program. It seems, at least a little, a bit more reasonable to prepare a rescue option for missions like this rather than simply strapping on the cowboy boots and riding some crazy contraption out of the atmosphere with no viable hope of coming back, should something go wrong.

More accurately, it's a sign of the hype and hysteria surround space flight and astronauts that such expensive precautions must be taken - when there are thousands of USN submariners at sea right now with no viable hope should something go seriously wrong. Not to mention the hundreds of people who winter over in Antarctica each year. Not to mention the hundred of scientists and crew at sea on USNS research vessels. (A friend of mine is in the middle of the Pacific right now - hundreds of miles from land and well off the shipping lanes. It would take over a day for a search aircraft to reach them - and most of a week for a rescue ship to do so.)
 
The submariners have rescue vessels standing by, sorta - we were told to expect to wait a week or more back in the 1980's, and our capabilities have declined sharply since then. None of the others have dedicated rescue capability standing by.
 
And that's just the government jobs...

Re:Possible maturity evident?

[Free the Cowards]

But do those submarines have relatively obvious unfixed failure modes the way the Shuttle does? It's one thing to have no protection from unknown problems and rather different to know that there's a problem with a significant chance of killing you but taking no precautions against it.

Re:Possible maturity evident?

[hcdejong]

Apples and oranges. Surface vessels have lifeboats, for submarines there's the rescue vessels you mention, but until now, astronauts who stranded in space were SOL. NASA said in the past that should this happen, they'd take the next available shuttle and reassemble it as quickly as possible, but they recognized that this would probably be too late. With the Shuttle failure rate being what it is, having a second one on standby IMO isn't responding to hysteria, it's prudent. You'll notice submarines don't have a 1% failure rate.
Also, it's not as if they're wasting resources. The standby shuttle will simply become the next mission.

Re:Possible maturity evident?

[DerekLyons]

With the Shuttle failure rate being what it is, having a second one on standby IMO isn't responding to hysteria, it's prudent.

With the failure rate so low, it's responding to hysteria.
 
 

Also, it's not as if they're wasting resources. The standby shuttle will simply become the next mission.

The standby Shuttle has been rolled out weeks before it would have been rolled out for it's next mission - which means it will be exposed to the elements for weeks longer than it would otherwise have been. Before it can become it's next mission, it will have to be rolled back to the VAB to have it's payload installed, and then rolled to pad 39A (it's currently on 39B) for launch - which means all the connections between the mobile and fixed pads have to be broken at 39B, attached in the VAB, broken in the VAB, and finally reattached at 39A for launch. This being a (theoretically) technical audience, I shouldn't have to recap the risks involved in all that extra handling and mating/demating.
 
 

until now, astronauts who stranded in space were SOL. NASA said in the past that should this happen, they'd take the next available shuttle and reassemble it as quickly as possible, but they recognized that this would probably be too late.

And the odds are non trivial that even with a rescue shuttle standing by - they still stand a good chance of being too late. Even with the new, streamlined, procedures in place, it will take 2-4 weeks to get Endeavor off the ground. But the maximum life span of Atlantis on orbit (assuming a failure that is recognized early on, and a subsequent drastic power down) is around 3 weeks. With every day Atlantis is on orbit, fully powered up, the odds of a sucessful rescue drop dramatically.

That leaves one question

[Anonymous Coward]

Who will rescue the rescuers?

Wondering about the docking ring for Hubble

[rrohbeck]

Will it be possible to dock a remote controlled craft to it? If yes, wouldn't it make sense to design one that can move the HST to an orbit with a different inclination so it can be serviced again in a couple of years? There was talk about de-orbiting Hubble safely at the end of its life, so why not "de-orbit" it to an orbit that's close to the ISS?

Re:Tow Truck?

[amRadioHed]

How is it that the guy repeating your point got +5 Insightful and you get bupkis? The mods work in mysterious ways.

Re:what is it going to do ?

[RedWizzard]

If the odds of a specific problem with a shuttle occurring are 1 in 100, the odds of it the same problem occurring on TWO shuttles at the same time is 1 in 10,000, not 1 in 100.

You're taking for granted that once a problem occurs, the odds that "it could occur" are no longer 1 in 100, they are 1:1 because it HAS occurred. In other words, the odds of a double failure pre-launch is 1:10,000. The odds of a double failure, once you HAVE a single failure, is 1:100. Until the single failure occurs, the odds remain at 1:10,000.

The point the parent is making is that if a particular problem occurs then it might mean that the design has a previously unknown flaw that makes that problem more likely than original estimates. So pre-launch the chance is 1 in 100 for each shuttle, which makes 1 in 10,000 for both. But if the first shuttle develops the problem then it might mean that the 1 in 100 was wrong - maybe it's actually 1 in 20. Now you're looking at launching a rescue mission with a vehicle that might have a 1 in 20 chance of failing, and you've got no time to properly assess the risk.

Re:what is it going to do ?

[RealGrouchy]

Sorry, I've already commented on this story, otherwise I'd mod you DOWN. In "regular" Shuttle missions, the destination is already to the ISS. If something goes wrong, they have time to wait at the ISS for another shuttle to be prepared and blasted up into space.

The reason *this* mission requires them both to be on the launch pad is because they *can't* get to the ISS, which you erroneously imply that they could. This has been mentioned in many comments, in most news stories, etc., etc.

- RG>