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The Rescue Plan That Could Have Saved Space Shuttle Columbia
An anonymous reader writes "In February, 2003, space shuttle Columbia was lost upon atmospheric re-entry. Afterward, NASA commissioned an exhaustive investigation to figure out what happened, and how it could be prevented in the future. However, they also figured out exactly what would have been required for a repair and rescue mission using Atlantis. Lee Hutchinson at Ars Technica went through the report and wrote a lengthy article explaining what such a mission would look like. In short: risky and terribly complex — but possible. 'In order to push Atlantis through processing in time, a number of standard checks would have to be abandoned. The expedited OPF processing would get Atlantis into the Vehicle Assembly Building in just six days, and the 24/7 prep work would then shave an additional day off the amount of time it takes to get Atlantis mated to its external tank and boosters. After only four days in the Vehicle Assembly Building, one of the two Crawler-Transporters would haul Atlantis out to Launch Complex 39, where it would stage on either Pad A or Pad B on Flight Day 15—January 30. ... Once on the pad, the final push to launch would begin. There would be no practice countdown for the astronauts chosen to fly the mission, nor would there be extra fuel leak tests. Prior to this launch, the shortest time a shuttle had spent on the launch pad was 14 days; the pad crews closing out Atlantis would have only 11 days to get it ready to fly.'"
However, this presupposes that you knew about the problem before trying to land.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Because you were cutting corners?
What then?
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I wonder what other options they investigated... for instance, would it have been feasible to do a spacewalk and relocate foam to critical areas? I know this stuff is way more complicated than any simplistic suggestions from the internet, but NASA pulled hell and high water to bring Apollo 13 home safely. Imminent emergencies have a way bringing out the greatness in an otherwise bureaucratic organization.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
...of only a few days, then this would be quite useful. You could get Denzel Washington in onthe project somehow.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
"Could" is a pretty strong word. As Lee goes into some depth on exactly how much of a record breaking effort it would have taken just to get Atlantis off the ground in time to save Columbia, and how many corners would have to be not only cut but removed with a chainsaw, it would be more accurate to say that the plan proposed by the CAIB shows that even if the Launch Director had pointed to Columbia as it was launching and said "Hey, there are some missing tiles there. We need to get Atlantis ready right now", they still wouldn't have been able to do it.
The thing to take away from this is not that NASA could have saved Columbia but didn't, but that they changed the plan for every other shuttle launch so that they would always have a second launch vehicle on standby. It's about learning from mistakes, not making them worse.
"The foam strike was not observed live. Only after the shuttle was orbiting Earth did NASA's launch imagery review reveal that the wing had been hit. Foam strikes during launch were not uncommon events, and shuttle program managers elected not to take on-orbit images of Columbia to visually assess any potential damage. Instead, NASA's Debris Assessment Team mathematically modeled the foam strike but could not reach any definitive conclusions about the state of the shuttle's wing. The mission continued"
..
.. said he tried at least half a dozen times to get the space agency to make the requests. There were two similar efforts by other engineers. All were turned aside. Mr. Rocha (pronounced ROE-cha) said a manager told him that he refused to be a "Chicken Little." The Columbia's flight director, LeRoy Cain, wrote a curt e-mail message that concluded, "I consider it to be a dead issue"`
NASA management choose to ignore reports of a foam strike, as they ignored previous problems with the O-Rings
'NASA engineer, Rodney Rocha
I think you have to go with both. As others have pointed out, humans can be awfully wrong too.
Having said this, there is no way, at all, that, if we had understood the gravity of the situation we would have done nothing. That's not the American or NASA spirit. Take John Glenn's first flight, where there was an indication that the heat shield and landing bag had been released in-orbit. Can you imagine being in that small capsule knowing that you might be about to burn up on re-entry? The incredible engineers, technicians, and flight directors considered every option and decided not to ignore the instrumentation reading (which was later proven to be false). They came up with a plan, and although it was untested and of course not analyzed by a computer, they put it into action, and sure enough, John Glenn made it back safely.
You're absolutely right that this level of complexity (and creativity) cannot be programmed into a computer model. It comes from ingenuity. Creativity. Outside-the-box thinking. We'll never know if the crew of Columbia could have repaired the damage, mitigated the risk, or been rescued because NOBODY TRIED. And they did deserve that fighting chance.
I'm not saying they would have made it, but they did deserve a chance.
The engineers who designed the rubber seals said that they were not designed for freezing temps, and to wait for it to warm up. No feel about it, the temperature was out of the design limit and the rubber was going to be brittle. Management wanted a launch that day and overrode the engineers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism