Does is true that Mission Controllers during STS-107 mission knew that shuttle not survive reentry and not tell crew about it?

[Pawelk198604]

I've heard that mission controllers, the ill-fated STS-107 space shuttle Columbia, knew that the ferry has damaged thermal coating, but they did not tell the astronauts because they were not able to help them, so decided that since the space shuttle probably burned up in the atmosphere during re-entry so better if astronaut die unexpectedly, not knowing their fate.

 

I think it's a little annoying, for whom mission controllers they think they are?
For gods?
Astronauts need to know these things at least be able to say goodbye to loved ones. I know that even the Soviets during the Soyuz 1 mission during which the cosmonaut Komarov was killed, brought to the control center his wife in order to talk to him one last time, 

[Rakaydos]

They suspected, they knew they couldnt help if thrre was a problem,  so thhey crossed their fingers and pretended everything was normal.

[Temstar]

It's not the first time that this sort of decision has taken place in NASA, for example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-Atlas_6#Reentry
 

Basically a faulty microswitch was showing that the heat shield has come loose. After talking to his flight controllers the Flight Director Chris Kraft decided that it was most likely an instrumentation problem and reentry can go ahead as normal. But he was overruled by his bosses who wanted to keep the retrorocket attached to the heat shield while the spacecraft reentered so that the force of reentry will push the retro pack which will then push the heat shield against the spacecraft until it hits denser air.

So that's what they had John Glenn do without telling him why he shouldn't jettison the retrorockets. He survived the reentry but was quite a hallowing experience with bits of the retro rocket breaking off and thumping against his spacecraft in reentry.

After this Chris Kraft said:

"My flight controllers and I were a lot closer to the systems and to events than anyone in top management. From now on, I swore, they'd pay hell before they overruled any decision I made."

Glenn wasn't happy either being denied information about his spacecraft. He said since astronaut needs to deal with problems as they arise in space (which is after all the whole point of having a pilot rather than "human cargo") they need to know everything about their spacecraft.

So yes unfortunately, it's always been the case that NASA admin, the flight controllers and the astronauts have different priorities when problem arise.

[fredinno]

They could've helped, but it would really be a stretch- the CO2 scrubber and power problems would make Apollo 13 look simple by comparison. At least you didn't have 7 crew, and the crew could only be saved if they knew right after launch the crew was screwed.

[Kerbart]

Part of the problem was that if the wing was inspected and did show damage (which it would), then there was nothing that could be done about it. So the decision was made to not inspect the wing, as it wouldn't make a difference. With hindsight that was maybe no the right decision, but that's what happened. It's not like mission control knew there was a problem; but they closed their eyes and put fingers in their ears, so to say, and hoped for the best.

It makes you wonder how many similar situations there were where "hope for the best" was the chosen solution and actually worked out.

[Frybert]

Off that bat they didn't KNOW that the ship was doomed. It was known there was a foam strike. Indeed some of the people watching the tapes brought up to the head controllers that there had been a rather large foam strike. From here it gets a little complicated. I remember after the launch it made a FEW news casts that something had happened but after the first day or so the news stopped reporting on it (a few years before that on Glenn's shuttle flight a piece of the tail fell off and hit one of the engines, they sort of played it up all through the launch and then again during the landing but nothing came of it so I suspect they were kind of trying to go for that this time around too). Foam strikes were actually pretty common, and indeed many shuttles returned with damage to their thermal protection systems. At the time it was considered a maintenance issue that could be dealt with once the shuttle returned. As others have stated there wasn't much they could have done if it actually turned out to be a problem, which combined with the fact that previous foam strikes weren't a problem led to the decision not to do anything about it. In reality had they known for 100% certainty that there was a hole in the wing they probably would not have had them reenter when they did, however any plan that they would have come up with would have been slim to none in the chances of getting the crew back. It was for this reason the shuttle program finally canceled: the shuttle was simply not as safe as it needed to be, and thirty years of NASA culture was based on the shuttle being as safe as it needed to be.

Edited January 11, 2016 by Frybert

[Alias72]

1. They wouldn't have known there was a hole unless they checked (which the administrators decided not to do because they didn't know there was a hole).

2. Foam strikes of this magnitude were highly uncommon.

3. Foam strikes were considered mission critical as of the start of the STS program. This never changed, people just stopped paying attention. The administrators in particular felt there was no need to investigate further. What happened is that intercity photo working group discovered the impact, forwarded a request to 3 different departments which formed a committee. That committee agreed to forward the request for imaging to Johnson space center engineering management directorate who declined the request.

4. I agree that there were limited alternatives. With hindsight we can conclude that any idea they came up with would have been better then reentering (because there was no chance they would survive a reentry).

In fact NASA didn't know about the hole because they never looked. The Columbia report has the information you want here. They recommend removing all control of technical requirements and waivers from senior management and placing it in the hands of a new body of engineers, nto responsible at all to the body responsible for scheduling and program costs (CAIB R7.5-1).

[radonek]

Same thing happened during Apollo 12 flight: stack got struck by lightning and, among other things, there was possibility that parachute pyrocartridges fired. Mission control decided not to tell anyone, since it was considered unlikely and they could not do anything about it anyway. I wonder if anybody ever investigated whether they were right, or just lucky…

[Matuchkin]

14 hours ago, Pawelk198604 said:

Astronauts need to know these things at least be able to say goodbye to loved ones. I know that even the Soviets during the Soyuz 1 mission during which the cosmonaut Komarov was killed, brought to the control center his wife in order to talk to him one last time

Would you like to know you're going to die, reentering and accepting your death or staying  in LEO until your air runs out? Or would you like to have a "successful" mission, have a good reentry, then suddenly black out and not even feel or know what happened?

[Frybert]

1 hour ago, radonek said:

Same thing happened during Apollo 12 flight: stack got struck by lightning and, among other things, there was possibility that parachute pyrocartridges fired. Mission control decided not to tell anyone, since it was considered unlikely and they could not do anything about it anyway. I wonder if anybody ever investigated whether they were right, or just lucky…

Actually in that case there was literally nothing that could be done about it. There was no way to know if the lightning strike set off the parachutes except to try and deploy them. Even if they could have found out if the pyros had been fired, there was no backup. They simply would have been left with the choice to die of lack of oxygen in space or by being crushed when they hit the water. I'm not sure what you would investigate.

[radonek]

43 minutes ago, Frybert said:

Actually in that case there was literally nothing that could be done about it. There was no way to know if the lightning strike set off the parachutes except to try and deploy them. Even if they could have found out if the pyros had been fired, there was no backup. They simply would have been left with the choice to die of lack of oxygen in space or by being crushed when they hit the water. I'm not sure what you would investigate.

I do not challenge the decision. I'm just curious if those pyrocartridges really could be triggered by lightining. 

[mikegarrison]

This is a case where normal human behavior gets people killed. When something dangerous happens once, it scares us. But when it happens again and again, we get used to it. Then we start actually minimizing it, because if it didn't kill us the first hundred times, we figure it won't kill us the 101st time either.

But that's why repeated foam strikes that repeatedly damaged the orbiter were tolerated. It's also why repeated partial burn-throughs on the SRBs were tolerated. The more times they happened, the less people worried about them -- even though the opposite reaction of worrying more about them would have been wiser. Both of those eventually killed shuttles and their crews.

After the first or second time that foam strikes damaged the shuttle, NASA should have fixed the foam problem. Or at least they should have figured out how to do on-orbit repairs. Instead, they actually worried less about the foam because it had happened so often.

[Motokid600]

I was more surprised the LES motors didn't fire on Apollo 12. As for Columbia. We've had this discussion in the past. A few people came forward and said that NASA could have conducted a rescue. So which is it?

If the crew was told they're not going to survive reentry and to start rationing supplies and life support... Could it have been done? Could an unmanned shuttle have been launched and docked in enough time?

Infact... Could the shuttle even operate unmanned or made to do so? If not then could it have seated more then seven should such a situation arise? 

Edited January 11, 2016 by Motokid600

[Frybert]

12 minutes ago, Motokid600 said:

I was more surprised the LES motors didn't fire on Apollo 12. As for Columbia. We've had this discussion in the past. A few people came forward and said that NASA could have conducted a rescue. So which is it?

If the crew was told they're not going to survive reentry and to start rationing supplies and life support... Could it have been done? Could an unmanned shuttle have been launched and docked in enough time?

Infact... Could the shuttle even operate unmanned or made to do so? If not then could it have seated more then seven should such a situation arise? 

The simplest answer to your questions is no. The shuttle was designed to NOT be able to fly unmanned. There was some part of the flight that needed to be done manually (my memory tells me it was some part of the landing, but there may have been something during launch as well). So two of the seven seats would have to be taken up by another crew. The shuttles were not as modular as apollo was so upping the crew factor would have been more than replacing some storage with couches. You then would have had to prepare the rescue shuttle very hastily. And then after all that hope nothing goes wrong on THAT flight.

 

Could they have done SOMETHING? Yes. Would it have likely failed or at least not rescued everyone? Absolutely.

[Frybert]

16 hours ago, Kerbart said:

It makes you wonder how many similar situations there were where "hope for the best" was the chosen solution and actually worked out.

I mentioned it earlier, but there's the video. I think it certainly fits that description.

 

Edited January 11, 2016 by Frybert

[Motokid600]

Well it'd only be unmanned for the launch. I just think something would have been better then nothing. It'd have made for a grim scenario though if the rushed rescue shuttle failed... Idk the whole thing is grim there's no getting away from that. 

[razark]

The people on the ground did not know the vehicle was fatally damaged.  Concerns were brought up and addressed.  The crew was informed of what was happening.

Even if the ground crew knew the shuttle would not survive re-entry, there would not have been a rescue mission launched.  Too many unknowns were involved to risk sending up a second orbiter.

 

13 hours ago, Alias72 said:

3. Foam strikes were considered mission critical as of the start of the STS program. This never changed, people just stopped paying attention. The administrators in particular felt there was no need to investigate further. What happened is that intercity photo working group discovered the impact, forwarded a request to 3 different departments which formed a committee. That committee agreed to forward the request for imaging to Johnson space center engineering management directorate who declined the request.

...

They recommend removing all control of technical requirements and waivers from senior management and placing it in the hands of a new body of engineers, nto responsible at all to the body responsible for scheduling and program costs (CAIB R7.5-1).

Part of the problem with the imagery requests were that no one knew if they could get good imagery.  The quality of the images capable was classified, and the people who needed to know didn't have the access.  This was corrected later, along with the Technical Warrant Holders mentioned, although not all the engineers were "new".  They were just aware of the technical aspects.  Also, there were multiple requests for imagery sent to multiple people from multiple people.  Different requests got crossed, and there was some confusion over which requests were being considered and which had already been rejected.

 

3 hours ago, 073198681 said:

Would you like to know you're going to die, reentering and accepting your death or staying  in LEO until your air runs out? Or would you like to have a "successful" mission, have a good reentry, then suddenly black out and not even feel or know what happened?

There was no sudden blackout.  The crew would have known something was happening, and the control stick was moved after the vehicle started to lose control.  I know the engineers working the aftermath would have moments during their meetings along the lines of "At X time, the vehicle experienced a sudden left roll of Y degrees per second, which must be the time when the wing came off... my god, what the crew must have been going through at that time!" followed by moments of silence.

 

42 minutes ago, Frybert said:

There was some part of the flight that needed to be done manually (my memory tells me it was some part of the landing, but there may have been something during launch as well).

The majority of re-entry and landing could have been done remotely.  The undocking, lowering the landing gear, and opening the drag chute were not capable of being controlled remotely at the time of STS-107.  Later, a cable was developed to add the functions, but the plan was most likely to ditch a damaged orbiter rather than possibly bring it in over populated areas.

Edited January 11, 2016 by razark

[Kerbart]

49 minutes ago, Motokid600 said:

I was more surprised the LES motors didn't fire on Apollo 12. As for Columbia. We've had this discussion in the past. A few people came forward and said that NASA could have conducted a rescue. So which is it?

If the crew was told they're not going to survive reentry and to start rationing supplies and life support... Could it have been done? Could an unmanned shuttle have been launched and docked in enough time?

I'm too lazy to look up the link, but when you google it you can find some interesting reading on it. The TLRD was basically:

• The STS-107 mission had effectively to be scrapped as the crew would go in an ultra-low activity mode to preserve as many life-support resources as possible, to extend their duration in space
• NASA would meanwhile have to rush another shuttle ready for launch (The Martian illustrates quite well what the risks are when you go down that route)
• Two shuttles cannot dock each other in space, so you'll have to EVA the Columbia crew over to the rescue shuttle. Added difficulty: no space suits. Additional difficulty: putting on a spacesuit, unlike what is shown in the movies, is apparently not a DIY operation. So getting that last person out of the airlock is another challenge. And doing EVA's that are not practiced is also a big uncertainty. I'm sure there would be ways around it, but in the end transferring crew from one shuttle to the other would be a logistical nightmare with plenty of options for disaster.
• Columbia was filled to max capacity. As earlier stated, at that point in time shuttles where not able to fly without crew. And I suspect you'd need two pilots, not one (but not sure about that). At any rate  you'd have to jerry-rig an extra seat in the rescue shuttle. Perhaps two, if you're willing to fly the rescue mission with a single pilot.
• There's no way to get the Columbia back, so that's a write-off, regardless of the damage or not.

In the end, a rescue mission would have been extremely costly (of course no argument in the face of human life but we all know how the corporate ball rolls). There were a lot of things that could go wrong and likely would go wrong, but for the mission to save everyone everything had to be executed perfectly. The odds were definitely against a rescue mission, and that was assuming there was something wrong with Columbia in the first place (which at that point was at best a suspicion, nothing more). From a practical point of view, a rescue mission wasn't a realistic option at the time; and without the option of a rescue mission, inspecting the wing for damage became a pointless exercise as there was nothing that could be done about it.

Would the crew have been better off with the chance of saying their goodbyes to family and loved ones before descent? Probably. But suppose their was minor damage to an extend that the descend was salvagable, but then got ruined by a distracted crew who panicked? Then what? Hindsight is easy, and we'll never know what the best outcome could have been.

[Motokid600]

What about rendezvousing with the 2003 ISS?

[razark]

Just now, Motokid600 said:

What about rendezvousing with the 2003 ISS?

STS-107 was not capable of reaching the ISS from the orbit it was in.

[Motokid600]

Different inclination. Stupid question...

[Kerbart]

14 minutes ago, Motokid600 said:

Different inclination. Stupid question...

Don't be too hard on yourself, most people wouldn't even know what that means. Most people outside this forum, of course...

[Pawelk198604]

4 hours ago, radonek said:

Same thing happened during Apollo 12 flight: stack got struck by lightning and, among other things, there was possibility that parachute pyrocartridges fired. Mission control decided not to tell anyone, since it was considered unlikely and they could not do anything about it anyway. I wonder if anybody ever investigated whether they were right, or just lucky…

 

Lucky for them Apollo 12 was under command of Real Life Jebediah Kerman

the Astronaut Charles "Pete" Conrad

 

 

 

Edited January 11, 2016 by Pawelk198604

[Frybert]

21 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

Don't be too hard on yourself, most people wouldn't even know what that means. Most people outside this forum, of course...

*coughGravitycough*

[Matuchkin]

1 hour ago, razark said:

There was no sudden blackout.  The crew would have known something was happening, and the control stick was moved after the vehicle started to lose control.  I know the engineers working the aftermath would have moments during their meetings along the lines of "At X time, the vehicle experienced a sudden left roll of Y degrees per second, which must be the time when the wing came off... my god, what the crew must have been going through at that time!" followed by moments of silence.

Well I'd rather know I'm gonna die for 2 minutes than for 2 hours.