A pretty in-depth article on "Could Columbia Have Been Saved?"

[vger]

A very interesting read. Best to set some time aside for it though because it's pretty long. I remember a few months ago we were talking about whether or not it'd be ethical to make a movie about a "what if" scenario. Reading this made me feel like I was watching that movie.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/the-audacious-rescue-plan-that-might-have-saved-space-shuttle-columbia/

Edited February 2, 2016 by vger

[Mitchz95]

I have trouble believing NASA would be able to put something like that into action so quickly, but it is a fascinating read nonetheless.

[tater]

A very interesting read. 

[Halo_003]

What a sad article, brings back some of my early childhood memories. It is fascinating though.

[Nibb31]

That's an old article that has already been mentioned several times on these forums. It gives a glimmer of hope, but by most accounts, it would not have been possible in the end. The plan described in the paper relies on zero defects or delaying issues in the processing of the rescue orbiter, which simply never happened throughout the whole program, and cutting corners to go faster would only make things worse. Secondly, there was no way for the two vehicles to dock, and manual station keeping during the time necessary for the rescue operation would have exhausted the RCS fuel in both orbiters. 

I suggest reading the actual CAIB report, available here:

http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/home/CAIB_Vol1.html

Edited February 2, 2016 by Nibb31

[DerekL1963]

The article is a nice bit of SF 'what-if', but it's an open question as to how well it's grounded in reality.

The folks I know who do this stuff (NASA shuttle folks and private sector folks who write flight software for a living) are very, very, skeptical of the article's breezy claim that the software is easily adapted.   It's not just a matter of substituting Columbia for ISS as a rendezvous target.   Low inclination orbits have a different ascent trajectory, and the abort options and boundaries are different.  And Atlantis's crew would have to be trained on the new procedures on a timeline much shorter than usual.

And that's on top of the issues that Nibb31 mentions.

Edited February 2, 2016 by DerekL1963

[p1t1o]

I didn't get the impression that the article, or paper, was saying "this should have been done" or any other implication of failure.

The impression I did get was that even with 20/20 hindsight a rescue plan would have pretty much have to have reached the theoretical maximum in terms of perfection in order for it to have worked, which may as well read "No, they couldn't have done anything."

I also got the impression that the boys at NASA, when asked if they could have done anything to save the crew of the Columbia, were not afraid to say "Well actually...yes", even if it was an extreme hypothetical. 

[razark]

Even if enough people at the right levels knew the full extent of the damage and thought this mission was possible, there would not have been a rescue mission.  There were too many risks involved to justify putting a second crew and vehicle up.

As my father told me afterwards, "If it was the foam strike that caused the loss, the crew was dead on launch. It just took them 16 days to die."

[vger]

11 minutes ago, razark said:

Even if enough people at the right levels knew the full extent of the damage and thought this mission was possible, there would not have been a rescue mission.  There were too many risks involved to justify putting a second crew and vehicle up.

As my father told me afterwards, "If it was the foam strike that caused the loss, the crew was dead on launch. It just took them 16 days to die."

Though one has to wonder if there was anything they could have done anything to marginally improve their chances.

It wouldn't be the first time a shuttle re-entered with a dangerous hole in her heat shield. STS-27 did the Columbia thing, without doing the final Columbia thing. But it gets even more interesting. NASA was equally unconcerned while the shuttle was in orbit.

http://www.astronautix.com/flights/sts27.htm

Quote

a review of launch video showed that the nose fairing of the right SRB had broken off during ascent and hit Atlantis. The crew was asked to make an unplanned RMS robot arm session to view the right underwing of the shuttle as good as possible. Even with the poor quality of the video, the crew could see that hundreds of tiles had been damaged, and the damage beyond the range of the camera was unknowable. NASA seemed remarkably unconcerned. The crew couldn't decide if Houston was hiding deadly information that they couldn't do anything about (a la John Glenn's mission) or were merely incompetent. Either way they were infuriated. Finally crew commander Gibson told everyone "No reason to die all tensed up", so the crew spent the remainder of the mission looking at the earth out the windows and trying not to think about the fiery death they were pretty sure awaited them.

When it was back on the ground, then they took it seriously.

Edited February 2, 2016 by vger

[Mitchz95]

If I recall correctly, NASA couldn't do a full investigation of the damage at the time because the shuttle was carrying a classified payload for the Air Force. It wasn't until Atlantis landed that they got a good look and realized how close they had come to disaster.

I wonder where the space program would be today if STS-27 had been lost, just three years after Challenger...

[fredinno]

27 minutes ago, Mitchz95 said:

If I recall correctly, NASA couldn't do a full investigation of the damage at the time because the shuttle was carrying a classified payload for the Air Force. It wasn't until Atlantis landed that they got a good look and realized how close they had come to disaster.

I wonder where the space program would be today if STS-27 had been lost, just three years after Challenger...

I think the Shuttle would likely have been cancelled earlier.

[razark]

22 minutes ago, vger said:

Though one has to wonder if there was anything they could have done anything to marginally improve their chances.

Theoretically, of course they could have done something.

Practically, not really.

The mission wasn't equipped with the arm and was not expecting to conduct any EVA operations.  There was no way they could have visually inspected the vehicle themselves, without undertaking a massive effort.  Imagery requests from other agencies were not considered useful, as previous missions had shown that imagery attempts were not adequate to show any damage, and NASA personnel did not have security clearances to be aware of the current state of the technology.  Further, the simulations run on the ground showed that even if the large piece of foam had struck the TPS, it would not have sufficient force to cause significant damage.  This relieved a lot of the pressure to continue concern over the issue.  (Of course, these simulations were later shown to be incorrect.)  STS-27 did suffer extensive damage to the TPS, after all, and made it through fine.

Even if the damage had been known or suspected, there's not a lot the crew could do with what they had.  They would have to improvise a fix for the damage, then improvise a way to get someone to the damage location, improvise tools and process, and they would have to get it right the first time, because they were not prepared for EVA, much less multiple attempts.  Without detailed information about what the damage was, and what was needed to fix it, any action they took could have simply made the issue worse. 

A rescue mission would have been extremely risky, as well.  Foam shedding from the ET was a known issue that had been previously determined as not being a flight risk.  STS-107 demonstrated that the rationale they had developed was incorrect.  The problem was that no one knew why the foam was shed.  It might have been a property of the foam itself, meaning that any ET used for a rescue flight would have a high possibility of losing foam, which was obviously (at this point) an underestimated risk.  The shedding could have something to do with the manufacturing process that applied the foam, meaning any ET available for flight would have been equally suspect.  In addition, any attempt at a rescue would have meant rushing the entire stack through preflight.  That would have introduced an entirely new set of risks that could not be foreseen, such as skipping checks or overlooking issues that would normally have prevented a launch.  The crew would also have been rushed through training that normally takes a very long time.  As mentioned above, there was no way to dock the shuttles, so transferring the crew would have been quite a feat.  Again, OV-102 was not prepared for EVA.  The rescue mission would have to plan for quite a bit of unconventional operations.  And all of this would have to be done quickly.  Any rescue plan I've seen has been something that was drafted up in weeks or months.  NASA would have had to come up with a plan and make it happen in days.

 

And remember, NASA wasn't dealing with a hypothetical situation.  This wasn't some "Rescue RandomName Kerman from orbit" contract.  The NASA folks dealing with this were co-workers, neighbors, and friends of the crewmembers.  A lot of them spent quite a bit of time dealing with the "What could I have done differently?" question, and a lot of them took it very hard.

10 minutes ago, fredinno said:

I think the Shuttle would likely have been cancelled earlier.

Indeed.  At the time of STS-107, the shuttles were deeply involved in the ISS program, and that gave them a reason to continue flying.  With a second accident so soon after Challenger and no station to support, the shuttle would most likely have been retired.

[Kilmeister]

Interesting read, I've never looked into the details of the report as much as this article does.  But even after all the theoretical ideas which would've taken hollywood levels of luck to accomplish, the fact remains that by sending up a 2nd  mission, you are now KNOWINGLY sending up a crew with a possibly catastrophic defect on their vehicle.  Even if they had a standby shuttle ready to go, this would've still been the case.

[StrandedonEarth]

6 hours ago, vger said:

It wouldn't be the first time a shuttle re-entered with a dangerous hole in her heat shield. STS-27 did the Columbia thing, without doing the final Columbia thing. But it gets even more interesting. NASA was equally unconcerned while the shuttle was in orbit.

STS-27 very nearly did have a burn-through, it was just luck that the spot where a tile was knocked off happened to be where the aluminum skin was thicker. From the CAIB: 

Quote

Post-flight analysis concluded that structural damage was confined to the exposed cavity left by the missing tile, which happened to be at the location of a thick aluminum plate covering an L-band navigation antenna. Were it not for the thick aluminum plate, Gibson stated during a presentation to the Board that a burn-through may have occurred

 

[fredinno]

10 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

STS-27 very nearly did have a burn-through, it was just luck that the spot where a tile was knocked off happened to be where the aluminum skin was thicker. From the CAIB: 

 

Damn. 

[Exoscientist]

 Guess it's my nature to be a non-conformist. I think Columbia's crew could have been saved by first extending the time the crew could survive in orbit:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/123731-about-the-resupply-missions-in-quotthe-martianquot/#comment-2243785

 

 Bob Clark

Edited February 3, 2016 by Exoscientist

[Endersmens]

Very nice to read. A very interesting "What if?" proposal. I do not believe it would have been possible, but the whole proposal is pretty amazing. Were they to make a Hollywood movie about it, I fear people would get the wrong idea that it was actually possible, and begin to wonder why NASA didn't try it. (Assuming they don't know that NASA had already made a larger mistake in not addressing the foam strike in the first place)

Nevertheless, I would watch that movie many, many times. I watch Apollo 13, Space Cowboys, Astronaut Farmer, and Race to Space as much as I can stand, and will continue to do that with Gravity and Interstellar, regardless of their inaccuracies. Space is what I plan to live my life for, and any movie having to do with space exploration in the feasible, similar, or realistic sense (With the exception of Interstellar, that's just a great movie with some space things in it. And a shiny black hole.  ) is absolutely amazing to me. I would watch any movie about the NASA program, in any aspect of it, or other space programs as well. If they managed to mix a Hollywood movie with actual history in the rocketry world, they would for sure have my money.

Now time for a question. Does anyone know of any other great movies about space exploration? Even good documentaries? I wanna watch as much as I can. As well as articles, any articles like the one mentioned above I love to read.

Can anykerbal help me out?