NASA says Columbia Rescue was Possible 236
nuke-alwin writes "Apparently NASA is saying that a rescue mission may have been possible for the Columbia crew. I first saw this on TV, but Chicago Sun-Times is also reporting the story. The risks would have been great, and may have endangered more astronaut's lives."
Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda (Score:5, Insightful)
-Sean
Re:Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda (Score:3, Insightful)
The astronauts already complain that few of them get to do space walks, and a visual inspection could be a good opportunity for allowing this.
What NASA does NOT need at this time is more "overseeing" bureaucrats collecting more data they don't understand, handing it back and forth to avoid personal responsibility and accountability, while not accomplishing more than
Re:Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda (Score:2)
Hrmm (Score:5, Interesting)
They could have kept the shuttle up there for 30 days, would that have been enough time to launch a rescue mission?
Re:Hrmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Two shuttles in orbit would have been amazing stuff.
Put a second crew in jeopardy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Put a second crew in jeopardy? (Score:3, Informative)
As it was, they didn't realize the wing was damaged (or the severity of the damage) until it was too late, and the accident investigation is still continuing.
Weather? (Score:2)
Re:Hrmm (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hrmm (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hrmm (Score:2, Insightful)
I would hope that they have a redundant mission control facility at some geograpically-different location (in case the active one is rendered unusable), which could serve a second shuttle if necessary.
Re:Hrmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hrmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Better would be not to rush a rescue, but rather rush finding a way to resupply Columbia so it could stay up long enough to wait for a non-rushed rescue.
With all the military launch capacity, plus various other country's space programs, it would probably not take too long to get something up that could deliver food/water/oxygen and whatever else is needed to keep things going.
Re:Hrmm (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yep, resupply was possible. (Score:3, Interesting)
The Progress which was sent to ISS could have reached Columbia. Columbia was in a lower orbit, and I'm sure the Progress launch rocket was not built for a specific orbit and could have been reprogrammed for the Columbia orbit. I don't know how easily the payload could have been replaced, but if Columbia was waiting in orbit for a month there should have been time to change Progress payloads. A Progres
Re:Yep, resupply was possible. (Score:2, Interesting)
RTFA (Score:5, Interesting)
However, Atlantis had already entered preparations for its scheduled March 1 launch-- if that had not been the case, Columbia and its crew would in all likelihood have been SOL. Prepping a shuttle for a launch is a tremendous, time-consuming undertaking, and it's not something you can cut corners on even if there is a "gotta get it up there quick" type situation. Perhaps they could institute round-the-clock operations via multiple shifts, but I don't know if they have enough qualified workers to be able to handle something like that.
Also keep in mind that hastily laying on a rescue launch increases the chance of something going catastrophically wrong on that mission. If NASA lost a second shuttle while trying to save the crew of a stuck-in-orbit first shuttle that would then be destroyed on re-entry, confidence in the space program would plummet. Congress would yank even more funding from NASA, and they might as well just deorbit the ISS a few days later-- maybe we could all get a free taco out of it this time.
~Philly
Re:RTFA (Score:2)
Standard operating procedure is nearly round-the-clock already (for the specific procedures that are the slowest, and bottleneck the overall prep time)
Re:RTFA (Score:3, Interesting)
When the fuel cells on the Shuttle run out, large amounts of the shuttle's equipment would be destroyed by the cold. The inside of the shuttle would likely settle down to -20 or -30 degrees.. but it would be possible to stretch things a couple more weeks while a rescue plan was developed.
There
Re:safe bailout altitude (Score:3, Interesting)
Still, bailout at 10,000 feet is conceivable with the systems as they exist. The main reason for a bailout as opposed to a controlled landing is it's likely that the landing gear would fail to deploy; and at the landing speeds and loads the shuttle experiences, lacking a gear on landing would definitely be LOCV (loss of crew and vehicle).
It's too bad that th
Whats done is done... (Score:5, Insightful)
And before people start yammering about sending them to the ISS, someone give them a physics book, they couldn't have.
I hope that NASA learns something (when something falls off a vessle it usually isn't a good sign!!!) and to be a bit more catious in the future. BUT I think they should get right back up on the horse so to speak and keep going. To quote "Enterprise" (and one of their better episodes recently) "If we are ever going to explore deep space we are going to need to take a few risks" and thats the truth of the matter.
-- It's harder to fly into the sun than out of the galaxy, go figure --
NASA did *worse* than not even try (Score:4, Interesting)
Then they proactively squashed any attempts to get actual pictures of the shuttle after the debris hit on launch.
I sure hope to hell we find out the name of the official who prevented the taking of photos of Columbia - because it's not enough for that dolt to have to live with tha decision the rest of his life. Everyone on the planet needs to know that he was such a fucking moron that he didn't even want to look and therefore doomed seven people to certain death.
That's the crime here - people at NASA undertook active efforts to keep themselves in the dark. That's utterly inexcusable.
Manslaughter (Score:2)
Another thought about this:
I wonder if manslaughter charges would apply to this guy, whoever he is. Because he IS responsible for those people dying. Or at least he's guilty of neglegence. He should have pushed for the photos that could have saved those astronaut's lives.
Re:NASA did *worse* than not even try (Score:5, Insightful)
Who killed the attempt at photos and why? That is the question I have been asking for 3 months.
Also the board has now allready recommeded to NASA that ALL shuttles be photographed as SOP from now on. If it so lousy a method why bother to require it?
Re:NASA did *worse* than not even try (Score:2)
Re:Whats done is done... (Score:3, Informative)
Well, kind of. A physics book wouldn't do much good, but an Astrodynamics book would. Hell, a geometry book would do better than a straight-up physics book. And here's why:
Even though the inclination (angle between flight path and equator when passing the equator) and semi-major axis (fancy-talk for altitude under circular orbits) were nearly the same for the Shuttle and the ISS, it i
Re:Whats done is done... (Score:2)
Ok I'll bite your troll..
please tell me WHY exactly they couldn't have.
A simple unmanned launch of fuel to an intercepting orbit will get them there. and if we launch any shuttle without the ability to do at least 1 person spacewalk then we need to start knocking heads with the idiots at mission control, as they are not qualified to run the space program.
You dont go for a cross country
WWKD? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:WWKD? (Score:5, Funny)
Man, that guy had it made.
Re:WWKD? (Score:3, Funny)
Get in with some foxy alien chick and forget his crew.
On a serious note, in light of such tragedy, it's best to learn from mistakes, not dwell on them, and continue to move forward in space exploration. The resources used to determine that a rescue was possible should have been used to aid in getting the space program airborne again.
Re:WWKD? (Score:5, Funny)
Kaaaahhhhhn!!!!!!
Sorry
Re:WWKD? (Score:2, Funny)
You! Must not! Watch! South Park! He! Would ask! What! Would! Brian Boitano Do!
And then! Send! Some extras! In red shirts! Who don't even! appear! in the! closing! credits!
Junk the Shuttle -- and ISS while you're at it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of the satellites that are "launched" by the shuttle suffer from the design constraint that they have to fit into the friggin' bay AND have room for the accompanying boosters that will put them into their real orbit once the shuttle lets them out. Again, the shuttle can't go high enough for real deployment.
The idea of capturing and reparing satellites is inherently absurd; most aren't where the shuttle can get 'em and the total cost of the program utterly dwarfs the expense that would have been incurred had they said of the Hubble "Well, we screwed it up...build another one and get it right this time."
The safety record sucks. After Challenger Richard Feynman put the probability of a fatal accident at one in fifty. So far, NASA's on the money and the nature of the shuttle is such that if someone dies, everybody dies.
Lest I be misunderstood, I understand the romantic and scientific appeal of manned space flight, of the visceral sense of satisfaction we can have as a species when we look up to the skies and say "We live there." I'm a strong proponent of that. I also recognize the complaints that the money spent on that is money not spent on (feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, inoculating the sick, fill in your pet cause). The manned space program is hellishly uneconomical and a great deal of that can be laid at the feet of the shuttle program.
It's a white elephant without a mission, a bastard child of a spacecraft and an airplane which like most gadgets that try to do two fundamentally different things does neither well. Its payload capacity compared to heavy-lift rockets is a joke, it's barely capable of crawling out of the atmosphere, it's presented a tremendous constraint to the rest of the space program by forcing many missions to be less than they could have been in order to be shuttle-doable, and it bears repeating that every fifty flights it kills everyone on board.
It's time to ground the shuttle fleet permanently. Space isn't going anywhere. Stop pouring the hundreds of millions of dollars into the shuttle program and pour them into a new design effort. Scrap the silly "space-plane" concept and develop a family of lifters and craft that _can_ be used for many things but don't back NASA into a corner that forces them to use it for all missions. Make crew safety an inherent feature (recognizing that there are tradeoffs and that getting out of the gravity well is a fundamentally dangerous activity). Stop throwing good money after bad on that trinity dies ISS as well, and use the collective resources of the two programs to start over. It's not true that the second design is always better than the first (see again ISS and Mir/Skylab) but you're wise to play those odds.
Let's do it over. And do it right.
WARNING - MATRIX SPOILER!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Dirty BASTARD! I HAVEN'T SEEN THE FILM YET!!!!
Talisman
Re:WARNING - MATRIX SPOILER!!! (Score:2)
Re:Junk the Shuttle -- and ISS while you're at it. (Score:5, Informative)
Before Challenger they were, Hubble and KH-12 have similar chasis for Shuttle launches, but after the delay from Challenger NRO/NSA/DMA switched to Titan for KH and Lacrosse.
Commerical sat launches were outlawed by Congress after Challenger and while some recce birds were launched by Shuttle after Challenger, it was due to problems with Delta/Titan which have been fixed and so for the last decade they do the launching.
Everything now is launched by the Russians, Chinese, Delta, Ariane, Titan, Sealaunch now.
Nor does Shuttle capture and repair anything anymore but Hubble.
Re:Junk the Shuttle -- and ISS while you're at it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, it's a rare, rare satellite that would be worth a launch to repair. However, on the off chance a Hubble-situation happened, you don't even need a Shuttle to fix it. It's also possible to spacewalk from an ELV. A nice Titan IV rocket (or whatever improved version we could've made if ELV research wasn't cancelled in favor of the Shuttle) could handle a fine repair crew for 25% the cost of a Shuttle flight. (And with a safer re-entry, too)
Re:Junk the Shuttle -- and ISS while you're at it. (Score:2)
Stop throwing good money after bad on that trinity dies ISS as well, and use the collective resources of the two programs to start over. It's not true that the second design is always better than the first (see again ISS and Mir/Skylab) but you're wise to play those odds.
Re:Junk the Shuttle -- and ISS while you're at it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Skylab was intended for exactly three missions, with no intention of resupply or re-use. The vehicle itself had severe problems -- one solar panel tore off at launch -- which limited its usefulness (the first mission ended up being largely wasted on rescuing the station). Mir was no picnic, either -- there was a major fire, and the collission with a resupply ship. The ISS has, so far, been comparatively problem-free.
Skylab's orbit was not that high -- roughly 270 miles [nasa.gov] -- in any case it was launched in 1973 and crashed to Earth only six years later, in 1979. The ISS's current altitude [nasa.gov] is 242 miles. I can't find any orbital data on Mir, but the space shuttle got there, too, and it didn't take more than a few years to crash back to Earth after maintenance ended.
Most of the satellites that are "launched" by the shuttle suffer from the design constraint that they have to fit into the friggin' bay AND have room for the accompanying boosters that will put them into their real orbit once the shuttle lets them out. Again, the shuttle can't go high enough for real deployment.
I don't know what you mean by "real orbit", but the shuttle deployed Hubble at an altitude of 368 miles [hubblesite.org] and has visited it several times since. No current manned vehicle can go much higher than this; and none can reach geosynchronous orbit. Shuttle deployment is not a good idea for commercial satellites, but it makes sense for large, multi-billion-dollar one-shot spacecraft (like Hubble) because if something goes wrong there is an option to bring it back to Earth or do on-orbit repair.
The safety record sucks.
The claimed accident rate of one-in-400 is clearly off. The demonstrated accident rate of 2-in-113 is not atypical [futurepundit.com] of comparable launch vehicles, such as Soyuz. It's even more impressive given that the shuttle system is intended to be reusable, while Soyuz is launched new each time.
It's a white elephant without a mission
Its mission has been and always will be to service the ISS.
It's very tempting to look at any complicated system that has problems, and say, "Bah, this is useless, let's start over". The reality is that experience gained using the shuttle and the ISS is crucial to the continued exploitation of space.
Space flight is a risky business and will continue to be so. There is no guarantee that a new system with untested hardware will be any safer.
Re:Junk the Shuttle -- and ISS while you're at it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Junk the Shuttle -- and ISS while you're at it. (Score:2)
Meanwhile, the mission of the ISS is to keep the shuttle program alive by requiring constant care and feeding.
The genius of NASA is to create a self-contained system of mutually dependent white elephants, and then justify them all in terms of one another.
It reminds me of a job I had as a rookie programmer, where I wrote an unmaintainable, overfeatured and useless program, left the company, and then racked up many consulting hours patching my
At least cite the source... (Score:2)
Re:Junk the Shuttle -- and ISS while you're at it. (Score:2)
We should all recognize the power that crystals have.
Lets also ban that horendiously dangerous dihydrogen oxide. It contributes to more deaths each year than you want to know about.
While we are at it, let's require all vehicles on the road to have an energy efficiency of 95% or higher.
-Rusty
Do we really need to hear this? (Score:4, Interesting)
There are an infinite number of things we could have done. Why live in hindsight now?
Re:Do we really need to hear this? (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you think that they're going to do next time a shuttle is up in space and has possible damage?
Just about everything that they could have done for Columbia, plus whatever new stuff they change on account of looking at what NASA could have done for Columbia.
They already tried rescues... (Score:3, Funny)
The creepy thing (Score:2)
I couldn't help in the early days after the columbia disaster but thinking about that movie.
and everyone said I was a fool... (Score:5, Interesting)
Administrators didn't want to admit the possiblity of a rescue becuase it makes the decision to not have the shuttle inspected using telescopes look even worse.
Nice troll (Score:2, Funny)
as what, a janitor ? since you read slashdot, methink you weren't in the top decisional sphere
Re:Nice troll (Score:3, Funny)
Re:and everyone said I was a fool... (Score:2)
There seems to be a very negative trend towards escalation of commitment as part of the organizational culture at NASA, the first shuttle explosion in the face of the knowledge of the o-ring problem being every management textbook's favorite example.
Let's face it, people don't care about other people's lives, especially if they go up in smoke way above the earth and come down as clean dust. They care about covering their own arses.
With this in mind, I think the problem is the fact that it is a severely
Re:and everyone said I was a fool... (Score:3, Insightful)
NASA management knew the orings were charing before Challenger, and they knew falling foam was causing damage to the surface integrity before Columbia.
The killing off of NASA's failure analysis group in California is also a problem. NASA saved lots of money killing that shop, bu
Re:and everyone said I was a fool... (Score:2)
"Do not try and bend the shuttle, that's impossible. Instead only try and realize the truth: There is no shuttle. Then you'll see that it's not the shuttle that burns in reentry, only yourself."
Possible, but not likely. (Score:5, Insightful)
And what of the risk of sending a crew up on a mission with zero training for that specific mission? As I understand it, they practice space walks for months ahead of time... The suggest this space walk with no training at all. And rushing another space shuttle into orbit doesn't exactly sound safe.
Sure, there is a chance they could have saved them. We could also have lost twice as many people.
Really, this just sounds like a witch hunt, and someone laying the groundwork for lawsuits.
--T
Re:Possible, but not likely. (Score:5, Interesting)
First we had (on
Now we have the "at what risk" crowd saying that it would have been too risky, and basically apologizing for NASA and Ron Dittemore.
NASA and Ron Dittemore had 20 years and 102 flights of warning to think about tile problems, foam problems, tile repair kits, and rescue options.
Me, I'm with the I love the space program, and I think the most courageous thing a leader at NASA would do, if they are as underfunded as we imagine they are, is to fucking resign, publically, and loudly. If Ron Dittemore, holder of One of the Most Prestigious Leadership Jobs in the World really thinks the shuttle is unsafe or underfunded, then it's his job to resign. If NASA management is such that it rewards employees and managers for saying yes to everything and to always do it with smaller budgets, well, THAT IS an accident waiting to happen and one WE need to fix before the shuttle flies again.
I don't want to explain to my kids again how NASA management decisions and leadership failed and another shuttle has uh, "had a bad day" (god what a sick euphemism that ran throughout NASA).
Re:Possible, but not likely. (Score:2)
Re:Possible, but not likely. (Score:2)
Which is way too bad, because I'd really prefer to work for NASA than any other job I can imagine.
Re:Possible, but not likely. (Score:2)
Simple. We already have astronauts with experience in space walking. Send them. And we wouldn't have needed to send a full crew on the second shuttle. Just a pilot and copilot, and maybe a third crew member
Re:Possible, but not likely. (Score:2)
Basically it boils down to the fact that the spacewalk experience can be tremendously disorienting. You train and train so y
Why send another shuttle ? (Score:3, Redundant)
Re:Why send another shuttle ? (Score:3, Informative)
So it would've taken 4 Soyuz to evacuate the Columbia crew, risking 4 individual pilots. As opposed to the two pilots who could bring a shuttle up (maybe even just one could do it, but NASA'd never try that).
Not possible. (Score:5, Informative)
B) Soyuz Capsules have such a severe reentry and landing profile that each crewmember must have a specially designed seat liner to avoid serious injury on landing. ISS Crews take their seat liners up with them on the Shuttle incase they have to use the Soyuz docked there to escape.
C) Soyuz Capsules don't have an Airlock, they have a simple hatch. So they would have had to depressurize and repressurize the capsule multiple times for the crew transfer. No idea how many repressurizations a Soyuz capsule is rated for, nor if enough consumables are available onboard for multiple repressurizations.
D) Russia can barely build enough Soyuz capsules to fulfill their current committments. Firing off one (they would have needed 4 due to the 7 member crew and the requirement for at least 1 cosmonaut in each one) would have been technically and physically impossible under the time constraints they were operating under. Even if they DID Have 4 spare Soyuz capsules lying around, it's doubtful they would have had 4 launch vehicles available and able to be prepped and launched in rapid succession.
Inshort, completely impossible.
Non news (Score:4, Funny)
Uh, duh?
Re:Non news (Score:5, Funny)
teacher: "Now if you turn to page 165.."
student: "Ah man too bad it wasn't page 163, I turned right to it!!!"
Geez, and if I knew i was going to be dumped i could have dumped the girl first.. oh wait I read
Pointless Speculation (Score:2, Troll)
But at the time there was only evidence of foam falling. NASA could have had a recon sat take a look at Shuttle during an orbit but what if the damage was too small to spot? They couldn't spacewalk out there and examine that point on the Columbia.
They couldn't have said "Well there might be a hole, stop everything, we'll rush another Shuttle up there and try to do a risky space transfer that's
Risk (Score:3, Insightful)
But sadly, and honestly, I would have disagreed with this approach due to the risk to the manned space program. Had both shuttles not returned (which was rather likely, I believe), I don't think we would have returned to space for at least a decade.
I guess that is a rather confusing/conflicting point of view.
In general, I'm still rather angry about things like the spy agencies not giving satellite time. This is where the root of the problem lies in our space program (by "our", I mean "man's", not the US's).
Okkkkay... (Score:3, Insightful)
This isn't like someone making a huge error, it's a small error. Nasa designs their parts to be probability-tolerent. IE, they build a part, test it 1000 times, figure out how many times it will fail then improve on it. They get their parts down to a 99% fault tolerency and then they put 8 or 9 of them on the shuttle to lessen the chance of them breaking.
It isn't like the crew didn't know about it and didn't take a look at the damage before re-entry and figure it was minor. Sometimes accidents just happen, miscalculators lead to deaths and we aren't perfect. But you're an idiot for saying that these people are a bunch of dumbnuts for not sending up a shuttle for every little incident.
The problem with Nasa is that they are low on funding and are run (as in, leaded by, not as in the people donig the work) by a bunch of idiots. This wouldn't have happened if they weren't going up in a 20 year old rickety tin can, and they probably do have the funding to build new shuttles they just waste so much that they don't have the recources to do so.
Buerocracy is a bitch.
Associated Press leaves out the best bits (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Associated Press leaves out the best bits (Score:5, Funny)
two or three rolls of duct-tape and it would've been as good as new.
Oh no, it may have endangered more astronauts! (Score:5, Insightful)
Ask the other astronauts, "We're looking for someone to go up to try and rescue these guys." I doubt one of them would say no, regardless of the danger. They would hope that those other astronauts would do the same for them if the tables were reversed, eh? It's part of the job. Hell, it's part of the human spirit.
It's not just the space program that they like to enforce "safety" upon, but that's been the clearest indicator recently. All the "oh no it's dangerous can't do it" anal-retentives of the world need to loosen up. Little of the research that has gotten us this far could be classified as "safe". So stop making decisions for others based on their safety.
There are stupid risks, and then there are just risks. Leave it up to the people whose lives are on the line to decide. Except, of course, if the risk is clearly a very stupid one, you might not want to waste an orbiter on it. That's fair. But to go up to save astronauts from certain death? Yeah, that's worth an orbiter.
Regardless, other posts are correct -- this is all 20/20 hindsight now. Time to move on. I just wish the lesson learned from this wasn't "Space travel is dangerous, we'd better be much more careful to the point of making everything we're trying to do only marginally useful at best", while all the people who are willing to take risks utterly blow them out of the water.
Re:Oh no, it may have endangered more astronauts! (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's some pure speculation for you: If every available astronaut would be willing to lay his life on the line to go up in attempt to rescue the others, what level
Re:Oh no, it may have endangered more astronauts! (Score:2)
If a squad of 7 marines were trapped in hostile territory and running low on supplies, do you think the senior officers would mount a massive raid on short notice to retrieve them knowing:
1) They would be risking many more lives
2) There would be very little time to prepare or train for the mission
My bet would be solidly on the "yes" side, and the men would be falling over themselves to volunteer for the mission, even if abandoning the stranded men would be the "logical" thing to do. Ever watch "Saving
Re:Oh no, it may have endangered more astronauts! (Score:2)
Everyone assumed too much (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically, all the engineers did their jobs, but they were making assumptions about how others would do their jobs, and what the options were.
One team analyzed the foam impact. They didn't think it would be serious, but there was some uncertainty. In general, rocket engineers, especially those working for NASA and the Air Force, are paid to make conservative analyses and decisions. So, if they were operating in a vacuum, the engineers would likely have requested better test data on foam impact of different parts, and better assessment of the damage.
Now, these engineers believed that getting better foam impact test data was unlikely. So they didn't ask for it. They had already made the 1st assessment that it was OK (based on un-wetted foam hitting tiles), even though they probably knew this wasn't a conservative analysis. So they asked for photos, to improve their assessment. Someone at NASA decided photos were not necessary since the intial analysis made it look like Columbia was OK. Plus, these managers assumed that the photographs would not be helpful, but that was based on 1) capabilities of a few years ago, and 2) probably what was unclassified; could an NRO spy satellite have taken pictures? Plus, the NASA manager has it in his head that a rescue is impossible anyways, so why push the issue?
I also wonder whether the foam-impact engineers knew about the piece that detached? Probably not. I'm sure someone had all the info, but it probably sounded like, "The foam impact analysis said there was no problem. Therefore this object is probably just ice."
And the point CAIB keeps hitting on, NASA got comfortable with risks b/c they turned out to be OK. But when you aim for 99.9% reliability, it should preclude using flight history to clear anomalies until the anomaly has occured 1000 times. NASA should've always been looking at objects neat STS.
All in all, it's a tough nut to crack. It took a lot to bring down Columbia, a sequence of events that took over 2 weeks to play out. Like Apollo 1, the biggest failure was probably a lack of imagination, and not realizing what our capabilities really are. The Shuttle is a true engineering marvel, on par with the great construction projects, and light-years ahead of any Stealth bomber (which cost almost as much as a shuttle!), aircraft carrier, dumb booster or any race car. The shuttle is a global asset, and the improvements we make to it will reep rewards for decades to come.
Re:Everyone assumed too much (Score:2)
For sure. On top of that you have to include the Russians and the Chinese. They might also have been able to put
Re:Everyone assumed too much (Score:2)
Adding more manpower doesn't change the laws of physics, nor those of biology. Water, power, oxygen and CO2 are t
Re:Everyone assumed too much (Score:2)
For example, a Delta II launched the GPS IIR-8 satellite on January 29. I imagine that if they knew
Nice for a movie plot, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
CYA, etc (Score:5, Insightful)
The right stuff and can-do attitude of the early days has been replaced by bureaucrats. Which, as you seen, can cost people their lives. As you can see here [usatoday.com], shuttle rescues used to be part of the nasa planning process.
Of courser there is this question as well
"What's to stop you from having the same damage to Atlantis? You're basically throwing the dice," Thagard said.
Re:CYA, etc (Score:2)
And part of my point was that by reducing the frequency of shuttle flights they actually increased the severity of shuttle mishaps because they eliminated on orbit rescue missions. And I wanted to know if NASA and Congress had actually recognized that, because if so, then one salient recommendation might be to b
exploration vs. media hype (Score:2, Insightful)
Stop Blaming NASA (Score:3, Insightful)
Could have been Much Worse. (Score:4, Insightful)
Though, the risk taker in me says we should've tried it if we had time to make a rescue attempt.
I'm also on board with the group that says, lets make improvements and move forward. I wish they had made the decision to take long range pictures, even if they couldn't have saved the Columbia. That information could've provided the needed piece to save future shuttle crews. Though it would've torn up the American public to know we had a shuttle that was lost before the fact.
Missing a key step (Score:3, Insightful)
From what I understood, even if the foam issue had been investigated, no damage would have been seen. Missing tiles could not have been seen by a telescope or any other long-range imaging mechanism.
The *only* way they could have determined there was a problem was with a space walk and that wasn't possible because they didn't have the equipment.
We're now talking about sending an entire shuttle up just to *check* to see if some foam hit the wing, not to rescue a shuttle with a known problem.
Is there really any doubt that yes, *something* could have been done if the outcome we now are aware of was known? Of course NASA would have tried to prevent it. But the fact remains that there was no known problem. We shouldn't be worried about whether a rescue mission could have been created, we should be worried about how could the actual damage have been more accurately assessed!
Risks Schmisks (Score:5, Insightful)
Soyuz as emergency vehicle (Score:3, Interesting)
BTW does anyone know what the minimum crew required to fly a shuttle?
minimum crew (Score:2)
How stupid. (Score:2)
Or a Soyuz rescue could have been sent up.
Something, ANYTHING would have been better than the fatal risk they took...
Monumental stupidity if you ask me. There *was* an alternative to what happened..
Re:How stupid. (Score:2, Insightful)
In related news..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Really now. Let's all play the "what if" game. What if they'd sent another shuttle? What if they'd looked at spy sat. images? What if a race of friendly aliens repaired the shuttle the erased the memories of those aboard? What if we could have sent Bruce Willis up there with a team of loveable hacks? You know what? None of that happened, and Columbia is still sitting in pieces. Deal with it. Establish what went wrong, do your best to ensure it doesn't happen again, and move on with the space program.
I'm just glad we've got experts in the media that can press home the fact that they're smarter than those in charge. "Hey, let's make NASA acknolwedge the fact that there was a super slim chance of possibly rescuing those poor, departed ratings....er...heros"
That is assuming they knew... (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree with that sentiment. We are in the 'Find problem, fix it and move on' stage and backtracking does nothing.
However since the subject was brought up, I have the thought of how could they have known?
Okay we have said that technicaly it was feasible to rescue.
Let's say we get into a time machine and go back to Janurary and try to convince NASA that something is very, very wrong and they need to start prepping Atlantis.
Even if you could show those officials your time machine and convince them you are who you say you are they are still not going to do it without absolute proof that Columbia is in a bad, bad way.
Did we have a system available to us in Janurary to assess the damage properly?
Having an astronaut do an EVA with one of those jet packs they got is a serious step. It is very possible it would end up with the astronaut doing that 'dying' thing that they all try to avoid.
So you can't simply throw that out. Once again you have to have serious suspicions that you can back up before you go that step. I would say that is the last step before prepping Atlantis.
I remember this as a huge debate directly after the crash. I remember being thoroughly unsold on if we could have figured it out.
The Right Stuff (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Another 'Vertical Limit" anyone? (Score:2)
Harsh, but in some ways correct. I never quite understood the logic behind "let's get a bunch of other people killed to rescue a few who are in danger." Needless to say, this inhibited my enjoyment of Black Hawk Down. I do understand that illogical but neccessary actions are part of being human... I mean, if I was in grave peril somewhere, I would feel really bad if I was going to die (duh) but I'd probably feel worse if six other gu
Re:I know they were volunteers, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
You are making the assumption that NASA knew the shuttle was going to suffer a catastrophic failure on re-entry. Other than some speculation by some NASA engineers, I havent seen any definitive proof that NASA was negligent.
Space travel is dangerous and accidents happen. I am not saying that should exclude people from taking responsibility, but it also means that we cant suggest letting people take baseball bats to men and women who lost their friends in an accident because we assume they played fast and loose with facts.
Re:I know they were volunteers, but... (Score:2)
As for the first part... Definitive proof, no. That's why I suggested that charges be filed and our legal system try to mete out some justice in this matter. While not perfect by any stretch of t
Re:Learning from Star Wars (Score:2)
-Sean
Re:Learning from Star Wars (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Learning from Star Wars (Score:2, Interesting)
Two reasons (off the top of my head):
- Parasitic cost vs. benefit; such an escape system would consume a lot of weight and space and compromise every mission, against the chance that they MIGHT be needed.
- Effectiveness: they would only be useful in an emergency where the crew knew there was a problem and had enough time to get the shuttle into a configuration where they might work.
Why don't airliners carry an escape pod for every passenger?
Re:Almost everything is possible (Score:2)
No they didn't. Reusable space vehicles are inherently dangerous compared to disposable ones.
If they wanted safety, we wouldn't have space shuttles at all. All the orbital lifting they do could be accomplished faster, cheaper, and safer by simpler rockets.
The only benefit of the space shuttle is that it can make a stylish 3-point landing.