
A rescue plan that might have saved space shuttle Columbia - SoapSeller
http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/02/the-audacious-rescue-plan-that-might-have-saved-space-shuttle-columbia/
======
natejenkins
I've always found the relative impact velocity of the foam piece with respect
to the shuttle quite surprising. There is some clarification of this in the
CAIB report, chapter 3, page 60
([http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/home/CAIB_Vol1.html](http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/home/CAIB_Vol1.html)):

THE ORBITER “RAN INTO” THE FOAM “How could a lightweight piece of foam travel
so fast and hit the wing at 545 miles per hour?” Just prior to separating from
the External Tank, the foam was traveling with the Shuttle stack at about
1,568 mph (2,300 feet per second). Visual evidence shows that the foam de-
bris impacted the wing approximately 0.161 seconds after separating from the
External Tank. In that time, the velocity of the foam debris slowed from 1,568
mph to about 1,022 mph (1,500 feet per second). Therefore, the Orbiter hit the
foam with a relative velocity of about 545 mph (800 feet per second). In
essence, the foam debris slowed down and the Orbiter did not, so the Orbiter
ran into the foam. The foam slowed down rapidly because such low-density
objects have low ballistic coefficients, which means their speed rapidly
decreases when they lose their means of propulsion.

~~~
camperman
The CAIB set up a dramatic recreation of the incident in which it used a
nitrogen gun to fire a piece of foam at ~500mph at a test panel. NASA was not
happy with the idea of the experiment feeling it was a waste of time. There
were audible gasps from the crowd of engineers when the foam punched a head-
sized hole in the panel. Bingo.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/11/columbia...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/11/columbias-
last-flight/304204/?single_page=true)

~~~
avsbst
Came here to make sure that this article was posted. It's an engaging and well
written examination of the followup to the Columbia's loss. Thanks for linking
to it!

------
geuis
I loved this article. Teared up a few times thinking about how things could
have gone differently.

I had an opportunity to tour Kennedy Space Center in December. I think many
people have this idea that the NASA of today is a shadow of itself and that
it's stagnating. I had an opinion something like that.

To my surprise, NASA is in the middle of some very interesting work. They've
completed a new gantry/launch tower for their next generation of rockets which
will be close to or bigger than the Saturn V. Several of the launch pads have
been completely retrofitted. There's a lot of cool activity going on that
we'll start seeing on the big stage in the next couple of years.

It was heart breaking to see one of the shuttles hanging in the museum. They
really are beautiful, utterly massive machines. You can only get a sense of
loss looking at them, feeling that we're missing something big by having
removed them from service.

But looking back, despite their majesty the shuttles took a lot of work to do
relatively little. (Little in this context is still a huge amount.) It was
time to retire them.

I'm cautiously optimistic about NASA's future. The idea of being more of a
support role for commercial manned space may seem beneath them, but it's not.
They will continue doing the types of projects that are impossible for
companies, including manned missions.

~~~
gus_massa
> _It was heart breaking to see one of the shuttles hanging in the museum.
> They really are beautiful, utterly massive machines. You can only get a
> sense of loss looking at them, feeling that we 're missing something big by
> having removed them from service._

I think this is the main problem with the space shuttle. They look good in a
museum. They look good in a postcard. They have a mix of cutting edge,
unproven, easy to break technology. They are a dead trap and explode in 1/50
launches.

According to Wikipedia the Soyuz have 4 dead astronauts, in 1700 launches. (No
deads since 1971, and they change the model, so the new model perhaps is safer
or perhaps they are lucky.) But they are "cheating", because most of the
missions are unmanned. When they explode, usually nobody dies. The death rate
is also approximately 1/50, But they only put humans when it's necessary.

~~~
Tloewald
If you add up all of the US launches then its numbers don't look so bad
either. It's not quite apples-to-apples. The big problem with the shuttle was
that it was a non-solution to arguably a non-problem, and having created this
very expensive non-solution, a mission had to be found for it. And it also
turned out to be horribly unsafe (aside from the people lost in the Apollo
fire -- which was during a training exercise, all of the US casualties in
space vehicles have been from the shuttle).

E.g. one of the highest profile achievements of the shuttle program was
repairing Hubble. But without the shuttle program Hubble would simply have
been replaced (more cheaply). IIRC it turns out that the US air force had (and
presumably still has) several superior telescopes sitting in warehouses in
case they need to replace a spy satellite in a hurry.

And of course the single biggest achievement of the shuttle program is the ISS
which is an utter boondoggle.

~~~
oofabz
The ISS is definitely expensive and doesn't produce much tangible return. But
they are up there doing research 24/7, and have been for more than ten years.

I still like it a lot better than the alternative, which is to have nothing.
Wikipedia says we have spent $150 billion on the ISS. That's very expensive
but it's cheaper than a war and only slightly more expensive than the TSA. At
least the ISS has a net positive impact.

~~~
Tloewald
Slight correction: they are up there doing "research" 24/7.

The alternative to the ISS is not nothing; and it's hard to demonstrate that
it's a net positive. I'd happily agree that the TSA is a negative, but "better
value for money than the TSA" is hardly an awesome rallying cry.

------
Arjuna
When the Space Shuttle program was decommissioned in 2011, the U.S. lost human
spaceflight capability. We are at a point in U.S. history that is similar to
the human spaceflight gap that existed between the Apollo program and the
Space Shuttle program.

There is an American flag that flew on-board STS-1. It was left on display in
the ISS by the crew of STS-135. It is awaiting return to the U.S. by the next
American crew that is launched from the U.S.

I do my best to embrace the concept of being _a citizen of the world_ rather
than of a specific country, but I can't help feeling a little patriotic. Like
many of you, I grew up watching the Space Shuttle launches; all of those
memories of both the successful launches and the tragic losses. That zeitgeist
you grew up with, seeing those launches: it indelibly marked young people like
us, with the knowledge and firm belief that, _anything is possible through
science and technology_ , perhaps even more so because it was during that time
that we were teaching ourselves to program on our Commodore 64, Atari 800,
etc.

Perhaps this feeling is heightened for me now, because in the U.S., I think
there has been an under-current feeling for some time now, that could be
paraphrased as, _" Where are we heading, as a nation?"_

I still believe in those child-hood dreams, and my eyes get a little misty,
thinking of when we will launch into space and bring that flag home.

~~~
lotsofmangos
_When the Space Shuttle program was decommissioned in 2011, the U.S. lost
human spaceflight capability._

The real problem is that there are so many people who either don't care or
think space exploration is a bad thing.

If you look at some polls you get half of all people polled not knowing that
Armstrong landed on the moon and a fairly clear majority opposing the idea of
spending public money on going to Mars.

[http://www.gallup.com/poll/3712/landing-man-moon-publics-
vie...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/3712/landing-man-moon-publics-view.aspx)

So now there is the situation that NASA lost the ability to get people into
space and only the nerds complained. It is going to be very difficult
politically to get that capability back.

~~~
harshreality
I think the question is not whether it's a good idea to return humans to space
(of course it is), but _what it will accomplish_ and _at what cost_.

You can make observations such as, "You have to feed the soul, too!" (from The
West Wing after Josh mocks the cost of Mars Direct). However, there are
serious problems on Earth in the U.S. that cannot be solved by developing
manned spaceflight tech, and those concerns are going to override thoughts
about manned spaceflight for most people most of the time. What drove the
space program (first unmanned, then manned, then to the Moon) was national
pride and the desire to out-compete the Soviets. I don't see any available
current of feeling that could generate similar support today.

Ignore the Shuttle for a moment and imagine we'd kept human-carrying
spacecraft perched on top of rockets, like we did before; in other words:
safer, cheaper, manned spaceflight in the modern era. What has manned
spaceflight achieved in the last 30 years? We've serviced some satellites,
certainly, but at what cost compared to simply deorbiting them and launching
new ones? Experiments in space have advanced medical and materials science
technology somewhat, but consider how far we could have advanced if all the
money thrown at the Shuttle and ISS programs had been allocated to
automated/remote-controlled experiments and, where possible, simulations.
Whatever the difference is, those are missions where you could make a case for
a manned mission to conduct experiments, but I doubt there would be very many.

Next, let's imagine a hypothetical Zubrin-inspired mission to Mars. It would
inspire everyone, but for how long? People don't stay inspired forever, and
suppose it becomes apparent that we'll never go back to Mars again because the
cost/benefit is too high, or heaven forbid if the mission _fails_ because the
astronauts die unexpectedly. Things on Earth become _worse_ because the _hope_
of productive Mars missions will have dimmed.

Americans have become much more risk-averse. I think that without a strong
_and sustained_ reason for sending humans back to space on a long-term or
regular basis, we shouldn't bother. Space is not a very nice place for humans,
even with all our technology. There's plenty of inspiration available by
accomplishing things in space without risking astronauts' lives to do so.

~~~
Crito
> _" However, there are serious problems on Earth in the U.S. that cannot be
> solved by developing manned spaceflight tech, and those concerns are going
> to override thoughts about manned spaceflight for most people most of the
> time."_

If you spent the _entire_ US Federal budget fighting worldwide poverty, you'd
end with less than $500 to spend on every person every year.

We should not spread wealth and advantage thin trying to fill in every low
point. Even the Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation doesn't wait until
_everyone_ is vaccinated before putting money to other "higher level"
activities such as research. Moreso, I am glad that there are charities which
primarily concern themselves with providing large amounts of money to
speculative research instead of spreading that money thin on lower level
concrete but ultimately fleeting activities. All that cancer research money
could be spend paying the hospital bills of people who are currently
undergoing treatment, but I much prefer it being spent on research.

Charities that focused on paying hospital bills would be great, but not at the
expense of charities which focus on research. There is room for both, but we
should not cut back on funding for high level research and advancement because
there are still low-level concerns to be addressed.

\----

Alternatively, more succinctly: If we had spent all that Apollo money on
malaria instead, would we still be fighting malaria today? I think that is
near certain.

\----

Alternatively, more metaphorically: If you are tasked with tracing the outline
of a Koch snowflake and tracing the outline of a square, would you hold off on
tracing the square until the Koch snowflake was complete?

------
skywhopper
Interesting to remember the Columbia tragedy while recalling Richard Feynman's
report summarizing the culture problems at NASA he found following the
Challenger disaster. It's clear that NASA ultimately learned very little (or
forgot it after 15 years).

No matter the state of the shuttle program, it's also a shame that NASA didn't
maintain a non-reusable rocket system that could have allowed for expensive
but relatively low-risk emergency flights for this sort of thing. If the
shuttle's all you've got then it's going to be difficult to address unexpected
problems _with another shuttle just like it_.

~~~
jedc
It seems NASA's safety culture erodes in cycles:

Apollo 1 fire - 27 January 1967 Challenger disaster - 28 January 1986 (19 yrs
later) Colombia disaster - 1 February 2003 (17 yrs later)

There's probably an interesting thought experiment around organizational
behavior and deterioration of standards in the cycle time here...

~~~
mnordhoff
No, it's a coincidence. The foam was a disaster waiting to happen from day 1.
The _second_ mission after the Challenger disaster was nearly destroyed by
foam. The two astronauts who inspected it in orbit were certain they were
going to die. (In this case, rescue was impossible.) Miraculously, the worst
damage was over an unusually sturdy part of the shuttle.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-27#Tile_damage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-27#Tile_damage)

(I learned about this a few weeks ago in another HN thread. :-)

------
ryanackley
Of course, hindsight is always 20/20\. If we sent a successful rescue mission,
we would instead be reading an article entitled. "Columbia Rescue: NASA's
finest hour or giant waste of taxpayer's dollars?" with a bunch of supporting
evidence on why the rescue was unnecessary.

~~~
venomsnake
Doubtful. Appolo 13 showed that the public really likes bringing the
astronauts alive. And even the most fervent republicans will have hard time
presenting saving the lives as waste.

~~~
blisterpeanuts
>> even the most fervent republicans

God, how I despise it when people have to bring their petty partisan politics
into every discussion.

No sane person in the United States of whatever political party or creed would
have said a rescue mission that had a reasonable chance of success was not
worth the money and risk. [EDIT] Assuming it was understood that the
spacecraft was in mortal danger.

According to the article, it would have been highly unlikely that the Atlantis
could have rescued the Columbia astronauts. Possible, but just barely. Should
they have tried? Maybe. Should they have planned for the contingency? Of
course--if they had an extra couple billion dollars budget for such a project.
20-20 hindsight.

You can't go to space on the cheap. The old Nasa slogan to promote the Shuttle
--faster, better, cheaper--is proven incorrect by historical events. You can
have 2 of those, not all 3.

~~~
rz2k
>No sane person in the United States of whatever political party or creed
would have said a rescue mission that had a reasonable chance of success was
not worth the money and risk.

I think most of us have the sentimental and emotional content that we would
want the rescue mission to go forward. However, if you were to ignore the
feel-good effects, it is very difficult to argue that the mission would
maximize human well-being. I only think it is an _obvious_ decision with a
failure of perspective. Let me try to characterize some of the considerations
in the most approximate and non-rigorous manner.

Ignoring the risk to the rescuers, let's say the cost of the mission is
something like $80M per astronaut life saved. If there is 80% chance of
success that is equivalent to $100M/life or if there's a 10% chance of success
that is $800M/life.

With big numbers, it starts to become a society-level decision about how
individual lives are valued. What are the resources we're willing to devote to
the rescue of a trapped coal-miner, the cancer treatment of a child with poor
parents, a medical evacuation from Antarctica, or the rescue of someone who
has been captured by pirates?

One could argue that these astronauts merit greater rescue efforts, since they
are spearheading humanity's exploration into space, but you could also argue
that they are sufficiently sophisticated to understand the risks they were
taking on.

Let's say an aircraft carrier takes two days to meet up with a cruise ship in
the middle of the ocean to airlift a girl with an appendicitis to its
shipboard hospital. Does the $20M/day operating cost of a carrier count as
resources spent on that one child? Probably not, because thousands of crew
members are going about their regular training regardless of where they are,
and carrier is doing its job of being some predetermined general vicinity.
While the justification for the expense of those other goals can be debated,
they don't happen to be an opportunity cost of rescuing that girl.

On the other hand, the shuttle crew rescue mission would likely have been
entirely in pursuit of one singular goal. The depreciation and consumption of
resources could not be considered to serve other purposes. The salaries paid
might be thought of as a transfer rather than a destruction of wealth, yet
they too represent the efforts of a large work force of highly competent
people not doing another tasks for that same pay.

The other benefits of such a mission really are difficult to project. For
example, maybe the value of additional capabilities that would have been
developed in pursuit of rescuing the astronauts would have been worth it.
Perhaps the feel-good effects alone would have been worth as much as anything
else that we spend money on that inspires us.

While it is the task of good leaders to divine when unreasonable expenses
should be taken when the incalculable benefits are worth it, terrible leaders
can be characterized as people who fail to have perspective and don't
appreciate costs, and who make rash decisions without considering the
implications.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Utilitarian arguments aside, one reason folks are willing to go out there on a
limb is, they feel they have backup. The Marines risk life and limb to 'leave
no man behind', and it works - Marines are bat-shit crazy-dedicated.

So the human equation counts too, not just the dollars.

~~~
rz2k
That is a utilitarian argument!

It is an implicit agreement that some quantity of available assets will be
subjected to a certain level of risk in order to insure that one man is not
left behind. The implicit agreement is not made because it is sustainable in
an environment when a large number of marines require a sacrifice of multiples
of their number to be rescued, but because of the number of marines who are at
risk of being left behind and the quantity of assets that are available to
insure that does not happen.

When considering what risk will be undertaken, you have to appreciate that
limits to what assets are even defined as available are imposed by what has
been certified as battle ready, which is essentially a risk assessment about a
unit's likelihood of survival in an engagement with the types of enemies it is
designed for. Or, to consider extremes, we don't field child soldiers, and
wouldn't even if it were the only way to make the difference between rescuing
a marine behind enemy lines or not.

Perhaps tens, or even hundreds of millions, of dollars per astronaut life does
not yet venture into the exotic territory where commonplace statements about
"sparing no cost" are meaningless, but it is unrealistic to assert that no
cost is so great that you would ever choose to compromise your norms instead.

~~~
XorNot
You're ignoring that the military's job is to the defeat the enemy. If a
marine is down, then the operation to rescue him/her by necessity involves
defeating or inflicting a severe blow to the enemy.

The same is arguably true of a shuttle rescue mission for that matter: having
never been done, the thinking and technological requirements of such a thing,
and the grand experiment of seeing if it all works, would be worth the effort.

As noted, since the Colombia disaster NASA took to prepping "launch on
necessity" shuttle missions.

------
thearn4
It's really difficult to imagine the proposed approach panning out as intended
- the infrastructure for STS wasn't set up for really quick turn arounds.
STS's conceptual design was pitched that way (shuttles going up several times
a week), but that didn't pan out in design. And the Challenger accident can be
blamed in part on a management culture that took too long to accept their
engineers telling them that.

As terrible as the Columbia accident was, I think this approach (with so many
checks skipped to get Atlantis up as quick as possible) would have ended in
the loss of both crews & orbiters. And I think if the Columbia crew knew the
full extent of the situation, and also knew of this sort of rescue in the
works, they probably would have pressed mission control to just let them try
the re-entry themselves.

~~~
krstck
> As terrible as the Columbia accident was, I think this approach (with so
> many checks skipped to get Atlantis up as quick as possible) would have
> ended in the loss of both crews & orbiters.

Agreed. The article touches on the fact that the Columbia disaster has its
roots in decisions that were made far in advance of its final launch. Not that
this excuses what happened, but I almost wonder if the reason the photographs
of the damage were never taken ("miscommunication") was that the people
involved knew there was no possibility of rescue, so better to not know and
hope for the best.

~~~
twoodfin
The Wikipedia article on the disaster[1] strongly suggests that this kind of
fatalism had permeated the culture:

 _Throughout the risk assessment process, senior NASA managers were influenced
by their belief that nothing could be done even if damage were detected. This
affected their stance on investigation urgency, thoroughness and possible
contingency actions. They decided to conduct a parametric "what-if" scenario
study more suited to determine risk probabilities of future events, instead of
inspecting and assessing the actual damage. The investigation report in
particular singled out NASA manager Linda Ham for exhibiting this attitude. In
2013, Hale recalled that Director of Mission Operations John Harpold told him
before Columbia's destruction:

"You know, there is nothing we can do about damage to the TPS [Thermal
Protection System]. If it has been damaged it's probably better not to know. I
think the crew would rather not know. Don't you think it would be better for
them to have a happy successful flight and die unexpectedly during entry than
to stay on orbit, knowing that there was nothing to be done, until the air ran
out?"

Hale added, "I was hard pressed to disagree [at the time]. That mindset was
widespread. Astronauts agreed. So don't blame an individual; look for the
organizational factors that lead to that kind of a mindset. Don't let them in
your organization."_

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaster](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaster)

------
grecy
Wow, I devoured every word of that article with baited breath. One of the most
amazing stories of fiction intertwined with actual events I've ever read.

I wonder how much years will have to pass before it would be acceptable to
make this fictional rescue mission into a movie..?

The obvious issue would be everyone walking out of the theater saying "Jeezz,
NASA should have obviously done that, idiots. They killed those astronauts
because they didn't do that."

~~~
philwelch
Of course, the thousands of scenarios where something goes horribly wrong all
make for terrible movies.

~~~
ytNumbers
Yeah. A movie like that might only get ten Academy Award nominations.

[http://gravitymovie.warnerbros.com/](http://gravitymovie.warnerbros.com/)

~~~
brc
The article for me pointed out just how unlikely the entire movie is. I
already knew there were a lot of impossibilities in Gravity (changing orbital
planes etc) - but reading just how much work it takes to keep two orbiters
aligned, and how much work it is to get into and out of a spacesuit. In the
movie she gets out of one space suit and then into another, and then out of it
again. That right there is impossible from the reading.

------
bfe
Reminds me of what Neil Armstrong said, when asked what he would do if an
engine on Eagle broke and there was no chance they could return from the Moon:
"I would try to fix it."

------
stormbrew
One thing not covered in this article (and maybe the CAIB report? I don't
know) is whether the Russians could have done something useful in the rescue.
Could enough fuel and scrubber tanks have been boosted to Columbia on a Soyuz
or Progress to get it up to the ISS?

~~~
tanzam75
> _One thing not covered in this article (and maybe the CAIB report? I don 't
> know) is whether the Russians could have done something useful in the
> rescue. Could enough fuel and scrubber tanks have been boosted to Columbia
> on a Soyuz or Progress to get it up to the ISS?_

No.

On STS-107, _Columbia_ was launched into a 39° orbit. The ISS is at an
inclination of 51°. It is very expensive to make an in-orbit change-of-plane.

A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that you would need 50,000 kg
of fuel to change the orbit of an _empty Shuttle_ from 39° to 51°. The
Progress M has a cargo capacity of 2600 kg -- and the Russians launch one
every two months. 20 Progresses all at once wouldn't have been very practical.

If you were going to attempt a rendezvous with _Columbia_ from Baikonur, it
would be better to send Soyuzes and bring them down two-at-a-time. The
Russians do have the Soyuz on an assembly line, but I don't think they have
four of them just sitting around.

~~~
stormbrew
This is a bit confusing. Since Columbia the contingency plan for _all_ of the
shuttles (except one, which was to the Hubble) was apparently to have them go
to the ISS and wait there for rescue from the standby shuttle (or later the
next mission once the ISS was fully complete). Was Columbia at an unusual
inclination for a shuttle mission?

[edit] Answered my own question, this does seem to be the case. At least for
the missions after STS-107.

~~~
tanzam75
> _Was Columbia at an unusual inclination for a shuttle mission?_

Here's the breakdown of orbital inclinations for Shuttle missions:

    
    
       28.3-28.8    53
       34.3          1
       38.0-40.3    11
       49.4          1
       51.3-51.6    47
       56.9-57.0    20
       61.9          1
       Not orbited   1
    

As you can see, 89% of Shuttle launches went to:

    
    
       around 28.5° to deploy satellites
       around 51.6° to reach Mir or ISS
       around 57.0° for earth observation

------
mrfusion
I wonder if a smaller rocket could have been repurposed to simply send extra
supplies to the shuttle (or a repair kit) while they waited for rescue? Maybe
a soyez?

Even if it couldn't dock with the shuttle, I wonder if it could match orbit
and then do a space walk to retrieve the supplies?

~~~
Mvandenbergh
Rockets launched from the Soyuz launch site in Kazakhstan cannot reach orbits
with an inclination of 39 degrees so there's no way that they could have
reached the orbiter from there. An Ariane launch from French Guiana could have
worked and there was a rocket there that launched a satellite shortly
afterwards but that would have required fabricating a supply vehicle with
automatic guidance and navigation capable of docking to the orbiter by itself.
(Ignoring for the moment that the orbiter didn't even have an external airlock
with docking collar installed.)

~~~
avmich
Proton rocket with DM booster and Zond - a version of Soyuz spacecraft,
without the orbital module - was launched multiple times in 1960s. DM adds
about 3 km/s deltaV. Baikonur latitude is 46N, to get to 39N one needs to
change orbital plane for 7 degrees, sin(7)*8 km/s is about 1 km/s. So there
could be some options there.

~~~
tanzam75
If you launch from Baikonur directly into a 46° orbit, you will drop spent
rocket stages on China. That is why the Russians launch into a 51° orbit, even
though their launch site is at 46°.

With a Proton, you have enough delta-v to launch into 51° and then make a
change of plane to 39°. But the Russians don't just have three Protons and
three Soyuzes sitting around, ready to launch. They have to schedule these
things.

The Soyuz is normally not launched on a Proton these days -- not since the
1970s. They'd have to jury-rig a bunch of things. It would not necessarily
have been safer than a NASA Shuttle rescue.

------
blisterpeanuts
Very good article, clears up a lot of questions, doubts, and misconceptions.

It seems to me that the problems with the Shuttle program always came down to
money. The Nixon Administration denied Nasa the necessary budget to build the
larger reusable vehicle they originally envisioned, while simultaneously
scrapping the Saturn manned program.

As a space nut since basically I was 5 or 6 years old, when America was in its
heyday of Gemini and Apollo programs (I was 10 when Apollo 11 astronauts
kicked up lunar dust), space exploration was a given to me and all of my
friends.

It was assumed that we would just keep on building and growing our space
program until we got to something that resembled Clarke/Kubrick's 2001: A
Space Odyssey. Perhaps we wouldn't make it by 2001, but some time not too far
beyond then. Maybe 2011. Maybe 2015.

It therefore makes me sad that we've been in this hiatus since about 1974,
really 40 years of treading water rather than building much on the
accomplishments of the past. Why not a permanent station on the moon? Why not
a nuclear propulsion system that could get to Mars in 6 weeks? What have we
done instead with our money, that is so much more worthwhile? Why was Nasa
denied the $4 billion it needed to continue the Constellation program, while
literally hundreds of billions were allocated for bank bailouts, automotive
bailouts, etc.? Where are our priorities?

I know these are controversial questions and there are probably some good
answers out there, but I go back to the lost dreams, the sacrifices made by
the Columbia and Challenger astronauts and others, and I wonder if we haven't
traded big dreams for little ones and lost sight along the way of what we're
all about.

~~~
Sharlin
Money, and in the end, politics. The Shuttle, as implemented, was not really
what NASA wanted, but they needed to make design compromises to support
certain use cases the Air Force told they need, including launching spy
satellites to polar orbits and potentially capturing enemy satellites and
bringing them down in one piece. The compromises were made but the Air Force
had changed their mind in the meantime and those use cases were never
actualized.

~~~
blisterpeanuts
True. But, really, in the end, money. The Air Force could have contracted its
own shuttle that was optimized for its needs, given enough budget.

~~~
twoodfin
In a sense, they did:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37)

------
rurounijones
Reading that it looks like the EVA would be a big problem due to getting into
the suits.

Would someone who is smarter than me comment on the feasibility (In extremis)
of just jumping across the 6 meter gap unsuited 1 by 1 with the suited
rescuers helping? I have read that a human can survive about 30 seconds of
vacuum without permanent damage. What if they huffed pure oxygen for a while
before making the attempt so their blood was super-oxygenated before breathing
out and making the leap?

Would the depressurization / repressurization take too long? Would it take too
long for the space-suited rescuers to man-handle them into the airlock? (Would
they even be able to align airlocks for a straight jump?)

It makes me wonder what would have happened if NASA has a set of minimal
protection "short-duration" suits with almost nothing more than pressurization
and a small oxygen supply for quick excursions (Like, for example,
transferring quickly between two craft as if your live depended on it :p )

~~~
philwelch
If you're going to rush a space shuttle into orbit and do a hundred things
that have never been done before on a space mission, things like not wearing a
space suit during EVA are fairly stupid risks to take.

~~~
rurounijones
If you read the original article one of the comments at the end was from an
STS engineer expressing his opinion that it would be _impossible_ (not enough
propellent, never mind pilot fatigue) for the rescue shuttle to maintain
station keeping for the required amount of time to do proper full suited EVAs.

Hence my "In extremis" bit at the beginning before thinking about the
feasibility of non-suited. I wasn't asking if it was a good idea (It obviously
isn't if it can be avoided)

~~~
philwelch
More or less impossible than jumping from one space shuttle to another, in
space, in shirtsleeves while suffering from carbon dioxide poisoning and
surviving?

~~~
nl
Problems don't get solved by pointing out how difficult they are. Of course
it's hard! The whole rescue mission is just about impossible.

But this does seem to be one area that isn't explored, and is pretty key to
the whole mission.

It's worth noting that astronauts on EVA actually have their heads under a lot
more air pressure than their bodies.

~~~
philwelch
I'm just saying that I suspect the people at NASA who wrote this document
likely designed the least impossible hypothetical mission after considering a
number of approaches, and didn't necessarily write down every approach they
considered.

------
sxcurry
For those interested in a technically detailed fictional account of a rescue
mission to Mars, read The Martian by Andy Weir. It raises some of the same
feelings as this article.

~~~
eudox
For those interested in a pretty ok movie, Marooned (1969) is about the rescue
of astronauts unable to de-orbit after spending months in a space station.

~~~
dandrews
Sorry to disagree, but the movie is kind of meh.

Read Marty Caidin's book instead. It's hard to put down, and contains a nice
section concerning Jim Pruett's finishing school that makes you want to become
a pilot yourself.

~~~
Shorel
Why not both?

I find easier to imagine the characters in a book if I have seen someone
portraying them before.

Actually, the full movie is not necessary, a trailer will do.

------
DavidSJ
As one of my coworkers remarked, if you saw this photo without context you
might think we had made it to the future: [http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-
content/uploads/2014/02/Space_...](http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-
content/uploads/2014/02/Space_shuttles_Atlantis_STS-125_and_Endeavour_STS-400_on_launch_pads.jpg)

~~~
grecy
It's a funny time when you can go to a museum to see the future - space
shuttles and faster-than-sound commercial planes.

------
avmich
Russia launched about a dozen Proton rockets a year at the time of Columbia
disaster, two Soyuz spacecrafts and two-three Progress spacecrafts.

Proton used to launch several Soyuz without Orbital Section, called Zond, in
1960s, with booster DM to fly around the Moon. DM adds about 3 km/s of deltaV.
Orbital plane change for 7 degrees - between Baikonur's 46 and Columbia's 39 -
takes sin(7)*8 km/s = 1 km/s. So technically it could be considered to launch
(several) Progress ship(s) with necessary cargos to Columbia while three
unmanned Soyuzes would be prepared and sent to the rescue. Soyuz approaches
Columbia, gets caught by manipulator, astronauts use spacesuits from Soyuz -
which have to be extracted from Soyuz first.

ISS, meanwhile, had to be kept without ships, which means landing the crew,
hopefully temporarily.

All that could be considered. But I don't think anybody high in chain of
command considered all of that necessary.

~~~
Mvandenbergh
I don't think Columbia had a docking collar, did they even have spacesuits on
board? If not, they wouldn't have been able to get to the Soyuz to extract
anything. You'd have to send up at least one person one the Soyuz to pass the
spacesuits into the shuttle airlock.

Also, I'm not sure Columbia had a manipulator arm installed at the time. It's
heavy and they don't fly with it when they're not going to use it.

~~~
avmich
Yes, there are problems. Soyuz could fly pretty close to Columbia, but to get
to the bay could be tricky. It was not going to be a regular docking - but
something for a saving mission.

If Soyuz could be taken to the Columbia bay, an astronaut in the Columbia
spacesuit could approach Soyuz and open the hatch. Spacesuits could be
extracted from Soyuz without entering the spacecraft. Talk about ingenious
ideas with rope, attached to the front hatch, etc. The Soyuz spacesuit then is
delivered to inside Columbia, where somebody could wear it to get to Soyuz.

------
lini
If you are interested in the Columbia events, check out Wayne Hale's blog[1].
He was a flight director/space shuttle program manager and offers a very
detailed recollection of the events from inside mission control.

[1] [https://waynehale.wordpress.com/](https://waynehale.wordpress.com/)

------
snowwolf
What surprises me is that this contingency was not already in place prior to
the Columbia accident. Was it budget constraints or did they really think it
was that unlikely that a shuttle would be rendered unable to return from orbit
and need the crew rescuing?

~~~
grecy
I think more likely, at some point, you just have to accept the risk.

How far do you take it? 4 launch vehicles all on standby ready to rescue the
one before it? Is 3 enough? Maybe 2? Up until then, they had obviously
calculated and accepted the risk of having no standby.

~~~
pwnna
So at one point NASA did have a second shuttle on standby.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-125#Contingency_mission](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-125#Contingency_mission)

~~~
grecy
Right, that was _after_ the incident in question.

So obviously before the incident they were accepting the risk of no standby,
where-as they revised that and decided that for a particular mission where
using the ISS as a life-boat was not an option, they needed a standby to
accept the risk.

------
arnold_palmur
This is the best article I've read in a long time - wonderful read on such an
incredible and yet tragic topic.

------
rdl
Seems like they could have rushed the development of RCO to allow a shot at
bringing the empty Columbia back, too. In parallel with all the other
preparation efforts, fast-tracking something like that where an
already-100%-written-off craft might get saved seems worthwhile.

~~~
gus_massa
In an emergency like that, you just put all your engineers and technicians to
work in whatever is critical to save the crew. If you have some spare
personal, you put them in whatever is very important. Don't worry, you would
not have enough people to cover the important task, you must hope that they
doesn't mater.

------
vl
So, after watching Gravity.

Would they have enough fuel to change orbit to dock to ISS?

If not, would there be enough fuel in Soyuz to undoc, change orbit to
Shuttle's and then either re-dock or re-entry?

In terms of safety, it appears that shuttle program became somewhat barbaric
by reasonable standards of 21st century. If primary vehicle lost re-entry
capability, there should be back up plan for re-suppling it until back up
vehicle is ready to take people back. I.e. if failure of Soyuz detected before
departing from ISS, they can always sit it out and wait for next one while
being resullplied by automatic Progresses.

~~~
scott_s
No.

From page 2: _An oft-asked question is whether or not Columbia could have
docked with the ISS, which would have had consumables to spare. There are
numerous reasons why this would not have been possible, but the overriding one
comes down to simple physics: Columbia would have had to execute what is known
in orbital mechanics terminology as a "plane change" maneuver—applying thrust
perpendicular to its orbital track in order to shift to match the ISS'
inclination. Plane change maneuvers require tremendous amounts of energy—in
some cases, even more energy than was required to launch the spacecraft in the
first place. Appendix D.13 dismisses the possibility of an ISS rendezvous with
just two sentences:

"Columbia's 39 degree orbital inclination could not have been altered to the
ISS 51.6 degree inclination without approximately 12,600 ft/sec of
translational capability. Columbia had 448 ft/sec of propellant available."_

For the record, it wasn't possible in Gravity, either.

~~~
firebones
Someone stated elsewhere in negating the possibility of a different type of
vehicle providing supplies that said vehicle was incapable of achieving the
shuttle's orbit.

Could the shuttle change orbit _downward_ to meet up with a vehicle that
itself was otherwise incapable of reaching the shuttle's particular orbit, or
is that just as hard of a change? I'll have to fire up KSP, but would it be
possible to meet a supply vehicle and use less fuel than an ISS rendezvous?

~~~
vl
This is not about changing orbital radius, these are relatively cheap to
change. It's about changing orbital plane - for 90 degree change (i.e. polar
to equatorial) roughly speaking it would require 1.4 amount of fuel to get to
the orbit in the first place (and additional fuel to get this fuel to orbit).

------
iamwithnail
Genuinely one of the most interesting things I've read in a long time.

------
WalterBright
I've often wondered if there was some repair the Columbia crew could have
done. Anything that the hole could have been stuffed with? What about pulling
a tile off of a less critical section, shaping it, and putting it in the hole?

~~~
andyjohnson0
Post-Columbia there was some examination of repair options that could have
been used if the crew had known about the damage. Some engineers considered it
feasible to repair the hole in the wing using material scavenged from Columbia
[1] but this was apparently considered very high-risk. The shuttle re-entered
at Mach 25 and the leading-edges of the wings were made from titanium because
of the extreme thermal and aerodynamic stresses they were subject to, so
stuffing a tile (assuming it could be removed, which would have been unlikely)
into the hole wouldn't have helped at all.

Some repair techniques and tools were developed part of the process of
returning the shuttle fleet to flight after the loss of Columbia. These
included a caulk-gun to allow in-situ repairs to thermal tiles [2] and a
device for plugging holes in leading surfaces such as the wings. These were
tested in space but were never needed.

[1]
[http://spaceflightnow.com/columbia/report/rescue.html](http://spaceflightnow.com/columbia/report/rescue.html)

[2] [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13521-shuttle-heat-
shi...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13521-shuttle-heat-shield-
repair-test-a-success.html)

~~~
WalterBright
An interesting article. I wonder what tools the crew had available for working
metal. Even hand tools would suffice, given the 30 days to work on it. The
idea of holding things in place with ice doesn't seem viable to me, ice would
melt really fast. I'd go for screws, rivets, bending and hammering, etc., to
get a mechanical connection.

Basically, just pile on enough metal so that there'll be just enough left as
the rest of it burned away.

------
ThomPete
Edward Tufte had his own information design take on this.

[http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-
msg?msg_id=0...](http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-
msg?msg_id=0001yB)

------
mrfusion
Would the ISS have had enough fuel to match the shuttles orbit? I wonder if
that was considered?

~~~
ceejayoz
I'd imagine that's pretty unlikely. They don't move it around much, just raise
its orbit occasionally, and it gets regular visits from cargo ships so they
don't need to keep large supplies of fuel onboard. Its much larger mass would
be an issue, too.

~~~
gsnedders
Orbital changes of the ISS are typically done by firing the rockets of docked
space-craft rather than the ISS's own rockets.

------
wtrsld
This super sad. Amazing that foam is what caused it.

------
fredgrott
hmm a launch rescue plan with no room for error from NSA..speed up even..What
we want two disasters with one month?

Someone's not dealing with reality wish full thinking

~~~
PakG1
The CAIB asked for options for a hypothetical scenario. They were given
options for a hypothetical scenario. It's unknown whether anyone would have
had the guts to actually try to do it if the opportunity arose. Furthermore,
sacrifice for the sake of rescue is one of the better aspects of humanity that
is respected. Otherwise, all risky rescue missions should not happen.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
It's unknown whether anyone would have had the guts to actually try to do it
if the opportunity arose.

I'll wager that Astronaut crews would have fought each other for the job, same
for ground control staff. NASA managers? Obviously not.

