
'Dying All Tensed-Up': 30 Years Since the Troubled Secret Mission of STS-27 - pinewurst
https://www.americaspace.com/2018/12/09/dying-all-tensed-up-30-years-since-the-troubled-secret-mission-of-sts-27/
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dbcurtis
Somewhere in the shuttle design is a lesson about not cramming too much into
the MVP. Many years ago, in some high school engineering camp, I remember a
university professor who had been involved in the STS design talking about
feature creep in the shuttle program in very uncomplimentary terms.

According to the prof, the shuttle as originally envisioned would have had
about 1/2 the cargo volume, and less throw weight, but in return a higher
orbit at engine cut-off, much better serviceability, and a simpler design. In
order to get the support of the military, the cargo requirement was pushed to
what was just-barely-heroically-possible engineering in order to launch the
military satellites desired by the spooks.

This decision compromised the program in every way imaginable. The schedule
stretched out. The launch-pad weight ballooned, forcing the solid booster
design into barely-possible territory. The original goal of "recycle for
weekly launches" became a pipe dream. The re-entry heat shield design became
very complex. The unit cost ballooned. The cost per launch ballooned.

The right answer all along would have been to tell the spooks: "No, damn it,
design satellites that fit the payload bay or take a hike." The spooks would
have had many years to refine and compact ever-better satellites. We paid a
high price for poor program management decisions at the top.

The lesson I take out of it: As engineers, we need to think about risk budget
at all times. Pushing the envelope on _something_ is probably necessary to
beat the competition. Pushing the envelope on _everything_ is poor risk
management. As an engineering manager, be very intentional about where risk is
allowed. Concentrate your management efforts on de-risking the risky, and
delegate the low-risk to clear your mind for managing the unpredictable.

I will admit that I have not always done that, and have collected the scars
that I deserved.

~~~
sgt101
You have to have a lot of power to do that. In most cases you'll just be
removed.

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rdl
Launching a (classifies) satellite into a useful-for-spying orbit is one level
of secret, although clearly something which could be done with unmanned
rockets (as was done later).

One of the super secret missions they used to sell the shuttle program was
capture (and theft, or tampering and replacement?) of foreign in-orbit
satellites. There isn’t any solid evidence this was ever done, but it was a
unique capability of something like the shuttle.

~~~
sandworm101
>> One of the super secret missions they used to sell the shuttle program was
capture

No. That is the easier-to-swallow purpose. The logistics of capturing an enemy
sat, one that might defend itself by changing orbit, are ridiculous.

What shuttle could do was bring friendly sats back. Why? Well it would have to
be something that you couldn't let burn up in the atmosphere but neverthless
needed to come home. Shuttle could have serviced space-based nuclear weaponry,
the one type of friendly sat that couldn't be destroyed in the atmosphere or
sent into a disposal orbit.

A fleet of nuclear-tipped reentry vehicles in orbit would have required
constant up-and-down servicing. Russia saw the US biulding a vehicle capable
of servicing such a fleet. Fearing a capability gap, Russia developed Buran.
But when various treaties and understandings mooted space-nuke concepts, Buran
lost its purpose and was parked. Shuttle continued.

Other aspects of shuttle also came from never-flew military missions. Those
giant wings were to permit a polar-orbit overflight of russia with return to
the launch center, a cross-range capability. It didn't need such massive
wings.

~~~
Rebelgecko
Not just nukes. There were some tentative plans to use the shuttle with recon
satellites. Either for on-orbit replacement of consumables (putting in more
film), or returning a satellite to earth for reservicing and eventual reuse
(which could also make getting the film back to earth much simpler)

~~~
sandworm101
True. Shuttle was begun long before digital imaging and asymmetric encryption
did away with film. Of course shuttle could also be used as a recon platform
itself, one that could alter orbit radically as needed to conduct surprise
overflights. The MOL/Almaz programs, manned spying _stations_ , were still in
the back of people's minds.

~~~
ams6110
Pre-digital, the film from spy satellites was parachuted to earth and captured
mid-air by recovery aircraft.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-
air_retrieval](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-air_retrieval)

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JustSomeNobody
A couple of thoughts.

> Flight controllers were convinced from the grainy images that the damage was
> not severe and that the crew were mistakenly seeing damage in conditions of
> poor lighting.

I can't help but wonder if they _had_ to say that because there was no real
way to either fix the shuttle or retrieve the astronauts.

> If the heat shield was damaged, it could spell disaster during the fiery
> return to Earth and Gibson’s was instructed to use RMS cameras to acquire
> imagery.

Why wasn't this SOP until after we lost another shuttle crew?

~~~
mikeash
Supposedly (I can't find a reliable source), Neil Armstrong was once asked
what he would have done with his final hours on the moon if the ascent engine
had failed and they had been stranded. His response was that he'd have spent
his final hours trying to fix the engine.

The point is that there's always something to try, even if it's improbable.
Pilots are told to fly as far into the crash as possible, because it never
helps to give up, and there might still be something you can do.

It's possible that they _chose_ to say that because they thought there was no
way to save the astronauts, but they definitely did not _have_ to. And if
that's really how it was, they definitely shouldn't have.

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woliveirajr
> Pity they didn’t learn the lesson and maybe Columbia in 2003 could have been
> saved. But again, mission controllers and engineers ignored the information
> as “insignificant".

That was in the comments. That is the best part of the article. We have a long
road to go about learning from things that worked ok by pure luck. But, as
usual, we barely learn from mistakes...

~~~
ubertakter
I don't think any _engineers_ deemed any available information about Columbia
as "insignificant", not that there was very much information to go on due to
lax execution by camera tracker teams. Management on the other hand was... not
effective.

I think that's really the crux of your statement. Humans seem to be terrible
at working together in large organizations, or at least running them.
Organizations seem to learn from mistakes only temporarily, or at all (as you
pointed out). Consider the self-driving car group at Uber as a recent example.

~~~
woliveirajr
Yes, and I agree with you. In my experience, even using some kind of protocol
to prioritize which problem should be taken care first, it's easy to miss
really important things because someone thought that "time to repair" should
give the same score as "severity of consequences", and then we begin to fix
things that are "easy and fast", not that are "relevant"

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mannykannot
"One tile on the shuttle's belly near the nose was completely missing and the
underlying metal - a thick mounting plate that helped anchor an antenna - was
partially melted. In a slightly different location, the missing tile could
have resulted in a catastrophic burn through."

[https://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts119/090327sts27/](https://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts119/090327sts27/)

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mr_overalls
> During their training, they earned the nickname “Swine Flight” from the
> astronaut office secretaries, and were even given novelty pigs’ snouts, as a
> result of Gibson’s penchant for making animal-like snorts whenever
> attractive women were in the vicinity.

Gross. I'm glad culture, as well as technology, has evolved since the 80's.

~~~
moron4hire
It has, but let's not confuse that with it being good now. A lot of this sort
of thing still goes on at a lot of very high profile places. I've personally
seen it happen--and worse!

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mannykannot
I am wondering why the images of the damage had to be encrypted - what sort of
secret about the mission could they reveal? My only guess, which I don't find
very convincing, is that it would reveal some modification that had been made
to the robot arm, or its camera, for the purpose of the mission.

~~~
Diederich
I suspect _all_ of the comms were encrypted.

~~~
mannykannot
I had not thought of that, but there are a couple of quotes that suggest that
clear images were technically an option[1]:

Shuttle Commander Gibson: "So in other words, the resolution on the encrypted
video was that bad that they based a conclusion on it that was in gross error.
... If I had said hey, I think this is important enough for us to break the
encryption and send you guys clear video, oh, it would have been pandemonium
down there at DOD. But in hindsight, oh man, that's what we should have done."

Ascent-Entry Flight Director Wayne Hale: "We were struggling in those days to
try to maintain the security classification, so on and so forth... When the
crew reported they saw this stuff, we had a long negotiation as I recall with
the customer to say well, can we look at the TV? Because we weren't supposed
to see any TV from on orbit. (They said) absolutely not. Could we look at the
bottom side of the shuttle? That was the agreement, that we could, but we used
this special slow-scan TV. And it was grainy."

So it looks like a case of "the rules are the rules, period."

[1]
[https://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts119/090327sts27/](https://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts119/090327sts27/)

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vermontdevil
Note the benefit of having a shuttle - the ability to fix the satellite after
launching. Too bad the shuttle design (attached to the tank etc) is not ideal.

~~~
java-man
I don't think one needs a shuttle for that.

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radicaldreamer
I wonder what kind of payload had to be deployed with the shuttle rather than
an unmanned rocket...

~~~
gsnedders
It was the first of the Lacrosse satellites; the remainder were launched on
the Titan IV, though the first launch of that wasn't until a year later.

