Joshua Micah Marshall notes that it turns out that there were a number of things that could have been tried to try to save the Columbia astronauts--if NASA had been curious enough to try to ascertain whether the spaceship had been damaged upon liftoff.
Posted by DeLong at June 4, 2003 11:56 AM | TrackBackTalking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: Tragic. Just tragic. Back on that awful day last February 1st when the shuttle Columbia ripped and burned apart over Texas, I never really believed that some sort of rescue or repair mission wasn't possible -- either an attempt at a repair of some sort, or sending one of the other shuttles up to save the crew. Couldn't they rush another shuttle up to rescue them? Couldn't they do a spacewalk and fix the damage? The conceit of the NASA brass was that there was simply nothing that could have been done -- a claim that took a lot of sting out of the fact that so little was in fact done to find out what damage the ship had sustained.
That never sounded right to me. And now it turns out that I and, I'm sure, many, many others who were similarly unconvinced were right...
I called this one months ago.
Now where are all the armchair experts who were telling us "there's nothing they could have done anyways", "there would be no point in trying to photograph the damage" etc. etc.?
Posted by: Fabio on June 4, 2003 12:03 PMThe armchair QB is total BS. The shuttle lasted a long time before it accumulated enough heat to cause it to lose integrity. This suggests that the initial breech was very small and was enlarged during the decent. All NASA models consistent with the timeline suggest this.
Had there been a huge breech, the shuttle would not have lasted as long as it did. The burn through would have occurred faster. Could spy satellite photos of Columbia have shown that it was badly damaged? Yes, but the actual breech was apparently very small and probably too small to be seen with the available resolution.
Yes, NASA could have taken photos, but they would not have had more to go on than what there sensors were telling them. Recent tests on firing foam at a wing mockup discovered that the impact deformed a T-seal. A deformed T-Seal is below the resolution of any photograph that could have been made of the shuttle at the time. Short of a entire missing panel, any damage would have been too small to see. The sensors indicated that nothing was badly damaged.
A spacewalk would have been out of the question. It would not have been possible without planning for it in advance. Fixing a heat shield? Try fixing a car engine by the side of the road. It would be easier.
There is no way that NASA would have put up a risky rescue mission without solid evidence that the shuttle was damaged. In the past tiles have fallen off the shuttle and it has returned safely. Some slight damage to the tiles even if detected might not have caused NASA to go into panic mode and try a last ditch rescue effort. NASA had no damage evidence and no way of obtaining the resolution they needed.
It is a matter of physics and technology. This is focusing on the wrong part of the time line.
The relevent portion of the time line is the foam from the tank striking the shuttle. This is not the first time foam had hit the shuttle. The NASA mistake was in not insisting on correcting the foam problem. After the foam hit, everything else was too late.
The rescue scenarios all require everything to fall in place and then would have had a low probability of success. Weather at launch and other factors would all play a role. This is rocket science, not auto repair. Just because Han Solo can repair a space ship while under enemy attack in the movies does not mean it really can be accomplished.
Posted by: bakho on June 4, 2003 12:36 PMIn today's test, the the foam strike caused the T-seal between RCC panels 6 and 7 to lift and pull away toward the outboard panel 7, the CAIB spokesman said, leaving an opening approximately 22 inches long. THE WIDTH OF THE RESULTING GAP VARIED FROM THE THICKNESS OF A DIME TO MORE THAN A QUARTER INCH.
http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts107/030529foamtest/
Harold Gehman said a lost T-seal would leave a slot-like gap between adjacent RCC panels. That gap could be an inch or more in width, providing a direct path into the leading edge.
http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts107/030415breach/
"With this very small hole, things would slowly transpire and take place over a period of time. And the timing is very critical. The comment we constantly keep saying to each other is gee, this craft made it (all the way) to eastern Texas. If we had an eight-inch hole (in RCC panel 8) out over the Pacific, I'm not sure we're going to make it to Texas.
http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts107/030520slag/
Ted Molczan, a respected satellite observer, has calculated that Columbia could have been imaged on multiple occasions by classified optical imaging satellites. RESOLUTION WOULD HAVE VARIED FROM SIX TO 16 CENTIMETERS, OR 2.3 TO ABOUT SIX INCHES.
http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts107/030318hearing/
To make it that long, the crew would have had to power down the orbiter and do everything possible to minimize physical activity and their consumption of oxygen. Staging more than one spacewalk likely would have eliminated the Atlantis rescue option because of air lost overboard when the airlock was cycled.
But the spacewalk repair option is interesting if for no other reason than NASA managers initially ruled out any chance for an on-orbit fix.
"They inventoried everything that was on board the Columbia," Gehman said. "There are two EVA suits. They devised a successful way to get out to the area of the damage without further damage to the TPS (thermal protection system). They devised a way that they thought they could work out there and they ... came up with a patch that they would jam stuff in the hole."
After plugging the breach, the spacewalkers would position a plastic water bag over the opening.
"Then, after a day or two of maneuvering the orbiter so that section of the wing was in the shade all the time, the water would freeze solid and then that holds the stuff in place," Gehman said. "They would then put something over the top of the hole, some Teflon tape or something like that, and then they would attempt to re-enter.
"No studies have been done on the thermal characteristics of this patch," he said. "Whether it would hold for 30 seconds, 60 seconds, 90 seconds or three minutes we have no clue. Those studies will be done, but we've got no clue, we can't put a number, a probability, that this patch would have worked. It kind of comes under the category of 'at least we would have done something.'"
The Atlantis rescue scenario is a bit more believable, but only just. “I'm saying if you could have reduced the processing time satisfactorily and if you could go through the launch countdown and prelaunch preparations without a mechanical problem and if the weather was suitable and if the rendezvous was successful and the two orbiters could maintain station on each other and if the multitude of EVAs worked all right, you could have done this. It is possible."
The decision to launch a rescue mission ultimately would have depended "solely on how good the knowledge of the damage to the orbiter was."
"In other words, if somebody came and said we've got a little tiny hole in the leading edge and we think the orbiter can re enter safely but it might not, then probably the decision to launch another orbiter would be very hard to come by," he said. "If on the other hand an inspection said 'holy mackerel, we've got a great big hole and the orbiter is doomed, the crew has no chance whatsoever,' then the probability they would have launched a rescue mission probably would have gone up."
He summed up the rescue scenario by saying "it's technically possible, very, very risky and a whole bunch of ifs have to line up. ... But I have no idea if it would have been successful or not."
http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts107/030523rescue/
The best course was the one that NASA tried. Bring the Columbia down as planned. Even had they had much more info, NASA would likely have concluded that trying to return Columbia was the best option.
Even after shedding debris, the shuttle kept flying within spec for 10 minutes or more. This suggests that the shuttle can sustain sizeable damage to its wings before its ability to fly is compromise. Trying to fix the shuttle or mount a rescue had sizeable risks. They were riskier than trying to bring Columbia down. So unless they were absolutely assured early on in the mission that Columbia was doomed, the least risky strategy would have been to try to bring it in.
Posted by: bakho on June 4, 2003 01:24 PMYou don't work for NASA by chance bakho? I suppose if you had been around for Apollo 13 you would have concluded after an exhaustive five minutes of thought that the mission was hopeless and recommended the astronauts depressurise the capsule to spare themselves unnecessary suffering.
Whether or not the proposed fixes would have actually worked is beside the point. The article proves that NASA simply did not even begin to explore all the possible options.
Posted by: Fabio on June 4, 2003 03:19 PM"Fixing a heat shield? Try fixing a car engine by the side of the road. It would be easier."
Well, I've fixed a car engine by the side of the road. And if it was the only chance of saving lives I would try a complete engine rebuild by the side of the road, slim as the chances of success might be.
It looks fom this distance as though the NASA bureaucrats were in denial. They really did not WANT to know, for fear that there truly was nothing they could do. But they had a moral responsibility to make very sure this in fact was the case. And if there was truly nothing to be done, the astronauts had a right to know.
Posted by: derrida derider on June 5, 2003 12:56 AMNo I do not work for NASA. I have a very good friend in aeronautical and astronautical engineering who is funded by NASA and talks incessantly about these issues.
It was clear that Apollo 13 was badly damaged. NASA knew what the damage was and what systems were available to them. Apollo 13 was little more than a tin can that had to reenter the atmosphere within a range of angles and fall into the ocean. It is a far more forgiving system than the shuttle.
There was no proof that there was any damage at all to the Columbia. There were no abnormal sensor readings, no unsual flight characteristics etc. The only indication that anything at all might be wrong was film footage of foam striking the shuttle.
NASA had already concluded in advance that the foam was not a problem. This, I argue and the Gehman commission agrees is the flaw that brought down Columbia. Previous shuttles had been hit by foam and no significant damage resulted. Why should this strike be different?
NASA did the modelling and determined that the strike should have no large damaging effect on the shuttle, based on available data. Are the shuttle managers then going to change the mission, reschedule the workload, scrap a large percentage of the experiments, bring in another agency, distract it from its work in providing the military with information during a buildup to the Iraq war and unknown NK intententions and jump through numerous hoops in order to try to position the shuttle to obtain photographs of a wing that all the models say should not have been damaged at that past experience has demonstrated that the photos were unlikely to provide the necessary resolution to tell if there was damage or not? The risk that there was serious damage to the shuttle was believed to be very low. That risk has to be balanced against the added workload and stress on the crew that would be required to alter the mission and look for a needle in a haystack that most probably is not even there.
When the shuttle did destruct on reentry, it was only then that NASA was awared that they had insufficient data on the effects of foam inpacts on shuttle materials. This is why NASA has spent the past several months firing foam at high velocities and measuring the impact on shuttle components.
Hindsight is always 20/20. In hindsight we know the shuttle was damaged enough to bring it down. However, at the time the probability that the shuttle was damaged at all was considered to be extremely low. The low probability of damage multiplied by the low probability of detecting such damage gives and even lower probability of photographing the shuttle providing any useful information at all. The shuttle managers are making hundreds of decisions that have very profound effects. There are hundreds of problems that could have caused loss of spacecraft and lives that have occurred on previous missions that were correctly addressed by NASA. There were some that were incorrectly addressed and we got lucky. Spaceflight is risky. The risk is inherent in the physics of acceleration and the biological capacity to withstand acceleration. Shoulda woulda coulda. I think you are undersestimating the complexity of the task of the space shuttle program and overestimating the information available to NASA concerning potential damage to the Columbia.
You could make the same argument about Pearl Harbor, that we should have known that the fleet was likely to be attacked early on a Sunday morning by an enemy thousands of miles away, no indications of enemy aircraft carriers in the vicinity and with the fleet commander blinded by an intelligence blackout.
Posted by: bakho on June 5, 2003 07:12 AMOh my god, Bakho, you must be joking. Please.
I think I speak for the rest of rational Americans when I weep for the vast gap between the "failure is not an option" of the Apollo 13 era, and the "what, me worry?" of today's callous NASA.
Fortunately the rest of us don't share Bakho's belief that people are expendable.
Posted by: squiddy on June 5, 2003 09:48 AMOh my god, Bakho, you must be joking. Please.
I think I speak for the rest of rational Americans when I weep for the vast gap between the "failure is not an option" of the Apollo 13 era, and the "what, me worry?" of today's callous NASA.
Fortunately the rest of us don't share Bakho's belief that people are expendable.
Posted by: squiddy on June 5, 2003 09:51 AMOh my god, Bakho, you must be joking. Please.
I think I speak for the rest of rational Americans when I weep for the vast gap between the "failure is not an option" of the Apollo 13 era, and the "what, me worry?" of today's callous NASA.
Fortunately the rest of us don't share Bakho's belief that people are expendable.
Posted by: squiddy on June 5, 2003 09:51 AMRepairing the heat shield is not easy. Although NASA attempted early on in the Shuttle program to develop a tile repair kit (notice: not a T-seal repair kit), they did not find materials appropriate for vaccumn. There are no handholds, you must somehow hover over the damaged region. You cannot brace yourself against the tiles - they are fragile, and you may damage tiles if you contact them. To repair damage on the wing is highly risky in itself - and requires equipment from the ground.
Note that if the damage had been on the tiles, it might have been possible to see the damage if you used the spy satelites - but the T-seal that is now suspected would not have been visible. Result - if you look at the shuttle NASA would have said: look, Ma, no tile damage - resulting in the same thing. For something like the T-seals, only local inspection would have sufficed.
Launching another shuttle requires that the damage be spotted (difficult) and that another foam-clad external tank be used. There is no guarantee that the second shuttle will not be damaged (but it seems unlikely, since so many shuttles were not.)
NASA failed. Not after Columbia's launch, but before. They discarded the idea of the foam being a serious problem.
To recap:
1)It is unlikely that satelite photos would have seen T-seal damage.
2)Heat shield repair requires somehow hovering over (under) the wing without touching it - and requires equipment that does not exist and must be brought up to the shuttle from the ground.
3)Sending up another shuttle runs the same shuttle roulette with the foam covering on the external tank.
Good well written post ,Chris.
squiddy, you unfairly characterize the position of NASA as "what me worry". NASA is plenty worried and they have paid worriers on staff to try to predict what can go wrong so it does not go wrong. The paid worriers analyzed the foam impact and came back with the conclusion that any damage was unlikely to be serious. They investigated photographing the shuttle and concluded that the resolution was insufficient to detect the damage. The result would have been one of those grainy photographs that can only be understood by reading the caption and using the imagination.
You underestimate the complexity of the mission and fail to understand that Henny Penny distractions can compromise the mission and jeopardize the safety of the crew.
Losing only 2 shuttles in 107 missions over several decades is not a bad track record. If only auto manufacturers could come that close!
My conclusion is that NASA exercised the only safe option that was truly an option. Bring the shuttle down as scheduled.
Well Columbia is gone now, but an improvement for the remaining shuttles occurs to me. A small remote roving device, essentially a remote-controlled jetpack carrying a camera, could examine the shuttle from the outside. Its use would be probably less expensive and dangerous than spacewalks, and would disrupt the planned mission less than waiting for spy satellites to be moved into the correct position for the necessary hi-res imaging.
I'm not a rocket scientist so I dont know how much weight it would add to the shuttle, but if it is possible, checking for external damage before reentry could become a standard part of every mission.
Posted by: taj on June 6, 2003 07:41 AMBakho, you disgust me. What happened to: "People are not expendable", and "Failure is not an option"?
You grossly underestimate the value of the Shuttle as America's flagship of science and technology, and the pride Americans take in the program. The loss of an orbiter is acceptable. The unnecessary loss of astronauts isn't. A rescue mission would have been worth moving heaven and earth for, and like Apollo 13, would stand for the lengths to which we go to ensure the safety of our people, and brought together all of America.
Instead, we have this disgrace of NASA administrators sticking their heads in the sand, and hoping for the best, and reaping the worst.
Posted by: squiddy on June 6, 2003 08:19 AMBakho, you disgust me. What happened to: "People are not expendable", and "Failure is not an option"?
You grossly underestimate the value of the Shuttle as America's flagship of science and technology, and the pride Americans take in the program. The loss of an orbiter is acceptable. The unnecessary loss of astronauts isn't. A rescue mission would have been worth moving heaven and earth for, and like Apollo 13, would stand for the lengths to which we go to ensure the safety of our people, and brought together all of America.
Instead, we have this disgrace of NASA administrators sticking their heads in the sand, and hoping for the best, and reaping the worst.
Posted by: squiddy on June 6, 2003 08:20 AM