Posted on 01/31/2013 8:35:29 PM PST by chessplayer
What would you tell seven astronauts if you knew their space shuttle was crippled on orbit?
It was a question that faced NASA's Mission Control considered after initial suspicions that something might be wrong with the shuttle Columbia as it was making its doomed reentry in 2003.
Wayne Hale, who later became space shuttle program manager, struggled with this question after the deaths of the Columbia crew 10 years ago. Recently he wrote about the debate in his blog, recalling a meeting to discuss the dilemma:
"After one of the MMTs (Mission Management Team) when possible damage to the orbiter was discussed, he (Flight Director Jon Harpold) gave me his opinion: '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?"
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Agree. If there really is “nothing” that can be done either way let them make an informed decision. It also takes away some of the guilt the engineers are still carrying for being ignored by the program people who were more concerned about the next mission than the current one. Working in an environment of engineers vs. program I completely understand the position they found themselves in.
The problem I see from the final report, that I have actually read, seems that no one on the program ($) side of the house wanted to listen to the engineers. Exactly the lesson NASA claimed to have learned from Challenger. Difficult to look for a solution to a problem no one wants to acknowledge even exits.
Management forced the engineers to prove it was unsafe to continue the mission vs. proving it was safe. As far as the DoD satellites go the engineers could not prove there was a problem until they had the pictures and management would not approve the pictures unless they could prove there was a problem.
This was purely a program decison because the management team on this flight was in charge of the next flight. Grounding the fleet for the foam/tile problem would have impacted the next flight and cost them $$.
I’m not sure what to say here, other than I was part of the Vladimir Komarov team recording and translating live his descent onto hell and death.
“... (he) is about to, literally, crash full speed into Earth, his body turning molten on impact. As he heads to his doom, U.S. listening posts in Turkey hear him crying in rage, “cursing the people who had put him inside a botched spaceship.””
This story - with recent updates and comments - is available at:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/05/02/134597833/cosmonaut-crashed-into-earth-crying-in-rage
I cannot begin to relate how this event affected all of us there at that terrible time. Devestation does not begin to cover it ... even some 40 years later ...
Assuming that there was really nothing NASA could do, their decision not to tell the crew was purely political. But, perhaps for the best as far as the dying US manned program was concerned. As for not telling the crew themselves ... well what was done is done - let G_d decide.
Had NASA told the crew, two things would have happened. One the tapes of the crew would have had to have been released, and they would have been very unpleasent to hear. Two: the US manned program would have been summarily canceled once the tapes were released to the media and the public.
The Siddiqi translated recordings in the update are NOT real. He was either given doctored or incomplete recordings. Vladimir Komarov did say all and more of what the original story claimed.
The names are in the final report. I believe it implies most of the blame for denying the pictures and minimizing the potential problem rested with Linda (Lisa?) Hamm. The report also mentions that NASA became overly reliant on Powerpoint vs. actual reports. In one section it talks about a slide that used the word “significant” about 5 times with varying degrees of risk from no big deal to they all die. On one slide.
That was my first thought. What an absolute horror, to deny someone their chance to get right with God...
They didn’t have time or the opportunity to get right with God in their entire lives prior to the disaster? You don’t, or at least shouldn’t, wait till the last few seconds of your life to get right with God.
Under that kind of stress, a personnel incident could have happened and they might not have gone for re-entry at all. Imagine if some of the crew wanted to attempt re-entry as-is while others wanted to wait for a last minute solution until oxygen ran out...
However, because they didn't tell the crew, not everything was done to reduce the risk of re-entry. They could have reduced weight and gone for an alternate path to reduce heat.
We will never know what could have been and this was a damn hard decision without the hindsight...
I have posted this before on FR:
I, too, worked on the Shuttle program. The whole story on Columbia has not been aired.
I still have my meeting notes and my report to my colleagues in Downey from my visit to JSC.
We told JSC that the RCC on the leading edge of Columbia’s wings MUST be replaced. Where the shock wave from the nose impacted the RCC very high heating rates were causing oxygen atoms to enter the RCC and “de-densify” it. In other words, the RCC was losing carbon atoms as CO and outgassing.
We were told by the JSC rep, “There’s no money in the budget to replace the RCC”.
You could poke your finger through an RCC panel it was so weakened.
That’s the point where the foam off the ET hit the wing leading edge.
I wrote a letter to the accident investigators telling them what I knew. Never got a reply. To this day, I do not know if they replaced the RCC.
Goldin was the Administrator.
Had his lips sewed to Al Gore’s ass.
Goldin rolled over, accepted the “green” adhesive (no use of fluorocarbons), and complied.
Once those death traps reached 20 years in age they should have been retired. But if they were to be used after that, there should have always been a back shuttle on a 12 hour( enough time to fuel and pre flight) stand by for rescue. After the mission that standby shuttle would be the next go shuttle, etc.
You could tell from the last teleconference they all knew.
They were all scientist and engineers. They could do the math.
Those were not the only options. The foam strike was noted early in the flight (in images taken during liftoff) -- some engineers thought it serious enough to warrant the taking of very high resolution images of Columbia on orbit using DoD assets. That request went up the chain of command and was turned down.
Suppose for a minute that it wasn't -- could Columbia have been saved? Yes, there was no back-up Shuttle ready (Atlantis was at the Cape and closest to being ready) and it is doubtful that it could be made ready within the two weeks during which Columbia had consumables, but they could have sure as hell tried to get it ready. And even if there were no American assets available, who knows what Russian, European, and yes even Chinese vehicles could have been made ready? If not to bring the crew back then at least to deliver them air, water and food until Atlantis could be made ready. None of those possibilities were even looked at.
Could the wing have been repaired by the crew? True enough, there was no repair kit on board and if it was the wing leading edge RCC (as we now think that it was) that had been shattered, that is nearly impossible to replace on-orbit. However, the orbiter is covered in heat-resistant thermal blankets. A spacewalking crew member could have stuffed the broken opening with these blankets. Then the Columbia could have taken a shallow angle, multiple-skip re-entry path (lower peak temperatures, but longer heat exposure) and it is possible that at a minimum, they could have reached a bail-out altitude.
I'm not saying they could have been saved, but they would have had a chance. The bureaucratic, blinders-on groupthink mentality that prevailed at NASA ensured that they would have no chance
Finally, I agree with the posters here that if someone knows that likely death is imminent for someone, you have the duty to inform that person, so that he or she can prepare for their death in their own way. To decide for someone else that "they're better off not knowing" is transcendent arrogance.
Why do you believe that?
I’ve worked in aerospace for over 40 years, including the Shuttle program and now Orion.
With knowledge of the surface damage, there are no two mission managers who would contend there was any possibility of the orbiter surviving re-entry.
Probably not but they seem to come up with them when they need to launch satellites. Private enterprise could also help.
As far as I know they never did. The whole thing was an odd happening. From what I remember of the investigation, I believe it took over 400 shots until they finally got the velocity and angles right to punch a hole in the test RCC leading edge they had set up. So things must have been just right (actually wrong) the day of lift off. During the post launch film reviews we could clearly see the foam impact the wing but there was absolutely no way to check for damage without DOD’s help which we didn’t get. Like I said, even if the damage was known, there was no way to do anything about it so.............do you tell the crew or not? I feel, myself, that they should have at least been told that there may have been damage at lift off. I still remember watching the guys in mission control and them watching the sensors in the left MLG drop out one by one. No booms, no landing, no orbiter. I forwarded the link of the video somebody in the Reno area had of the “puff” in the contrail as she headed east to the investigaiton team but like you, never got any response from “above”. Still the most rewarding job I ever had. Heck, looking back, I spent over half my life working on the program. (Well, over half so far!)
The gas used as the propellant to spray the foam was changed to a “more friendly” gas and some people believe that this lead to the foam being less resilient. (algore should get some of the blame) The ceramic tiles weren’t the problem. The leading edge of the left wing was compromised thus allowing allowing the super hot gasses to enter and eventually rip the orbiter apart. The tiles did take some hits and always did but the chunk of foam that came from the left bi-pod area is what did the damage to the wing.
I’ll bet the impact tests were done with new, pristine RCC.
Downey Lab & Test Dept. first noticed microscopic craters in the RCC around 1995. They found that the craters were from CO outgassing. When the O2 was hot enough it diffused across the silica layer on the surface of the RCC.
We CAT scanned the RCC on Columbia and found that, although it looked OK, the de-densification had weakened it to the point where we could poke a hole in the test panels with a finger.
Fresh RCC is pretty tough.
I don’t think NASA replaced the weakened RCC because there was no funding in the budget.
Typical coverup, just like Challenger. You probably know, it was NOT the O rings.
The orbiters were only used a third of their design life cycle.
G Larry. I concur. Thirty six + years on the ET. From MAF (12 years) to KSC (24 years). There was NO possibility of rescue by anybody. Russkies or Chinese and NO way to prep, stack, process another orbiter within the time frame. If there had been a stack on the other pad, maybe.
How’s Orion doing? You probably know some of the same people I know.
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