Shuttle Team Sought Satellite Assessment of Liftoff Damage (Nasa had plenty of warnings)

Two or three days after the space shuttle Columbia's liftoff, a group of NASA engineers asked the shuttle program manager to request the aid of United States spy satellites in determining the extent of debris damage to the shuttle's left wing, but the manager declined to do so, a senior NASA official said yesterday.

The official said the satellites would "absolutely" have helped the engineers measure any damage to the wing's protective heat tiles from debris slamming into them about 81 seconds after liftoff on Jan. 16.

He said Lambert Austin, an engineer at Johnson Space Center in Houston, had asked Ron D. Dittemore, the shuttle program manager, in a group meeting to obtain satellite images to help gauge the damage. Mr. Dittemore turned down the request, even though Mr. Austin was also speaking for several other engineers, the official said.

Mr. Austin and his colleagues were disappointed, the official said, especially because they believed Mr. Dittemore did not have the technical knowledge of imagery to determine whether the images would have been helpful.

Mr. Dittemore also would not comment, but a NASA spokesman said yesterday that Mr. Dittemore and other officials had decided that satellite images would not necessarily help determine damage.

It is unclear how Mr. Austin's request was related to another NASA request for imagery made around the same time to Defense Department officials, and later withdrawn via an e-mail message, which NASA publicly released last month.

The senior official also said some NASA engineers were now questioning whether the debris actually came from the large external fuel tank. The engineers are scrutinizing the solid rocket boosters to see whether the debris could have originated there, he said.

While the shuttle was in orbit, five Boeing engineers concluded in a report to NASA that the debris impact had not caused serious damage based on the assumption, now perhaps faulty, that the debris was a chunk of foam insulation from the external tank.

A central question in the investigation of the Columbia's break-up on Feb. 1 is whether the National Aeronautics and Space Agency and its contractors had enough information to accurately assess the tile damage. Many experts say damage from the debris may have weakened the wing and is the most obvious possible root cause of the accident, though there are many suspects.

A reconnaissance satellite could have been used to capture images of the tiles. Shortly after the Columbia accident, when aerospace experts outside NASA asked why the agency had not sought satellite assistance, Mr. Dittemore said such images might not have been sharp enough.

But the senior NASA official, who agreed to talk on the condition that his name not be used, said: "When a group of engineers puts forward a request, they're not doing it for grins and giggles. Within their minds, they thought that was a path that would resolve some final concerns. I don't know if it was a cost issue, a timing issue. I don't know if assets could not be arranged."

It is unclear whether even a better determination of the tile damage would have helped NASA bring the astronauts home safely.

James Hartsfield, a NASA spokesman, said yesterday that there were discussions in the days after liftoff on whether to obtain satellite imagery. Officials decided not to, he said, because they were satisfied with the Boeing analysis and, as Mr. Dittemore indicated, they questioned the usefulness of the images that satellites would provide.

Mr. Hartsfield said someone at NASA did make an early request for imagery to the Defense Department. But he said that request, which "was not coordinated with the rest of the flight operations world," was withdrawn by another NASA official, Roger D. Simpson.

Mr. Hartsfield said he did not know who had made the request to the Defense Department. The National Reconnaissance Office, the government's main operator of spy satellites, is chartered under the Defense Department. The senior NASA official familiar with Mr. Austin's request said that as far as he knew, Mr. Austin did not contact a department official directly and dropped his request after Mr. Dittemore denied it.

But in an e-mail message dated Jan. 29 and sent from one NASA official to another in Houston, Mr. Austin was mentioned as the person who might have initiated the request to the Defense Department. The author of the e-mail message, J. Steven Stich, wrote that Mr. Austin's involvement was a "rumor."

That e-mail message was released last month by NASA, along with one written by Mr. Simpson on Jan. 23 in which he thanked officials at the United States Strategic Command for considering a request to observe the Columbia for damage but criticized the request as not having gone through proper channels.

Mr. Simpson apologized for any "inconvenience the cancellation of the request may have caused" and said that it had served only to "spin the community up about potential problems." He added that the shuttle was "in excellent shape."

The retraction of that request is now part of the investigation into the Columbia's break-up, said Laura J. Brown, a spokeswoman for the independent investigative panel.

The request Mr. Austin made of Mr. Dittemore was to get satellites from the National Reconnaissance Office to look at the shuttle's tiles. Richard Oborn, a spokesman for the office, declined to talk about the satellites' operations and capabilities, saying such information is classified.

Though NASA did not ask the reconnaissance office for the use of the satellites in assessing the Columbia's tile damage, it requested the agency's help after the accident to try and determine whether the shuttle was hit by space debris.

An expert on tile damage, Paul S. Fischbeck of Carnegie Mellon University, said NASA had made a mistake by not using satellites, ground telescopes or both to obtain images of the wing tiles while the Columbia was still in orbit.

"It would have made the decision-making process a lot clearer, and that's the goal," said Professor Fischbeck, who has co-written two NASA studies on tile damage. "They classified this as not a problem, I think, prematurely."

The senior NASA official briefed on Mr. Austin's request also said some engineers working on the Columbia investigation were now not certain at all that the debris that hit the tiles had come from the external tank. Last month, several NASA officials said the debris was probably hardened foam insulation from the area near two metal struts that connect the tank to the shuttle. In four other shuttle launchings, foam had broken off from the area and damaged the orbiter.

But a close look at the video of the launching does not show beyond a doubt that that was the case with the Columbia, even though the Boeing engineers clearly made that assumption, the senior official said. The only thing the video shows, he said, is that debris from the right side of the orbiter floated beneath the nose and re-emerged on the orbiter's left side. It then slammed into the left wing.

Engineers specializing in the solid rocket boosters are checking to see whether the debris could have broken off from one of the boosters, the official said. They are looking at any material that could have come loose, including a silicone-based heat shield called superlightweight ablator that covered two structures on the boosters called bolt catchers.

Each bolt catcher is the size of two large stacked cans. There is a catcher on each rocket booster near the forward area of the external tank. They catch explosive bolts that come loose when the rocket boosters separate from the external tank as the shuttle shoots into orbit.

The official said NASA engineers recently determined that the amount of loads and stresses they had thought the bolt catchers could handle had been exceeded during their actual uses. During manufacturing, the bolt catchers were tested without the ablator on them.

The consequences of the bolt catchers' exceeding their load and stress limits are unknown right now, and engineers will have to run more tests, the official said.

During a launching in 1988, the shuttle Atlantis sustained serious tile damage from debris flying off a solid rocket booster. In that case, the debris came from the nose cone of a rocket booster and knocked out most of one tile below the crew compartment, said Professor Fischbeck. The shuttle's aluminum skin experienced high heating, he said, but a steel frame around an access hatch in the area absorbed most of the heat.

I posted this on another thread but I'll repost it here. O'Keefe strongly disagreed with Dittermores nonsense about how nothing could have been done.

O'Keefe was asked about Ron Dittemore's statement about nothing could've been done to save Columbia, he categorically rejected that statement:

From an article at spaceref:

When asked about something Ron Dittemore repeatedly said in post-accident briefings with regard to options which could have been exercised i.e. that 'nothing we could be done anyway' O'Keefe said "with all due respect, Ron Dittemore is not speaking for the agency in this regard. I fundamentally - absolutely - reject the proposition that there was nothing that could have been done on-orbit. The context within which he stated that has an entirely different meaning than what has been attributed to him. There isn't anybody here at this agency that, had there been a strong indication that [something was wrong], wouldn't have looked at the scenarios, the contingencies to see how applicable any of these might have been. [There is] no doubt in my mind whatsoever. Given the history of this agency there is nothing - we would have spared no effort to avoid a catastrophe. Every incident you can think of will never be covered by every scenario or every simulation that you can run. But to suggest that we would have done NOTHING!? at all is positively fallacious. If there would have been any indication at all that would have driven us to the point – and I am not talking about 'what if' scenarios - but rather a clear indication that says 'here is some apparent damage, or something that is causing an operational deficiency, there would have been no end to the efforts to try and figure out [what could be done]."

At this point O'Keefe started to get a little angry "Apollo 13 - think about the circumstances there. There was no International Space station to rendezvous with. There was no other capsule up there. There was nothing on the pad that could have gone up to retrieve them. So I am sure there could have been a lot [of people saying] at that juncture - 'Oh well, I guess there's not much we can do'. But that is not what happened. In a situation like this you have to look at what you have available. Was this [the cause of the Apollo 13 accident] in anyone's scenario or simulation? No. This was not a story that someone cooked up - this really happened. There are folks walking around - alive - today telling that story because they lived it - not because they wrote about it on some beach weekend. This really did happen."

O'Keefe went on to say "in looking to save these people (Columbia's crew), had there been an option, this would have been the 'core responsibility - 24/7 - to try and find some solution. I just fundamentally, absolutely - categorically - reject the proposition that nothing would have been done - or that nothing could have been done."

NASA Walks the Gauntlet: Sean O'Keefe Does Brunch With the Press (Part 1)

... NASA had made a mistake by not using satellites, ground telescopes or both to obtain images of the wing tiles while the Columbia was still in orbit.

I'm no expert, certainly, but I see three possible viewings of the tiles:

A large gouge in several tiles, exposing the base blanket or possibly aluminum skin of the wing.
A large but very shallow gouge stripping off the black silicon overcoat exposing the white internal structure of the tiles.
A large but shallow depression cracking the black silicon overcoat but not stripping it off.
No visible damage not consistent with other launch damage that was survived.

We have satellite photo-recon that can show the plate on a car, so I doubt that the last two things I listed would be the result. FWIW, while the foam-tile strike may have been the initiating event, it seems there are many other variables being found out-of-spec for it to be the sole cause.

Thanks for the ping, Mike, and a ping back.
[If you want off or on my Columbia ping list, let me know. FReegards.]

The institutional blinding arrogance continues:

Mr. Hartsfield said someone at NASA did make an early request for imagery to the Defense Department. But he said that request, which "was not coordinated with the rest of the flight operations world," was withdrawn by another NASA official, Roger D. Simpson.
[The] e-mail message was released last month by NASA, [] Mr. Simpson on Jan. 23 []thanked officials at the United States Strategic Command for considering a request to observe the Columbia for damage but criticized the request as not having gone through proper channels.
Mr. Simpson apologized for any "inconvenience the cancellation of the request may have caused" and said that it had served only to "spin the community up about potential problems." He added that the shuttle was "in excellent shape."

SIMPSON should be fired for misfeasance and endangering incompetence and his pension voided. HARTSFIELD should be demoted and assigned a non-visibility, clerical job -- he leads falsely in arrogance of explanation when utter humility is required!

* * * * *

On a side note there were a few quick-to-be-knowledgable "expert" Freepers who made FALSE and RIDICULOUS claims that our satellite imaging capability was not up to taking adequate photos of the shuttle. Where ARE these *experts* today? Where is their willingness to admit misstatement or even to give *some* explanation of why they were so forward with statements posted as knowledgable facts that now appear too be all fantasty and pull-out-of-tuckus blarney?

To sum up the management problem, which I have seen in government, I would describe the managers as mostly being "moderators." That is the term which explains, from my view, their job skill at job security.

Basically, their intent is to dismiss im-moderation; they're in the job to attenuate, to not make waves, and to dampen, or eliminate altogether, any thing and anybody making waves.

In hi-tech. project operations and development, the work of failure analysis and applied science naturally includes finding out what makes waves --- but for the purpose of learning what opposes us as a challenge to be overcome.

Thus, the terminology of the business, can be used by both the moderators and the applied scientists, but to two different ends.

The moderators are most expert at sounding like they are applied scientists, as they work to attenuate discovery and minimize expensive, actual technical achievement.

While the applied scientists work for the truth, emboldened by the challenges to improve our lot; in other words, to an honest day's work for an honest day's pay; learn and fix.

Instead of "the fix" which is so ingrained and telling, the course of the "work" [not] done by the management.

God Bless our brave men and women, and please forgive us, our moderators.

Link to World Trade Center --- this is the first report at FreeRepublic, on September 11, 2001, of the terrorists' attacks; see reply 34, posted by FRPR Merovingian, quoting a federal government N.T.S.B. official:

NTSB says could have been inattention, engine failure, etc...Angle of the sun could factor in...

Typical. Gov't manager's first effort, is to moderate, attenuate, dismiss.

Rick Rescorla (see the movie, We Were Soldierrs Once ... and Young), later in the early morning of September 11, 2001, died in the WTC while helping people out of the complex; he was the security manager for Morgan Stanley.

But when he first made contact with the New York Port Authority, immediately after the first aircraft's plunge through the first tower struck, he was astonished to hear them say that it wasn't anything and to sit tight ... no need to panic:

See James B. Stewart's article, "The Real Heroes Are Dead," Feb. 11, 2002, The New Yorker.

Because of [his long-time friend] Hill's training in counterterrorism, in 1990 Rescorla asked him to come up and take a look at the security situation. "He knew I could be an evil-minded bastard," Hill recalls. At the World Trade Center, Rescorla asked him a simple question: "How would you take this out?" Hill looked around, and asked to see the basement. They walked down an entrance ramp into a parking garage; there was no visible security, and no one stopped them. "This is a soft touch," Hill said, pointing to a load-bearing column easily accessible in the middle of the space. "I'd drive a truck full of explosives in here, walk out, and light it off."
As a result of Hill's observations and his own, Rescorla arranged a meeting with a security official for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which managed the building. "They told Rick to kiss off," Hill recalled. "They told him, 'You lease your stories, you worry about that. The rest of the building is not your concern.' " (A Port Authority spokesman says that security "took into account all known threats at that time," and "was better than in most office buildings in New York.")
. . .
[On Sept. 11, 2001] Hill could hear Rescorla issuing orders through the bullhorn. He was calm and collected, never raising his voice. Then Hill heard him break into song:
Men of Cornwall stop your dreaming;
Can't you see their spearpoints gleaming?
See their warriors' pennants streaming
To this battlefield.
Men of Cornwall stand ye steady;
It cannot be ever said ye
for the battle were not ready;
Stand and never yield!

Rescorla came back on the phone. "Pack a bag and get up here," he said. "You can be my consultant again." He added that the Port Authority was telling him not to evacuate and to order people to stay at their desks.
"What'd you say?" Hill asked.
"I said, 'Piss off, you son of a bitch,' " Rescorla replied. "Everything above where that plane hit is going to collapse, and it's going to take the whole building with it.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.