Posted on 05/23/2003 5:47:43 AM PDT by William McKinley
"EXPLOSIVE" COLUMBIA NEWS COMING [Rod Dreher]
A good Washington source says that there will be "explosive" news on Friday about the space shuttle Columbia. NASA is said to be bracing.
BUMP
SAVING COLUMBIA [Rod Dreher]Here's more about that supposed big NASA news coming out today. It was supposedly leaked to a Florida Space Coast paper, which said the following on Wednesday, and failed to attract national attention. My source says there's a lot more detail to come, but the bottom line is that the review board is rumored to conclude that contrary to its earlier statements, NASA could have saved the shuttle crew: Since the first days after shuttle Columbia's loss, NASA has maintained there is nothing it could have done to save the crew even if they had known the ship's heat protection system was fatally damaged. Now, a different picture has emerged. An internal NASA study done at the request of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board indicates it may have been possible to mount a rescue mission that could have had a chance of saving Columbia astronauts. A senior investigator familiar with the study told Florida Today the plan would have to have been predicated on an immediate post-launch recognition by NASA that the shuttle was so badly crippled it could not make it home. That would have allowed the crew to strictly conserve its life-sustaining supplies, hunker down and wait for the rushed launched of shuttle Atlantis, which was on its way to being ready for liftoff March 1 on another flight. Atlantis' crew then could have rendezvoused with Columbia and tried to bring the crew aboard through a series of daring spacewalks. We'll never know if this Hollywoodesque scenario would have worked. Frankly, it takes a great leap of faith to think it would have. But it was never even considered, because NASA managers failed to thoroughly examine the extent of Columbia's damage.
I am not sure it was the wrong decision. If there is a 5% chance of saving everyone, and a 10% chance of losing the rescue crew in addition to them, and a 85% chance of not saving them, not losing the rescuers, but costing millions- what is the right decision in such a situation?
However, that supposition depends on numbers- numbers that would have come from considering and weighing all the options. If the brass did not weigh all the options, then I think there is a problem.
Fuzzy photos stymied studies of shuttle's wing damage
Poor quality frustrated engineers during missionBy John Kelly and Todd Halvorson FLORIDA TODAY
CAPE CANAVERAL -- Frustrated NASA engineers complained during Columbia's mission that blurry pictures hindered their ability to assess how badly Columbia's left wing was damaged by launch debris.
Documents obtained by Florida Today show the Kennedy Space Center engineer who regularly studies launch films for possible dangers wrote to managers and a contractor while Columbia was in space, saying this was the latest case of unfixed camera problems limiting the number and quality of images his team needed to do its job.
"This is simply unacceptable from an engineering perspective," ice and debris team engineer Armando Olui wrote in a Jan. 21 e-mail. Olui's note came after his team worked through a holiday weekend to analyze photos and video from the Jan. 16 launch to see whether foam debris from the external fuel tank badly damaged the orbiter's heat shield.
"Unfortunately, the one film item that would have given us the best data for this was out of focus and unusable," Olui wrote in a follow-up message the next day to shuttle program managers at Kennedy Space Center. The messages were among a batch of records released by NASA this week in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by Florida Today.
"As one can imagine, we were quite disappointed," Olui went on. "The extent of the damage on the orbiter is unknown at this point due to poor resolution of film data. I am not sure if (camera) E-208 would have given us the information we desire, but we certainly will not know now."
The internal e-mails and documents shared among the NASA engineers and contractors show, for the first time, the high level of frustration NASA experienced trying to determine anything from still photos and video that might help colleagues in Houston who were making fateful decisions about whether Columbia could return home safely.
Ultimately, NASA relied on the pictures it had and computer-modeling tools to determine that a chunk of foam insulation could not have hit Columbia hard enough to compromise the heat shield. Since Feb. 1, when the heat shield failed and Columbia burned up during atmospheric re-entry, top agency officials have said one limitation of the real-time analysis was the lack of high-resolution pictures clear enough to see damage.
Neil Otte, deputy manager of the external tank project office at Marshall Space Flight Center, said it's impossible to know whether limited imagery hurt the assessment during the mission.
"You look for all the data you can get," Otte said Thursday. "I can't say that it hindered. I can't say that it hurt. We had what we had, and we work with what we've got. You'll never have enough. You're always wishing you had some other piece of data. You'll always wish that you had some other view. I wish we had the external tank back intact. But that's not how we fly this vehicle and that's not what happened. So you work with what you've got. And you do the best you can."
In the wake of the loss of seven astronauts and a historic spaceship, NASA and the U.S. Air Force already are at work improving their existing equipment and considering upgrades that could include using high-definition television cameras to track shuttles as they roar off the pad and over the Atlantic.
"We're strapped fundamentally with the problem that here we are on the coast and the orbiter is moving away from the coast very quickly," said Greg Byrne, a NASA manager who since the accident has been working on analyzing photography and video for the investigators. "So we're going up and away from our camera assets and so just losing sight of it very quickly."
The chief concern raised by the documents, however, is that the number and quality of launch images has been a lingering problem for NASA engineers, one they had been pressing a contractor to fix for some time before Columbia blasted off Jan. 16."We simply don't have enough cameras available to afford any problems," Olui wrote during the mission. "The loss of one camera can be, and, is significant. This mission proves that, and then some."
The pictures are taken by Johnson Controls, under a complicated contract structure that also involves the U.S. Air Force because the work is closely tied to the shuttle tracking done by its Eastern Missile Range. NASA gets the pictures from Johnson Controls -- some for public relations shots and others for engineering purposes such as Olui's post-launch safety reviews.
The Johnson Controls representative working on the photo issue with Olui did not respond to an interview request Thursday. In the immediate wake of the accident, Johnson Controls officials told reporters asking about blurry photographs that the company's cameras worked properly and there was no problem with the images.
Olui and other Kennedy Space Center officials have been forbidden from doing interviews because of the ongoing investigation.
All of the messages released this week were written before the Feb. 1 disaster. So Olui did not realize the assessment he felt was hindered would become one of the most second-guessed assessments in shuttle program history.
He reported to colleagues and superiors that the two best chances for a clear look at the underside of the shuttle wing would have come from a pair of cameras that didn't work properly that day. Film from a station near Playalinda beach was not usable and images from a telescope/camera at Cocoa Beach were out of focus.
Olui's e-mails indicate the problems date back at least through 2002. He talks not just about malfunctioning equipment, but also operator error. He said one of the cameras for Columbia's launch was not set up properly, a recurring problem.
"We need to figure out what happened and why, and then prevent this from happening again," Olui wrote. "If equipment is getting old, then we need to replace it. If manpower is getting slim, then that needs to be brought forward. If the experience of the workers is a problem, then that needs to come forward. Whatever the problem, it needs to be fixed. We cannot continue to play this roulette with the film data."
The day before the shuttle was to land, NASA Test Director Jeff Spaulding issued a memo listing two issues to be dealt with regarding the STS-107 launch. One was a request to the Air Force and Johnson Controls to ensure correct setup procedures were in place for the Playalinda cameras and to fix or enhance the camera equipment at the Cocoa Beach location.
Lt. Col. Mike Rein, a spokesman for the U.S. Air Force, said 45th Space Wing officials knew before the Columbia launch about a "soft focus" problem with the telescope camera at Cocoa Beach. They believed they had repaired the problem only to see when the Columbia pictures came back that the camera still was out of focus. He could not comment about the Playalinda shots.
The Air Force and contractor intended to test it again by snapping pictures of Columbia landing Feb. 1, but that never happened. Now Rein said the equipment is back at the manufacturer being overhauled. A functional setup will be ready before another shuttle flies, he said.
Following a 1988 flight when launch debris caused more damage than usual to Atlantis' heat shield, a NASA investigative team issued recommendations including increasing the number of still and video cameras capturing images of launches to improve the agency's ability to assess debris incidents.
Two years earlier, launch photography helped investigators quickly zero in on the cause of the 1986 Challenger accident.
A high-resolution still photograph in that case showed a telltale cloud of black smoke that escaped a seal on the shuttle's right hand solid rocket booster at ignition.
Former NASA astronaut Sally Ride, who served on the presidential panel that investigated that disaster, said the photo helped investigators pinpoint the failure of the booster seal as the root cause of the fatal explosion.
"We got lucky because when we started through the slog of all the data, some of the data that was available to us was the launch photos," Ride, who also is a member of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, said at a recent news conference.
However, someone posting a comment akin to "I knew it was aliens! Green or grey?" on a Columbia thread and getting suspended for it seems a bit thin skinned to me. Perhaps you are correct and there is more to the story.
It is certainly irreverent an perhaps in poor taste and worth a warning...but not something to suspend for.
But then, you're the AM and I'm not. I apologize if I offended.
Cheers.
Why? They do space walks on a very regular basis, deploying and repairing satellites. I'd think it has become at least somewhat "routine" as far as space activity goes. If someone understands what would make transferring seven people to another shuttle so difficult, please share.
Thanks...
MM
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