Columbia's Problems Began on Left Wing

NYT.com ^

[Swordmaker]

So tell me why an EVA to look under the shuttle was impossible. Really. Of course, you'll have to explain = with at least some degree of convincing detail - why every suggested approach is impossible, because that's the only way to know it is impossible, sicne it certainly doesn't violate any law of physics. If even one of those approaches is practical, you're wrong: you would have had to think of every possible approach. I doubt if you have.

OK, I'll make this VERY SIMPLE.

The basic problem is that STS-107 had no MMUs, and most importantly, it carried NO 'SPACE' SUITS!

Each of the astronauts is issued a personalized, fitted pressure suit that has a portable, short-time A/C and telemetry pack that you see them carrying when they do the famous march to the shuttle. Those little packs are disconnected when they are placed in their flight seats and their pressure suits are connected to the shuttle's A/C and power... the portable units are then REMOVED from the shuttle as useless weight! Even if they were left on board, they do not carry oxygen... they take that from the ambient atmosphere and merely pressurize it to the suit.

The pressure suits are not intended or designed to be EVA suits. They lack the insulation, telemetry equipment, radios, Oxygen tanks, cooling and heating ducting, constant pressure joints, and sun shields an EVA suit requires. They are provided as a safety measure only to assure survival in the event of a hull breech that causes the loss of air and pressure during takeoff and landing. The shuttle was designed to be a "shirt sleeve" environment similar to a jet airliner but NASA has never taken the planned final step and launched a shuttle with astronauts without the pressure suits.

They cannot be modified to become EVA suits.

In addition, an EVA without a MMU and a proper EVA suit IS a violation of the laws of physics. Specifically, how would your make-shift inspector move around? The Shuttle is non-magnetic so magnet soled space shoes wouldn't work. Jumping requires a properly placed fixed object to kick-off from (nothing sticking out under there, you know). Assuming our valiant space-walker does kick-off of the non-existant object in the exactly right trajectory to take him to the left wing, how does he stop? Perhaps one of the ladies has smuggled a can of hair spray on board that can be used as a mini-MMU???

OH, and how, exactly, is he or she going to breathe? The pressure suits require an umbilical to the shuttle's Life Support systems. The supplied cabin umbilicals are only long enough to reach across the cabin so that in the event of decompression, they can still reach controls. Are you going to collect all of the seven umbilicals and DUCT TAPE them together to get sufficient length to reach from a Life Support port, out the door (Thank God its on the left side), along the left wing to the damage area? Oops... the Life Support ports are INSIDE the cabin. We have to leave the door open. Bummer, we're using everyone else's umbilicals to get the length we need... I guess they won't need to breathe while were outside poking around.

An EVA without proper preparation and equipment is impossible.

Is that factual and practical enough for you?

[Swordmaker]

NYTimes confirms that we would have had a decent chance at a good-enough image of the wing damage using adaptive optics telescopes, either the one at Starfire Optical Range (near Albuqerque) or the one on Maui. Trust me, you would want to use the one on Maui. The atmospheric conditions are much better.

Right.

And how would they track the Columbia in a pitched orbit to the North-East or South East (depending on its position in orbit), moving at 500 degrees per hour, with these equatorially mounted, ASTRONOMICAL telescopes designed to follow stars at 15 degrees per HOUR with only a West vector? Satellite tracking telescopes do not generally have the resolution to distinguish any detail at all. We are lucky to get fuzzy shapes.

The shuttle would have to have shut down all operations, closed the bay doors, and turned turtle so the bottom of the wings would be toward the Earth before any of these ground based telescopes could see a thing.

And finally, the only thing to be learned by such an examination was a moot point. IF the tiles were too badly damaged, the astronauts were dead, one way or the other. If they aren't too badly damaged, the shuttle will survive re-entry. A ground based examination MAY show the damage but the DEPTH into the insulation tiles could not be judged from such a distance. You cannot even SEE anything except a possible color differential and, according to John Jamieson, the most important tiles are actually Black Glaze on Black ceramic foam. Only the farther back, less critical tiles are Black on white.

[Swordmaker]

A late report is now stating that there were actually TWO Space rated suits on board Columbia... no MMU, though. Two of the astronauts were trained for minimal EVA but not for major repairs.

In addition, according to a NASA spokesman, moving around under the shuttle "can result in more damage than what they are trying to repair" because of the very fragile nature of the tiles.