[Arkinsaw]

The Russians just launched a resupply ship to the ISS. Perhaps they could have sent it to the shuttle instead? It would have given three astronaughts the chance to escape, and supplied food, air, and water to the other four, giving additional time.

Well Professor, How would it dock with Columbia with no docking interface? If it had a docking interface how would it dock with the space lab attached?

The space shuttle Atlantis is currently being prepped. .....It's worth pointing out that NASA was experimenting with a tile repair kit in the 1970's; perhaps this could have been sent up as well.

First they had no way of knowing if there was actually damage and an EVA to repair "possible" damage would have a high risk of damaging tiles itself due to the fact that there are no hand or footholes on the underside of the craft and the only way for an astronaut to move would have required pushing off of tiles with hands and feet and bumping around under there with hard equipment and helmets. The reason tile repair kits weren't sent is because of this and the fact that they couldn't get them to work particularly well.

Surely they could have modified the reentry pattern to reduce the heating.

Ummmm, the reentry pattern is designed to reduce heating as much as possible anyway. It would be senseless to design a reentry pattern that did not reduce heating as much as possible.

Even if none of these are viable plans, and there really is absolutely nothing to do but reenter on a standard pattern and possibly fry, at a minimum ditch the science pod to reduce the weight and hence the heating.

I doubt that it is held in with rubber bands or strings. I have no idea how difficult it would be to detach the science lab......but you don't either.

[TennesseeProfessor]

Well Professor, How would it dock with Columbia with no docking interface? If it had a docking interface how would it dock with the space lab attached?

Rememer that the Atlantis in its hypothetical mission can bring up whatever we think would be helpful, including EVA suits for everybody, a wrench and arm to remove the science lab, a second docking adaptor for Columbia, etc, etc.

No I don't have an itemized list of exactly what Atlantis would have needed to carry to rescue the crew. My point is the mantra "There is nothing that could have been done" is unproven and highly suspect.

Ummmm, the reentry pattern is designed to reduce heating as much as possible anyway. It would be senseless to design a reentry pattern that did not reduce heating as much as possible.

I was taught that the current reentry pattern was a trade off between a steep angle (way too much heat) and a shallow angle (low heat, but a risk of skipping off the atmosphere and careening into space). I also notice that the breakup happened when the shuttle was entering a left roll. I don't know if changing the roll pattern would have had any affect at all on wing stresses, but from what I can tell it wasn't even considered.