Columbia Was Beyond Any Help, Officials Say

New York Times ^ | 2/03/03 | KENNETH CHANG

[kattracks]

OUSTON, Feb. 3 — Even if flight controllers had known for certain that protective heat tiles on the underside of the space shuttle had sustained severe damage at launching, little or nothing could have been done to address the problem, NASA officials say.

Virtually since the hour Columbia went down, the space agency has been peppered with possible options for repairing the damage or getting the crew down safely. But in each case, officials here and at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida say, the proposed solution would not have worked.

The simplest would have been to abort the mission the moment the damage was discovered. In case of an engine malfunction or other serious problem at launching, a space shuttle can jettison its solid rocket boosters and the external fuel tank, shut down its own engines and glide back down, either returning to the Kennedy Space Center or an emergency landing site in Spain or Morocco.

But no one even knew that a piece of insulation from the external tank had hit the orbiter until a frame-by-frame review of videotape of the launching was undertaken the next day. By then, Columbia was already in orbit, and re-entry would have posed the same danger that it did 16 days later.

Four other possibilities have been discussed at briefings or in interviews since the loss of Columbia, and rejected one by one by NASA officials.

First, repairing the damaged tiles. The crew had no tools for such a repair. At a news conference on Sunday, Ron D. Dittemore, the shuttle program manager, said that early in the shuttle program, NASA considered developing a tile repair kit, but that "we just didn't believe it was feasible at the time." He added that a crew member climbing along the underside of the shuttle could cause even more damage to the tiles.

Another idea, widely circulated on the Internet in the last few days, was that the shuttle could have docked with the International Space Station once the damage was discovered. But without the external fuel tank, dropped as usual after launching, Columbia had no fuel for its main engines and thus no way it could propel itself to the station, which circles the earth on a different orbit at a higher altitude.

"We have nowhere near the fuel needed to get there," said Bruce Buckingham, a spokesman at the Kennedy Space Center.

Another shuttle, Atlantis, was scheduled for launching on March 1 to carry supplies and a new crew to the space station, and it is possible to imagine a Hollywood-type series of events in which NASA rushed Atlantis to the launching pad, sent it up with a minimal crew of two, had it rendezvous with Columbia in space and brought everyone down safely.

But Atlantis is still in its hangar, and to rush it to launching would have required NASA to circumvent most of its safety measures. "It takes about three weeks, at our best effort, to prepare the shuttle for launch once we're at the pad," Mr. Buckingham said, "and we're not even at the pad." Further, Columbia had enough oxygen, supplies and fuel (for its thrusters only) to remain in orbit for only five more days, said Patrick Ryan, a spokesman at the Johnson Space Center here.

Finally, there is the notion that Columbia's re-entry might have been altered in some way to protect its damaged area. But Mr. Dittemore said the shuttle's descent path was already designed to keep temperatures as low as possible. "Because I'm reusing this vehicle over and over again, so I'm trying to send it through an environment that minimizes the wear and tear on the structure and the tile," he said at his news conference on Sunday.

Today he added that he did not know of a way for the shuttle to re-enter so that most of the heat would be absorbed by tiles that were not damaged, on its right wing. "I'm not aware of any other scenarios, any other techniques, that would have allowed me to favor one wing over the other," he said.

Even if that had been possible, it would probably have damaged the shuttle beyond repair and made it impossible to land, requiring the crew to parachute out at high speed and at high altitude. He said there was no way managers could have gotten information about the damaged tiles that would have warranted so drastic a move.

Gene Kranz, the flight director who orchestrated the rescue of astronauts aboard the crippled Apollo 13 in 1970, said that from what he knew about the suspected tile damage, there was probably nothing that could have been done to save the flight. "The options," he said in a telephone interview, "were just nonexistent."

[kayak]

Thank you for your service to our country and to mankind ...... and for your voice of reason on these threads.

[TLBSHOW]

I just finished watching the O'Reilly tape and he said he called Dons house and his wife said he didn't want to talk about it. He is in mourning. I say he is very depressed. He knows he tried to stop it from ever going up.

O'Reilly said he should come out from under the bed because he wants answers. He wants to know what is going on as does NASAWATCH.COM.......

[blackdog]

I find it an excuse for not sending an astronaut outside to at least look at the ship! There is so much crap/debris floating in orbit that can hit/damage the ship, I cannot believe that a visual pre-entry inspection of the hull is not part of those 7000, systems checks prior to re-entry. They walk around on it to fix antenae, camera's, mirrors, panels, collectors, arms, and such....Why all the sudden would looking at the one physical condition on the shuttle that keeps you alive on re-entry over all others be an execise of futility and potentially damage the ship?

[strela]

Orbiter couldn't get to ISS.

Not disputed.

Orbiter not fitted to dock with ISS.

Not disputed.

Soyuz fitted to dock with ISS

Correct but irrelevant in my scenario (assuming that Soyuz doesn't have enough delta-v to make it to the orbiter anyway).

[Chad Fairbanks]

He is in mourning. I say he is very depressed. He knows he tried to stop it from ever going up.

Well, I'm glad that YO know what Don is feeling better than Don does...

[Fred Mertz]

Maybe the powers to be got to Don Nelson. I think his letter speaks for itself, in case they try to off him. It's an insurance policy, therefore he's untouchable. But they might muzzle him.

[Chad Fairbanks]

If the Soyuz is fitted to dock with the ISS, how could it dock with the Columbia, which ISN'T fitted in a matching manner? I'd say that's relevent... :0)

[Doohickey]

That's quite an indictment. I hope none of those guys are FReepers who will see you impugn their character.

I've never flown a shuttle mission and I've never slept at a Holiday Inn Express, but I did do 7 1/2 years of sea duty on submarines; another job that has a meticulous QA process and demands attention to detail.

And you know what? Despite all the checks and balances, all the policies and procedures; stuff leaked. A worn ball valve here, a leaky flange there. Drips and dribbles of seawater, hydraulic oil and DFM all over the place. Air leaks from reducers and needle valves.

Point is; you take each individual drip, dripple and hiss, fix the ones that are saftety of ship issues and deal with the rest. Sometimes it's a guessing game. I was lucky - most of the time we guessed right and when we guessed wrong nobody died. The guys on USS Bonefish guessed wrong and I lost a close friend and two other shipmates. It always comes down to the human factor. We're all imperfect, like our inventions. We just do the absolute best we can.

Give these guys a break.

[John Jamieson]

Some real facts

Landing weight of sts107 = 232788 (from another freeper)
sts96 = 219890
sts98 = 198909

Unless there has been a heavier reentry I couldn't find, STS107 was subjected to about 6% more heat load than any other Shuttle in the history of the program. Other Shuttle flights may have been far more tolerant of any tile damage than this one.

Jan 16th was perfect for ice formation, low 40s 100%RH.

[Rome2000]

Do you really expect them to come out and say there were things that could have been done, but they just didn't do them?

This is damage control, nothing more.

[beckett]

I have not been following the story closely, no. They had no EVA capability? That strikes me as a major safety violation right there.

I had no idea they ever went up without the ability to do an EVA in the event of an emergency.

[Chad Fairbanks]

They only have EVA when it's required as part of the mission. This was a science/experiment mission, not an EVA mission (such as working on the ISS, etc...)

[Let's Roll]

"Obviously, that's one (unrealistic) extreme. But to accomodate the various fixes recommended in this thread (All flights being able to reach the ISS, having a shuttle always ready to make a rescue flight, etc.) SERIOUSLY degrade the ability of the Shuttle to do useful things, and also likely cost vastly more money. There's a balance point you try to reach but there's no obvious guidlines to find where it is."

AND if you did take all those precautions, it would be the one you didn't think of or take that bit you.

[TLBSHOW]

I agree we should not stop the program but in this case there is major problems with NASA and if it was doomed from the start then it should not of started. Until there was a way out of the shuttle for these people. One of them used to live near me and the family is still local, this is being felt right where I live. There was no reason any of them had to die, not with the warning.

http://www.thedailystar.com/news/stories/2003/02/03/shuttlelo.html

[Balata]

I am aware they didn't know the foam had fallen off until they reviewed the film the next day. It makes my point that they can't in every instance have a perfect takeoff, which they need, because they don't have a back up system to retrieve the astronauts.

[John Jamieson]

Wow, I hope I can live up to that!

Actually, I have been quite critical of NASA's low goals, but not the engineers (including Ron Dittemore) that I respect so much.

[Chad Fairbanks]

"The Warning"?????? It wasn't very specific... "Someday we may have a catestrophic shuttle disaster" WOW! What a warning! I mean, 'No s**t, Sherlock!' odds were in favor of that happening someday... That would be like me saying, "Ya know, sometime this year there will be an airline crash... "

[blackdog]

I respect and agree with your opinion of the enormity of tile failure. But don't those involved in the mission and the people in support have the absolute right to know the condition of their ship? These are the most highly trained professionals in the world. I am sure that given the choice, they would rather know the true condition of the craft. Or perhaps they were completely aware of their potential problem and we the public just don't know that?

[strela]

If the Soyuz is fitted to dock with the ISS, how could it dock with the Columbia, which ISN'T fitted in a matching manner?

That's new information that hadn't been brought out in this thread yet (your contention that Soyuz can't dock with Columbia). I said nothing about docking with Columbia in my original post; my idea would have been to transfer Columbia personnel in suits or those spiffy rescue bubbles I heard about years ago (but they probably didn't have aboard Columbia either) out Columbia's rear airlock to Soyuz. Soyuz couldn't get to Columbia to begin with, so its irrelevant and this discussion is pointless.

[chaosagent]

I thjnk O'Reilly called Dan Goldin's house, not Don Nelson. Goldin was the previous NASA Administrator. They were talking about his bad management of NASA.