[supercat]

Would it be practical to build a protective shield for the tiles which would be mechanically durable enough to provide useful protection during launch, but would burn away harmlessly during re-entry?

[SierraWasp]

Bump for required reading for all the wild speculators postulating all over FreeRepublic from pillar to post!

[yonif]

That's what they said about Apollo 13, and they proved themselves wrong.

[TheDon]

"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."

A brutal assessment of NASA. They didn't prepare for this type of problem. Oh well, you can't prepare for everything. Who would have had the foresight to see that if the tiles were damaged the crew was doomed, and they should make provisions for such an eventuality, one that didn't involve the crew being incinerated?

[#3Fan]

NASA couldn't have sent up another orbiter without doing it's proper safety procedures to retrieve the astronauts without really knowing for sure the first one had a problem. That's taking a bigger chance than just trying to get Columbia home. Their best bet was to try to get this one home with tile damage like they've done 120+ times before. They got bit this time.

[Lancey Howard]

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."

Then that is the problem. It's 2003, and there should be "options" for a shuttle which is damaged and at peril. There is a space station, three other shuttles, a Russian manned space program - - there should always be "options".

[paul544]

This is a bunch of crap. America would never have just left them up there to die. Never. We would have done something, especially if they knew right after launch. This is just a way for them to feel better about the fact that they missed it. Thank G*d that this kind of defeatism didn't reign when Apollo 13 ran into problems.

[Balata]

The simplest would have been to abort the mission the moment the damage was discovered.

Hey, there's a novel idea. If you can't bring them back in case of emergency then any takeoff that is less than perfect should be aborted immediately.

[dead]

It's odd that this whole article presumes that the problem was the alleged damage the tiles suffered on liftoff. That's nowhere near established.

I think the larger problem is that the shuttle was operating in 2003 with a 1978 design.

[Fred Mertz]

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.

The NYT is parroting the NASA lines. Why am I not surprised?

[DaGman]

I've no doubt NASA could put 6 months worth of food and oxygen on each shuttle. NASA could also load up a complete set of replacement tiles. NASA could do all the things people think should be done to plan for these contingencies.

One thing, though. It would add millions if not billions to the cost when the chances are at the worst 1/120 of something like this happening. Is that worth it? I don't think so.

[strela]

OK, so the orbiter was in the wrong orbit/inclination to make it to the ISS. What about using the Soyuz docked at the ISS as a ferry between the orbiter and the ISS? It holds 3 bodies so it would have taken 4 trips (with pilot) to get everyone off the orbiter.

I've not heard this option discussed at all.

[beckett]

As soon as they knew that foam had made contact with the wing, they should have sent one of the crew out to see if any damage had been done. Why didn't they?

[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.

[Tall_Texan]

It seems so unlike NASA to not have contingency plans for nearly any possibility. I'm really surprised, not by the fact that they didn't consider the problem that serious and were caught unawares but, that even if they *were* aware, that they had no plan to save the crew.

Let's hypothesize that a shuttle goes up and a very serious flaw is detected. Let's say it bumps a meteor and incurs a serious gash. The craft is still stable but a section of the wing and the heat-resistant tiles are clearly damaged. Are they trying to tell us that they have no backup plan *at all*??

When they went to the moon, took their first spacewalk, etc., they knew they were pushing the envelope and could run into a catastrophe with loss of life because they were taking risks that had never been taken before. But this was something they'd sent up dozens of times and I would have assumed they would have anticipated this situation happening *sometime* and come up with a backup plan. Otherwise, what were they thinking sending up teachers and congressmen, poster children for diversity and the sort? Seems darned irresponsible for them to send up a ship that they can't retrieve if it gets anything beyond minimal damage.

You can criticize all you want about the whistleblowers who complain about cutting corners on safety regs but, it doesn't cost money to have contingency plans in place should an event happen which the odds say was going to happen at some point. What I'm learning is that NASA had none for this and that's as startling to discover as the ship itself disintegrating on Saturday.

[strela]

Y'know, there are some Freepers that are extremely knowledgeable about the capabilities of the US space program. Some even work or have worked in the industry. Meanwhile, there are others who have never worked in the industry and know only what they have read or researched on the topic.

Having said that, I feel that it is counterproductive for some to react as defensively and dismissively as they sometimes seem to toward questions and comments by the latter, for the simple reason that every American is a stakeholder of sorts in the space program and has a direct financial interest in it (that is, if you pay taxes).

It is not a requirement to be a rocket scientist to ask questions and make suppositions about this horrible tragedy, and you do not have to have a working knowledge of orbital mechanics in order to hold an opinion on the subject. To paraphrase Sen. William Smith, the committee chairman of the government inquest into the Titanic disaster, "How do you trained, professional mariners and seamen manage to keep doing this sort of thing?"

[JoeA]

The article mentions four possible scenarios for saving the astronauts:

• Reparing the tiles - not possible in space.
• Docking with the ISS. Orbits don't align.
• Revise the reentry to accomodate the tile damage. Not technically possible.
• Launch the Atlantis with minimal crew to retrieve the astronauts.

NASA claims "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.

Let's see, three weeks to launch the Atlantis. Columbia had enough oxygen, supplies and fuel for five more days. It was in orbit for 16 days. In my math, sixteen + five equals twenty one. That's three weeks. Three weeks to launch the Atalantis. Sounds like it could have been done.

The assumption of course, is that NASA knew the severity of the problem, whihc is by no means certain, or even likely. But the argument that a rescue mission using Atlantis wasn't possible is pure bull.

[Coto]

Even if the Tiles are magically protected....

...it still leaves many moving parts that have, according to the Roger's Commission, a "Critical Rating" of 1. Meaning that if any one of those parts fail, during Launch - On Orbit - or Rentry, loss of Vehicle / Crew is probable.

[fire_eye]

When the shuttle was designed, I read the following (and it's been too long for me to remember where, but I am certain of the details, at least):
(1) That the preferred material for the shuttle skin was titanium, but that titanium could not be used due to cost and due to its being a strategic material during the Cold War, when the world's reserves of titanium were largely either controlled by the Russians or off limits to America due to the (Lieberal-produced) embargo of trade with South Africa,
(2) That the tiles were known, and expected, to become detached in small numbers during launch,
(3) That the shuttle carried a tile repair kit with it, for use in orbit, consisting of spare tiles, adhesive, and a rasp for shaping replaced tiles.

I've always had some questions about the preceding - such as how the silicon rubber vulcanizing adhesive could possibly cure at orbital temperatures, whether titanium could really be expected to survive re-entry temperatures, etc. - but those were the "facts" at one time.

Personally, I don't understand, given all of the preceding, why replacement of the insulating surface as soon as sufficient supplies of titanium became available - or replacement with a molded ceramic material which would not be susceptible to fragmentation - was not a high priority with NASA from the very beginning. But, what do I know... I'm a EE, not a rocket scientist... and my company simply refuses to build devices for military, medical, or aerospace applications, for liability reasons...

[tictoc]

There is some truly amazing stuff coming on line that will make spaceflight much safer.

This article in Space Daily talks about fullerenes and other exotic materials that will be stronger, lighter and even capable of repairing themselves.

I have faith in the extremely bright men and women working on new discoveries and translating them to the manufacturing stage. I am still optimistic about the future of spaceflight, with and without humans on board.