"Scott M. Kozel" wrote:

On Saturday, February 4, 2017 at 10:42:55 AM UTC-5, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...

Scott Kozel wrote:
Columbia could have been saved; if they used ground based telescopes to find the damage, then they would have had 2 weeks to come up with a patch from either material on board or material sent up on an expendable rocket, then EVAs to apply the patch. The ability to patch would have been marginal, but they would have had a good shot at a safe landing.


Do you understand what was damaged on Columbia? I don't think you
could have seen it with a ground based telescope and even if you could
the Shuttle would have been a write off because there was no way to
effect a repair on orbit. There's no way to 'patch' that kind of
damage.

No way? Au contraire. It is quite possible that *duct tape* might have gotten them home.

The Air Force has a program called "ABDR" that teaches how to do such repairs. They will cut things like soda cans and flatten them out and then duct tape them onto holes on a jet's wing or fuselage as a viable patch.

So for doing a MacGyver-style Aircraft Battle Damage Repair of Columbia's wing leading edge, you scour the crew cabin for some flat bendable piece of metal. Maybe use clipboards. Whatever. Then go out and tape it over the gaping hole. On day of Entry, hope it holds long enough to get you home.


Wrong. The wing leading edge was reinforced carbon-carbon composite.
This was the material on the shuttle which could withstand the most
reentry heating. This isn't something you can "MacGyver" with any spare
parts on board Columbia.


That depends on the exact nature of the damage, and given that it wasn't
surveyed by EVA or by shuttle-based camera or by telescope, we don't know
whether it was a big hole or a small hole, or whether it was on the
leading edge or behind of there. That could not be ascertained after the
fact from the debris on the ground.


We know with as much certainty as you can ever know anything. It was
an approximately 12"x12" hole in RCC Panel 8, located toward the root
of the left wing. So what don't you think we know?


Sending another shuttle on a rescue or repair mission would have had its
own risks to that vehicle and crew, so that would need to be considered
carefully before making that decision.


There was no such Shuttle ready for launch, so it's a moot point.


That is why I suggested sending an expendable rocket with materials to
for Columbia crew to make an emergency patch. Titanium sheets and
sheets of ablative material and fasteners, for example.


You suggest that because you don't understand things.


As far as to whether an emergency patch would work well enough to at
least make a normal landing, NASA investigators determined that on-orbit
repair by the shuttle astronauts was possible but overall considered high
risk, primarily due to the uncertain resiliency of the repair using
available materials and the anticipated high risk of doing additional
damage to the Orbiter.


That's true if the damage is to heat tiles. However, the damage was
not to heat tiles. It was to the RCC leading edge.


And again, that would depend on the exact nature of the damage, and that
is unknown due to the fact that they never made any attempt to examine it.
The smaller the hole the higher the chance of a successful emergency
repair. A huge hole might be impossible.


ANY hole in the RCC is impossible.

snip silliness


--
"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the
truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."
-- Thomas Jefferson