Could Columbia have been Saved?

Abrigon Gusiq wrote:
What is the procedure and protocols for when the Shuttle is known to have taken some damage?


Depends very much on the circumstances. In this case, they had
a very remote chance of rescue, but that would presuppose they
knew the cause of the accident and could positively eliminate
it as a cause for the rescue vehicle. In case of foam impact,
this was not the case. The next vehicle was as much at risk.

Did the sending the craft down after there was known damage.


They did not know there was damage. They thought there was a
remote possibility of it having some. There is a fairly extensive
previous experience with foam impacts to go off of though. They
were studying that particular damage recently as it did seem
to be occuring more often. Or, maybe it was not being obscured
by other more important issues.


And could it have been differently?


On an offchance, the damage would have been visible from
recon satellites. Meaning the damage had to be a certain size
and angle from the recon satellites. Also, recon sats would not
help in the least in a large cross-sections of types of damage.
(ie, structural failure internal to the vehicle)

And did it have to happen?


The could have grounded the fleet a long, long time ago.

And what ways are there, to make sure this sort of accident/disaster never happens again, or
atleast alot less chances..


Well. They can make a reasonable stab at not having foam impact the
Shuttle again, but generally, there is not a lot they can do with
Shuttle given the shear number of single-point catastrophic failure
modes. It is just a matter of time before the next one is lost.
(If you look at NASA's projected safety rating prior to the accident,
you'll see that NASA had a fairly reasonable guess as to the likelihood
of losing another Shuttle. Using their modified flight rate and modified
safety projection, you have a loss of 1-2 more shuttles prior to the
end-of-life of the Shuttle program).

Definetly some changes of policy and procedure, as well as how things are done. Change in future
shuttles or like craft!?


Not really. The main thing to consider is that Columbia's best chance
was in that the next Shuttle was fairly close to being launched. There
was a very short window between that particular sequence of flights.
That really does not happen when you have a flight rate of 4 flights
per year, which will be often the case in the coming few years.

The real gain would be to scratch the next Hubble flight and fly only
to ISS. That would help shuttles that have problems going up find a
harbor.


What purpose does the ISS have for the future exploration of space, other than to serve as a very
expensive laboratory in space? Not that this is a bad idea, just that how can it be used to get
humanity into space, to build colonies and like efforts?


What does that have to do with anything? Shuttle is for ISS. ISS is
for Shuttle. Stop one and you stop the other. Shuttle has no mission
outside ISS. And it would be longer to ramp up uses for Shuttle than
ground the fleet and build something else in it's place.

Mike




"John E. Perry" wrote:


Abrigon Gusiq wrote:

If ISS had been available as a space dock, so that the damage could have been checked out
before the shuttle went to land. Could it have been discovered and repaired in space, if the
ISS Was available to repair it?

Others have already answered that question better than I could have.


Alternate, new policy, would they have let the shuttle go down with a crew, or should have
instead sent up a Soyuz or like, to act as a ferry to Earth, and bring the damaged shuttle
down remotely?

Recall that they only sent the shuttle down because they were convinced
-- from bottom to top of the hierarchy -- that there was no problem.
I'm sure they're developing new policies right now that may include
these ideas, and other ideas that may be better or worse. Not being
privy to such internal discussions, none of us (unless some of those
involved are monitoring these ng's) can really answer for them.

By the way, my comment wasn't intended to denounce discussion of
alternatives here. I think "how could this have been done better, and
what can be done to improve it" is altogether appropriate. I was
addressing the "they were assholes because they didn't do...", and then
concocting solutions that weren't available when the shuttles were
built, and second-guessing alternatives to solve one problem that
appeared insignificant until it actually happened.

After all, many apparently much worse problems were already known, and
had been addressed. That's what opened the window to let this one
occur, assuming the presently indicated scenario is the correct one
(which, by the way, is still not altogether certain, is it?).

jp