Re: Shuttle Humor, Risk Estimation
On Monday, February 3, 2003, at 03:01 PM, Harmon Seaver wrote:
The biggest question there is why didn't they inspect it? Seems very bizarre, since that's what they did in the past.
That's what they _reported_ later that they did in the past...there certainly was no public announcement that Keyhole satellites were being tasked to look at the shuttle tiles. One might assume that they did in fact look at the tiles this time around, noted the damage, reported to Admiral Poindexter the "toast" conclusion, and that was that. Had the landing gone OK, we would have been hearing about how NASA had verified that little damage had occurred. Now, it's "we didn't have a chance to look, but even if we had, there was nothing anyone could do, so we didn't look." (Of course, there is _much_ they could have done, including coming in at a more westerly landing site, either Edwards or White Sands. Or, with about 10 days of advance notice, Atlantis could have been ready for launch and rendezvous to take the crew off, and perhaps even to transfer fuel to let Columbia go into a higher parking orbit until repairs could be arranged.) But the ostrich was strutting and now NASA is dying. --Tim May "Dogs can't conceive of a group of cats without an alpha cat." --David Honig, on the Cypherpunks list, 2001-11
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 6:21 PM -0800 on 2/3/03, Tim May wrote:
Or, with about 10 days of advance notice, Atlantis could have been ready for launch and rendezvous to take the crew off, and perhaps even to transfer fuel to let Columbia go into a higher parking orbit until repairs could be arranged.
Really? My understanding is that launches are planned so far in advance, and the events required to do so are so tightly coupled they wouldn't have had a chance even if they'd *had* that kind of running room. Just asking, not disputing, here. So, here we go, googling "atlantis rescue mission columbia" doesn't get any recent hits... Ah. Here's *one*, in news.google.com, of course : <http://www.knoxstudio.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=SHUTTLE-DOOM-02-03-03&cat =AN>
Q: Were there any rescue options available for the crew?
A: Columbia had enough fuel and oxygen to stay in orbit several more days, perhaps a week or more with careful management. The shuttle Atlantis was being readied for a March 1 launch from Cape Canaveral, and could possibly have been ready for an emergency mission in a week or two.
"If the problem had been detected at the beginning of the mission and you could get some extra life support up there earlier, they might have been able to wait it out," said MIT science and technology professor Ted Postol. "It would be difficult, but it doesn't sound impossible."
Q: Could Columbia have sought refuge at the international space station?
A: The shuttle didn't have a docking device to visit the station or enough fuel to reach the station, which orbits 30 miles higher than the path taken by Columbia. However, the station does have an airlock that its astronauts can use for space walks, and some tethered escape attempt might have been made had the shuttle gotten there.
Q: What rescue resources could the Russian space program have offered if the danger had been recognized?
A: The Russians have two Soyuz space capsules, each able to carry just three people, ready to fly, and those craft have no equipment to connect to the shuttle.
Which gives the lie to the idea that Columbia was in a higher *altitude* orbit than the space station, which is what I had thought I had heard, but was in a higher *inclination* orbit, which was obvious, of course, by its flight path. Columbia is the only shuttle not actually capable of docking with the ISS to begin with, and that's why they freed it up for this mission. . They were talking about putting it into mothballs a few years ago when money was tight. And, of course, somewhere in my google-walking, I came across the fact that Reagan issued an Executive Order in 1986 forbidding any primary shuttle mission to be commercial, which is about when I pulled the plug on about 7 years of my life, and corresponding financial resources... Same shit, etc... Cheers, RAH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.0 - not licensed for commercial use: www.pgp.com iQA/AwUBPj87UMPxH8jf3ohaEQJZjgCglCObe+AQOgjC1FTsQWgK1Bb9gG0An3HP Ghdte3PcwWGtNbJOGlWisD8P =Z9NF -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
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Tim May