Looking Back and Looking Forward
NASA manager mused about what to tell Columbia crew if they had known space shuttle was doomed, AP
“When NASA started flying shuttles again, Hale told the new team of mission managers: “We are never ever going to say that there is nothing we can do.” NASA developed an in-flight heat shield repair kit. … Hale said he is now writing about the issue because he wanted future space officials not to make the mistakes he and his colleagues did. The loss of the Columbia astronauts — people he knew — still weighs on Hale. “You never get over it. It’s always present with you,” Hale said. “These are people I knew well. Several of them, I worked closely with. I was responsible for their safety. It’s never going to go away.”
I’m wondering if they could have sent up air/water/food in smaller rockets until they could prep another shuttle to go pick them up.
The problem was that, if they had known that Columbia coudn’t re-enter safely (which they didn’t), then by definition all the other shuttles would have been grounded. It would have taken months to build enough Soyuz spacecraft and LVs for a rescue attempt and I’m not convinced the shuttle’s systems could have lasted that long. At the very least, they would have had to figure out a way to run the ship off of jerry-rigged solar arrays because the fuel cells would not have lasted more than a month, even with extreme power conservation measures.
Good points. Also, it’s probably not fair for me to what-if the scenario. They didn’t know the shuttle was fatally damaged and if they had to listen to every engineer calling foul they would have never got off the ground in the first place. These were not incompetent people, everything was clear in hindsight.
I’m just glad the folks at NASA had the balls to fix the problems and finish building the space station. I think it’s NASA’s finest hour, and nobody really talks about it. And the first shuttle commander (Eileen Collins)and her crew post Columbia? That’s beyond nerves of steel to me. Commander Collins will always be the human face of the shuttle to me, she’s simply awesome!
” if they had to listen to every engineer calling foul”
This is exactly what Wayne Hale advises in his list of lessons from the incident.
There’s an awesome portrait of her here: http://airandspace.si.edu/w…
Certainly shuttles would have been grounded from routine flight, but a rescue flight is not routine. The risk would have been accepted for a rescue mission. I’m sure that NASA could have found volunteers to fly the shuttle on a rescue flight.
Yes, there was an Ariane on the pad at Kourou and it could have launched a canister within a week. Much longer, and the Orbiter power would have run out of cryos, but until then, Columbia had full rendezvous capability but would have needed manual grapple by EVA. The package could have provided supplies to hunker down in a dead cabin for weeks, perhaps longer, awaiting clearance for a shuttle rescue. Russian ships were useless, they were launched too far north.
Jim, do you really think that they could have got the ET safe enough in a short enough period of time?
Keith: thanks for linking whenever Mr. Hale pops up–or finds time away from his grandkids. He’s the kind of public servant that folks constantly disparaging government employees should know about . I wish I had known him.
No disrespect to Mr. Hale intended, but it seems odd that he can quote Mr. Harpold. Did he record the conversation? Was it an email exchange? I hope Mr. Hale would remove the quotes, paraphrase it and state it is just his best memory of the event. How many of us can quote something somebody said to us a year ago or longer? After all, Mr. Harpold is no longer around to confirm or deny or correct the remarks as Mr. Harpold remembered them.
Seems like it’s a good idea to have a launch on need spacecraft/launch vehicle ready to fly for all future LEO human spaceflights? In the end it’s all a risk trade and how much risk versus redundancy you are willing to tolerate?
Theoretically, launch-on-need should become more feasible as lower cost spacecraft like Dragon and its peers become more widely used. It’s a good idea.
Cost = 1 launch vehicle + 1 spacecraft + 1 launch pad + recurring modifications to change destinations + recurring man power + recurring repairs
With Dragon, CST-100 and Dream Chaser the LON (Launch On Need) does not even have to be the same design of spacecraft and launch vehicle.
One thing that I’ve never heard discussed is Nasa’s decision to fly the mission at all. We we were well into struction the construction of the ISS. Why even why the mission at all when could have been done at the ISS? shuttle Columbia schedule you have an external docking adapter installed in 2003. Why not wait and fly the same mission to the ISS? It seems like it was a failure in NASA’s management before the flight began.
I know hindsight is 20/20, but I’m rather disappointed in this attitude that nothing could have been done. I have to believe that if NASA had been all over this issue from the day of launch and gotten the pics from the military to confirm the damage, that we could have come up with a plan to mount a rescue mission. The crew could have gone into survival mode to extend the on-orbit capability, the ground crews could have streamlined the processing to get ready for launch as safely as possible in the shortest amount of time. The odds of similar damage on another flight would be within the acceptable risk of mounting a rescue mission vs. writing off the Columbia crew. I guarantee you there would have been no shortage of volunteers among the astronaut ranks. If Apollo 13 had happened in today’s NASA, that crew would have died for sure. Where is the can-do attitude? Don’t tell me why it couldn’t have been done, tell me how it could have been done. And telling me it couldn’t have be done is not an option.
Saying we couldn’t have done anything is just something that those responsible for this tragedy tell themselves so they can sleep at night because they can’t handle the fact that they screwed the pooch on this one and people died.