I've always found the relative impact velocity of the foam piece with respect to the shuttle quite surprising. There is some clarification of this in the CAIB report, chapter 3, page 60 (<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/home/CAIB_Vol1.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/home/CAIB_Vol1.html</a>):<p>THE ORBITER “RAN INTO” THE FOAM
“How could a lightweight piece of foam travel so fast and hit
the wing at 545 miles per hour?”
Just prior to separating from the External Tank, the foam was
traveling with the Shuttle stack at about 1,568 mph (2,300
feet per second). Visual evidence shows that the foam de-
bris impacted the wing approximately 0.161 seconds after
separating from the External Tank. In that time, the velocity
of the foam debris slowed from 1,568 mph to about 1,022
mph (1,500 feet per second). Therefore, the Orbiter hit the
foam with a relative velocity of about 545 mph (800 feet per
second). In essence, the foam debris slowed down and the
Orbiter did not, so the Orbiter ran into the foam. The foam
slowed down rapidly because such low-density objects have
low ballistic coefficients, which means their speed rapidly
decreases when they lose their means of propulsion.
I loved this article. Teared up a few times thinking about how things could have gone differently.<p>I had an opportunity to tour Kennedy Space Center in December. I think many people have this idea that the NASA of today is a shadow of itself and that it's stagnating. I had an opinion something like that.<p>To my surprise, NASA is in the middle of some very interesting work. They've completed a new gantry/launch tower for their next generation of rockets which will be close to or bigger than the Saturn V. Several of the launch pads have been completely retrofitted. There's a lot of cool activity going on that we'll start seeing on the big stage in the next couple of years.<p>It was heart breaking to see one of the shuttles hanging in the museum. They really are beautiful, utterly massive machines. You can only get a sense of loss looking at them, feeling that we're missing something big by having removed them from service.<p>But looking back, despite their majesty the shuttles took a lot of work to do relatively little. (Little in this context is still a huge amount.) It was time to retire them.<p>I'm cautiously optimistic about NASA's future. The idea of being more of a support role for commercial manned space may seem beneath them, but it's not. They will continue doing the types of projects that are impossible for companies, including manned missions.
When the Space Shuttle program was decommissioned in 2011, the U.S. lost human spaceflight capability. We are at a point in U.S. history that is similar to the human spaceflight gap that existed between the Apollo program and the Space Shuttle program.<p>There is an American flag that flew on-board STS-1. It was left on display in the ISS by the crew of STS-135. It is awaiting return to the U.S. by the next American crew that is launched from the U.S.<p>I do my best to embrace the concept of being <i>a citizen of the world</i> rather than of a specific country, but I can't help feeling a little patriotic. Like many of you, I grew up watching the Space Shuttle launches; all of those memories of both the successful launches and the tragic losses. That zeitgeist you grew up with, seeing those launches: it indelibly marked young people like us, with the knowledge and firm belief that, <i>anything is possible through science and technology</i>, perhaps even more so because it was during that time that we were teaching ourselves to program on our Commodore 64, Atari 800, etc.<p>Perhaps this feeling is heightened for me now, because in the U.S., I think there has been an under-current feeling for some time now, that could be paraphrased as, <i>"Where are we heading, as a nation?"</i><p>I still believe in those child-hood dreams, and my eyes get a little misty, thinking of when we will launch into space and bring that flag home.
Interesting to remember the Columbia tragedy while recalling Richard Feynman's report summarizing the culture problems at NASA he found following the Challenger disaster. It's clear that NASA ultimately learned very little (or forgot it after 15 years).<p>No matter the state of the shuttle program, it's also a shame that NASA didn't maintain a non-reusable rocket system that could have allowed for expensive but relatively low-risk emergency flights for this sort of thing. If the shuttle's all you've got then it's going to be difficult to address unexpected problems <i>with another shuttle just like it</i>.
Of course, hindsight is always 20/20. If we sent a successful rescue mission, we would instead be reading an article entitled. "Columbia Rescue: NASA's finest hour or giant waste of taxpayer's dollars?" with a bunch of supporting evidence on why the rescue was unnecessary.
It's really difficult to imagine the proposed approach panning out as intended - the infrastructure for STS wasn't set up for really quick turn arounds. STS's conceptual design was pitched that way (shuttles going up several times a week), but that didn't pan out in design. And the Challenger accident can be blamed in part on a management culture that took too long to accept their engineers telling them that.<p>As terrible as the Columbia accident was, I think this approach (with so many checks skipped to get Atlantis up as quick as possible) would have ended in the loss of both crews & orbiters. And I think if the Columbia crew knew the full extent of the situation, and also knew of this sort of rescue in the works, they probably would have pressed mission control to just let them try the re-entry themselves.
Wow, I devoured every word of that article with baited breath. One of the most amazing stories of fiction intertwined with actual events I've ever read.<p>I wonder how much years will have to pass before it would be acceptable to make this fictional rescue mission into a movie..?<p>The obvious issue would be everyone walking out of the theater saying "Jeezz, NASA should have obviously done that, idiots. They killed those astronauts because they didn't do that."
Reminds me of what Neil Armstrong said, when asked what he would do if an engine on Eagle broke and there was no chance they could return from the Moon: "I would try to fix it."
One thing not covered in this article (and maybe the CAIB report? I don't know) is whether the Russians could have done something useful in the rescue. Could enough fuel and scrubber tanks have been boosted to Columbia on a Soyuz or Progress to get it up to the ISS?
I wonder if a smaller rocket could have been repurposed to simply send extra supplies to the shuttle (or a repair kit) while they waited for rescue? Maybe a soyez?<p>Even if it couldn't dock with the shuttle, I wonder if it could match orbit and then do a space walk to retrieve the supplies?
Very good article, clears up a lot of questions, doubts, and misconceptions.<p>It seems to me that the problems with the Shuttle program always came down to money. The Nixon Administration denied Nasa the necessary budget to build the larger reusable vehicle they originally envisioned, while simultaneously scrapping the Saturn manned program.<p>As a space nut since basically I was 5 or 6 years old, when America was in its heyday of Gemini and Apollo programs (I was 10 when Apollo 11 astronauts kicked up lunar dust), space exploration was a given to me and all of my friends.<p>It was assumed that we would just keep on building and growing our space program until we got to something that resembled Clarke/Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Perhaps we wouldn't make it by 2001, but some time not too far beyond then. Maybe 2011. Maybe 2015.<p>It therefore makes me sad that we've been in this hiatus since about 1974, really 40 years of treading water rather than building much on the accomplishments of the past. Why not a permanent station on the moon? Why not a nuclear propulsion system that could get to Mars in 6 weeks? What have we done instead with our money, that is so much more worthwhile? Why was Nasa denied the $4 billion it needed to continue the Constellation program, while literally hundreds of billions were allocated for bank bailouts, automotive bailouts, etc.? Where are our priorities?<p>I know these are controversial questions and there are probably some good answers out there, but I go back to the lost dreams, the sacrifices made by the Columbia and Challenger astronauts and others, and I wonder if we haven't traded big dreams for little ones and lost sight along the way of what we're all about.
Reading that it looks like the EVA would be a big problem due to getting into the suits.<p>Would someone who is smarter than me comment on the feasibility (In extremis) of just jumping across the 6 meter gap unsuited 1 by 1 with the suited rescuers helping? I have read that a human can survive about 30 seconds of vacuum without permanent damage. What if they huffed pure oxygen for a while before making the attempt so their blood was super-oxygenated before breathing out and making the leap?<p>Would the depressurization / repressurization take too long? Would it take too long for the space-suited rescuers to man-handle them into the airlock? (Would they even be able to align airlocks for a straight jump?)<p>It makes me wonder what would have happened if NASA has a set of minimal protection "short-duration" suits with almost nothing more than pressurization and a small oxygen supply for quick excursions (Like, for example, transferring quickly between two craft as if your live depended on it :p )
For those interested in a technically detailed fictional account of a rescue mission to Mars, read The Martian by Andy Weir. It raises some of the same feelings as this article.
As one of my coworkers remarked, if you saw this photo without context you might think we had made it to the future:
<a href="http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Space_shuttles_Atlantis_STS-125_and_Endeavour_STS-400_on_launch_pads.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Space_...</a>
Russia launched about a dozen Proton rockets a year at the time of Columbia disaster, two Soyuz spacecrafts and two-three Progress spacecrafts.<p>Proton used to launch several Soyuz without Orbital Section, called Zond, in 1960s, with booster DM to fly around the Moon. DM adds about 3 km/s of deltaV. Orbital plane change for 7 degrees - between Baikonur's 46 and Columbia's 39 - takes sin(7)*8 km/s = 1 km/s. So technically it could be considered to launch (several) Progress ship(s) with necessary cargos to Columbia while three unmanned Soyuzes would be prepared and sent to the rescue. Soyuz approaches Columbia, gets caught by manipulator, astronauts use spacesuits from Soyuz - which have to be extracted from Soyuz first.<p>ISS, meanwhile, had to be kept without ships, which means landing the crew, hopefully temporarily.<p>All that could be considered. But I don't think anybody high in chain of command considered all of that necessary.
If you are interested in the Columbia events, check out Wayne Hale's blog[1]. He was a flight director/space shuttle program manager and offers a very detailed recollection of the events from inside mission control.<p>[1] <a href="https://waynehale.wordpress.com/" rel="nofollow">https://waynehale.wordpress.com/</a>
What surprises me is that this contingency was not already in place prior to the Columbia accident. Was it budget constraints or did they really think it was that unlikely that a shuttle would be rendered unable to return from orbit and need the crew rescuing?
Seems like they could have rushed the development of RCO to allow a shot at bringing the empty Columbia back, too. In parallel with all the other preparation efforts, fast-tracking something like that where an already-100%-written-off craft might get saved seems worthwhile.
So, after watching Gravity.<p>Would they have enough fuel to change orbit to dock to ISS?<p>If not, would there be enough fuel in Soyuz to undoc, change orbit to Shuttle's and then either re-dock or re-entry?<p>In terms of safety, it appears that shuttle program became somewhat barbaric by reasonable standards of 21st century. If primary vehicle lost re-entry capability, there should be back up plan for re-suppling it until back up vehicle is ready to take people back. I.e. if failure of Soyuz detected before departing from ISS, they can always sit it out and wait for next one while being resullplied by automatic Progresses.
I've often wondered if there was some repair the Columbia crew could have done. Anything that the hole could have been stuffed with? What about pulling a tile off of a less critical section, shaping it, and putting it in the hole?
Edward Tufte had his own information design take on this.<p><a href="http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001yB" rel="nofollow">http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0...</a>
hmm a launch rescue plan with no room for error from NSA..speed up even..What we want two disasters with one month?<p>Someone's not dealing with reality wish full thinking