NASA Could have aborted the flight before it reached orbit!

NASA Website ^ | 02/03/03 | self

[Fred Mertz]

Good info, thanks.

[cinFLA]

I did not flame the messenger, although he was worthy of flaming as his post is not accurate

No? You only postulated a situation that would make his post not credible. However your post was not credible as I posted. Now you are saying his post was not accurate! It may have contained errors but he provided a credible link which you obviously did not bother to read before flaming him.

[cinFLA]

also, my point about aborting a launch that cost $500 million on speculation and a split-second decision is valid....

Better to shut our eyes and lose seven lives?

[cinFLA]

I suspect, if they had aborted, the same thing would have happened-with even more disatrous results.

I suspect that you should do more research and less "suspecting".

[ApesForEvolution]

Would the fuel tanks be remotely destroyed before they hit ground and destroyed an entire community? What about the shuttle itself? What assurances that it won't crash on a densely populated area? If it were my call, assuming there was a reasonable time frame and intuitive reason to abort, unless I knew I wouldn't be killing 7 or a dozen or several dozen or hundreds of people on the ground, the astronauts would have to go into orbit and we'd fix their problem while safely floating around. I believe all future flights must make contingency emergency access to the ISS a priority, regardless.

[Publius6961]

Oh they will listen, but it doesn't take much smarts to be a Monday morning quarterback.
This legend in his own mind wants to point out the obvious.

[cinFLA]

I ( having worked at NASA Ames and on the Shuttle specifically) went to the link because what you said made NO SENSE!!! The link does NOT say they have 25 mins to make a decision...what it says is that in 25 mins the shuttle would return for landing...Geeez Louise this is the kind of stupid nonscience thinkling that fuels ALL cinspiracy theories. Let me assure you that once those boosters fire you cannot stop the process there is no "abort" or stop...The bird is live. You might be able to have a different flight path but there was NO indicacation that an emergency had occured and the bird needed to return...Learn to read learn to think

Learn to read and think! Did you even bother to read the link? Obviously not or you would not have made the above post.

[Anticommie]

And I am trying to tell you that it isn't possible to do anything more than is done. The event simply wasn't seen until the tapes were reviewed, and they can't be reviewed within 25 minutes of launch, and certainly not before initial orbit is reached, at ~8 minutes.

Really? NASA new from the previous launches there is a problem with foam debrees falling from the body of main rocket during the launch, they also had cameras installed at several points of the shuttle, I 've seen pictures on TV from one of the previous flights showing footage from one of those cameras. So the question is they did not watch closely the lift off, or they knew about the problem and just kept their fingers crossed. I smell major rat here, they (NASA) already started the spin "Nothing can be done once the shuffle lifts off," however they could fix a Hubble telescope in space, exchange the crews onboard the space station etc, etc, I will never buy this crap, and as the investigation progresses hopefully they won't be able to cover up they role in this tragedy. One of major NASA experts warned several monts ago a tragic accident is coming, they had lots of problems and with shutlle's readiness for flight in the past, and those problems were not a bad weather.
I believe the shuttle program at this point is doomed without major revolutionary fixes, and it should be.
Space exploration should and will be continued, but they need to take a long and hard look where we came from and where we are going.

[Frank_Discussion]

The launch is watched real-time, this is true. However, the general idea of picking out individual flashes of light or debris blur in a plume of gasses moving at high-supersonic speeds, well, it's damn ludicrous. There is a whole team of people who that is charge of analyzing launch imagery and video, but it is a task that is performed for use post-launch. The review takes longer than 8 to 25 minutes!

There is a gremlin in the system somewhere, and it may be the debris strike. I speculate that there is a link between it and the breakup, in my pure opinion. However, there is a time limitation on the whole launch system/process that doesn't allow for abort on visual strangeness of launch. IF it is even seen at the time of launch.

Abort modes are triggered by sensor data or on-board readings.

[Junior]

Using ! in headlines bespeaks a kind of amateurishness.

[Preech1]

I plead guilty to being an amateur. But then, must all posters be professionals? I thought the name of the website, Freerepublic.com was representative of our freedom of speech as well as the freedom to be an amateur.

[Junior]

No offense intended. Think of exclamation points as "laugh tracks" for threads; a laugh track says the audience is too stupid to know when something's funny and an exclamation point says the audience is too stupid to know something's important.

[Preech1]

Oh!?! I % get * it " now&&& (GRIN)

[Jael]

Don't worry about it. :-) No offense taken.

[CardCarryingMember.VastRightWC]

Since no one else in the first 134 posts to this thread has bothered to copy it over here, I'll post the actual relevant text from the referenced NASA page that you are all arguing about --

The RTLS abort mode is designed to allow the return of the orbiter, crew, and payload to the launch site, Kennedy Space Center, approximately 25 minutes after lift-off.

The RTLS profile is designed to accommodate the loss of thrust from one space shuttle main engine between lift-off and approximately four minutes 20 seconds, at which time not enough main propulsion system propellant remains to return to the launch site.

Unless I am a complete failure in the skill set of Reading Comprehension, it seems clear that the RTLS (Return To Launch Site) scenario - which involves the shuttle coming back to the exact same spot they started from - lasts approximately 25 minutes from the moment of launch until the moment of landing. So the entire length of time the shuttle is off the ground is 25 minutes. Isn't that what it says? Did I misread it?

The second paragraph says that the RTLS scenario must be started no later than 4 min 20 sec after launch. That leaves about 20 more minutes for the the short return flight - which later paragraphs split into two parts - a powered phase and a glide phase (with a jettisoning of the External Tank occurring between the two phases). So we get 4-1/2 minutes up and 20 minutes back down.

BOTTOM LINE: They had 4-1/2 minutes and not 25 minutes after launch to decide to abort it using the RTLS scenario.

BTW: After 4-1/2 minutes have passed since launch, the next abort phase available to them involves crossing the Atlantic Ocean. It's not 100% clear to me from the language they use that this involves leaving and re-entering the atmosphere. But the phrase "ballistic trajectory" certainly seems to imply that. This would mean that the same tragic outcome would have happened with the Trans-Atlantic scenario if the abort decision had been made after 4-1/2 minutes had elapsed.

BTW AGAIN: There are 2 paragraphs on that page briefly describing "Contingency Aborts" - where the crew is saved but the vehicle is lost. However, not a single timing deadline is mentioned in that section, so it's anybody's guess as to the timelines involved there. The only mention of "25 minutes" - the figure you are all arguing about - is WRT the "RTLS" scenario.

[ContemptofCourt]

See my post at 110 for a more detailed explanation of the four types of abort senarios....7.5 minutes after launch is the last chance to abort, and that abort requires an orbit around the Earth.

[aristeides]

This Washington Post article, First Mission Shaped Decisions in Last Shuttle Managers Relied on Experience, Calculations on Tile Damage , seems to consider aborting the mission to have been a possibility. It also mentions another possible strategy:

As a result, ground controllers apparently did not consider the radical measures that might have saved the astronauts' lives -- aborting the mission soon after liftoff or bringing the shuttle in at a reentry angle that could have allowed the crew to parachute to safety.

... Dittemore said that after the engineers concluded the shuttle would be safe, there was no consideration given to having it reenter the atmosphere tilted away from the damaged side. That might have allowed the crew to eject when the shuttle reached a lower altitude, but would have certainly doomed the spacecraft.

[Preech1]

And if you'd have read the previous 134 posts, you'd see that I acknowledged my error in stating the 25 minute window. But I stand by my original premise that the shuttle was not "Doomed the second it got off the pad", which was my original reason for posting this thread.

[snooker]

Kind of funny.

You can always see better with 20/20 hindsight.

NASA reviewed the pictures from the long range cameras the next day, as is the policy.

snooker