[deport]

You are assuming they knew they had a problem withing the 80 seconds....... where do you have that assumption documented?

[jlogajan]

Calling the Whack-a-mole team. Calling the Whack-a-mole team. Please report.

[Tennessee_Bob]

And they knew there was trouble when??

[Brett66]

I think the Russian Progress resupply spacecraft could have been reconfigured to resupply the Columbia which would have given them enough time to get another shuttle up there for a rescue attempt. We probably would have to break a lot of safety rules to do something like that, but it wouldn't hurt to have some plans in place just in case.

[lady lawyer]

I'm not a scientist, but here's my guess. They have very clearly said, more than once, that they didn't see the piece of foam hit the orbiter when they were watching the launch, as they said, it is not unusual for ice or debris to fall off the tanks, and you can't see much when you are "looking into the plume." They didn't spot the piece of foam until the next day, when they were carefully reviewing film of the launch.

Once they were out of the earth's atmosphere, any "normal" return meant going through the atmosphere, through the heat which ultimately caused the orbiter to break apart.

[lady lawyer]

I don't think you're going to be able to find "bad guy" here -- at least not within NASA.

[Positive]

Yo Mitch - Challenger exploded at 73 seconds.

Potential damage to Columbia wasn't discovered until over 24 hours.

All of your abort possibilities are irrelevant.

[Fred Mertz]

I don't think they identified the 'minor' glitch in time to react. That's understandable.

I think they had an opportunity to investigate while the Columbia was in space, but they didn't.

[kwyjibo]

Sorry, pal. The debris wasn't noticed until a day later, when Columbia was already in orbit. Sure, if NASA had noticed the impact at the moment it occurred, there may have been some options available. But once the shuttle reached its orbit, there was absolutely NOTHING that could have been done. So, please stop pulling your hair because it's all for naught.

[Chad Fairbanks]

"IT WAS NASA!!!! NASA'S FAULT!!!!!!!!

KILL IT!!!!! KILL IT!!!"

[AnalogReigns]

NASA has repeatedly said they did not see the foam falling off until the taping of the liftoff was reviewed.... well AFTER Columbia was in orbit. Nothing could have been done at that point...unless the bottom of the shuttle was inspected--which for the shuttle crews is impossible, they could not have known of the suspected damage.

Even if damage had been seen from ground telescopes, it was irrepairable up there; the shuttle and crew had no choice but to come back down--as they'd of run out of air before anything could of possibly gotten to them, and the space station was impossible to reach--at a much higher orbit.

Everything appears now like God had better things for them to do other than in this world....

[Jewels1091]

They DIDN'T look at the tape of the lift off until the NEXT day...it was way too late. Had they seen this as it happened, they could have landed at one of their emergency sites.

[Brett66]

They just recently tested a shuttle cam that rides on the external tank and gives video all the way to orbit. Why not position a couple of these cams closer to the wing areas on future flights? This would give them a much better chance of seeing potential problems on the way to orbit. It could've been beneficial in this instance.

[Fpimentel]

Welcome to FreeRepublic. : )

[Fred Mertz]

You ask a good question. Go with the flow, dude.

[nvskibum]

I have read a post from one Freeper, a former NASA executive, suggesting that one problem may have been the heavy weight of the Columbia vehicle. Columbia, being the oldest shuttle, was considerably heavier than newer shuttles. The post stated that heavy re-entry weight would tend to create more stress and heat upon re-entry. If this is true, and if NASA knew that the vehicle sustained damage which would make re-entry more dangerous, might the situation have been improved if the crew were instructed to toss out all unessential items, such as experiments, unneeded equipment, everything in the cargo bay, etc., before initiating re-entry, in order to reduce vehicle weight and stress?

[Screaming_Gerbil]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/835422/posts

Columbia Was Beyond Any Help, Officials Say

Even if flight controllers had known for certain that protective heat tiles on the underside of the space shuttle had sustained severe damage at launching, little or nothing could have been done to address the problem, NASA officials say.

Virtually since the hour Columbia went down, the space agency has been peppered with possible options for repairing the damage or getting the crew down safely. But in each case, officials here and at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida say, the proposed solution would not have worked.

The simplest would have been to abort the mission the moment the damage was discovered. In case of an engine malfunction or other serious problem at launching, a space shuttle can jettison its solid rocket boosters and the external fuel tank, shut down its own engines and glide back down, either returning to the Kennedy Space Center or an emergency landing site in Spain or Morocco.

But no one even knew that a piece of insulation from the external tank had hit the orbiter until a frame-by-frame review of videotape of the launching was undertaken the next day. By then, Columbia was already in orbit, and re-entry would have posed the same danger that it did 16 days later...

[Brett66]

If they had a couple of these cams close to the wing it would've helped a lot. Here's a pic of these cams in use:

Why not put these close to each wing on future flights? They would've had a lot better idea of the threat to the shuttle with these cams on board.

[Diddle E. Squat]

Winnie the Pooh was the first to come out with this theory.

So now its Winnie the Pooh, and Tighe, too.

[coloradan]

In a TAL abort, the vehicle continues on a ballistic trajectory across the Atlantic Ocean to land at a predetermined runway. Landing occurs approximately 45 minutes after launch.

Concorde and for that matter, SR-71, eat your hearts out.