Columbia's Problems Began on Left Wing

NYT.com ^

[Salgak]

Good idea, but impractical. I had a friend in the USAF who worked Shuttle Ops. Tiles differ in size, shape, and thickness, depending on where they're placed. Mounting a replacement tile is a multi-week iteration. And in any case, the shuttle lacked EVA suits sufficient to even TRY such repairs. . .

[Jonah Hex]

(I posted this on another thread about the Columbia and the ISS.)

The ISS and Columbia were on different orbital inclinations relative to the Earth's equator. The ISS orbit ranges further north and south than the normal shuttle orbit. To shift Columbia's orbital inclination to match the ISS would require an enormous amount of cross-track delta-v, more than the shuttle's OMS fuel supply can support. Try as they might, they never could have matched orbit with the ISS.

Why are the oribital inclinations different? NASA made that decision when Goldin decided to bring on the Russians as ISS partners. They needed the greater inclined orbit to support launching modules/crews/supplies with Russian boosters. Not only did this change the ISS-support orbital inclination, it also reduced the available orbiter ISS mission payload since additional fuel is required to reach orbit because the inclined orbit loses some of the advantage of using the Earth's east-west rotation.

Bottom line: Columbia could not have reached the ISS.

[Salgak]

The kits were for dings or cracks in tiles, not tile replacement kits. . .

[John Jamieson]

Good repairs are impossible. They may have had a "universal patch kit" at one time, but I'm unaware of it.

[John Jamieson]

Right

[Salgak]

For the same reason a lot of cars have first-aid kits.
In case of a major accident, the kit is just about useless, but for normal ops, it's a peace-of-mind generator. . .

[John Jamieson]

27 years KSC NASA

[Republic of Texas]

Any thoughts on this one?

[John Jamieson]

Too heavy a landing payload, too old, maybe launch damage.

[mewzilla]

Well, what can I say? The guy on ABCNews said they sent the early flights up with "tile repair kits". For patching purposes they had a ceramic based grouting compund-like goo which could be directed into the area where a tile was missing. This stuff was designed to slowly burn away upon re-entry. (the latter info per Mr. Mew, not the ABC guy).

[yooper]

The minute I heard about the take-off wing damage this morning, I knew that it was the cause of the wreck.

"Even if they did find damage, there was nothing the crew could have done to fix it, he said."

I bet this will be corrected quickly. I recently took a SCUBA course and the instructor at one point presented all of the technological advancements in equipment, noting that each advance was the result of an incident where someone paid with their life.

[Republic of Texas]

I heard this shuttle returned with the heaviest payload ever. It happened at a critical time. I suppose even a small thing gone wrong, at that time, could be fatal.

[Solamente]

1. Dittemore said there was nothing that the astronauts could have done in orbit to fix damaged thermal tiles and nothing that flight controllers could have done to safely bring home a severely scarred shuttle, given the extreme temperatures of re-entry.

2. Dittemore said that even if the astronauts had gone out on an emergency spacewalk, there was no way a spacewalker could have safely checked under the wings, which bear the brunt of heat re-entry and have reinforced protection.

This is beyond unreal. You'd think the first order of business once in orbit would be to check for damage.

[John Jamieson]

We used to drop quarters from 2 feet onto the tiles and study the damage. They are very fragile. One goes, and the rest downstrean start peeling off. Stuck on with fabric like material to let them move around a little without cracking off.

[Oztrich Boy]

OK. so devise a repair kit that moulds epoxy-ablative material over the missing tile space. if aerodynamically necessary, mould a dummy ablative patch on the other wing.

Anything has got to be better than a system where losing one of 10,000 tiles dooms the entire craft and everybody on board.

[OReilly]

Bottom line: Columbia could not have reached the ISS.

That adds to the 'it doesn't smell right' when they kept insisting that it made no sense to look for tile damage caused at launch, because they have no capability to repair tiles in orbit...

Something tells me, that might have originally been said about Apollo 13, but when faced with the situation they figured out a way, to bring them back.

[Churchillspirit]

If memory serves, the early shuttle flights often returned with many tiles missing.

[John Jamieson]

Challenger failed at max Q during liftoff. This one failed at max Q during reentry. Max Q is bad stuff. It's the product of air density times velocity squared.

[finnman69]

Uncertain, apparently this shuttle was too heavy to dock with the space station....

[yooper]

"Should they have carried spare parts for every possibility? Each tile is different and has a serial number."

Each tile should have spares on the ISS, and provisions should be made for enabling replacement of the tiles while the shuttle is docked on the ISS. Each shuttle should be fitted with a docking ring.

Keep the faith all. This incident will ultimately result in increased protection of our people....