Very close-up, slo-mo of the Columbia launch debris.

Florida Today ^ | 02/01/03

[slimer]

If the liftoff damage was to blame, the shuttle and its crew of seven may well have been doomed from the very start of the mission.

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.

Article Explains Repairs Not Possible While in Orbit

[Atchafalaya]

If damage would have been determined in orbit to be prohibitve for reentry I'm sure that Columbia could have been parked "up" to buy time. If it is determined that that the cause of the breakup was a failure of the left wing (not root cause mind you, foam, ice, whatever) and the engineers on terra firma said no problem, my question is did anyone go outside (shuttle) and look at it? A picture is worth a thousand words, a visual is what I'd want!

[aruanan]

helmut

A Helmut is some German guy. A helmet is the thing he'd wear on his head to protect it.

[XBob]

the tank is coated with a sprayed on foam, it weighs only about 66,000 lbs and carries about 500,000 gallons of fuel.

The foam is designed to keep the liquid hydrogen and the liquid oxygen cold, as the tank is expendible and usually burns up on re-entry

too many people are confusing the tank insulation (what came off) with the shuttle insulation (what was hit).

[Atchafalaya]

Only if you inhale!!

[XBob]

101 - "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. "

I agree. The only thing they could have done was to abort the orbit and land in Spain. And perhaps even that wouldn't have worked. And someone would have needed to do it just a moment after the tank insulation came loose.

And that would have cost $500 million - the average cost of one shuttle launch.

[tophat9000]

No hand-holds under there. No robot arm on this mission either. They sometimes use the arm with it's camera to check tiles.

I'm not even sure there was an EVA suit onboard for this mission.

I do remember on the very first shuttle launch in 81 they was concern they may have lost some tiles … at that time they used ground based telescopes to takes photo of the shuttle in orbit to check for damage

I know that may sound a little wild but I remember it very well.
I was working for Raytheon Data System at the time and NASA was using our gear to transmit data between Houston and Rockwell Space Division in Downey .. During that time there was a problem with some of our gear in Downey and to expedite getting back online so the data could be transmitted the field engineering group grabbed our test bed system in the Irving CA repair depot (normally a big no-no)

[XBob]

"only if you inhale"

LOL

well, the monomethylhydrazine (fuel) isn't bad, and you would probably be ok, but and nitrogen tetroxide (oxidizer) will burn out your eyes and your skin, fast.

[XBob]

good memory.

I wonder if they were complacent, or since they were already in orbit, with no way to rescue, they decided just to trust to luck. This 'hollywood' movie type idea of flying the colombia up to the space station, or park and wait for rescue, just doesn't work in real life. It takes months to prepare a shuttle for flight, not a few hours/days like hollywood does it.

[BraveMan]

From washington.edu . . .

"The year 1979 was the planned launch year for the first shuttle prototype vehicle, Columbia. During that year, the vehicle shed some 40% of its "critical" ceramic thermal insulation in a flight riding piggy-back on a Boeing 747 from California to Cape Kennedy."

Link: Learning to Take the Heat: Insulation for the Space Shuttle

[Atchafalaya]

I know that the people let go were fired, There was a show I saw about the discussions (heated) to determine launch/no launch for Challenger. That is why I added the qualifyer that everyone needs to tell the truth. These people live in a world beyond mine and I work in a stat lab in a hospital where things can get busy. There is constant input either from samples coming in or from Dr.s calling for reports; at the end of the shift I'm whipped. I sign everything I do and all computer transactions are by my password initials. If I eff up (and everyone does) I want to be the first one to bring attention to that fact and to have someone outside the process determine what needs to be done to correct the error(s). Can't do that unless you admit your failures (eff-ups)! That was then, maybe we'll see something different this time?

[poindexter]

"Is it time to consider replacing the shuttle with a new generation of space craft?"

It was time to do that 10 years ago.

[Atchafalaya]

Ah the deadly B stoff and H stoff. Wish both would evaporate ASAP. I noticed B stoff managed to get his feel your pain comment in today. I wait with baited breath......

[unspun]

Look closely at the frame of the debris coming out from under the wing. The shuttle seems to yaw. Camera jerk or a hard hit?

When that last "spray" shows up under the wing, it *seems* that the shuttle is lifted a bit.

[XBob]

111 -"If I eff up (and everyone does) I want to be the first one to bring attention to that fact and to have someone outside the process determine what needs to be done to correct the error(s). Can't do that unless you admit your failures (eff-ups)! That was then, maybe we'll see something different this time?"

you would never make it at today's NASA.

Mission #1 - protect your job
Mission #2 - protect your boss's job
mission #3 - do your job, if you have time after #1 and #2.

[Jael]

excellent post

[anymouse]

I can assure you that no "corners were cut." Everyone here takes safety and their job (really they are intertwined) deadly serious. And with the Israeli astronaut, COL Ramon on board this flight, security was extra tight, even before 9/11/01.

A little known or remembered fact is that a shuttle entering the atmosphere is nearly as critical/dangerous as launch. The shuttle has to be flown very precisely (by computers) and the thermal and aerodynamic forces are very intense. The shape of the orbiter is optimized to minimize those re-enty temperatures and loads. Those funny ceramic tiles are what separates the shuttle from +3000 deg. F temperatures. Unprotected the aluminum structure and most everything else starts to melt or burn quickly at those temperatures.

Nature has a way of reminding you that you only think you understand how things work. You can bet the best and brightest at NASA and it's contractors will be hard at work trying to figure out what went wrong, correct it and get the shuttles back and flying as soon as possible. To expand on Apollo 13 Flight Director, Gen Kranz's famous line, "Failure is not an option, but if it does happen, you better d@mn well figure out what went wrong and make sure it never happens again."

[SwampFoxOfVa]

I remember reading that the putty used to seal the gaps at the joins in the SRBs was changed prior to the Challenger accident due to the old putty containing asbestos. The old putty would have remained pliable at the low temperatures on that fateful morning. Another case of PC!

[Chi-townChief]

The Apollo fire also.

[eno_]

I suggested this on another thread, and it was pointed out that the shuttle needs a docking unit in the payload bay to dock with the ISS. That was almost certainly not on board for this mission.

MAYBE they could have ferried people across a distance between the two craft using some jury rig, but that makes the whole attempt to put the crew aboard the ISS very risky.

Still, if they had arranged a flyby of the ISS early in the mission, they might have had some images of damaged tiles, and an idea of whether desperate measures were the only option. Or, they might have found nothing of value.