Hugh Sprunt
Wednesday February 5, 2003

This article, in the New York Times, indicates that Columbia did not have enough fuel to reach the International Space Station (both altitude-change and orbital plane-change maneuvers would be required) which would have allowed the Columbia crew, with help from those aboard the ISS, to evacuate to the space station where they could have had safe haven until the arrival of, presumably, shuttle Atlantis to return them safely to earth shortly after March 1.

The Russian "lifeboat" reentry vehicle attached to the ISS would also presumably not have had the fuel to rendezvous with the Columbia, remove some of the crew, and return them to earth (The normal capacity of the "lifeboat" vehicle is just three, including its own pilot, though I am sure it would have been crowded to its limit under this scenario, had it been possible to attempt it).

The Times also indicates that NASA (wisely or unwisely) does not have the capability to repair tile damage in orbit, specifically ruling out the possibility that the Columbia crew could have performed the critical tile repairs themselves.

Even assuming the Columbia space walker(s), equipped only with the space suits Columbia had on board lacking the shuttle’s customary robot arm, could maneuver themselves to the damaged tile area(s) and maintain position during repairs, it is far from clear that they could have successfully attempted some sort of jury-rigged tile repair effort with the materials onboard (all the while taking care not to harm any of the undamaged tiles on the underside of Columbia).

That said, one does hark back fondly to the very successful (and very off-the-cuff) jury-rigging of various Apollo 13 systems that allowed its crew to return safely to earth.

We also know from the Times article that the films of the Columbia launch, depicting the impact of the external tank’s "foam insulation" on the underside of Columbia’s left wing, were not reviewed until the day after launch, January 17th, so there was no real-time knowledge of potential tile damage that would have allowed NASA to order the Columbia to perform a relatively risky return-to-launch-site (RTLS) abort very shortly after launch or even to try for a less risky sub-orbital landing downrange in, say, Spain or Africa (Such a downrange landing would have permitted a return to earth commencing at somewhat lower, sub-orbital, speeds that would have put less stress on the damaged tiles, perhaps allowing a successful touchdown).

In relevant part, according to today’s Times (Page A27 of the National Edition):

"Another shuttle, Atlantis, was scheduled for launching on March 1 to carry supplies and a new crew to the space station, and it is possible to imagine a Hollywood-type series of events in which NASA rushed Atlantis to the launching pad, sent it up with a minimal crew of two, had it rendezvous with Columbia in space and brought down everyone safely.

"But Atlantis is still in its hangar, and to rush it to launching would have required NASA to circumvent most of its safety measures. 'It takes about three weeks, at our best effort, to prepare the shuttle for launch once we're at the pad,' Mr. Buckingham said, 'and were not even at the pad.' Further, Columbia had enough oxygen, supplies, and fuel (for its thrusters only) to remain in orbit for only five more days, said Patrick Ryan, a spokesman for the Johnson Space Center here."

The rescue approach being derided above as totally infeasible is exactly the scenario I have been pondering the most since first learning of the "foam insulation" impact last Saturday morning.

Before going on, the language usage above causes me to inquire whether the Times - or today's NASA - would consider NASA's extremely rapid, impromptu, and successful reactions to Apollo 13's problems (after a heater short circuit caused one of the fuel cell units to heavily damage the Apollo 13 service module) to have been "Hollywood-type" scenarios that were not worth pursuing.

By modern NASA standards, it appears to me that the effort that saved the Apollo 13 crew (done on the spur of the moment and under much greater time pressure than prevailed in the case of Columbia damage) would indeed be considered a "Hollywood-type" scenario (and I say that not merely because a major film was in fact made about the Apollo 13 and the crew rescue strategies employed).

Let's take a look at the two paragraphs above from the Times to determine if unanswered questions still remain re the “Atlantis rescue” scenario.

Had NASA ordered Atlantis to be prepared with all reasonable speed for a possible rescue mission on January 17, the same day that NASA first became aware that the "foam insulation" impact under the left wing of the Columbia during launch MIGHT be a problem, the space agency would have had very significant amount of time to launch Atlantis before Columbia ran out of consumables (on Day 22, five days after the planned February 1 touchdown, according to the NASA spokesman quoted by the Times).

Taking precautions before determining for certain the dimensions of potential problem often makes sense, especially if the time needed to implement precautionary actions is large compared to the time it takes to determine with some certainty whether the potential problem in question in fact exists.

While Atlantis was being prepared for the earliest feasible launch (accelerated preparations having started on January 17th) NASA could have taken another couple of days (or even more) to arrange ground-based and space-based optically-related imagery of the belly of Columbia.

The first visual indication of damaged tiles on the bottom of Columbia would presumably have been the stripping away of the black coating on the tiles on the underside of Columbia. The color of the tile under the black coating is white.

Thus, had the highest resolution imagery obtainable revealed a material amount of white within an area that should have been all black, further analysis of the apparent damage would have been extremely appropriate (including, but not limited to, soliciting advice from independent outside experts in the time available prior to the earliest reasonable launch date of Atlantis).

NASA thought it worthwhile to image the shuttle via high-powered ground-based optics quite a few years ago, so why no do so again, especially since the hardware and digital processing techniques have materially improved? Surely neither the cost nor the time required was a factor in this decision.

I note that it appears, at least to this lay observer, that it should have been relatively easy to detect even relatively small damaged white areas (if any) on the black background of Columbia’s belly, given modern spaced-base recon satellites can apparently detect a white golf ball sitting on a green from low earth orbit.

More to the point, if a space-based system can obtain this sort of resolution of the earth's surface through the full depth of the earth's atmosphere, how much higher resolution can be obtained when a space-based system (such as the Hubble satellite, a modern military recon satellite, or other similar systems) is used to image another vehicle in space where there is no atmospheric distortion? Did NASA bother to even inquire about the imaging capabilities of other US government agencies on or about January 17? If not, why not?

In any event, this semi-informed citizen would like to hear, from experts within NASA, the USAF, and the private sector, whether it is completely certain (as NASA has said) that the sort of optical examination described above could not possibly have provided any useful information to NASA concerning the state of the tiles on the underside of Columbia’s left wing. All NASA information on this point to date (of which I am aware) indicates that NASA believes that no significant additional information could have been gathered in this fashion - consistent with NASA statements that it did not even bother to examine the underside of the shuttle optically in any way whatsoever.

The NASA statement in the Times indicates that Columbia would have run out of consumables (presumably either electrical power, oxygen, or CO2 scrubbing capacity was the critical single limiting factor) by Day 22. This is consistent with NASA's often exercised capability to "waive-off" a shuttle landing for at least several days due to bad weather at the Cape or the alternate landing site at Edwards AFB in California.

However, in the face of (possible) fatal damage to the underside of the shuttle's left wing, I would have expected NASA (while gathering and analyzing the degree of damage, including the ways described above) to have ordered Columbia, on January 17th, to go into a full power-down mode, at least for a day or two, while the potential tile damage was assessed through all available means and analyzed (within and outside NASA). What was the downside to doing so?

Although I am not privy to the specific detailed information NASA has on shuttle performance, my expectation is that a fully-powered-down Columbia on January 17th (bare essential life support for a crew, who would spend almost all its time resting quietly instead of conducting science, and with the shuttle systems providing the bare minimum amount of power - no science experiments or non-essential other operational routines – to keep Columbia “alive”) could have remained safely in orbit well beyond the Day 22 figure above.

The five-day extension from Day 17 to Day 22 that NASA routinely allows for clearly assumes that Columbia would have been going through its consumables at the customary rate throughout its entire 16-17 day science mission and does not appear to consider the in-orbit endurance of a Columbia that had been fully powered down (man and machine) starting January 17.

What would have been the cost of powering down until the best reasonable information on possible tile damage could have been gathered and analyzed? Two or three days of in-orbit science experiments, work that could have been done with only moderate risk (should NASA have later decided to run that particular risk) by extending the mission a couple of days into the extra five-day minimum extension period to which the NASA spokesman referred (Shuttles have often had longer landing delays due to weather without adverse result).

I would guess (and I would be delighted to hear the actual figures from NASA and independent experts) that a full human and mechanical "powering-down" like the one I describe above would have turned the putative extra five day extension period that NASA provided to the New York Times into at least an additional week or so in orbit. An extra twelve days (five plus seven) from the actual February 1 return date gets us to February 13th.

Is NASA saying that it would have been not worthwhile, as of January 17th, to create and at least temporarily maintain the possibility of launching Atlantis, likely with a minimal two- or three-person crew, to rescue the Columbia crew via a launch around February 13th (or a few days after February 13th if my estimate of an additional week’s endurance, if powered down starting January 17, turns out to be on the low side)?

Atlantis could presumably also have taken an extra couple of days (after taking Columbia’s crew aboard) to examine up close (with or without a space walk) the damage to Columbia tiles with a view toward the possibility of returning to Columbia on a subsequent shuttle mission (properly equipped with a robot arm, the proper suits for extended space walks, and whatever repair materials NASA thought might do the job).

Though the ability to "revive" a totally shut-down and unoccupied Columbia at least several weeks after the rescue mission is a serious question (even assuming the tile repairs turned out to be successful), any reasonable potential option to save this irreplaceable billion dollar machine, after having rescued its crew several weeks earlier seems worth considering to me. Did NASA consider rescuing the crew (and the Atlantis herself) in this fashion? If not, why not? If so, why has no one at NASA walked us through enough detail for the average citizen to understand that this strategy was not even worth serious contemplation?

For that matter, could a one- or two-person caretaker volunteer crew could have been left aboard the damaged Columbia for several weeks after the rescue to preserve and stabilize Columbia's on-board system (the powered down mode) for a later repair and recovery of Columbia? Presumably the presence of a minimum caretaker crew would have increased the chances of fully reviving Columbia for reentry should the tile repair effort prove successful.

After all, the Atlantis presumably could have supplied Columbia with the essential consumables to allow her and a volunteer or two to maintain the vehicle’s systems – and themselves – with a small amount of power while a repair attempt is mounted (If the separate repair mission did not appear to have fixed the tile problem, the repair shuttle could always have simply left Columbia in orbit indefinitely - if any chance of repair was still thought to exist - and simply taken the small caretaker crew back home).

Some final points:

Everything I advocate above may well be completely worthless and, to someone with the requisite technical knowledge, even downright silly. However, I've gleaned nothing from the plethora of data in gleaned from TV and print media (including today's Times article excerpted above) that gives me any reason to think that I am grossly in error. If nothing else, this is a shortfall in communications on the part of NASA (and the media) that can presumably be corrected quickly and easily corrected.

I am also disturbed (based upon NASA's pronouncements) that it appears that it did so little advanced contingency planning regarding these fragile, yet so vital, shuttle tiles, especially given the record of the tiles' performance over the last 20+ years. I may be wrong to think so, but that's the impression I'm getting.

I also don't see much evidence (believe me, I'd like to be set straight, especially on this point!) that the attitude within NASA during the Apollo 13 rescue mission still exists. Saving the Apollo 13 crew required very unorthodox (and previously unimagined) rescue scenarios that were successfully accomplished in a much shorter time frame than was available in Columbia's case.

A proper and uplifting mourning of our dead, as I witnessed on Tuesday, can be healing and spiritually uplifting. However, a great nation is not measured merely by its ability to mourn its dead.

How much more inspiring would a successful rescue of man, and possibly machine, have been for all of us, despite the small chunk of NASA's annual budget a rescue would have consumed? But what if the rescue was attempted and failed? I submit that we would be better off than we are today, perhaps even if additional lives had been lost.

I have not met that many astronauts, but I have little doubt that, if "the numbers" looked halfway reasonable that, NASA's management's routine day-to-day launch and operational safety procedures notwithstanding, there would have been plenty of volunteers to take Atlantis into orbit to try to save the crew of Columbia.