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....Linda Ham was presenting the results of two days of intensive and sometimes heated brainstormings. She was visibly exhausted, but at the same time the oldest veterans in the room felt some Gene Kranz "failure is not option" vibe going through the air. ...."But sending Atlantis to rescue Columbia creates a huge morale issue. We do know that recent modifications brought to the external tank foam made it more brittle as shown by both STS-112 in October and the current emergency."...
"We may change the tank to an older model with more resilient foam, such as ET-94 stored in Louisiana. Atlantis, however, already has its boosters strapped to the tank; destacking is tedious and time consuming, and we have no time. ...
"I also want to mention that a third, Blue Team has also been created to review every possible scenario outside the main two options - even the wildest concepts. Since we declared emergency we are literally flooded with internal and external calls. We have very serious people coming with all sort of hare-brained concepts and ideas. Although most of them fell short of the February 15 deadline, among the lot there might be some clever ideas that need to be reviewed. Anything will help." Ham concluded.
I could easily imagine a package whipped together with e.g. an mmu or two, extra oxygen and food, and a repair kit, and launched on a delta, say. Of course, getting it to the shuttle, last km or 10 m or whatever would be really tricky.
I cant imagine ANYTHING could make the shuttle 'fluffy'.
Well, Dathi, I have to agree that it seems obvious that someone should look into launching something from somewhere that Columbia can snag and use to extend their mission lifetime, buying time for a better rescue mission.
Definitely Team Blue though, because it's a roll of the dice. It all depends on how long it takes to whip together a suitable launch vehicle and availability of a pad, at Canaveral or Kourou. Maybe the Japanese launch pad is available, or Vandenberg. Can you think of others? I think that's enough pads so that the bottleneck becomes the launch vehicle itself.
OK, I've got a "Team Blue" suggestion.
It's really a contingency plan in case Atlantis does indeed take a hit comparable to what incapacitates Columbia.
Atlantis is going up with no mission payload and only 4 astronauts. It has a lot of cargo capacity! There is no time to count on inventing any nifty new doodads, such as a patch kit for Columbia's wing, as pointed out they can't even swap in an older-model tank for Atlantis's safety. However there is ample payload for extending the stay of both Columbia and Atlantis on-orbit for a very long time. Just pack the cargo bay with lots and lots of C02 scrubbers (Maybe some raw materials for the harebrained Blue Team scheme of reheating and thus reviving the LiOH scrubbers for more life), loads of oxygen, water, food, etc. So, if in fact the crews of both ships--eleven people all told--are stranded in orbit, they can hold out for months.
I imagine that with nothing else, the capacity is great enough to supply them for years, though food might go bad before then, and years won't be necessary. We should surely include a Canadarm for this mission though!
Columbia approaches Atlantis, but before coming in to the 90 degree, cargo bay to cargo bay "docking," she comes up as close to Atlantis's control deck windows as is deemed safe, and pirouettes slowly around her yaw axis so that Atlantis crew can inspect the wing, notably the leading edge (but also the underside, why not?) and make sure her wing is intact.
If it is--mission proceeds as in the CAIB appendix, with a twist.
If not--Atlantis comes in to dock, but doesn't proceed to evacuate the crew, not completely anyway. Instead the first spacewalkers bring over LiOH canisters, and bring back to Atlantis a pilot and one or two other crewmembers. Gradually enough supplies are transferred over to Columbia to keep her remaining crew safe and comfortable, and both crews go to work (or continue work, with much more materials included in Atlantis's payload) on fixing the wings.
BUT--I would never suggest that crew return to Earth with a damaged wing, even if it is patched, not unless it were certain death for them otherwise and they have nothing to lose. Black team is working on patching Columbia's wing as a contingency in case Atlantis can't make it in time, and also frankly to keep Columbia's crew busy and ward off despair. It is definitely not plan A, as the post makes clear.
So, with only one craft damaged, the plan is to bring all of Columbia's crew down in undamaged Atlantis, and then deorbit Columbia to its destruction.
In the best case, I propose, for my twist, that instead Columbia be boosted up into a higher parking orbit, to wait for a later mission that will rendezvous and attempt a better job of fixing the wing, developed on the ground while Endeavour or really any of the other three are prepped for this mission. The mission will include installing remote control equipment, also developed at leisure on the ground, that will give complete control authority to the ground, and enable it to be deorbited for a hopeful landing at Edwards. The worst case scenario there is, either the wing repair or the ground controlled landing fails, and the ship burns up over the Pacific or crash-lands on the dry lake. Best case--NASA gets her back pretty well intact for an intensive post-mortem and conceivably refurbishment for reuse, though more likely she'd be "scrapped" to museum status.
If in fact Atlantis as well as Columbia is stricken, the rescue attempt at least has bought months of time, in which Endeavor (clearly the next one to be ready) can be assembled on an express basis with the old type of tank. Unfortunately it is not clear to me that even if Endeavor is launched with just two pilots, relying on the crews of the two stranded ships for EVAing themselves over, that it can possibly take down a total of 13 astronauts all at once!
In that case, Endeavor just takes down as many as she can (presumably all but two, but they might want to leave up more to keep them company) and leaves off more supplies, including more nifty repair kit stuff for the wings of both shuttles. Then a third mission, presumably Discovery, flies up with just 5 astronauts aboard (or seven minus however many were left with the stricken pair) and spends some time assisting the ones stranded up there trying to fix the wings some more. Then when they've done their jobs, they all load into Discovery to return to Earth at last. The two stricken shuttles, with their new remote/autopilot controls installed, successively maneuver for reentry, whichever one is less damaged landing first, then the other.
A busy day for NASA, but a months-long rescue saga is now over at last, and conceivably all four spacecraft are safely on the ground, some time after their astronauts are.
The stricken ones might never launch again, but at least with intact ships to examine, they will know better than OTL just what happened, as a guide to preventing it.
I daresay public excitement about the affair will offset the embarrassment of things going wrong in the first place and perhaps boost support for a new generation of spacecraft and sustaining current efforts.