Columbia rescue - save the space shuttle !
- Thread starter Archibald
- Start date
No, it couldn't--Shuttle doesn't have the maneuvering capability. Shuttle had a maximum orbital maneuvering ability of 300 m/s, and at its orbital altitude it had an orbital velocity of 7257 m/s.
Plane change burns work like this:
delta-v=2*orbit_velocity*sin(angle/2)
So some basic algebra works it out to:
angle=2*arcsin( delta-v / (2*orbital_velocity) )
So with all the delta-v capaility Shuttle started the mission with, it could only have effected a maximum of 9.5 degrees change in inclination--and they'd already used some of that capacity. 9.5 degrees from 39.0 degrees is not enough to make it to an orbit accessible to Soyuz.
Archibald
Banned
This will be adressed (although briefly - perhaps I should expend it
) in another entry. Hopefully it will be more like Space Cowboys than Armaggedon.
EDIT: I've just build a cast (made of an explosive mix of space movies mixed up with series like E.R and 24) More on this later.
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So the Soyuz has no maneuver capability of its own to help out?
Anyways, I still wonder if the 'package' delivery method can be ruled out; even if the package is unguided, the shuttle can move the last few miles to reach it. The package does not have to be guided, it only has to get close enough to be reached by the shuttle.
AndyC
Donor
Nowhere near enough. Unless they launched a Soyuz from Kennedy. Any Soyuz from Baikonur would be in the wrong orbital inclination (you can't get an inclination lower than your latitude; Baikonur is at 51.6 degrees latitude so launches from there can enter orbits of only 51.6 to 90 degrees inclination) - you could get the orbits to intersect, but the Soyuz would have a large velocity differential from the Shuttle. In essence, it'd go through Columbia several times faster than a rifle bullet if they intersected from those particular orbits.
I remember it being described that if you have two orbits of sufficiently different inclination, it can almost be worthwhile re-entering, landing and relaunching in the different inclination in order to save fuel ...
I could see that as an emergency way to supply new CO2 scrubbers, air and consumables, but only a couple of times until the OMS fuel runs out.
Not enough. It's got about 250 m/s, which buys you another 2 degrees--incidentally, I did my math wrong for Shuttle. Not 9.5 degrees, 4.73 degrees.
IIRC, STS Atlantis could have been prepared within the necessary timeframe to mount a rescue mission, though this was a lucky break for them, not planned.
This way, they could get at least some of the crew down and send up new supplies to support the remaining crew until the trick could be repeated, with some emergency funding from Congress to make it so.
Clearly, this is going to be a job for Atlantis.
But my understanding is that an Atlantis rescue mission could have gotten all the astronauts off - Atlantis would have been launched with only four astronauts.
Of course, we have to hope that nothing happens to *Atlantis's* tiles during launch...
Archibald
Banned
To repair, to survive or to rescue ?
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]Flight Day 6 [/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]January 21, 2003 [/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]Johnson Spaceflight Center, Houston[/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif](music: Coldplay, In my place) [/FONT]
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.
"I will be blunt and direct. As of today only two countries have manned spaceships in the world - us, and the Russians. The Russians are out because Baikonur is not compatible with Columbia orbit. That mean that whatever happens Columbia can only save itself or be rescued by another of our shuttles.
"We have three orbiters left, but Discovery is out for long term maintenance, leaving only Endeavour or Atlantis.
Because Endeavour has just returned from STS-113 it is currently being prepared for a flight in May - way too late.
"That leave Atlantis, which was to take off on March 1 for the STS-114 flight to the International Space Station. This date is close enough we may compress the schedule by two or three weeks and reach the February 15 deadline if we hurry up from today.
"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. STS-113 is not help since it lifted off by night and we couldn't see anything.
"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.
"So if we ever mount a rescue mission Atlantis crew will fly with some big sword of Damocles hanging above their heads. Although I'm sure we would be no short of volunteers... "
The faces of the many astronauts presents instantly told Ham she was right. She eyed Norm Thagard, a veteran of the Mir flights; his facial expression alone screamed I will fly that mission.
"Sending Atlantis will be plan A, and the work of White Team."
"Or the crew could try and repair Columbia in orbit - this is plan B for the Black Team."
"Black Team will be divided into two groups.
"Black Team One is tasked with assessing a possible wing repair.
"Black Team Two, for his part, will work on making the orbiter as light as possible. If we make Columbia fluffy - like a feather - reentry will be accordingly less harsher to the damaged thermal protection system.
"Without offending Black Team, we consider the wing repair / light orbiter much less likely to succeed. Yet their work is equally important because unlike White Team studies it actively involves Columbia crew. Repairing the wing and throwing things overboard will keep them busy and active. Plus there might some big glitch pushing Atlantis flight behind February 15... and forcing the crew to return on their damaged ship. That last hypothesis has to be taken into account, even if it is frightening.
"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.
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]Flight Day 6 [/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]January 21, 2003 [/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]Johnson Spaceflight Center, Houston[/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif](music: Coldplay, In my place) [/FONT]
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.
"I will be blunt and direct. As of today only two countries have manned spaceships in the world - us, and the Russians. The Russians are out because Baikonur is not compatible with Columbia orbit. That mean that whatever happens Columbia can only save itself or be rescued by another of our shuttles.
"We have three orbiters left, but Discovery is out for long term maintenance, leaving only Endeavour or Atlantis.
Because Endeavour has just returned from STS-113 it is currently being prepared for a flight in May - way too late.
"That leave Atlantis, which was to take off on March 1 for the STS-114 flight to the International Space Station. This date is close enough we may compress the schedule by two or three weeks and reach the February 15 deadline if we hurry up from today.
"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. STS-113 is not help since it lifted off by night and we couldn't see anything.
"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.
"So if we ever mount a rescue mission Atlantis crew will fly with some big sword of Damocles hanging above their heads. Although I'm sure we would be no short of volunteers... "
The faces of the many astronauts presents instantly told Ham she was right. She eyed Norm Thagard, a veteran of the Mir flights; his facial expression alone screamed I will fly that mission.
"Sending Atlantis will be plan A, and the work of White Team."
"Or the crew could try and repair Columbia in orbit - this is plan B for the Black Team."
"Black Team will be divided into two groups.
"Black Team One is tasked with assessing a possible wing repair.
"Black Team Two, for his part, will work on making the orbiter as light as possible. If we make Columbia fluffy - like a feather - reentry will be accordingly less harsher to the damaged thermal protection system.
"Without offending Black Team, we consider the wing repair / light orbiter much less likely to succeed. Yet their work is equally important because unlike White Team studies it actively involves Columbia crew. Repairing the wing and throwing things overboard will keep them busy and active. Plus there might some big glitch pushing Atlantis flight behind February 15... and forcing the crew to return on their damaged ship. That last hypothesis has to be taken into account, even if it is frightening.
"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'.
I cant imagine ANYTHING could make the shuttle 'fluffy'.
Archibald
Banned
I don't know if fluffy is the correct word (since english is not my native language).
I've found a technical study not included on the CAIB final report (but done during the inquiry by experts, so it's not fantasy). The reason why they didn't included it is they felt it was a dead-end, something with too much risk and too little result.
When I red the contain of that study, my jaw literally hit the ground, and I told myself "I NEED this in my TL".
All I can say is: never before did I imagined one could trim so much weight out of an orbiter. It just boggles the mind.
The fact is that the Soviets had automated rendezvous and docking from 1969 and Soyuz; on the American side however, the shuttle was manual. Automated docking had to wait for Orbital Express, DART, and XSS-11 - after 2000 !
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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.
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.
It's cute and it conveys the point pretty well--lighten the ship. A lot.
You're going to tell us just how light the report thought the Orbiter could be made by astronauts not planning for this mission, who are running out of air, right?..
All I can say is: never before did I imagined one could trim so much weight out of an orbiter. It just boggles the mind.
OK, but until their CO2 scrubbers give out, what we have here is a perfectly operational Orbiter with a perky but nervous and possibly bored crew, perfectly well up to the challenge of going out and grabbing a package that will let them breathe for some extra months, and perhaps turn on the galley again and enjoy some hot meals while they wait for Atlantis. They don't have the thousands of feet per second Delta-V they need to get to the ISS but they do have tens of fps to do something like this.
Especially if they start "fluffifying" the ship now by stripping everything possibly useful out of their cargo bay payloads, then ejecting them.
There's nothing wrong with Columbia as a spaceship. It's as a reentry vehicle she has problems.