Wow. I'd forgotten that Zond used the Proton. So, they've already done some of the engineering work, even. Hunh!Not so crazy !
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/04/landing-soyuz-lifeboats-in-australia-1992/
See ? they would have used a Proton to launch a Soyuz from Baikonur 51.6 degree into Freedom 28.5 degree. Kind of launching the Soyuz into GEO - it says a lot about plane changes in low Earth orbit.
Icing on the cake, Proton and Soyuz already slept together in the past - in the Zond days.
Columbia rescue - save the space shuttle !
- Thread starter Archibald
- Start date
No. There's SLBM supply and ICBM supply from USAF, to hold over to Atlantis.
Now honestly, since we aren't as far as I know making the "we try everything and it all fails until we have to fall back on MOOSE" movie, I'd think that Atlantis can be prepped and launched soon enough, and that she won't take severe wing damage during launch, and that is the end of the immediate crisis, leaving as an epilogue the question of whether to remote-control Columbia into a higher parking orbit awaiting a later mission to attempt a serious repair and stripping and install sufficient gadgets to make her fully remote controlled then try to land her, versus throwing in the towel and having the Atlantis-based rescuers prep her instead for deorbiting to destruction, lest she be considered space junk. Atlantis gets there, their 2 EVA people spacewalk over extra LiOH canisters and they evacuate.
By the way I am not sure Atlantis can safely carry 11 astronauts but no one has objected to this so I suppose room can be made. And there's no reason not to carry up all the life-support cargo she can lift, because if it is not needed because there's nothing wrong with Atlantis after launch, they can always eject it. (They'd want to do that after partially deorbiting, to guarantee it burns up and doesn't become drifting space junk--but hey, they can always take a bit of time to stash it in Columbia, whatever her fate.
Still unanswered, and remaining unanswered by me tonight because of surprise overtime and being too tired to see straight, is just how much useful camping supplies Atlantis can bring to Columbia and how long it would last 11 stranded astronauts. I'm guessing, quite a lot, 10 tonnes or more, and it ought to last long enough for Endeavor or Discovery to get prepped with a safer tank and more extensively developed fixes. Since 13-15 astronauts returning to Earth in one Orbiter is probably too many, the third Orbiter--I was going to say would have to drop some of them off at ISS, but I remember, that's impossible, too much inclination change. Nope, if it comes down a third Shuttle it comes down to either a fourth one to get the excess crew down from the stricken pair, having a plan to fix one or both of Atlantis and Columbia and plan to land someone (pilots of course) in one or both, or some exotic type spaceship like an Ariane-launched Soyuz launched from Kourou meets them to take down the balance.
Other hare-brained schemes occur to me, like launching a big payload that is a tank full of the type of fuel the OMS uses, a big one that fills the cargo bay, and doing a lot of plumbing to connect said big tank to the onboard fuel system, so that piloted or remote controlled one or both stricken shuttles can after all get to ISS and park there for future refurbishments or to serve as extra lab/hab space there....
....Well, huh, I did a bit of research and math, and it definitely falls into the harebrained category! Just to do the 12.6 degree inclination change alone requires 1700 m/sec delta V, with the OMS isp of 316 sec that implies using propellant massing nearly 3/4 the burnout mass, which for an Orbiter is in the ballpark of 100 tonnes (for STS-107 it was well over but maybe stuff could be tossed overboard--but don't make me go back to the Wiki page for the mission tonight, I'll short out my keyboard crying. I spent too long looking at the mission patch.) So, 75, 80 tonnes of "dragon's blood," and I didn't even account for raising altitude to whatever orbit ISS was keeping that year from their 270-285 km orbit. (That probably wouldn't be much delta-V compared to the inclination change though). Basically we'd need a launcher in the 100 tonne payload range to do it in one launch.
Just one of those has ever been built in astronautical history--it was called the Saturn V!
with available launchers it would probably take 8 or so, and that's assuming minimal auxiliary mass. Not to mention the riskiness of kludging around with the OMS fuel system in orbit.
So no, either the stricken Orbiter(s) go up, or down, they don't go sideways.
Blue Team should be considering all options and all contingencies, however farfetched and unlikely, and NASA should be implementing everything that can reasonably work and might reasonably be needed before Columbia's first CO2 deadline. But Plan A remains, Atlantis arrives and saves their bacon. And it's only reasonable that that's all that's needed to save Columbia's crew. What later happens to Columbia after that is secondary.
By the way I am not sure Atlantis can safely carry 11 astronauts but no one has objected to this so I suppose room can be made. And there's no reason not to carry up all the life-support cargo she can lift, because if it is not needed because there's nothing wrong with Atlantis after launch, they can always eject it. (They'd want to do that after partially deorbiting, to guarantee it burns up and doesn't become drifting space junk--but hey, they can always take a bit of time to stash it in Columbia, whatever her fate.
Still unanswered, and remaining unanswered by me tonight because of surprise overtime and being too tired to see straight, is just how much useful camping supplies Atlantis can bring to Columbia and how long it would last 11 stranded astronauts. I'm guessing, quite a lot, 10 tonnes or more, and it ought to last long enough for Endeavor or Discovery to get prepped with a safer tank and more extensively developed fixes. Since 13-15 astronauts returning to Earth in one Orbiter is probably too many, the third Orbiter--I was going to say would have to drop some of them off at ISS, but I remember, that's impossible, too much inclination change. Nope, if it comes down a third Shuttle it comes down to either a fourth one to get the excess crew down from the stricken pair, having a plan to fix one or both of Atlantis and Columbia and plan to land someone (pilots of course) in one or both, or some exotic type spaceship like an Ariane-launched Soyuz launched from Kourou meets them to take down the balance.
Other hare-brained schemes occur to me, like launching a big payload that is a tank full of the type of fuel the OMS uses, a big one that fills the cargo bay, and doing a lot of plumbing to connect said big tank to the onboard fuel system, so that piloted or remote controlled one or both stricken shuttles can after all get to ISS and park there for future refurbishments or to serve as extra lab/hab space there....
....Well, huh, I did a bit of research and math, and it definitely falls into the harebrained category!
Just to do the 12.6 degree inclination change alone requires 1700 m/sec delta V, with the OMS isp of 316 sec that implies using propellant massing nearly 3/4 the burnout mass, which for an Orbiter is in the ballpark of 100 tonnes (for STS-107 it was well over but maybe stuff could be tossed overboard--but don't make me go back to the Wiki page for the mission tonight, I'll short out my keyboard crying. I spent too long looking at the mission patch.) So, 75, 80 tonnes of "dragon's blood," and I didn't even account for raising altitude to whatever orbit ISS was keeping that year from their 270-285 km orbit. (That probably wouldn't be much delta-V compared to the inclination change though). Basically we'd need a launcher in the 100 tonne payload range to do it in one launch.Just one of those has ever been built in astronautical history--it was called the Saturn V!
with available launchers it would probably take 8 or so, and that's assuming minimal auxiliary mass. Not to mention the riskiness of kludging around with the OMS fuel system in orbit.
So no, either the stricken Orbiter(s) go up, or down, they don't go sideways.
Blue Team should be considering all options and all contingencies, however farfetched and unlikely, and NASA should be implementing everything that can reasonably work and might reasonably be needed before Columbia's first CO2 deadline. But Plan A remains, Atlantis arrives and saves their bacon. And it's only reasonable that that's all that's needed to save Columbia's crew. What later happens to Columbia after that is secondary.
Hello Shevek,
By the way I am not sure Atlantis can safely carry 11 astronauts but no one has objected to this so I suppose room can be made. And there's no reason not to carry up all the life-support cargo she can lift, because if it is not needed because there's nothing wrong with Atlantis after launch, they can always eject it. (They'd want to do that after partially deorbiting, to guarantee it burns up and doesn't become drifting space junk--but hey, they can always take a bit of time to stash it in Columbia, whatever her fate.
I haven't looked at the numbers myself, but CAIB plainly thought that bringing all 11 home on Atlantis was feasible. So I've assumed that it was.
I don't know the details of what they had in mind, i.e., where each astronaut would sit, whether an additional hab module would be needed in the cargo bay, etc.. But they clearly thought it could be done.
Still unanswered, and remaining unanswered by me tonight because of surprise overtime and being too tired to see straight, is just how much useful camping supplies Atlantis can bring to Columbia and how long it would last 11 stranded astronauts. I'm guessing, quite a lot, 10 tonnes or more, and it ought to last long enough for Endeavor or Discovery to get prepped with a safer tank and more extensively developed fixes.
As valuable as it would be to move Columbia to a higher parking orbit, I have to think this would be a strictly secondary consideration. The top priority is the safe return of all eleven astronauts, ideally in the first instance by prompt safe return to Earth, or in the second in providing sufficient supplies for all eleven to stay in orbit for long enough that one or both of the remaining orbiters could be properly stacked and prepared for launch (with a safer ET). NASA would almost certainly be highly risk averse to any other considerations that might entail any significant risks run in setting up Columbia for an orbit boost.
Blue Team should be considering all options and all contingencies, however farfetched and unlikely, and NASA should be implementing everything that can reasonably work and might reasonably be needed before Columbia's first CO2 deadline. But Plan A remains, Atlantis arrives and saves their bacon. And it's only reasonable that that's all that's needed to save Columbia's crew. What later happens to Columbia after that is secondary.
I agree: Plan A (Atlantis) remains the best plan. And the most likely to succeed. NASA will follow through on Plan B and Plan C and so on, but most likely it is not going to need them.
But I'm looking forward to seeing how Arch resolves this problem.
By the way I am not sure Atlantis can safely carry 11 astronauts but no one has objected to this so I suppose room can be made. And there's no reason not to carry up all the life-support cargo she can lift, because if it is not needed because there's nothing wrong with Atlantis after launch, they can always eject it. (They'd want to do that after partially deorbiting, to guarantee it burns up and doesn't become drifting space junk--but hey, they can always take a bit of time to stash it in Columbia, whatever her fate.
I haven't looked at the numbers myself, but CAIB plainly thought that bringing all 11 home on Atlantis was feasible. So I've assumed that it was.
I don't know the details of what they had in mind, i.e., where each astronaut would sit, whether an additional hab module would be needed in the cargo bay, etc.. But they clearly thought it could be done.
Still unanswered, and remaining unanswered by me tonight because of surprise overtime and being too tired to see straight, is just how much useful camping supplies Atlantis can bring to Columbia and how long it would last 11 stranded astronauts. I'm guessing, quite a lot, 10 tonnes or more, and it ought to last long enough for Endeavor or Discovery to get prepped with a safer tank and more extensively developed fixes.
As valuable as it would be to move Columbia to a higher parking orbit, I have to think this would be a strictly secondary consideration. The top priority is the safe return of all eleven astronauts, ideally in the first instance by prompt safe return to Earth, or in the second in providing sufficient supplies for all eleven to stay in orbit for long enough that one or both of the remaining orbiters could be properly stacked and prepared for launch (with a safer ET). NASA would almost certainly be highly risk averse to any other considerations that might entail any significant risks run in setting up Columbia for an orbit boost.
Blue Team should be considering all options and all contingencies, however farfetched and unlikely, and NASA should be implementing everything that can reasonably work and might reasonably be needed before Columbia's first CO2 deadline. But Plan A remains, Atlantis arrives and saves their bacon. And it's only reasonable that that's all that's needed to save Columbia's crew. What later happens to Columbia after that is secondary.
I agree: Plan A (Atlantis) remains the best plan. And the most likely to succeed. NASA will follow through on Plan B and Plan C and so on, but most likely it is not going to need them.
But I'm looking forward to seeing how Arch resolves this problem.
Archibald
Banned
preparing for the worse
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]- > 3000 views and a solid technical discussion - thank you all !
Flight day 11[/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]January 26, 2003 [/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]Aboard Columbia [/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif](music:Texas, In demand)
[/FONT]
"That's one small step to the middeck but...a giant leap for a ladder." someone poked.
The space shuttle orbiter, like a Boeing 747 or a big ship, actually had decks - two of them. The seven astronauts did not sat all at the same level. There were four seats amid the windowed cockpit; but the other three, less fortunate passengers sat in the middeck - somewhat a cave without any view of the outside. That configuration explained by itself why the shuttle, even after Challenger, still had no ejection seats. Where would the middeck seats have fired ? There was no way four astronauts ejected from a crippled orbiter while three of them died stranded there.
On the pad the crew entered the orbiter by a lateral door that led into the middeck. There were three removable seats, the living area (including a toilet) big lockers and a couple of hatches - one to the airlock, the other to a ladder leading to the four man upper deck and cockpit. It was that ladder the crew was removing for a grandiose mission.
And it was only a beginning.
As Kalpana Chawla and David Brown struggled with the ladder, armed with a hammer Laurel Clark was scavenging the orbiter crew cabin in a quest for small bits of titanium. The damn material was extremely resistant to heat and, if they ever were to try and fill their wing hole with something, the best choice by far was titanium.
William McCool, for his part, had a shopping list of items to collect. The checklist, as beamed from the ground red
Required hardware
1. 2-3 empty CWCs
2. 2 empty jettison stowage bags
3. Jettison stowage bag filled with various metal parts
4. Hose/valve/nozzle assembly attached to water port on Airlock panel
Mike Anderson, for his part, was once again in the airlock for an extravehicular sortie that, by comparison with past and present space activities was like a walk in the park. He was to collect a so-called mini-workstation, essentially a bell on the pressure suits that was used to carry tools.
...
Two hours later Columbia seven crew members gathered all the items they had collected in every corner of their spaceship. It made for a bizarre collection of objects: Laurel Clark precious bits of titanium, Chawla and Brown ladder, McCool diverse bags and hoses. They were meticulously examined, photos were made to be send to the ground, after what the packaged items were placed into the airlock. Anderson retrieved the items, he added the mini-workstation to the lot and placed all the items into the Provisions Stowage Assembly - a corner of Columbia payload bay where emergency EVA tools were also stowed. That way everything he and David Brown needed was in the same place and readily accessible.
Kennedy Space Center, Florida
Space shuttle Atlantis was being towed out of his comfortable Orbiter Processing Facility. It was there that between missions space shuttle orbiters were care-taken by ground teams – their big engines installed, their avionics verified in a myriad of meticulous tests that lasted days and weeks of time.
The orbiter was an impressive, somewhat beautiful machine, a space airliner with an immense payload bay and truly unique capabilities. Very ironically it was those same capabilities that made it so hard to replace. The shuttle was just like Concorde. It had unique capabilities yet it was a technical dead-end; it would have no direct successor.
Atlantis destination was the Vehicle Assembly Building, the mammoth building constructed in the days of the Apollo program. There the solid rocket motors mated to the external tank stood vertically like an arch. They had been waiting for the orbiter since January 7. Atlantis was already three days in advance; according to the original STS-114 schedule the orbiter was to exit OPF-1 only on January 29. The payload bay for its part remained empty, and that would help cutting a lot of time from the schedule.
In another reality Atlantis would have lifted-off on March 1, carrying Expedition 7 to the burgeoning International Space Station. There would have been a pair of Russians aboard. Needless to say STS-114 had been washed away by events.
OPF workers watched Atlantis roll out in silence, although many of them saluted the departing orbiter. Since the beginning of the alert on January 20 they had been working full time, 24 hours of every day of the week.
Within the Vehicle Assembly Building more workers rolled their sleeves and prepared for the orbiter arrival. Atlantis would be hauled vertically by a giant crane hanging to the roof, mated to the external tank, and checked all over. If all went well, thanks to the accelerated schedule it would lift-off on February 10 instead of the original March 1. As impressive as NASA efforts were, only five days would be left before Columbia crew asphyxiation. The accelerated schedule, by the way, made Atlantis more vulnerable to the usual glitches grounding a shuttle for hours or even days. Many times such glitches happened as late as only five or two seconds before launch. There was no way to be sure.
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]- > 3000 views and a solid technical discussion - thank you all !
Flight day 11[/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]January 26, 2003 [/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]Aboard Columbia [/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif](music:Texas, In demand)
[/FONT]
"That's one small step to the middeck but...a giant leap for a ladder." someone poked.
The space shuttle orbiter, like a Boeing 747 or a big ship, actually had decks - two of them. The seven astronauts did not sat all at the same level. There were four seats amid the windowed cockpit; but the other three, less fortunate passengers sat in the middeck - somewhat a cave without any view of the outside. That configuration explained by itself why the shuttle, even after Challenger, still had no ejection seats. Where would the middeck seats have fired ? There was no way four astronauts ejected from a crippled orbiter while three of them died stranded there.
On the pad the crew entered the orbiter by a lateral door that led into the middeck. There were three removable seats, the living area (including a toilet) big lockers and a couple of hatches - one to the airlock, the other to a ladder leading to the four man upper deck and cockpit. It was that ladder the crew was removing for a grandiose mission.
And it was only a beginning.
As Kalpana Chawla and David Brown struggled with the ladder, armed with a hammer Laurel Clark was scavenging the orbiter crew cabin in a quest for small bits of titanium. The damn material was extremely resistant to heat and, if they ever were to try and fill their wing hole with something, the best choice by far was titanium.
William McCool, for his part, had a shopping list of items to collect. The checklist, as beamed from the ground red
Required hardware
1. 2-3 empty CWCs
2. 2 empty jettison stowage bags
3. Jettison stowage bag filled with various metal parts
4. Hose/valve/nozzle assembly attached to water port on Airlock panel
Mike Anderson, for his part, was once again in the airlock for an extravehicular sortie that, by comparison with past and present space activities was like a walk in the park. He was to collect a so-called mini-workstation, essentially a bell on the pressure suits that was used to carry tools.
...
Two hours later Columbia seven crew members gathered all the items they had collected in every corner of their spaceship. It made for a bizarre collection of objects: Laurel Clark precious bits of titanium, Chawla and Brown ladder, McCool diverse bags and hoses. They were meticulously examined, photos were made to be send to the ground, after what the packaged items were placed into the airlock. Anderson retrieved the items, he added the mini-workstation to the lot and placed all the items into the Provisions Stowage Assembly - a corner of Columbia payload bay where emergency EVA tools were also stowed. That way everything he and David Brown needed was in the same place and readily accessible.
Kennedy Space Center, Florida
Space shuttle Atlantis was being towed out of his comfortable Orbiter Processing Facility. It was there that between missions space shuttle orbiters were care-taken by ground teams – their big engines installed, their avionics verified in a myriad of meticulous tests that lasted days and weeks of time.
The orbiter was an impressive, somewhat beautiful machine, a space airliner with an immense payload bay and truly unique capabilities. Very ironically it was those same capabilities that made it so hard to replace. The shuttle was just like Concorde. It had unique capabilities yet it was a technical dead-end; it would have no direct successor.
Atlantis destination was the Vehicle Assembly Building, the mammoth building constructed in the days of the Apollo program. There the solid rocket motors mated to the external tank stood vertically like an arch. They had been waiting for the orbiter since January 7. Atlantis was already three days in advance; according to the original STS-114 schedule the orbiter was to exit OPF-1 only on January 29. The payload bay for its part remained empty, and that would help cutting a lot of time from the schedule.
In another reality Atlantis would have lifted-off on March 1, carrying Expedition 7 to the burgeoning International Space Station. There would have been a pair of Russians aboard. Needless to say STS-114 had been washed away by events.
OPF workers watched Atlantis roll out in silence, although many of them saluted the departing orbiter. Since the beginning of the alert on January 20 they had been working full time, 24 hours of every day of the week.
Within the Vehicle Assembly Building more workers rolled their sleeves and prepared for the orbiter arrival. Atlantis would be hauled vertically by a giant crane hanging to the roof, mated to the external tank, and checked all over. If all went well, thanks to the accelerated schedule it would lift-off on February 10 instead of the original March 1. As impressive as NASA efforts were, only five days would be left before Columbia crew asphyxiation. The accelerated schedule, by the way, made Atlantis more vulnerable to the usual glitches grounding a shuttle for hours or even days. Many times such glitches happened as late as only five or two seconds before launch. There was no way to be sure.
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Actually in the early days of jet bombers, in the 1950s, I know several makes of British V-bombers (and their backup predecessor, the Sperrin) provided different modes of escape, with the flight crew having ejection seats but other crew being forced to attempt to bail out of a hatch. I believe this 2-class escape system was not just a British thing either but I can't name an American or Soviet plane that had the same arrangement.
Frankly, ejection seats on an Orbiter strike me as like asking crew of a jet bomber to climb out of a hatch to jump anyway; anachronistic and a very partial, limited solution at best. Admittedly better (were it possible) than falling back to the even more primitive option of requiring everyone to indeed scramble out of a hatch! Which is the best NASA came up with.
Well, ejection seats were deemed a good solution on the Gemini missions, in lieu of a LES rocket tower to pull the whole capsule away from the launch rocket so it could make an early, unplanned abort landing as a whole. I still don't follow the logic though; there are phases, I suppose, during the failure of a launch to orbit where individuals being blasted loose in spacesuits with parachutes could save their lives, notably early in a launch. But what happens if the Titan II rocket suddenly fails or blows up when the stack has reached high suborbital speed but not orbital?
I think the idea was that ejection is an option while the craft is still moving slowly enough that the astronauts could keep their atmospheric maximum speed below one that would melt their spacesuits, and by the time it was going fast enough for that to be a risk, it would be time or past time to simply separate the whole Gemini capsule from the stack; either it would be in suborbital or orbital flight by then so they just take their potluck abort landing in the former case or orbit a bit before picking an emergency landing reentry in the latter.
The ejection seats obviously would do no good if the capsule were damaged for reentry purposes. Though they might be useful if the problem were not with the heat shield but with the parachutes, if the capsule chutes failed to deploy, then the crew could punch out and drift to a water landing in their individual chute harnesses while their ship slams destructively into the water.
So in that one respect perhaps the Gemini crew were actually better provided for than Apollo, maybe.
Why yes, it would, but what about hauling up stuff so all 11 astronauts can survive for months in orbit in case Atlantis's wing gets damaged the same way Columbia's did?
With only 4 astronauts aboard I suppose Atlantis will have lots of storage space available in the main crew area of course. And I have yet to do the math on how many kilograms of consumables (including LiOH canisters of course) it takes to keep an astronaut alive for a day, so enough for 11 for say 100 days might turn out not to be much. Keeping all of it in the main cabin might work out fine.
But in that case, I'd think at least a pallet of materials that might be helpful with wing repairs should be hastily thrown together and bolted into place.
It would be nice if something could be put into the payload bay at the last minute, giving them some time to think over what they really need there, get it together, then strap it in. But I'd guess that's a no-no, once it goes to Vertical Assembly, you can't be opening the doors nor can crews safely or effectively attach payloads to the anchor points.
Well, I hope I'm wrong in this pessimistic guess, and Atlantis will carry useful stuff up. Or that they just won't need any such bric-a-brac.
Launching light ought to make her a lean mean maneuvering machine anyway. And pre-"fluffy!"
You might want to review Shuttle procdures, Shevek, because your making a wrong assumption. You seem to be thinking that Shuttle was loaded with cargo prior to rollover to the VAB for lift/mate. If this were true, it indeed might be hard to change her cargo rapidly. However, that's not the case. Shuttle payloads, actually, were not put into the bay until the vehicle was on the pad using the Rotating Service Structure. They can have access to the bay within a couple of days of launch, potentially shorter if they skimp on closeout procedures (though I wouldn't advise that, it's not a major difference even here).
AndyC
Donor
Well, if Atlantis only has to carry them for a short while, there shouldn't be a critical life support issue. They can physically fit on board - although I don't know if everyone would have a seat?
If not - well, ISTR that Story Musgrove once stood up all the way through re-entry. Given the alternatives, an uncomfortable seat on the floor on the ride home won't be too bad
As it happens - why is Atlantis carrying 4 astronauts up, anyway? Can it really not be done with 3 or even 2?
??? Why does it matter? I cant imagine anything Israel can do to help.
Archibald
Banned
Two pilots and two EVA aids - Columbia astronauts (minus two) were not trained for extravehicular activities, and a month spent in gravity won't help. There will be room for everyone, anyway.
One nice aspect of winged, lift reentry is the low G-loads - at 1.5 G a lot of astronauts spend re-entry on their feet.
It happened to Mike "riding rockets" Mullane - that idiot was so fascinated by re-entry that he forget to sat until it was too late.
Try that in an Apollo or in Gagarine Vostok
! As for Israel - hope and pray for Ilan Ramon and all his crewmates, that's all they can do
What Archibald said.
More to the point, here's what the CAIB report stated:
And:
Link: http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/caib/PDFS/VOL2/D13.PDF
Another Team Blue suggestion:
Send up Apollo or Gemini capsules with an Ariane or Titan booster. There are several unflown capsules (backups and test capsules) in various museums. You could even put the capsules (or a Soyuz capsule) in Atlantis's payload bay as a backup in case Atlantis's heat shield were to be damaged.
Of course, refurbishing the electronics and pressure seals on a 40-year-old museum piece space capsule could be a tad ... interesting.
Send up Apollo or Gemini capsules with an Ariane or Titan booster. There are several unflown capsules (backups and test capsules) in various museums. You could even put the capsules (or a Soyuz capsule) in Atlantis's payload bay as a backup in case Atlantis's heat shield were to be damaged.
Of course, refurbishing the electronics and pressure seals on a 40-year-old museum piece space capsule could be a tad ... interesting.
The pilot had the ejector seat, the rest had to make do with jumping out of a hatch.....apparently on at least one occasion in a Vulcan when an emergency landing had to be made, those without ejector seats made damm sure the ejector seat wouldn't fire to make sure the pilot did his best.
Another option might be Pegasus, which has a payload of about 440 kilos to LEO. Wiki says there were successful launches on January 25 and April 28, so it's possible that the second rocket could be reappropriated in time to launch supplies to Columbia.
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Archibald
Banned
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]Flight day 12[/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]January 27, 2003 [/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif](music: Travis, Writting to reach you)
[/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]
[/FONT]
A patchwork plan for space rescue
Daring scenario may employs unguided payloads and second
shuttle for survival
[FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT, serif]By James Oberg (1)
[/FONT]
[FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT, serif]HOUSTON, Jan. 27, 2003 [/FONT][FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT, serif]— [/FONT]
Human eyes all over the world rise to the heavens at a level not seen in a generation or more.
They look at space shuttle Columbia, which is visible from Earth everyday at dawn and dusk as a bright, fast-moving star.
Mike Anderson dramatic sketches and CGI of space shuttle Columbia damaged leading edge have sparked new interest in a nagging question: can NASA save the astronauts ?
A week ago horrified NASA officials revealed that visioning of launch tracking cameras led to early realization that the shuttle’s thermal protection system had been mortally wounded. Program managers were alarmed by the debris impacts noted after Columbia’s launch on Jan. 16 and they wanted more information. Extended damage was ultimately identified by military telescopes, spy satellites and a daring spacewalk by two crew members.
And now what?
If a landing looks suicidal, and refuge at the international space station is out of reach because of incompatible orbits, how can the crew be rescued before their limited stock of supplies runs out?
Before January 17, 2003 general consensus at NASA what akin to “there’s nothing that we can do about tile damage once we get to orbit.” NASA has not yet figured out a way to perform repairs on damaged or missing tiles in space.
But that doesn’t mean the situation is hopeless, NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe insisted Friday. “To suggest that we will done nothing is fallacious,” O’Keefe said in a meeting with reporters. “Since there had been a clear indication (of problems) there will be been no end to the efforts.”
Cruel calculus
In all the current speculations about possible rescue missions, there always remain an unbridgeable chasm between how long the crew members can stretch their life support systems, and how long it would take to get a rescue shuttle mission to reach them. The cruel calculus of this spaceflight crisis may led some to an unhappy, premature, pessimistic conclusion: The astronauts will die, probably of carbon dioxide poisoning, before a rescue mission involving a second shuttle can be mounted.
NASA answered to that issue by configuring Columbia for “slumber,” with many systems (such as the aft-end thrusters) turned off forever to save power. The fuel cells, one after the other, idle at minimum for an extended period. Navigation and even communications gear was shut down. Heaters are probably off, and the cabin certainly dropped to near freezing.
Meanwhile amateurs and retired space workers are frantically developing at least one miracle maneuver to bridge that gap. For days now the fullpowered brainstorms from Mission Control and throughout the space industry have been working on workable rescue plans — or ideas even better !
On-orbit delivery
One gimmick would be to launch an emergency supply payload into orbit aboard an expendable launch vehicle. Several such packages would have to be prepared in parallel, because mission success of any one of them might have been 50-50 or even less. But with enough attempts, one of them may likely work.
The ideal package would weigh at least half a ton, maybe a lot more, and would contain all the materials needed to extend the crew’s survival for several more weeks. Most critically, it would carry the airscrubbing chemical packs to keep exhaled carbon dioxide below harmful levels. There would be food and water, waste management bags, batteries, and blankets — it would get cold really fast on this orbital campout. There would be medications, including drugs to reduce the astronauts’ metabolism rates as low as possible to conserve air.
But the most precious cargo aboard such a payload would be hope, both for the stranded crew andfor their loved ones and colleagues and everyone else back on Earth.
What kinds of rockets are available for sudden redirection? And how readily can they be reprogrammed?
First, we know which rockets are not available. No Russian rockets can help, because Russia’s launch sites are too far north to allow launchings into the more southerly orbit followed by Columbia. [FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT, serif](2)
But many others are available !
At the European launch site at Kourou in French Guyana, a powerful Ariane 4 booster actually is in its final days of countdown. Other expendable boosters are in various preparatory stages in India, China and Japan, and of course at U.S. launch sites, both government and commercial.
Lastly, among the Pentagon’s fleet of MX Peacekeeper and Trident military missiles are some already tagged with combat orbital missions, and they too could carry a ton or more of lifesaving equipment into orbit.[/FONT][FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT, serif](3)
The main issue is that the package would not be able to maneuver or navigate in the direction of the crippled shuttle.
As such it would need to be at the correct orbital inclination to within a tenth of a degree, and it would have to blast off to within a second or less of the exact launch window that allowed compatible flight.
Rocket computers could be reprogrammed for these paths within a few days, but the risk of human error would be considerable. That’s why many attempts would have to be initiated. [/FONT][FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT, serif](4)[/FONT] Once any one of these packages reached a compatible orbit, Columbia could do the rest. Since its propulsion system is still functional, it will be able to chase down the package and performe a space rendezvous with it. This is a standard maneuver that all astronauts receive summary training for, although it was not part of the original STS-107 mission. So in the days while the rescue rockets are being prepared, Houston could fax up a set of reference books and charts to be used by the crew. They would even have time for several dry-run practice sessions. Exactly such an unplanned rendezvous — although only to save a payload, not the crew — was performed by an untrained shuttle crew in 1985, and it worked perfectly.
A minor caveat to Columbia maneuvering in chase of an unguided package is the quantity of propellant left into the OMS pods. A shuttle usually has 300 m/s of delta-V; yet according to the last data from Houston, Columbia is left with only 448 ft/s, which translate as 135 m/s. Which begs the question of what to do with that limited amount of propellant - chasing elusive packages across the sky or maneuvering in the direction of Atlantis ? [FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT, serif](5)[/FONT]
Once the shuttle had approached the supply package and had it floating over its payload bay, the next tricky part would begin. It would be tricky because the package would not be self-stabilized; experience with STS-49 1992 repair of Intelsat 603 is not exactly encouraging. The two spacewalk-trained astronauts would be outside ready to grab it by hand — and for that reason, lots of handholds would have been bolted all over it.
They then would snap their safety lines onto pre-installed attachment points, and tie the package down.
For however many cycles it took, they would load up the shuttle’s airlock with hand-carried packages, close the outer hatch, and let their companions inside unload the goodies. Then they too would come back inside.
As one can see, the main drawback of the expendable launch vehicle option is the fact the packages are unguided, which in turn would lead to high attrition rate and a difficult "last mile" approach by Columbia and recovery by the stranded crew.
Unfortunately most experience with self-navigating, self-stabilized spacecrafts lies with the Russian Soyuz or Progress which are not available in that scenario.
A NASA official however stated yesterday that "the agency is currently scrambling for every possible space platform or space system able to self navigate, maneuver, rendezvous and stabilize in the vicinity of a shuttle orbiter."
NASA DART (Demonstration for Autonomous Rendezvous Technology) DARPA Orbital Express and the Air ForceXS-11 are being build just for that mission; but they will fly only within the next couple of years. A frantic search is ongoing for any existing system that could be reconfigured fast enough to be send to Columbia.
Support from Earth - what will the rescue mission be like
If a new shuttle is to be ready it will be probably be Atlantis, as it was to liftoff on March 1 for the STS-114 mission to the International Space Station. Of course the accident that caused the mortal wound to Columbia will have to be prevented from happening again.
Then the day will finally come when a rescue mission blast off. Its crew will be reduced to four, the bare minimum required to perform all necessary maneuvers.
After reaching the drifting Columbia, the rescuers could tie a line between them and set up a “gravity gradient” stationkeeping posture — a maneuver tested as far back as the Gemini program in 1966. Spacewalkers could go across with emergency suits (perhaps even the dusted-off “rescue balls” designed back in the late 1970s) and begin evacuating the stranded crew. Each of those activities would be composed of routine steps from scores of earlier shuttle missions, but strung together in a most non-routine pattern.
Seating for landing would be no problem. Astronauts could just deploy a mat on the floor of the middeck and tie the now-rescued astronauts down prone. They would ride back to Earth safely in that posture.[FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT, serif](6)
None of these steps is individually impossible, and in fact most have been performed piecemeal in the past. Everything needed to do it this way — or in any of a dozen better ways that the space teams could have devised — is already on hand.
[/FONT]NASA can do it - and we can be sure they will be no lack of astronaut volunteers to rescue their stranded mates."
(James Oberg, space analyst for NBC News, spent 22 years at the Johnson Space Center as aMission Control operator and an orbital designer.)
Bremen, Germany
Ulf Merbold had flown four times in space, and he knew the unmanned platform better than anyone else. He was quite sure it might do a good job if only it survived a ride on Ariane. After all that spacecraft had been an offspring of the shuttle; it was literally born of its payload bay. Most importantly, the little platform knew how to navigate and maneuver alone for months of time; icing on the cake, it could carry as much as one ton of payload. At 10 000 pounds it didn't even maxed Ariane 15 000 pound payload into low Earth orbit.
That would be a great première for the European launch vehicle - quite ironically on its very last flight ! For that rocket over its long career had essentially launched communication satellites into geosynchronous orbit... and nothing else or so. To be honest, there had been a handful of remote sensing satellites (Spot, Topex, the military Helios) that had gone into low polar orbit. That kind of mission was so rare, however, that Ariane never had a dedicated upper stage; it had to do with the expensive liquid hydrogen H-10 even if it was a total overkill.
(1) This is a straight adaptation of an OTL piece written by James Oberg late February 2003 that can easily found on the Internet. Together with the CAIB appendix 13 it is somewhat a glimpse of a Columbia rescue scenario - and a strong motivation for writting this TL.
This article is interesting in the sense it answers a lot of technical questions previously asked - see (2) (3) (4) (5) and (6)
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]January 27, 2003 [/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif](music: Travis, Writting to reach you)
[/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]
[/FONT]
A patchwork plan for space rescue
Daring scenario may employs unguided payloads and second
shuttle for survival
[FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT, serif]By James Oberg (1)
[/FONT]
[FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT, serif]HOUSTON, Jan. 27, 2003 [/FONT][FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT, serif]— [/FONT]
Human eyes all over the world rise to the heavens at a level not seen in a generation or more.
They look at space shuttle Columbia, which is visible from Earth everyday at dawn and dusk as a bright, fast-moving star.
Mike Anderson dramatic sketches and CGI of space shuttle Columbia damaged leading edge have sparked new interest in a nagging question: can NASA save the astronauts ?
A week ago horrified NASA officials revealed that visioning of launch tracking cameras led to early realization that the shuttle’s thermal protection system had been mortally wounded. Program managers were alarmed by the debris impacts noted after Columbia’s launch on Jan. 16 and they wanted more information. Extended damage was ultimately identified by military telescopes, spy satellites and a daring spacewalk by two crew members.
And now what?
If a landing looks suicidal, and refuge at the international space station is out of reach because of incompatible orbits, how can the crew be rescued before their limited stock of supplies runs out?
Before January 17, 2003 general consensus at NASA what akin to “there’s nothing that we can do about tile damage once we get to orbit.” NASA has not yet figured out a way to perform repairs on damaged or missing tiles in space.
But that doesn’t mean the situation is hopeless, NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe insisted Friday. “To suggest that we will done nothing is fallacious,” O’Keefe said in a meeting with reporters. “Since there had been a clear indication (of problems) there will be been no end to the efforts.”
Cruel calculus
In all the current speculations about possible rescue missions, there always remain an unbridgeable chasm between how long the crew members can stretch their life support systems, and how long it would take to get a rescue shuttle mission to reach them. The cruel calculus of this spaceflight crisis may led some to an unhappy, premature, pessimistic conclusion: The astronauts will die, probably of carbon dioxide poisoning, before a rescue mission involving a second shuttle can be mounted.
NASA answered to that issue by configuring Columbia for “slumber,” with many systems (such as the aft-end thrusters) turned off forever to save power. The fuel cells, one after the other, idle at minimum for an extended period. Navigation and even communications gear was shut down. Heaters are probably off, and the cabin certainly dropped to near freezing.
Meanwhile amateurs and retired space workers are frantically developing at least one miracle maneuver to bridge that gap. For days now the fullpowered brainstorms from Mission Control and throughout the space industry have been working on workable rescue plans — or ideas even better !
On-orbit delivery
One gimmick would be to launch an emergency supply payload into orbit aboard an expendable launch vehicle. Several such packages would have to be prepared in parallel, because mission success of any one of them might have been 50-50 or even less. But with enough attempts, one of them may likely work.
The ideal package would weigh at least half a ton, maybe a lot more, and would contain all the materials needed to extend the crew’s survival for several more weeks. Most critically, it would carry the airscrubbing chemical packs to keep exhaled carbon dioxide below harmful levels. There would be food and water, waste management bags, batteries, and blankets — it would get cold really fast on this orbital campout. There would be medications, including drugs to reduce the astronauts’ metabolism rates as low as possible to conserve air.
But the most precious cargo aboard such a payload would be hope, both for the stranded crew andfor their loved ones and colleagues and everyone else back on Earth.
What kinds of rockets are available for sudden redirection? And how readily can they be reprogrammed?
First, we know which rockets are not available. No Russian rockets can help, because Russia’s launch sites are too far north to allow launchings into the more southerly orbit followed by Columbia. [FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT, serif](2)
But many others are available !
At the European launch site at Kourou in French Guyana, a powerful Ariane 4 booster actually is in its final days of countdown. Other expendable boosters are in various preparatory stages in India, China and Japan, and of course at U.S. launch sites, both government and commercial.
Lastly, among the Pentagon’s fleet of MX Peacekeeper and Trident military missiles are some already tagged with combat orbital missions, and they too could carry a ton or more of lifesaving equipment into orbit.[/FONT][FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT, serif](3)
The main issue is that the package would not be able to maneuver or navigate in the direction of the crippled shuttle.
As such it would need to be at the correct orbital inclination to within a tenth of a degree, and it would have to blast off to within a second or less of the exact launch window that allowed compatible flight.
Rocket computers could be reprogrammed for these paths within a few days, but the risk of human error would be considerable. That’s why many attempts would have to be initiated. [/FONT][FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT, serif](4)[/FONT] Once any one of these packages reached a compatible orbit, Columbia could do the rest. Since its propulsion system is still functional, it will be able to chase down the package and performe a space rendezvous with it. This is a standard maneuver that all astronauts receive summary training for, although it was not part of the original STS-107 mission. So in the days while the rescue rockets are being prepared, Houston could fax up a set of reference books and charts to be used by the crew. They would even have time for several dry-run practice sessions. Exactly such an unplanned rendezvous — although only to save a payload, not the crew — was performed by an untrained shuttle crew in 1985, and it worked perfectly.
A minor caveat to Columbia maneuvering in chase of an unguided package is the quantity of propellant left into the OMS pods. A shuttle usually has 300 m/s of delta-V; yet according to the last data from Houston, Columbia is left with only 448 ft/s, which translate as 135 m/s. Which begs the question of what to do with that limited amount of propellant - chasing elusive packages across the sky or maneuvering in the direction of Atlantis ? [FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT, serif](5)[/FONT]
Once the shuttle had approached the supply package and had it floating over its payload bay, the next tricky part would begin. It would be tricky because the package would not be self-stabilized; experience with STS-49 1992 repair of Intelsat 603 is not exactly encouraging. The two spacewalk-trained astronauts would be outside ready to grab it by hand — and for that reason, lots of handholds would have been bolted all over it.
They then would snap their safety lines onto pre-installed attachment points, and tie the package down.
For however many cycles it took, they would load up the shuttle’s airlock with hand-carried packages, close the outer hatch, and let their companions inside unload the goodies. Then they too would come back inside.
As one can see, the main drawback of the expendable launch vehicle option is the fact the packages are unguided, which in turn would lead to high attrition rate and a difficult "last mile" approach by Columbia and recovery by the stranded crew.
Unfortunately most experience with self-navigating, self-stabilized spacecrafts lies with the Russian Soyuz or Progress which are not available in that scenario.
A NASA official however stated yesterday that "the agency is currently scrambling for every possible space platform or space system able to self navigate, maneuver, rendezvous and stabilize in the vicinity of a shuttle orbiter."
NASA DART (Demonstration for Autonomous Rendezvous Technology) DARPA Orbital Express and the Air ForceXS-11 are being build just for that mission; but they will fly only within the next couple of years. A frantic search is ongoing for any existing system that could be reconfigured fast enough to be send to Columbia.
Support from Earth - what will the rescue mission be like
If a new shuttle is to be ready it will be probably be Atlantis, as it was to liftoff on March 1 for the STS-114 mission to the International Space Station. Of course the accident that caused the mortal wound to Columbia will have to be prevented from happening again.
Then the day will finally come when a rescue mission blast off. Its crew will be reduced to four, the bare minimum required to perform all necessary maneuvers.
After reaching the drifting Columbia, the rescuers could tie a line between them and set up a “gravity gradient” stationkeeping posture — a maneuver tested as far back as the Gemini program in 1966. Spacewalkers could go across with emergency suits (perhaps even the dusted-off “rescue balls” designed back in the late 1970s) and begin evacuating the stranded crew. Each of those activities would be composed of routine steps from scores of earlier shuttle missions, but strung together in a most non-routine pattern.
Seating for landing would be no problem. Astronauts could just deploy a mat on the floor of the middeck and tie the now-rescued astronauts down prone. They would ride back to Earth safely in that posture.[FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT, serif](6)
None of these steps is individually impossible, and in fact most have been performed piecemeal in the past. Everything needed to do it this way — or in any of a dozen better ways that the space teams could have devised — is already on hand.
[/FONT]NASA can do it - and we can be sure they will be no lack of astronaut volunteers to rescue their stranded mates."
(James Oberg, space analyst for NBC News, spent 22 years at the Johnson Space Center as aMission Control operator and an orbital designer.)
Bremen, Germany
Ulf Merbold had flown four times in space, and he knew the unmanned platform better than anyone else. He was quite sure it might do a good job if only it survived a ride on Ariane. After all that spacecraft had been an offspring of the shuttle; it was literally born of its payload bay. Most importantly, the little platform knew how to navigate and maneuver alone for months of time; icing on the cake, it could carry as much as one ton of payload. At 10 000 pounds it didn't even maxed Ariane 15 000 pound payload into low Earth orbit.
That would be a great première for the European launch vehicle - quite ironically on its very last flight ! For that rocket over its long career had essentially launched communication satellites into geosynchronous orbit... and nothing else or so. To be honest, there had been a handful of remote sensing satellites (Spot, Topex, the military Helios) that had gone into low polar orbit. That kind of mission was so rare, however, that Ariane never had a dedicated upper stage; it had to do with the expensive liquid hydrogen H-10 even if it was a total overkill.
(1) This is a straight adaptation of an OTL piece written by James Oberg late February 2003 that can easily found on the Internet. Together with the CAIB appendix 13 it is somewhat a glimpse of a Columbia rescue scenario - and a strong motivation for writting this TL.
This article is interesting in the sense it answers a lot of technical questions previously asked - see (2) (3) (4) (5) and (6)
Quote:
"Lastly, among the Pentagon’s fleet of MX Peacekeeper and Trident military missiles are some already tagged with combat orbital missions, and they too could carry a ton or more of lifesaving equipment into orbit.(3)"
Details please, I don't think that would be possible, since I thought, they are (especially Trident) without extensive modifications ballistic only missiles.
"Lastly, among the Pentagon’s fleet of MX Peacekeeper and Trident military missiles are some already tagged with combat orbital missions, and they too could carry a ton or more of lifesaving equipment into orbit.(3)"
Details please, I don't think that would be possible, since I thought, they are (especially Trident) without extensive modifications ballistic only missiles.