Heck, theres a handful of universities that could pull it off. It would be inelegant, heavy, and not optimised, but getting self guided packages really close should be quite possible.
Columbia rescue - save the space shuttle !
- Thread starter Archibald
- Start date
Heck, theres a handful of universities that could pull it off. It would be inelegant, heavy, and not optimised, but getting self guided packages really close should be quite possible.
Orville_third
Banned
Indeed. I can be assured there are people around the world coming up with ideas to send in to NASA. Europe would be a big source. So would Russia. Israel would have an added impetus.
I haven't (in my own mind) even ruled out the possibility that Soyuz could have been launched from elsewhere, since the Russian rail net has to be able to support the movement of oversized loads to at least one port in the Black Sea. Or stripped down and launched with enough fuel to reach the shuttle. Slapping a guidance package on a payload using the best and brighest engineers in the US aerospace industry? Seems child's play compared to that.
Anyways, what is clear is that the technical capacity of the nations of the world to react is a very fuzzy subject which only the engineer teams of those nations could answer. And I'm guessing that their answers would change by the day as teams of their best and brighest came up with amazing solutions to seemingly intractable problems. This fantastic thread is only reinforcing that initial hunch. How some management team at NASA decided they knew nothing could be done looks incomprehensible, at least to me. For all they knew, the Russians had already done a contingency study on emergency capacity for alternative Soyuz orbits. Looks to me like they didn't even ask. And that's not even including the USAF and Navy, or France, or others.
I trust no one is suggesting rushing up a Soyuz as a means of providing reentry for some of the crew of Columbia, because a single Soyuz--even if flown up to Columbia rendezvous completely unmanned, under automatic or ground control--can only return 3 of the 7 Columbia crew to Earth. You'd need three of them for that. Of course if a Soyuz could get there long before February 14 and take down three, the remaining 4 on Columbia would have longer than Feb 15 to live. But the Russians can't do it from their launching pads even if they happened to have one ready to launch when NASA announced the bad news, and we've discussed other limitations that would have to be overcome if one magically materialized atop the Ariane or some other rocket, ready to go. Such as lading it with more EVA suits to ferry a third astronaut over to the Soyuz, and more suits for the 4 left behind, and more LiOH canisters to leave with Columbia, etc.
A Soviet capsule that would do them some good would be a Progress cargo hauler, bringing supplies to extend the time they can survive in orbit, allowing the Atlantis launch to be less rushed.
And it has to be launched on a different rocket than the Russians use since neither Kourou nor I suppose the alternatives--Canaveral and the Japanese launching site are the only ones that come to mind--have the special gantries and stuff the Russian rocket needs.
Besides Ariane, and ICBMs which no, I don't think can accomplish much of what is needed, what sort of heavy launchers did the US military have in stock, or on order and essentially ready to go, in these weeks? It would be basically a choice between the biggest Titan and the biggest Atlas. As far as I can tell, in early 2003 the new Delta IV was not yet quite ready nor was the late-generation Atlas, but Titan IVB was being retired in their favor, and the last Titan IV launched a military payload in April. I don't think we can count on it being available in late January or early February, and I'm not sure if it launched from Vandenberg or Canaveral.
That would be the heaviest payload launcher; a great many types in the less than ten tonne to LEO range (Ariane IV falls into this range) typically lifting about 7 tonnes might have been more available and launchable from more sites.
I think Team Blue needs to identify just which system is most available well before Feb 14 and plan around a 5-8 tonne system to deliver vital necessities to Columbia.
A Progress capsule might do the job, and seems to me to be fittable on many candidate rockets. But if no one has ever done that integration before, it would presumably take some time to iron out bugs. It seems more likely that it would be a hasty ad hoc unique thing made in the USA most likely. And launched on a Delta or a number of foreign equivalents--the Japanese rockets for instance were derived, as Deltas were, from the old Thor series and have as it were evolved in parallel.
Again, all of this is just a contingency in case the accelerated schedule for Atlantis's launch slips.
A Soviet capsule that would do them some good would be a Progress cargo hauler, bringing supplies to extend the time they can survive in orbit, allowing the Atlantis launch to be less rushed.
And it has to be launched on a different rocket than the Russians use since neither Kourou nor I suppose the alternatives--Canaveral and the Japanese launching site are the only ones that come to mind--have the special gantries and stuff the Russian rocket needs.
Besides Ariane, and ICBMs which no, I don't think can accomplish much of what is needed, what sort of heavy launchers did the US military have in stock, or on order and essentially ready to go, in these weeks? It would be basically a choice between the biggest Titan and the biggest Atlas. As far as I can tell, in early 2003 the new Delta IV was not yet quite ready nor was the late-generation Atlas, but Titan IVB was being retired in their favor, and the last Titan IV launched a military payload in April. I don't think we can count on it being available in late January or early February, and I'm not sure if it launched from Vandenberg or Canaveral.
That would be the heaviest payload launcher; a great many types in the less than ten tonne to LEO range (Ariane IV falls into this range) typically lifting about 7 tonnes might have been more available and launchable from more sites.
I think Team Blue needs to identify just which system is most available well before Feb 14 and plan around a 5-8 tonne system to deliver vital necessities to Columbia.
A Progress capsule might do the job, and seems to me to be fittable on many candidate rockets. But if no one has ever done that integration before, it would presumably take some time to iron out bugs. It seems more likely that it would be a hasty ad hoc unique thing made in the USA most likely. And launched on a Delta or a number of foreign equivalents--the Japanese rockets for instance were derived, as Deltas were, from the old Thor series and have as it were evolved in parallel.
Again, all of this is just a contingency in case the accelerated schedule for Atlantis's launch slips.
I hadn't considered Japanese launch systems; wiki says that there was an H-IIA launch on March 28. Doubt it would be possible to accelerate launch preparation by 6 weeks though...
Archibald
Banned
A little teaser before the week-end, and a major EVA work for the stranded crew. 
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]Flight day 13[/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]January 28, 2003 [/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]Aboard Columbia[/FONT]
The crew observed a brief moment of silence in memory of the Challenger seven. Columbia astronauts may have been depressed by a coincidence aggravated by another sad anniversary the previous day, of the Apollo 1 fire of 1967 and the death of Ed White, Roger Chaffee and Gus Grissom. But they were psychologically solid and way too busy to really think that their names might be added to NASA martyrdom. Their mood, shared by the ground, was they would fight until the very end. There was no question about that.
Mike Brown and David Anderson spent the day talking with the ground and rehearsing the next day extravehicular activity (EVA) - which promised to be the most extraordinary in the history of the space program.
Yet there had been no lack of extraordinary astronaut sorties in space before.
September 1985
Cosmonauts Dzhanibekov and Savinykh have been sent to Salyut 7 for a rather desperate mission. Months earlier after a human mistake the (inhabited) Salyut has been shut down and lost into the coldness of space. The two cosmonauts are to revive a dead station. They painfully dock their Soyuz and prepare for the worse, including gas masks. They don't know what lies behind the hatch.
They found a frozen space station littered with ice and icicles; Salyut 7 is reminiscent of an underground cave in Antarctica.
The cosmonauts can only guess by how much did the electrical systems and avionics suffered. Nothing worse than the Apollo 13 astronauts trying to revive their long dead Command Module (the only ship able to bring them through Earth ree-entry) and finding it literally filled with water.
After tremendous efforts Dzhanibekov and Savinykh manage to return the space station to life, only for the next mission to leave unfinished work aboard Salyut 7, courtesy of a medical emergency. The next year, in May 1986 another Soyuz accomplishes the first interorbital flight. Soyuz T-15 departs Mir to Salyut 7 for a fifty days stay there before returning Mir - an orbital mechanics masterpiece.
May 1973
Skylab launch into orbit on a cloudy day that prevent Saturn V tracking during ascent. In the chaos of the launch, after a serious glitch a solar array stupidly extends outside the rocket. It is immediately ripped apart by the tremendous aerodynamic forces, making the $2.5 billion Skylab a partial wreck. As for the other solar array it is stuck in folded position by debris.
Skylab electric power now hangs to the Apollo solar telescope arrays not exactly build for that purpose.
The next month a salvage mission led by moonwalker Alan Bean reach the crippled station. There's no workaround: or the lone solar array gets deployed, or Skylab will be lost. Without a shuttle payload bay nor robotic arm however, Alan Bean has to be literally towed by the Apollo capsule in the direction of the stuck solar array. Once there, he grasp the array into his gloved hands and start to pull it with all the strength his clumsy space suit allows him. Suddenly, wham ! the solar array unfolds without a warning, sending Bean tumbling into space. Only his rope save him. But Skylab is saved.
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]Flight day 13[/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]January 28, 2003 [/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]Aboard Columbia[/FONT]
The crew observed a brief moment of silence in memory of the Challenger seven. Columbia astronauts may have been depressed by a coincidence aggravated by another sad anniversary the previous day, of the Apollo 1 fire of 1967 and the death of Ed White, Roger Chaffee and Gus Grissom. But they were psychologically solid and way too busy to really think that their names might be added to NASA martyrdom. Their mood, shared by the ground, was they would fight until the very end. There was no question about that.
Mike Brown and David Anderson spent the day talking with the ground and rehearsing the next day extravehicular activity (EVA) - which promised to be the most extraordinary in the history of the space program.
Yet there had been no lack of extraordinary astronaut sorties in space before.
September 1985
Cosmonauts Dzhanibekov and Savinykh have been sent to Salyut 7 for a rather desperate mission. Months earlier after a human mistake the (inhabited) Salyut has been shut down and lost into the coldness of space. The two cosmonauts are to revive a dead station. They painfully dock their Soyuz and prepare for the worse, including gas masks. They don't know what lies behind the hatch.
They found a frozen space station littered with ice and icicles; Salyut 7 is reminiscent of an underground cave in Antarctica.
After tremendous efforts Dzhanibekov and Savinykh manage to return the space station to life, only for the next mission to leave unfinished work aboard Salyut 7, courtesy of a medical emergency. The next year, in May 1986 another Soyuz accomplishes the first interorbital flight. Soyuz T-15 departs Mir to Salyut 7 for a fifty days stay there before returning Mir - an orbital mechanics masterpiece.
May 1973
Skylab launch into orbit on a cloudy day that prevent Saturn V tracking during ascent. In the chaos of the launch, after a serious glitch a solar array stupidly extends outside the rocket. It is immediately ripped apart by the tremendous aerodynamic forces, making the $2.5 billion Skylab a partial wreck. As for the other solar array it is stuck in folded position by debris.
Skylab electric power now hangs to the Apollo solar telescope arrays not exactly build for that purpose.
The next month a salvage mission led by moonwalker Alan Bean reach the crippled station. There's no workaround: or the lone solar array gets deployed, or Skylab will be lost. Without a shuttle payload bay nor robotic arm however, Alan Bean has to be literally towed by the Apollo capsule in the direction of the stuck solar array. Once there, he grasp the array into his gloved hands and start to pull it with all the strength his clumsy space suit allows him. Suddenly, wham ! the solar array unfolds without a warning, sending Bean tumbling into space. Only his rope save him. But Skylab is saved.
I'm not seeing a case that rescuing 3 and leaving 4 would be a bad thing.
The way it would work, I should guess, is that once it was clear the shuttle was doomed, the U.S. government would make immediate inquires to other space faring nations including Russia. This might be via phone calls directly by the President to various national leaders, or it might be via a historical first ever space S.O.S. call made by Columbia. This would be part of a comprehensive assessment by the United States (not just NASA) of the available options inside and outside all US institutions.
These inquires would lead to responses by these other nations within days. In Russia's case, either they come back with a 'no' or a 'yes' after their engineers look at the problem. If 'yes', then I would assume that this would include a proposed mission profile, and that a NASA engineering team would be dispatched to Russia.
The U.S. Navy alone has or had 18 Ohio Class Ballistic Missile submarines each with 24 ballistic missiles, which is a total of 432 missiles, each having a throw weight of 2,800kg according to the internet.
Throw weight suborbital ballistic is not throw weight to LEO. According to running the numbers on a Trident, it could roughly put about 1000 kg to a 307x307 at 39 degree inclination orbit like Columbia's if launched from 39 degree latitude. Any distance off this and you lose performance, but that is one benefit of a seaborne launch platform. However, it's common even with specifically designed orbital launch vehicles to miss the target orbit by anything like 3 km in perigee/apogee and perhaps a quarter of a degree in inclination. Given the missile's guidance systems are generally not configured for such a mission, if they could hit that accuracy, it'd be a pretty good achievement. This would then require the shuttle to expend almost 75 m/s of delta-v to run down each package--75 out of a total of 300, some of which has already been used. That's a maximum of about 4 packages that Columbia could run down in the most optimistic cases, and those packages will have to be proof against the 6-8 Gs of a missile launch, plus a lot of vibration, so if they're even 50% useful cargo, I'd be impressed. So that's about 2 tons of cargo, at the cost of Columbia losing any maneuver capability of her own for attempting an entry after jury-rig repairs or to maneuver to meet Atlantis--the main and best options for saving the crew. It's wasting a lot of fuel for very little payload.
Nope. Ground-service-only. What this means is that fuel is as critical a resource as oxygen or fuel cell reactants, and needs to be just as carefully husbanded. It's only worth running down a package if that package is of fairly substantial size--say, something that could fit that Ariane 44L.
Yes, a Boomer by its very nature can sail right to the best launch spot with up to 16 payload shots. You're saying the load to orbit is 1,000kg, so that's 16,000kgs launch potential in one rescue submarine.
From the OOB of Ohio Class subs, US Navy has something like 432 operational Trident missiles aboard 18 Boomers. So if one launch was off, then the plan would be simply to launch more until one was close enough for an 'acceptable' recovery. If this took 6 launches, who cares? The supply of launch missiles is functionally limitless.
Also, the US aerospace industry is the best in the world; it could rig off the shelf components to give packages a capacity for guidance towards the shuttle. I imagine something like a Boomer in port on the east coast being alerted, US industry crash-fitting the Tridents aboard with new packages within 10 days or so, then it sailing south to the launch point and sending up to all 16 missiles into orbit, or fewer, as proved necessary.
I imagine the Russians are going to want to have a look at the rocket payloads if that plan went forward.
Thank you, I'm very aware of what the US aerospace industry is capable of--and what it's not. The kind of system such a package would need is a 3-axis inertial measuring unit to provide input on the attitude of the package, a set of star trackers to provide position, a brain to knit that all together to fix the position of the package and decide how to navigate to the target orbit, and a thruster package to turn the brain's commands into actions, capable of both pitch/roll/yaw control and then a main maneuvering engine for orbit changes.
There is no "off-the-shelf" capacity for any of that in this size range--there are suitable package designs, but they are produced in production volumes of 1s and 2s for specific satellites, not stockpiled. They also could not simply be "cranked out" in their hundreds over the course of a week--they have production lead times measured in months or years. That's the reality of the challenge. It's not trivial. Guidance packages are not happening, not in 30 days, not in three months.
So given that, the only option would be to salvo hundreds of the bloody things, standing down and wasting most of the core of the US nuclear deterrent just in the hopes that a few come within reasonable distance of the shuttle. MOOSE is less silly.
So, if I read the consensus right here, what we have is this:
1) Plan A: Atlantis. And it's a big (109K kg) Plan A, because Plan A has by far the best chance of getting seven astronauts back alive - if in fact you can get Plan A off the ground. If you can't, their odds get a lot worse, and the fallback options sub-optimal in mutliple ways. NASA really needs to make the maximum effort to get Atlantis up there. It's their best chance.
2) Plan B: Impromptu repair. With a corollary of lightening the load, possibly, by jettisoning most of the payload. It's a poor Plan B, because Columbia doesn't really have any real repair materials, and because it involves highly risky EVA's, which Arch is already prepping us for. The CAIB report on this possibility does not fill one with confidence:
3) Plan C: Ariane emergency supply payload launched from Kourou. This seems to be the only option that would justify the burning of Columbia's scarce delta-v, and it would likely only justify it if Atlantis can't get in the game. In this case, NASA would only approve the launch if it were apparent that Atlantis simply could not be launched in time. What would be in this supply load (whatever vehicle is chosen) could be a number of things: LiOH canisters, oxygen, food, or MOOSE capsules; at least it has the payload capacity for whatever NASA has in mind.
Then it's a question of whether it has bought enough time for a true rescue mission by the delayed Atlantis, or MOOSE-ing their way back home. Frankly, MOOSE, wild as it is, seems more likely to get some back alive than any coldsoak/payload jettison repair job reentry scheme for Columbia.
1) Plan A: Atlantis. And it's a big (109K kg) Plan A, because Plan A has by far the best chance of getting seven astronauts back alive - if in fact you can get Plan A off the ground. If you can't, their odds get a lot worse, and the fallback options sub-optimal in mutliple ways. NASA really needs to make the maximum effort to get Atlantis up there. It's their best chance.
2) Plan B: Impromptu repair. With a corollary of lightening the load, possibly, by jettisoning most of the payload. It's a poor Plan B, because Columbia doesn't really have any real repair materials, and because it involves highly risky EVA's, which Arch is already prepping us for. The CAIB report on this possibility does not fill one with confidence:
3) Plan C: Ariane emergency supply payload launched from Kourou. This seems to be the only option that would justify the burning of Columbia's scarce delta-v, and it would likely only justify it if Atlantis can't get in the game. In this case, NASA would only approve the launch if it were apparent that Atlantis simply could not be launched in time. What would be in this supply load (whatever vehicle is chosen) could be a number of things: LiOH canisters, oxygen, food, or MOOSE capsules; at least it has the payload capacity for whatever NASA has in mind.
Then it's a question of whether it has bought enough time for a true rescue mission by the delayed Atlantis, or MOOSE-ing their way back home. Frankly, MOOSE, wild as it is, seems more likely to get some back alive than any coldsoak/payload jettison repair job reentry scheme for Columbia.
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Rip out the hardward from a USAF drone to provide the command guidance link and camera. The package might need a radar beacon. Ground radars do the measuring between the package and shuttle, a ground controller does the command guidance inputs. Ground computers do all the course computations.
All off the shelf.
While clearly Glen is clueless about whats involved, a quick and dirty navigation system that weighed 10 times what a polished version would, and which only needed to last days should be able to be whipped up by any of several outfits.
As long as youre launching on something like an Ariane, you probably have the payload to spare.
As for lauching from a boomer. Ouch. How do you get the payload TO the sub in the middle of the ocean? How do you mate it to a rocket that was never meant for orbital launches? And is a hypothetical jury rigged upperstage/payload even going to FIT into a launch tube? Is there any room there to do those mods?
Id think a hypothetical boomer launch would reqire the boomer to return to base and off load the missiles to be used. At which point you might want to launch them from land.
The drone's system would not be sufficient to act as even a basic attitude detection system/inertial measurement unit (IMU), and ground radar can only give position data. So you'd know exactly where your package is, but have no way to know which way it's pointing. That's no use at all. The communications link from a drone will be totally ill-suited, so while your idea of processing the commands on the ground has merit (if you had an IMU), the comms systems you're speccing isn't up to the job of sending that data. And, of course, you're neglecting completely adding any thrusters to turn those commands into motion of the spacecraft, so what you'd have is a fairly stupid brick.
It's the time that's the problem. The systems exist, there are workable designs, but integrating something flyable is not easy on the given timescale. The Intelsat Ariane was going to launch might not be a bad base, it's already got all the hardware necessary, which means you can play "design by deletion," going around the thing and tearing stuff off. "Don't need that, don't need this." However, the base stock for exercises like that is fairly small--but so are the number of vehicles it's worth doing it for, and most of them are launching satellites that could act as bases--providing a pre-prepared bus of at least some initial capability, and one already suited for the LV in question with each individual launch.
And, of course, none of these really solve the core problem of getting the crew down--the best options for that remain Atlantis, or if sufficient time can be bought and you also have issues with Atlantis, Endeavour.
Orville_third
Banned
If there's a US (or UK) boomer at King's Bay, Georgia, they could try and load a satellite into one of the missile tubes. (I'm sure the US would even be happy to warn Russia before then.) Would a King's Bay launch help get it close to the shuttle?
IDEA! Russia helps provide the payload for the ballistic missile.
IDEA! Russia helps provide the payload for the ballistic missile.
I don't think there's enough time to work out the integration details for mounting something on an ICBM, and as previously mentioned, an ICBM wouldn't be able to launch a worthwhile payload into orbit, considering that Columbia would have to use up a good deal of its remaining fuel supply to chase it down and capture it. At this point, the Ariane is probably the best bet after Atlantis.