Columbia rescue - save the space shuttle !

[Archibald]

[FONT=Times, Times, serif]Flight day 17 [/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]February 1, 2003 [/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]Aboard Columbia [/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif](music: The Rasmus, In the shadows)
[/FONT]
For a day now the orbiter was flying with a wing pointed in the dark. It was hoped that in the absence of the sun the wing would literally freeze – and, most importantly, all that water Anderson and Brown had taped into the bags would turn into a big iceberg.
Of uttermost importance was the wing spar, the solid bar of metal that hold Columbia wing into a single piece. Made of aluminium and usually protected by the wing and thermal protection around it, the spar stood no chance if ever touched by the re-entry plasma. And if it ever broke then the wing would be torn apart, resulting in a complete destruction of the orbiter and an horrific death for its crew.
The plan was not to stop the plasma – only an intact carbon panel could resist broken molecules of air nearly as hot as the surface of the sun. Instead NASA and the astronauts would use every possible trick to make the plasma life more difficult.
Before it can reach the spar the plasma would have to blast through the AFSRI, then it would have to melt all that frozen water. The last line of defence would be Laurel Clark bits of titanium, a very hard nut to crack even for a furious plasma. Unfortunately the broken pieces of titanium only hold together through a plastic bag, and the plasma would show no mercy for it.
It was no the end of the line, however.
Not only would the destructive burn-through be delayed; NASA engineers also had a couple of tricks in their sleeves to weaken the plasma itself.
It was a unforgiving battle between a fragile mass of metal and aerodynamic heating trying to melt and destroy it. No side would show mercy !

 

[mattep74]

How high up does the crew need to be to survive a bail out? They dont have the protective gear the austrian jumper had so they cant be at that altitude

 

[Petike]

*adopts a R. Lee Ermey-style voice, points finger at author*

Sonny, you know where this TL is headed ?

To the wiki, that's where !

What's a' matter, numbnuts ? Do you not believe that good spaceflight-centred TLs deserve their place among other praised spaceflight timelines ? Well, I do ! Dismised !

 

[Archibald]

Wow, very honoured. Thank you Petike !

 

[RazeByFire]

How high up does the crew need to be to survive a bail out? They dont have the protective gear the austrian jumper had so they cant be at that altitude

They can't. If Columbia attempts re-entry they will either burn up or ride her all the way in. Maximum force and temperature on the wing happen too high to jump with anything but a small chance if success. If they make it to jump altitude without a breakup might as well finish the ride.

Oh, if they're not still in the plasma sheath and the wing breaks off they might try to jump, but they probably die.

You know, I have an idea about where Columbia could cut about 20000 lbs off her weight. If NASA and the astronauts have the tools and the intestinal fortitude. Might even be able to get some reactants for the fuel cells. Probably play havoc with the expected glide characteristics though. Anyone care to guess?

 

[Archibald]

You know, I have an idea about where Columbia could cut about 20000 lbs off her weight. If NASA and the astronauts have the tools and the intestinal fortitude. Might even be able to get some reactants for the fuel cells. Probably play havoc with the expected glide characteristics though. Anyone care to guess?

Yes, please.

 

[Athelstane]

Raze,

They can't. If Columbia attempts re-entry they will either burn up or ride her all the way in. Maximum force and temperature on the wing happen too high to jump with anything but a small chance if success. If they make it to jump altitude without a breakup might as well finish the ride.

If it comes to this, they might as well use a MOOSE. Better chance than riding Columbia back.

You know, I have an idea about where Columbia could cut about 20000 lbs off her weight. If NASA and the astronauts have the tools and the intestinal fortitude. Might even be able to get some reactants for the fuel cells. Probably play havoc with the expected glide characteristics though. Anyone care to guess?

Empty out the cargo bay and strip out the engines?

Good luck getting that done.

 

[Aelita]

They can't. If Columbia attempts re-entry they will either burn up or ride her all the way in. Maximum force and temperature on the wing happen too high to jump with anything but a small chance if success. If they make it to jump altitude without a breakup might as well finish the ride.

Oh, if they're not still in the plasma sheath and the wing breaks off they might try to jump, but they probably die.

You know, I have an idea about where Columbia could cut about 20000 lbs off her weight. If NASA and the astronauts have the tools and the intestinal fortitude. Might even be able to get some reactants for the fuel cells. Probably play havoc with the expected glide characteristics though. Anyone care to guess?

I can't even begin to guess how they'd go about jettisoning the SSMEs...

 

[RazeByFire]

Raze,

They can't. If Columbia attempts re-entry they will either burn up or ride her all the way in. Maximum force and temperature on the wing happen too high to jump with anything but a small chance if success. If they make it to jump altitude without a breakup might as well finish the ride.

If it comes to this, they might as well use a MOOSE. Better chance than riding Columbia back.

You know, I have an idea about where Columbia could cut about 20000 lbs off her weight. If NASA and the astronauts have the tools and the intestinal fortitude. Might even be able to get some reactants for the fuel cells. Probably play havoc with the expected glide characteristics though. Anyone care to guess?

Empty out the cargo bay and strip out the engines?

Good luck getting that done.

Just need a Saws-all and a few wrenches right? Probably an idea from some crazy redneck in the basement at Huntsville.

It would be somewhere above the MOOSE near the bottom of the list I assume. If Atlantis can't get there and Columbia starts dying through equipment failures... May as well try it.

From the same department: how many space/pressure suits/rescue balls on Columbia? Cable? Spare o2? How much delta v does Eucera have? Don't need to get Columbia to the ISS? Just the astronauts.

 

[mattep74]

If they want to loose weight, cant they dump the wheels. They can jump out of the shuttle and have it crash into the sea

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

And it's MOOSE, MOOSE, I like a MOOSE. I never rode anything quite like a MOOSE. I've flown many spaceflights, I've had lots of use, but I never rode any anything quite like a MOOSE.

 

[mattep74]

As for the bail out, i thought of the miniseries Austronauts with Corbin Bensen that had such an ep

 

[LostCosmonaut]

If they want to loose weight, cant they dump the wheels. They can jump out of the shuttle and have it crash into the sea

I believe they already sliced up the tires to use as insulation. So I'm assuming that a bailout is pretty much inevitable if they ride the orbiter down (and survive), if only due to lack of landing gear.

 

[Orville_third]

I believe they already sliced up the tires to use as insulation. So I'm assuming that a bailout is pretty much inevitable if they ride the orbiter down (and survive), if only due to lack of landing gear.

I suggested the idea- but I'm not sure if they did it or not.
If someone is interested, I can try and contact someone at Michelin. I'm not sure who would know- but their North American HQ is in town. They'd likely have someone who could try and provide info. Should I ask?

http://www.airmichelin.com/generalcontent.aspx?id=149
http://www.collectspace.com/ubb/Forum14/HTML/000971.html

And, if they get rid of the tires, they could use gear components to help fill in the gaps.
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/technology/sts-newsref/sts-gear.html

OH! Here's a 1988 manual on the Shuttle you might use for reference.
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/technology/sts-newsref/stsref-toc.html

 

[simonbp]

How high up does the crew need to be to survive a bail out? They dont have the protective gear the austrian jumper had so they cant be at that altitude

Well, they had something close enough:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Crew_Escape_Suit

The real trick is getting out of the Shuttle. That's where the pole comes in:

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/shutref/escape/inflight.html

For a nominal deployment of the pole, they need to get down to 25,000 ft and 200 knots. In other words, they need to suvive the reentry, but abandon the vehicle before starting the landing procedure.

 

[Shevek23]

...

OH! Here's a 1988 manual on the Shuttle you might use for reference.
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/technology/sts-newsref/stsref-toc.html

That's very helpful indeed!

To quote the electrical section:

Each fuel cell power plant is 14 inches high, 15 inches wide and 40 inches long and weighs 255 pounds.

The voltage and current range of each is 2 kilowatts at 32.5 volts dc, 61.5 amps, to 12 kilowatts at 27.5 volts dc, 436 amps. Each fuel cell is capable of supplying 12 kilowatts peak and 7 kilowatts maximum continuous power. The three fuel cells are capable of a maximum continuous output of 21,000 watts with 15-minute peaks of 36,000 watts. The average power consumption of the orbiter is expected to be approximately 14,000 watts, or 14 kilowatts, leaving 7 kilowatts average available for payloads. Each fuel cell will be serviced between flights and reused until each accumulates 2,000 hours of on-line service.

There are 3 fuel cells, located apparently just below the front end of the cargo bay.

So--it would not be inconceivable to me that there might be a possibility of running some sort of hoses (shipped up with the new tanks) from tanks of hydrogen and oxygen supplied from Earth right into the existing fuel cells. Failing that, a single cell masses about 1/8 of a tonne; sending up just one replacement cell probably won't cut it, but perhaps just two might serve.

That's a quarter of the single tonne Archibald allows Eureca to deliver, just to replicate equipment that already exists on the orbiter. And perhaps inadequate at that.

But it is definitely possible to extend the electrical (and water) supply somewhat.

I was figuring the cells would mass tonnes or something like that!

 

[Archibald]

Extreme weight reductions, you say ?

strip out the engines

dump the wheels

Columbia could cut about 20000 lbs off her weight

Numbers are right, plus someone made a correct guess

Not to the point of throwing wheels or engines overboard perhaps (how would they access the undercarriage, anyway ?)
As for the SSMEs, they are so heavy their departure would destroy the orbiter center of gravity and turn the computers nuts.

As for the bail out, I thought of the miniseries Austronauts with Corbin Bensen that had such an ep

The Cape ! Now if someone can point me to a good internet place where to buy the DVD set of that series...

Saws-all and a few wrenches

Yes.

And now ladies and gentleman, enter NASA engineer LeRoy Cain - bringing some radical ideas to cut weight out of Columbia.
The next posts will be epic.
Once again, these were ideas that were reviewed OTL but not included in the CAIB final report as "too audacious". Yet I included them into the story just because of their sheer craziness - because they truly bordered on science fiction.

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[FONT=Times, Times, serif]Flight day 18[/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]February 2, 2003[/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]Johnson Spaceflight Center, Houston, Texas
[/FONT]
LeRoy Cain could read doubt on the faces of the officials there.
“We are reaching a point where we have to seriously take into consideration the possibility that Columbia crew may have to ride their crippled machine across the atmosphere. If that ever happen, we have to give them the best possible chance.” Cain started.
“You say that the wing repair may not be enough ?”
“Not exactly; rather, than there are a pair of tricks that may make the life of the plasma even more difficult.”
“Such as a lighter orbiter. But the weight reduction scenarios you are proposing here...” Linda Ham shook her head in disbelief.
“...are pretty extreme. I realize it. But we have to discuss them right now, because they are so difficult the crew will have to start work soon.”
“We have already most of the crew sedated most of the day, because in their sleep they breath less, saving precious oxygen, rejecting less carbon dioxide.”
“Are you seriously suggesting we only keep only Brown and Anderson awake ?”
“Well, only them have been trained for extra-vehicular activities.”
“They are nearing exhaustion, however. The rate of sorties is killing them. Is that massive weight saving worth it ?”
“Well, our calculation show 30 to 60 percent reduction in heat load and heat rates...” Leroy Cain started
“But that only for an intact orbiter. God knows how a damaged machine would react. That, and the critical wing leading edge are spared of only seven percent of the usual temperatures.”
“Others options are lowering the perigee, and increasing the angle of attack during entry, to 45 degree instead of the usual forty. Put together they can have the orbiter through the worse of re-entry and - who knows ? - hold it together low and slow enough for the crew to bailout."

Aboard Columbia
Late in the evening the shuttle established a new endurance record, breaking his own record it had established in November 1996. That year Columbia had spent 18 days in space. From this moment every hour that passed carried the orbiter systems into the unknown – never before they had been asked to last so long in orbit.

 

[mattep74]

The Cape ! Now if someone can point me to a good internet place where to buy the DVD set of that series...

Strange thing is that one cant even find it as a torrent, i tried a few years back

 

[Shevek23]

I've been looking some more at the 1988 Shuttle Manual press release, specifically at the electrical system section. It says that various numbers of pairs of oxygen and hydrogen tanks could be installed depending on the mission--this suggests to me that it might be realistically possible to remove spent tanks and swap in full ones, which is very good as it means the power system can keep going without having to ship up more fuel cells--just the tanks. I was puzzled since the oxygen tank seemed to carry about 45 pounds more oxygen than needed to react with the hydrogen, but apparently that's because the fuel cell O2 tanks double as the oxygen source for the cabin air! So in shipping up replacement tanks for the fuel cells, we automatically also ship up extra breathing oxygen! (Just as keeping the fuel cells running means that drinking water is no problem).

So assuming it might be possible to simply bolt in new reactant tanks, discarding the old spent ones, the problem of urgent supplies seems largely to boil down to LiOH canisters and pairs of oxygen and hydrogen tanks. And possibly, if the crisis is drawn out amazingly long, food, and maybe even nitrogen--nitrogen is expected to be depleted too, apparently by leakage and possibly by biological processes, and if the nitrogen tank runs out, the air will gradually become more oxygenated as a percentage, and that poses fire hazards.

But I'd think they have to have come down one way or another before then.

So--a standard Orbiter oxy tank weighs 982 pounds, 45 of which is breathing oxygen, and the corresponding hydrogen tank weighs 308 lb. That's 717 kg mass right there, leaving only 283 for LiOH canisters and nothing else. Still that's enough for 56 canisters, good for nearly a month--I don't think the fuel cell reactants will last that long, so it might make sense to leave out some of the canisters and send up other stuff instead, some food or medicine or something like that.

I'm not sure the linear dimensions of a pair of reactant tanks will fit on the Eureca, nor am I certain the crew can swap them in, or even run patch hoses from the free-standing tanks down to the cells. And the expected consumption or loss of oxygen per day is 9 pounds; with each of Columbia's oxygen tanks, of which I don't know how many she was launched with, holding 45 pounds extra or 5 day's worth, I guess come February 15 they are all depleted and so we'd only need 10, maybe 20 more canisters before the breathing oxygen in the fuel cell supply tank is gone anyway, unless we ship up supplemental oxygen tanks as well.

The Eureca is to buy time until either Atlantis can make it there or another unmanned rocket can ship another supply packet--this one, I urge, really ought to use a bigger portion of their mass to deliver more goods.

But by then, hopefully the need to wait much longer will be ending.

Really, Eureca should deliver more than a tonne! Or we should consider launching something else on the Arianne even if it can't maneuver the way Eureca can. Columbia needs more than a tonne of supplies, it would seem--definitely so if it turns out they can't use the existing fuel cells to supply power and water and must ship up auxiliary ones as well. Then Columbia needs a minimum of 2 tonnes or so.

I was feeling pretty good about the Arianne since it can launch at least 6 tonnes to their orbit, so seeing most of that frittered away in the bus, when the need for supplies is so pressing, is very frustrating and dismaying. At 3 tonnes I might breathe more easily; one is just too tiny.

 

[Archibald]

[FONT=Times, Times, serif]Flight day 19[/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]February 3, 2003[/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif]Aboard Columbia [/FONT]
[FONT=Times, Times, serif](music: Moby, In my heart) [/FONT]
From that day on, Michael Anderson and David Brown life took a bizarre turn. They were the only ones aboard Columbia trained for extra-vehicular activities. Most of what could be done to preserve the shuttle now required extra-vehicular activities – as such the rest of the crew had to reduce their daily activities to save oxygen and reduced emission of carbon dioxide. That, and the repeated EVAs had taken a toll on the oxygen reserves.
From that day Anderson and Brown felt isolated, much like 2001 Frank Poole and David Bowman had been. They spent part of their days outside the orbiter, working on a new issue – of making the orbiter lighter and lighter to ease thermal constraints on the damaged heat shield during reentry, if there was ever a re-entry.
That day when they floated outside the airlock and into the lower cockpit they entered a scene straight out of a science fiction movie. A light had been left on in the toilet and it dimly illuminated Columbia's sleeping crew. They were in their restraints, some pinned to the forward wall, others stretched horizontally across the mid-deck. In the relaxation of sleep their arms floated chest high in front of them. It appeared as if they were in suspended animation, and in some way they were. Despite the disciplined astronauts best efforts, life aboard Columbia become more and more difficult as the days passed.
Anderson and Brown were so exhausted they had no time to think about their precarious situation or uncertain future. They had to perform the most difficult work first - before they were too exhausted and / or before the crew reserves were too much impacted by all their EVAs.