Geronimo : What if Osama Bin Laden was killed prior to 9/11?

[Pax_Nihil]

Plot twist the shuttle falls into the Twin Towers

Dude....... yes...?

 

[LaCreatura00]

Sep 11, 2007 -- Updated 2020 GMT (0420 HKT)
By John Zarrella
CNN

I swear those twin towers better be standing next time I check in.

 

[JCC the Alt Historian]

I swear those twin towers better be standing next time I check in.

Don't worry, the Twin Towers aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

 

[baliebox4916]

Which will make this incident all the more appropriate as an end to the Long Nineties that this TL seems to have had.

which means the vanilla 90s would have lasted 22 years (as it technically began in 1986)

but thats ok because unlike the how the 90s would never truly come back due to the affects of the post 9/11 world being irreversible

ITTL the 80s/90s will come back in the 2010s/2020s once millenials grow out of their nurave phase and become yuppies (as webbystar92 said in this post)

And there’s one more thing on how the short lived recession of TTL would affect Millenials. if my generation managed to get their dream jobs and the unemployment rate drastically drops there would be a revival of 80s Yuppie culture but with Smartphones and social media. Heck Vaporwave might be mainstream because how similar of TTL’s 2010s America would be similar to the 80s. By the mid 2010s the flat design aesthetic which replaced Frutiger Aero in OTL might get replaced by an aesthetic movement inspired by the mid 80s to early 90s Memphis design mixed with the Y2K aesthetic of the late 90s to mid 2000s.

 

[TheKennedyMachine.]

Plot twist the shuttle falls into the Twin Towers

I don't think that makes any geographical sense, especially from where The Shuttle was launched.

 

[Aluma]

I don't think that makes any geographical sense, especially from where The Shuttle was launched.

I know, it was a joke

 

[LaCreatura00]

I know, it was a joke

>religious group uses a spaceship to destroy the twin towers
Sounds like the Luddic Path from Starsector, lol.

 

[Aluma]

Sounds like the Luddic Path from Starsector

That would make it even more hilarious

 

[InsertCoolUsernameHere]

Got bored and decided to make a list of US Senators in TTL 2007:

Alabama:
2. Jeff Sessions (R)
3. Richard Shelby (R)
Alaska:
2. Ted Stevens (R)
3. Lisa Murkowski (R)
Arizona:
1. John Kyl (R)
3. John McCain (R)
Arkansas:
2. Mark Pryor (D)
3. Blanche Lincoln (D)
California:
1. Dianne Feinstein (D)
3. Barbara Boxer (D)
Colorado:
2. Tom Strickland (D)
3. Ken Salazar (D)
Connecticut:
1. Joe Lieberman (D)
3. Chris Dodd (D)
Delaware:
1. Tom Carper (D)
2. Joe Biden (D)
Florida:
1. Bill Nelson (D)
3. Mel Martinez (R)
Georgia:
2. Max Cleland (D)
3. Zell Miller (D)
Hawaii:
1. Daniel Akaka (D)
3. Daniel Inouye (D)
Idaho:
2. Larry Craig (R)
3. Mike Crapo (R)
Illinois:
2. Dick Durbin (D)
3. Barack Obama (D)
Indiana:
1. Richard Lugar (R)
3. Evan Bayh (D)
Iowa:
1. Tom Harkin (D)
3. Chuck Grassley (R)
Kansas:
2. Pat Roberts (R)
3. Sam Brownback (R)
Kentucky:
2. Mitch McConnell (R)
3. Daniel Mongiardo (D)
Louisiana:
2. Mary Landrieu (D)
3. John Breaux (D)
Maine:
1. Olympia Snowe (R)
3. Susan Collins (R)
Maryland:
1. Michael Steele (R)
3. Barbara Mikulski (D)
Massachusetts:
1. Ted Kennedy (D)
2. Deval Patrick (D)
Michigan:
1. Debbie Stabenow (D)
2. Carl Levin (D)
Minnesota:
1. Mark Dayton (DFL)
2. Walter Mondale (DFL)
Mississippi:
1. Trent Lott (R)
2. Thad Cochran (R)
Missouri:
1. Jean Carnahan (D)
3. Kit Bond (R)
Montana:
1. Conrad Burns (R)
2. Max Baucus (D)
Nebraska:
1. Ben Nelson (D)
2. Chuck Hagel (R)
Nevada:
1. John Ensign (R)
3. Harry Reid (D)
New Hampshire:
2. Jeanne Shaheen (D)
3. Gregg Judd (R)
New Jersey:
1. Thomas Kean (R)
2. Frank Lautenberg (D)
New Mexico:
1. Jeff Bingaman (D)
2. Pete Dominici (R)
New York:
1. Hillary Clinton (D)
3. Chuck Schumer (D)
North Carolina:
2. Elizabeth Dole (R)
3. Erskine Bowles (D)
North Dakota:
1. Kent Conrad (D-NPL)
3. Byron Dorgan (D-NPL)
Ohio:
1. Sherrod Brown (D)
3. George Voinovich (R)
Oklahoma:
2. Jim Inhofe (R)
3. Tom Coburn (R)
Oregon:
2. Gordon H. Smith (R)
3. Ron Wyden (D)
Pennsylvania:
1. Rick Santorum (R)
3. Pat Toomey (R)
Rhode Island:
1. Lincoln Chaffee (Keep Chaffee)
2. Jack Reed (D)
South Carolina:
2. Lindsey Graham (R)
3. Jim DeMint (R)
South Dakota:
2. Tim Johnson (D)
3. Tom Daschle(D)
Tennessee:
1. Bob Corker (R)
3. Lamar Alexander (R)
Texas:
1. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R)
2. John Cornyn (R)
Utah:
1. Orrin Hatch (R)
3. Bob Bennett (R)
Vermont:
1. Bernie Sanders (I)
3. Patrick Leahy (D)
Virginia:
1. George Allen (R)
2. John Warner (R)
Washington:
1. Maria Cantwell (D)
3. Patty Murray (D)
West Virginia:
1. Robert Byrd (D)
2. Jay Rockefeller (D)
Wisconisn:
1. Herb Kohl (D)
3. Russ Feingold (D)
Wyoming:
1. John Barrasso (R)
2. Mike Enzi (R)

 

[InsertCoolUsernameHere]

Here's a list of US governors ITTL 2007 (note this is prior to the 2007 elections):
Alabama: Roy Moore (R)
Alaska: Sarah Palin (R)
Arizona: Janet Napolitano (D)
Arkansas: Mike Beebe (D)
California: Arianna Huffington (D)
Colorado: Bill Ritter (D)
Connecticut: Jodi Rell (R)
Delaware: Ruth Ann Minner (D)
Florida: Charlie Crist (R)
Georgia: Ralph Reed (R)
Hawaii: Linda Lingle (R)
Idaho: Butch Otter (R)
Illinois: Rod Blagojevich (D)
Indiana: Mitch Daniels (R)
Iowa: Jim Nussle (R)
Kansas: Kathleen Sebelius (D)
Kentucky: Ernie Fletcher (R)
Louisiana: Kathleen Blanco (D)
Maine: Chandler Woodcock (R)
Maryland: Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (D)
Massachusetts: Shannon O'Brien (D)
Michigan: John D. Cherry (D)
Minnesota: Tim Pawlenty (R)
Mississippi: Haley Barbour (R)
Missouri: Claire McCaskill (D)
Montana: Brian Schweitzer (D)
Nebraska: Dave Heineman (R)
Nevada: Jim Gibbons (R)
New Hampshire: John Lynch (D)
New Jersey: Chris Christie (R)
New Mexico: Bill Richardson (D)
New York: Michael Bloomberg (R)
North Carolina: Mike Easley (D)
North Dakota: John Hoeven (R)
Ohio: Ted Strickland (D)
Oklahoma: Brad Henry (D)
Oregon: Ron Saxton (R)
Pennsylvania: Ed Rendell (D)
Rhode Island: Donald Carcieri (R)
South Carolina: Mark Sanford (R)
South Dakota: Mike Rounds (R)
Tennessee: Phil Bredesen (D)
Texas: Rick Perry (R)
Utah: Jon Huntsman Jr. (R)
Vermont: Doug Racine (D)
Virginia: Tim Kaine (D)
Washington: Dino Rossi (R)
West Virginia: Joe Manchin (D)
Wisconsin: Mark Green (R)
Wyoming: Dave Freudenthal (D)

 

[InsertCoolUsernameHere]

Maybe ITTL 2007 Jackie Chan is making a movie where he plays an astronaut on the space shuttle who discovers the mission leader is secretly a terrorist plotting to use the shuttle to destroy the ISS, but the idea is scrapped after the Atlantis disaster

 

[KingSweden24]

Roy Moore and Ralph Reed as Governors is supremely cursed

 

[TheKennedyMachine.]

Roy Moore and Ralph Reed as Governors is supremely cursed

I know right? I dread for the 2012 elections, lol.

 

[InsertCoolUsernameHere]

Roy Moore and Ralph Reed as Governors is supremely cursed

Maybe Moore's scandals come up earlier than OTL and he loses in 2010 🤞

 

[ThePinkRabbit]

Maybe Moore's scandals come up earlier than OTL and he loses in 2010 🤞

I hope so.

 

[Pokemon Master]

Maybe Moore's scandals come up earlier than OTL and he loses in 2010 🤞

I hope so.

then he'll become Roy Less

 

[Iwanh]

Part LXXV

Atlantis Lost

September 11, 2007 (DAY 1)
At 14:01 Eastern Standard Time on September 11, 2007. The space shuttle Atlantis lifted off from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After just over 100 seconds following launch, several large chunks of foam insulation, approximately nine in total broke away from the large orange fuel tanks and three of these, struck the shuttle at a speed of 800 feet per second.

Foam strikes were not uncommon events, NASA post-launch investigators found that foam loss occurred in 80% of documented missions, preventing foam loss was deemed far too difficult, its durability entirely untestable prior to launch and in tricky areas necessitates being applied by hand, resulting in small tears.

“We’d seen the same phenomenon in other flights, in 2006 a vulture collided with Endeavor,” said flight director Holly Ridings “We expected this to be no different”.

Cameras mounted on the side of the external tank provided NASA’s first high-definition footage of the Space Center dropping below, as well as the cloud of foam debris breaking away. It was not yet clear, what the impact the debris had on the shuttle, and no urgent effort was made to examine the depth of the debris strike. Though commander of the mission Astronaut Stephen Frick reported a ‘debris event’ on the left-wing mid-way through launch.

Needless to say, the strike did not warrant a mid-launch mission cancellation, an option so far only reserved for major engine or electrical malfunctions, which would have allowed the flight to glide down in an emergency landing site in Spain. By 14:20 Atlantis entered orbit, above the Earth’s atmosphere and the crew followed the procedure for post ascent, opening payload doors, and powering up the Remote Manipulator (CANADARM) for use the next day.

(Left to right) Impact of foam strike on Endeavor, Launch of Atlantis, Commander Stephen Frick
​

September 12, 2007 (DAY 2)
Through the night of the 11th and 12th, and the mission STS-133’s second day, an in-depth review of the launch began, including a frame-by-frame analysis of the debris strike. Combing a combined feed of both high definition on-board and on-the-ground cameras which captured the lift-off from dozens of angles cameras installed in 2006.

Though debris strikes were increasingly common, the importance of a Hubble repair mission and the study of other strikes notably on Endeavour in 2005 and Columbia in 2003 had encouraged the installation of more powerful cameras ‘Shuttle Trackers’, to fully capture the scene in close to 400 frames per second, producing over 5 million frames of footage in total, footage that was now being studied in-depth by the ‘Photo Working Group’ to determine the status of Atlantis.

It didn’t take long for the photo lab to notice the abnormal size of the debris, two pieces larger than a baseball and a third the size of a briefcase.

“We saw the impact, frame by frame. BAM! Straight into the wing” recalled Bob Casey the lead debris analyst at the time of the incident.

Calculating the speed and potential size of the impact, the alarm bells were ringing in the lab. But what they had wasn’t enough on its own to assess the whole situation, direct proof was needed imagery of the current impact of the strike classifying the incident as an “out of family” ie of higher importance event and a phone call was made to Mission Control of the coming ‘debris strike’ report.

By the afternoon, concern about the foam and its impact continued to rise, reaching the managerial heights of the Shuttle Program, though they remained unaware of how deep the crisis they were currently in, detailing in the mission log that “analysis of impacts energy/speed are factors of concern”, and were inclined to wait for a more in-depth film analysis report the following day.

Mission control was far more concerned with the mission at hand, preparing the Shuttle for berthing with Hubble and a circuit breaker aboard that had seemingly failed (though was connected to an old redundant system and thus of no danger).

But before the day ended, a report commissioned by a contracted Boeing assessment team was forwarded to mission control, escalating the situation by providing the first satellite analysis of the impact and the crater, though the data in mission control was worrying, without any real-time data of the impact calling off the mission was still not on the books.

That evening, mission control as a growing sense of emergency rose, dialled Atlantis and requested that Shuttle Commander Frick deploy the remote manipulator (Canadarm) to see if any image of the impact zone could be detailed, before the Hubble meet-up.

(Left to right) Houston Mission Control, Shuttle Trackers, On Board footage of debris strike
​

September 13, 2007 (DAY 3)
The crew aboard Atlantis was experienced, a Hubble mission necessitated it, and installing some of the most sensitive hardware and cameras ever constructed onto the telescope would necessitate 5 total spacewalks.

The crew aboard was Commander Stephen Frick, Fighter Pilot turned Shuttle Pilot on his Commanding his 4th Mission, and the Shuttle was piloted by Charles Hobaugh, also on his 4th Mission, both men were Gulf War Veterans.

On day three Atlantis was supposed to prepare for its rendezvous with Hubble, refining its approach before grappling to the telescope in the afternoon. But Mission Control had issued the inspection order of Atlantis’s wing and in addition to that, a survey of the ship's EVA tools and spacesuits would be inspected.

Canadian Astronaut Julie Payette on her third shuttle mission, operated the mechanical arm and manoeuvred it to the impact site where on the television screens, the first in-depth pictures of the ‘gash’ were clearly visible.

“From that point on it was clear. There was nothing routine about this mission, we could see the hole in the shield”. Recalled flight controller Dan Burbank, as mission control got their eyes on the same imagery.

‘The Gash’ an 8-inch-wide tear across the wing’s underside, penetrating the heat shielding of Atlantis. Damage far greater than that observed on any other Shuttle mission.

The voices of concern, scattered from Houston to Orlando were now one. The official diary of the mission recorded the startling revision nonchalantly “Atlantis had taken a surprising amount of force on launch” and an indefinite postpone the Hubble rendezvous, pending assessment of the impact site was ordered by Mission Control.

(Left to right) Pilot Charles Hobaugh, Damadge to heat shielding, Canadarm, Specialist Julie Payette​

September 14, 2007 (DAY 4)
With ‘The Gash’ identified NASA submerged into a state of emergency, a dozen different think tanks assessed the photos, including analysts from the Defence Department, private aerospace contractors, forensic photo labs, and computer technicians to assess the scale of the damage inflicted on Atlantis, as well as pinning down the exact cause of the damage.

By the 4th morning at 6:39 the combined ‘Impact Assessment Team’ came to its first conclusion that ‘The Gash’ was a grave safety concern for the mission, and sufficient damage had been dealt to the Shuttles heat shielding to be considered highly dangerous. A classified DoD report categorized it to Agency heads, and the President as a “severe penetration that could impede normal re-entry of the shuttle”.

Before further decisions were taken, it was already clear in the minds of some NASA managers that the situation was of fatal concern.

In an E-Mail to the Assessment Team Co-Chair Tom Margera Flight Director Phil Angels wrote “If the damage dealt is as severe as reported, the temperature risk is of extreme concern … retrieval of [Atlantis] must be part of the conversation”.

At 11. A.M. NASA bosses had their first serious meeting on the re-entry problem. Where lead mission directors and the Assessment team agreed that the damage dealt to the heat shielding was sufficient enough to lead to ‘burn-through’ and thus deal catastrophic damage to the Shuttle on re-entry and its destruction. Minutes of the meeting, still show confusion as to the cause of the impact including the possibility the impact could be associated with other space debris such as pieces of an exploded Chinese rocket, or even a bird or ice strike rather than foam shedding, a confusion that has become one of the enduring myths of Atlantis.

The conclusion though was unanimous, the rendezvous with Hubble needed to be immediately and permanently cancelled, and the crew of Atlantis be made aware of the volatile situation. Additionally, it was decided that the first press reports needed to be released on the evolving situation, the delay of the rendezvous had already perked up ears, but the cancellation of the Hubble mission necessitated an official notification.

The message was vague from the office of NASA administrator Bob Graham that a ‘Foreign debris impact’ had unfortunately led to the cancellation of the Hubble mission pending an in-depth assessment of the situation. It didn’t garner much notice outside the online blogosphere.

But as the doors and windows shut in Mission Control, concerns of the scale of the impact and the fate of Atlantis found their way into the outer world.

(Left to right) Hubble Repair Mission in 2002, Atlantis, NASA administrator Bob Graham​

September 15, 2007 (DAY 5)
Each separate assessment returned dire prospects, computer simulations of re-entry backed up the burn-through hypothesis, that the fiery impact of re-entry would send superheated plasma through the stricken left wing, tearing through electrical cables, destroying sensors and ultimately tearing apart the aluminium hull: certain disaster. Even the best-case analysis left the astronauts with a 50/50 chance of a safe return following a heavily modified re-entry strategy.

Other options desperately needed to be considered. But there weren’t many available.

Of the various scenarios, it came down to just 3.

Scenario 1. Repair. Repairing the damage to Atlantis’s wing in orbit, using onboard material to rig a temporary fix, jettisoning as much cargo as possible, including fuel to reduce weight and preparing the crew to jettison completely if the wing structure was predicted to fail.

Scenario 2. Rendezvous. Atlantis could theoretically by expending all of its fuel and shedding extra weight, reach the International Space Station where the crew could effectively reside as a safe haven until later retrieval by shuttle or Russian Soyuz.

And finally, Scenario 3. Rescue. By launching the Space Shuttle Columbia on an emergency mission and crew to meet up with Atlantis and ferry its crew aboard before the automatic re-entry of Atlantis

None of these scenarios was appealing, there would be no certainty of a successful repair effort, with the tools and material available aboard Atlantis woefully insufficient especially with a hole of that size in the shielding. A rendezvous was technically feasible but practically extremely dangerous with the possibility of expending too much fuel and thus leaving the crew completely stranded. And a rescue operation meant rushing an extremely delicate shuttle launch and exposing more astronauts and Columbia to the same unknown debris risk.

Regardless of the chosen scenario, NASA was acutely aware of a ticking clock, STS-131 was designed to be a 9-day mission and the main limiting factor was the shuttle's carbon dioxide scrubbers, to remove CO2 from the consumable air it was estimated that this could be extended to the absolute maximum up to 30 days until October 11th, if no decision had been taken by then the whole crew would perish aboard.

There remained no room for error, and after the discovery of the gash, every move would be under extreme scrutiny as the first reports of the dire situation hit the desks of every major American agency up to the Oval Office and seconds after, the front pages of every newspaper on the planet.

As hundreds of men and women got to work on assigned tasks, calculating the possibility or strategy for accomplishing either of the three strategies, NASA’s senior leadership sent the chilling report to the senior networks at 5 PM and cables went out detailing the basics of the events. The debris strike, impact crater, the gash, and the infeasibility of normal re-entry.

This report was followed by a press conference featuring the key NASA Shuttle programme directors and managers from Kennedy Space Center, featuring Flight Director Holly Ridings, Launch Director Doug Lyons, Shuttle Director Wayne Hayle and Director of Flight Operations Ellen Ochoa to explain to the public on the disaster so far.

It was in the conference room, that the world learned of the Co2 levels on Atlantis, but most ominously of all the lack of available contingencies. In 1970 when Apollo 13 suffered an explosion, the solution to getting the crew home was already in hand by the time the public found out. Oxygen levels had been safe, and their chances of survival were “excellent” In the words of the NASA heads back then.

But in 2007, there were too few words of comfort to be found in the sullen and serious faces of the interviewees, the scenarios laid out were all still theoretical, and the best Director Wayne could do was assure the press and the public at large that they were “confident in the skill and ability of this crew and our abilities here down here”.

(Left to right) NASA Press Conference, Front Page of San Diego Union-Tribune​

September 16, 2007 (DAY 6)
All of NASA had been divided up into three separate groups, to break down the feasibility and strategies of each of the three scenarios. And it didn’t take long for the Rendezvous strategy to be mostly considered as totally unfeasible,

The ISS was simply too far, in a higher orbital plane and the fuel expended to reach it would make it impossible to successfully manoeuvre for a crew transfer with zero room for error, if unsuccessful either a re-entry strategy or rescue mission would be defunct.

The repair effort was the most promising for the time being, but the project of DIY space shuttle repair without the material or tools specific to the task was daunting but it was the only viable strategy with a chance of returning the shuttle with its crew.

And the rescue method would be risky, expensive and complex by accelerating the planned launch of Columbia by 6 weeks and prepping a crew in an incredibly short period of time, for the precarious mission.

September 17, 2007 (DAY 7)
By Day 7, the rendezvous strategy was totally abandoned, with chances of survival far lower than the option of re-entry, but both Re-Entry and Rescue had hit multiple speedbumps.

Space Shuttles did not carry a repair kit, certainly not anything that could replace an entire heat-resistant tile. So, NASA brainstormed possible solutions, just as they did 37 years ago for Apollo 13.

“No stones could be left unturned” said Shuttle engineer Frank Anderson “We pointed to every asset aboard Atlantis and asked how this could be used?”. To find what could adequately patch the gash in the shuttle wing.

Thankfully Atlantis was on a Hubble mission and was thus equipped with an actual tool kit to achieve what was often called “brain surgery in the dark using oven mitts”, the kit included a power drill (the PGT) a Grid Cutter to cut through metal strips and other tools for dealing with delicate electricals, nothing for a drastic and large repair operation like Atlantis now needed.

As for the rescue scenario, hordes of technicians, and engineers descended to the Processing Facility at Kennedy to arrange a new tight schedule for preparing the Space Shuttle Columbia for a massively accelerated launch, working in round-the-clock shifts, 24/7 to prep the shuttle for a potential launch date of October 5th, less than a week before the Co2 levels would become fatal.

(Top to bottom, left to right) Photo of the ISS, Media swarm Cape Canaveral, Space Walk training, Shuttle prep​

September 18, 2007 (DAY 8)
The world watched with bated breath, virtually all news programmes on earth were preceded with updates of the ongoing space struggle, all while the crew men and women of Atlantis and the legions of NASA, DoD and all manner of contracted help, aided in the campaign.

Progress was made in both feasible scenarios, and the crew of the potential rescue mission was selected, an all-veteran team. The ‘best of the best’ would be needed who could be counted on to have ‘The right stuff’ should the mission be ordered, and an intense period of evaluations and training needed to begin for an emergency rescue. Shortening the training period for a specific mission from a year to 3 weeks.

As the rescue crew was hastily prepared; aboard Atlantis the improvised repair kit, was slowly and delicately assembled from small metal instruments, canisters and tools, water bottles, trays and thermoses. They stripped down the ship’s payload, including its cameras, expensive spectrographs, tethers and handrails. Even personal items were plundered like flag pins, telescopes and medallions were gathered together for the patch-up.

Hundreds of man-hours into engineering had surmised that the best method for repairing Atlantis, or at least preventing a fatal burn-through, would be by filling the gash with available metal material and sealing it in with water, which would freeze in space, ironically the expensive heavy equipment, tools for repairing the Hubble would find their use, being stripped for material for the repair, before finally being covered with insulation salvaged from the would-be additions to Hubble.

All this became a painstakingly slow effort, the need to preserve oxygen and limit Co2 meant to extend the life of Atlantis the full 30 days meant that crew activity needed to be limited to the absolute minimum, and drastic measures were taken immediately to reduce exhaustion. best achieved by confining crew members to 12-hour sleeping shifts, and turning most of the shuttle functions into low-power mode, switching off lights, TV screens, cameras and non-vital computer equipment. Becoming the only beings in the solar system, not aware of the media frenzy covering them. And most of the crew remained confined to their sedentary positions to conserve oxygen, using as few words as possible to communicate with one another.

(Left to right) Simulation of Atlantis repair, Space Shuttle sleeping quarters.​

September 18, 2007 (DAY 9)
Describing the repair effort as ‘risky’ was deeply misleading, but it ended up being the line that the agency dropped to the press, as the Astronauts continued to ‘repair’ Atlantis. Describing the mission in terms of risk, meant implied some determination of safety, even approaching the gash came with the risk of electrocution, given the removed strips of insulation. The exposed pieces of jagged metal, or even just rough handholds could lead to tears in space suits, and the process of the patch job came with an unknowable number of complicating factors.

To summarize the views of Dominique Harriman, a NASA mission director at the time“Just listing out the warnings was extensive, detailing the number of things to look out for, and at a distance that would place them further from an airlock than any point in the history of the shuttle programme”.

The men selected for the repair mission were the Shuttles designated Space Walkers, Rex Walheim and Daniel Tani, while Specialist Leland Melvin would pilot the mechanical arm as a guide and Pilot Hobough commanded the spacewalk.

For 11 hours, the two men carefully crawled across the hull of the spacecraft, amidst the vacuum of space, swaddling the ship in the scrap metal insulation, communicating directly and in detail with mission control and the Charles. Using the arm to reach the wing kept leashed by a harness, but from there be placed in effective suspense, touching the void.

Each crevasse of the chasm needed to be carefully analysed for sharp edges that could snag a space suit, the metallic instruments bundled in bags, T-shirts and a deflated basketball crammed into the ship's gaping wound, all through the thick mittens. On multiple instances NASA managers considered calling off the repair effort, seeing the gash as too large to effectively patch, and the risks to the astronauts far too high, but the world's most expensive repairmen waved off such concerns “We are actually quite comfortable up here” joyfully replied Tani well into the 7th hour of the spacewalk.

The spacewalk continued after a break for 4 more hours, removing other heavy equipment, and unscrewing handholds of the ship's ladders, and the ice was shaved down to be as smooth as possible to best deflect air pressure.

In their mission diaries in Houston, The Spacewalk manager Anna Jarvis gave rave reviews to Walheim and Tani the most rookie member of the Atlantis crew who “Performed excellently” but worried that the images provided by the repair only confirmed the “poor state of the heat shield … the thermal protection is still a paramount issue for clearance … the big picture is still one of high risk”.

(Top to bottom, left to right) Astronuughts, Rex Walhem, Daniel Tani and Leland Melvin. Images of the repair effort.
​

September 19, 2007 (DAY 10)
The crew aboard Atlantis continued, the successful EVA mission gave the shuttle an extra layer of protection, but the scavenging continued, to gain every second of safety the effort might provide, measuring and stripping spare interior insulation to cover every crevasse in a second Spacewalk but before that could be arranged the order had gone out from Mission control, hold tight, stay in bed, conserve energy, while Earth determines the options.

“For every second they could save, it quite literally might save their lives” Detailed a dramatic analysis in the London Times

NASA had come to terms. The Atlantis was lost, and the analysis of the damage done by the debris strike was sufficient that a normal re-entry would be unfeasible, instead for a safe return of the crew, Atlantis would need to be slowed as much as possible to a height of 25,000 feet to allow the crew to bail out, over the ocean, in a never before tested procedure while at any moment a controlled glide could turn to an uncontrolled crash

“Team consensus is that a bailout will be performed” detailed the joint report, to the now dozen federal agencies working on the operation. “Due to uncertainty in the wing structure” dooming the Atlantis Orbiter to a preprogrammed crash landing.

The Atlantis crew had nothing to do but wait and preserve oxygen, until the final decision would be made, almost entirely confined to quarters, to watch the sun rise and set half a dozen times a day with NASA providing interspersed updates on the prospective return or potential rescue mission with Columbia.

The maintenance checks on Columbia had gone well, but an exhausted ground crew, with its own dissected mission control, was struggling to meet the launch window. If the mission were to be launched, a decision needed to be made over whether to put Columbia on the pad now and skip several pre-launch procedures, a prospect that chilled the Agency.

“This incident was already going to shake the Agency, head to toe,” Reported insider Ronald Lee, “A second disaster, on a rescue mission, could kill it, end modern space travel as we know it.”

The internal NASA debate over Re-entry or Rescue had spilt out across the whole of the U.S. government, and after that, the press and the public at large. Soon enough the identities of the would-be NASA rescue team were public knowledge too, in a Newsweek article detailing the scrambled exhaustive effort to prep Columbia for an early launch. A report that meant that even highly classified information was being leaked to feed the endless global speculation, in the world’s biggest news story.

Oxygen levels were diminishing, unlikely to stretch to the full 30 days, and given the extra uncontrollable factors (for instance the weather) a rescue launch would extend to the very last moments, meaning an exhausted, oxygen-deprived Atlantis crew would be less able to be rescued or initiate the modified re-entry if the rescue launch proved a failure.

Adding to the fervour, a former Shuttle Programme Manager Ron Whitney went on the record in a 60 Minutes interview explaining the internal debate to the public, “Doubtless the agency is devoting all its efforts, its resources and people to save the crew … but my concern is NASA risk if damage to the external is sufficient, no repair job will suffice, and the safest method is a rescue mission. .. no method is easy, or without risk, but I see it as more conceivable.”

Public concern was boiling, with NASA dropping few hints on “good spirits of the Astronauts”. Without day-to-day updates of the Atlantis crew, that gap was being filled with speculation. Commentators, pundits and bloggers, flung out far-fetched theories and ideas, and even politicians as they recited their hopes and prayers for the spacefaring heroes questioned why NASA was being so quiet. “There is an insider culture [in NASA]” said Air Force Major John Barry “They work their hearts out, but don’t open up often” a sentiment shared by other agencies tasked with the cooperation.

As the public vigils and prayer sessions built up globally, helmed by all major faith leaders, it was determined that only the executive could decide the course forward, as Agency Director Graham put the final say in the President's hands. Rescue or Re-entry.

The President had offered his prayers (a minute silence) as every other Governor, Senator and local dog catcher had, constantly and often, and had received calls from many foreign dignitaries offering their own heartfelt sorrow and what little assistance they could provide, the Pope and Dalai Llamma offered their prayers to the crew and French President Bayrou, and Canadian PM Frank McKenna whose countries both hoped for the safe return of their respective astronauts Brigadier General Leo Eyharts and Julie Payette pleaded to be placed into the loop of the top secretive effort, but now the final options lay in front of him. A potentially fatal splash down in the Ocean that could doom the crew of Atlantis to break up in the descent, or a fatally risky rescue operation that could endanger the lives of yet even more American Astronauts

The White House asked for odds on either option, but NASA couldn’t provide any, and ultimately the prospect of losing more Astronauts swayed the President to pick the Re-entry option as the best viable option, and after two separate speeches were drafted.

(Left to right) Specialist Leo Eyharts, Atlantis, Cloudy Skies over Florida, Texas Church prays for the Astronauts​

September 20- 24, 2007 (DAY 11 - 15)
For four agonizing days, the crew of Atlantis prepared for descent, shedding the orbiter of its ‘dead weight’ for the modified re-entry programme. For the best chance of a successful crash landing, the shuttle would need to land as slowly as possible, to enable a feasible escape, a tactic known as “surfing hell”, equipping the re-entry pumpkin suits, and getting very familiar with the suit's parachute and life raft capabilities.

The additional EVA was conducted to inspect, recoat and shave down the patch up, as well as disposal of the extra cargo, Mission Control (now united around the single scenario) trained the crew in the modified re-entry procedure, to prepare for the eventuality that burn-through would disrupt remote ground control and put the crew in charge of the controlled crash.

Until, the morning of September 24th when the 7 men and women, prepared for the ride down. “There was nothing like this in the simulations” flight director Ridings wrote, the closest procedure was a scenario where an orbiter's cargo doors failed to close, necessitating a different re-entry, and bailout training was well rehearsed since the Challengers' destruction, but never put into actual practice.

The steps were calm, despite the unparalleled fate that awaited them, grim-faced technicians and flight directors doubtless after many sleepless nights were gripped to control screens. NASA leadership continually refused to detail survival prospects, every minute detail was being calculated, the potential for a tropical storm to sweep them away, a bird strike on re-entry, stray cargo vessels even shark attacks were considered with U.S. Navy ships were positioned and the best path for re-entry charted.

Final notes were also made, unbeknownst to the public or press each of the crew, free from the constraints of the threat of oxygen depletion communicated with their respective families. And then on September 23rd, the Space Shuttle Atlantis, fell to Earth.

After 15 days 1 hour, 17 minutes and 10 seconds. Atlantis commenced its re-entry burn, at once the Shuttle became both lifeboat and death trap, descending at a modified re-entry to press heat away from the damaged thermal tiles, putting the decades-old shuttle to the test of 1500C ionising heat, that stripped electrons from atoms, with no margin for error.

Reaching top velocity high hypersonic speeds it glid through the atmosphere, second after second as the pressurized air beat on the craft.

400,000 feet, 350,000 feet, 300,00 feet. Facing the winds of a factor 5 hurricane, NASA and crew paid deep detail to the torque and drag of the craft's left wing, as the ice coating turned to water.

At 120,000 feet the first indicators ticked on, signalling the first detection thresholds had been tripped and the bailout procedures were prepared but were still far too high to begin to do so.

They were inside the plasma, and unlike most re-entries the modified plan would not be smooth, to relieve the damaged tile the descent would not be as comfortable as NASA astronauts were used to. They were facing “A lot more G’s” according to U.S. technician Ken Bowser, and it was “imperative for them to be strapped down”.

But minute after minute the ship stayed together. 50, 40, and 30,000 feet. The escape could begin.

The cabin was depressurized by Commander Frick and the hatch jettisoned by Specialist Eyharts, deploying a nine-foot pole out into the 200-mile winds, starting at 25,000 feet the men and women of Atlantis stepped briefly onto nothing, before being rocketed out sliding down the pile. The suit then acts as an ejection suit, the parachute triggering automatically, steering them into the wide-open deep blue seas.

“I was more afraid of the landing than the re-entry” reported back Walheim who was given the job of jump master, these were untested and never before experienced circumstances, “but I thought it was best to lead by example”

One by one the once-stranded citizens of Atlantis parachuted to safety, thousands of feet, from sky to sea where they each proceeded to deploy the lifeboats and bobbed in the drink uneasily.

“It was music to my ears” reported Payette, describing the waves of the ocean and the spotters from the U.S. Navy “I made sure to take deep breaths”.

The world was watching, by the millions as the reports of the successful re-entry and the first scenes of the little orange men being pulled from the waves surfaced.

The patch job had performed admirably, much better than expectations. And as Commander Frick was the last to depart the vessel he got the last word aboard the vessel “Thanks for getting us this far” Before his sudden departure, it continued to glide into the drink 15 Km northeast of Bermuda. Where the Shuttle met its final end, breaking up in the preprogrammed crash, forever lost.

Time Magazine Cover​

​

 

[MLK JFK LBJ Beatles]

We all thought it would be Challenger or Columbia however it turned out it is Apollo 13😳

What a beautiful chapter

 

[Shockeye7665]

And wow, what a tense few days for the crew of Atlantis! Must have been such a scary re-entry!
No doubt books and movies will be made about the whole Atlantis mission in the future!

 

[CarlosTheAltHistoryGuy]

Part LXXV

Atlantis Lost

September 11, 2007 (DAY 1)
At 14:01 Eastern Standard Time on September 11, 2007. The space shuttle Atlantis lifted off from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After just over 100 seconds following launch, several large chunks of foam insulation, approximately nine in total broke away from the large orange fuel tanks and three of these, struck the shuttle at a speed of 800 feet per second.

Foam strikes were not uncommon events, NASA post-launch investigators found that foam loss occurred in 80% of documented missions, preventing foam loss was deemed far too difficult, its durability entirely untestable prior to launch and in tricky areas necessitates being applied by hand, resulting in small tears.

“We’d seen the same phenomenon in other flights, in 2006 a vulture collided with Endeavor,” said flight director Holly Ridings “We expected this to be no different”.

Cameras mounted on the side of the external tank provided NASA’s first high-definition footage of the Space Center dropping below, as well as the cloud of foam debris breaking away. It was not yet clear, what the impact the debris had on the shuttle, and no urgent effort was made to examine the depth of the debris strike. Though commander of the mission Astronaut Stephen Frick reported a ‘debris event’ on the left-wing mid-way through launch.

Needless to say, the strike did not warrant a mid-launch mission cancellation, an option so far only reserved for major engine or electrical malfunctions, which would have allowed the flight to glide down in an emergency landing site in Spain. By 14:20 Atlantis entered orbit, above the Earth’s atmosphere and the crew followed the procedure for post ascent, opening payload doors, and powering up the Remote Manipulator (CANADARM) for use the next day.

View attachment 899886
(Left to right) Impact of foam strike on Endeavor, Launch of Atlantis, Commander Stephen Frick
​

September 12, 2007 (DAY 2)
Through the night of the 11th and 12th, and the mission STS-133’s second day, an in-depth review of the launch began, including a frame-by-frame analysis of the debris strike. Combing a combined feed of both high definition on-board and on-the-ground cameras which captured the lift-off from dozens of angles cameras installed in 2006.

Though debris strikes were increasingly common, the importance of a Hubble repair mission and the study of other strikes notably on Endeavour in 2005 and Columbia in 2003 had encouraged the installation of more powerful cameras ‘Shuttle Trackers’, to fully capture the scene in close to 400 frames per second, producing over 5 million frames of footage in total, footage that was now being studied in-depth by the ‘Photo Working Group’ to determine the status of Atlantis.

It didn’t take long for the photo lab to notice the abnormal size of the debris, two pieces larger than a baseball and a third the size of a briefcase.

“We saw the impact, frame by frame. BAM! Straight into the wing” recalled Bob Casey the lead debris analyst at the time of the incident.

Calculating the speed and potential size of the impact, the alarm bells were ringing in the lab. But what they had wasn’t enough on its own to assess the whole situation, direct proof was needed imagery of the current impact of the strike classifying the incident as an “out of family” ie of higher importance event and a phone call was made to Mission Control of the coming ‘debris strike’ report.

By the afternoon, concern about the foam and its impact continued to rise, reaching the managerial heights of the Shuttle Program, though they remained unaware of how deep the crisis they were currently in, detailing in the mission log that “analysis of impacts energy/speed are factors of concern”, and were inclined to wait for a more in-depth film analysis report the following day.

Mission control was far more concerned with the mission at hand, preparing the Shuttle for berthing with Hubble and a circuit breaker aboard that had seemingly failed (though was connected to an old redundant system and thus of no danger).

But before the day ended, a report commissioned by a contracted Boeing assessment team was forwarded to mission control, escalating the situation by providing the first satellite analysis of the impact and the crater, though the data in mission control was worrying, without any real-time data of the impact calling off the mission was still not on the books.

That evening, mission control as a growing sense of emergency rose, dialled Atlantis and requested that Shuttle Commander Frick deploy the remote manipulator (Canadarm) to see if any image of the impact zone could be detailed, before the Hubble meet-up.

View attachment 899887
(Left to right) Houston Mission Control, Shuttle Trackers, On Board footage of debris strike
​

September 13, 2007 (DAY 3)
The crew aboard Atlantis was experienced, a Hubble mission necessitated it, and installing some of the most sensitive hardware and cameras ever constructed onto the telescope would necessitate 5 total spacewalks.

The crew aboard was Commander Stephen Frick, Fighter Pilot turned Shuttle Pilot on his Commanding his 4th Mission, and the Shuttle was piloted by Charles Hobaugh, also on his 4th Mission, both men were Gulf War Veterans.

On day three Atlantis was supposed to prepare for its rendezvous with Hubble, refining its approach before grappling to the telescope in the afternoon. But Mission Control had issued the inspection order of Atlantis’s wing and in addition to that, a survey of the ship's EVA tools and spacesuits would be inspected.

Canadian Astronaut Julie Payette on her third shuttle mission, operated the mechanical arm and manoeuvred it to the impact site where on the television screens, the first in-depth pictures of the ‘gash’ were clearly visible.

“From that point on it was clear. There was nothing routine about this mission, we could see the hole in the shield”. Recalled flight controller Dan Burbank, as mission control got their eyes on the same imagery.

‘The Gash’ an 8-inch-wide tear across the wing’s underside, penetrating the heat shielding of Atlantis. Damage far greater than that observed on any other Shuttle mission.

The voices of concern, scattered from Houston to Orlando were now one. The official diary of the mission recorded the startling revision nonchalantly “Atlantis had taken a surprising amount of force on launch” and an indefinite postpone the Hubble rendezvous, pending assessment of the impact site was ordered by Mission Control.

View attachment 899890
(Left to right) Pilot Charles Hobaugh, Damadge to heat shielding, Canadarm, Specialist Julie Payette​

September 14, 2007 (DAY 4)
With ‘The Gash’ identified NASA submerged into a state of emergency, a dozen different think tanks assessed the photos, including analysts from the Defence Department, private aerospace contractors, forensic photo labs, and computer technicians to assess the scale of the damage inflicted on Atlantis, as well as pinning down the exact cause of the damage.

By the 4th morning at 6:39 the combined ‘Impact Assessment Team’ came to its first conclusion that ‘The Gash’ was a grave safety concern for the mission, and sufficient damage had been dealt to the Shuttles heat shielding to be considered highly dangerous. A classified DoD report categorized it to Agency heads, and the President as a “severe penetration that could impede normal re-entry of the shuttle”.

Before further decisions were taken, it was already clear in the minds of some NASA managers that the situation was of fatal concern.

In an E-Mail to the Assessment Team Co-Chair Tom Margera Flight Director Phil Angels wrote “If the damage dealt is as severe as reported, the temperature risk is of extreme concern … retrieval of [Atlantis] must be part of the conversation”.

At 11. A.M. NASA bosses had their first serious meeting on the re-entry problem. Where lead mission directors and the Assessment team agreed that the damage dealt to the heat shielding was sufficient enough to lead to ‘burn-through’ and thus deal catastrophic damage to the Shuttle on re-entry and its destruction. Minutes of the meeting, still show confusion as to the cause of the impact including the possibility the impact could be associated with other space debris such as pieces of an exploded Chinese rocket, or even a bird or ice strike rather than foam shedding, a confusion that has become one of the enduring myths of Atlantis.

The conclusion though was unanimous, the rendezvous with Hubble needed to be immediately and permanently cancelled, and the crew of Atlantis be made aware of the volatile situation. Additionally, it was decided that the first press reports needed to be released on the evolving situation, the delay of the rendezvous had already perked up ears, but the cancellation of the Hubble mission necessitated an official notification.

The message was vague from the office of NASA administrator Bob Graham that a ‘Foreign debris impact’ had unfortunately led to the cancellation of the Hubble mission pending an in-depth assessment of the situation. It didn’t garner much notice outside the online blogosphere.

But as the doors and windows shut in Mission Control, concerns of the scale of the impact and the fate of Atlantis found their way into the outer world.

View attachment 899894
(Left to right) Hubble Repair Mission in 2002, Atlantis, NASA administrator Bob Graham​

September 15, 2007 (DAY 5)
Each separate assessment returned dire prospects, computer simulations of re-entry backed up the burn-through hypothesis, that the fiery impact of re-entry would send superheated plasma through the stricken left wing, tearing through electrical cables, destroying sensors and ultimately tearing apart the aluminium hull: certain disaster. Even the best-case analysis left the astronauts with a 50/50 chance of a safe return following a heavily modified re-entry strategy.

Other options desperately needed to be considered. But there weren’t many available.

Of the various scenarios, it came down to just 3.

Scenario 1. Repair. Repairing the damage to Atlantis’s wing in orbit, using onboard material to rig a temporary fix, jettisoning as much cargo as possible, including fuel to reduce weight and preparing the crew to jettison completely if the wing structure was predicted to fail.

Scenario 2. Rendezvous. Atlantis could theoretically by expending all of its fuel and shedding extra weight, reach the International Space Station where the crew could effectively reside as a safe haven until later retrieval by shuttle or Russian Soyuz.

And finally, Scenario 3. Rescue. By launching the Space Shuttle Columbia on an emergency mission and crew to meet up with Atlantis and ferry its crew aboard before the automatic re-entry of Atlantis

None of these scenarios was appealing, there would be no certainty of a successful repair effort, with the tools and material available aboard Atlantis woefully insufficient especially with a hole of that size in the shielding. A rendezvous was technically feasible but practically extremely dangerous with the possibility of expending too much fuel and thus leaving the crew completely stranded. And a rescue operation meant rushing an extremely delicate shuttle launch and exposing more astronauts and Columbia to the same unknown debris risk.

Regardless of the chosen scenario, NASA was acutely aware of a ticking clock, STS-131 was designed to be a 9-day mission and the main limiting factor was the shuttle's carbon dioxide scrubbers, to remove CO2 from the consumable air it was estimated that this could be extended to the absolute maximum up to 30 days until October 11th, if no decision had been taken by then the whole crew would perish aboard.

There remained no room for error, and after the discovery of the gash, every move would be under extreme scrutiny as the first reports of the dire situation hit the desks of every major American agency up to the Oval Office and seconds after, the front pages of every newspaper on the planet.

As hundreds of men and women got to work on assigned tasks, calculating the possibility or strategy for accomplishing either of the three strategies, NASA’s senior leadership sent the chilling report to the senior networks at 5 PM and cables went out detailing the basics of the events. The debris strike, impact crater, the gash, and the infeasibility of normal re-entry.

This report was followed by a press conference featuring the key NASA Shuttle programme directors and managers from Kennedy Space Center, featuring Flight Director Holly Ridings, Launch Director Doug Lyons, Shuttle Director Wayne Hayle and Director of Flight Operations Ellen Ochoa to explain to the public on the disaster so far.

It was in the conference room, that the world learned of the Co2 levels on Atlantis, but most ominously of all the lack of available contingencies. In 1970 when Apollo 13 suffered an explosion, the solution to getting the crew home was already in hand by the time the public found out. Oxygen levels had been safe, and their chances of survival were “excellent” In the words of the NASA heads back then.

But in 2007, there were too few words of comfort to be found in the sullen and serious faces of the interviewees, the scenarios laid out were all still theoretical, and the best Director Wayne could do was assure the press and the public at large that they were “confident in the skill and ability of this crew and our abilities here down here”.

View attachment 899895
(Left to right) NASA Press Conference, Front Page of San Diego Union-Tribune​

September 16, 2007 (DAY 6)
All of NASA had been divided up into three separate groups, to break down the feasibility and strategies of each of the three scenarios. And it didn’t take long for the Rendezvous strategy to be mostly considered as totally unfeasible,

The ISS was simply too far, in a higher orbital plane and the fuel expended to reach it would make it impossible to successfully manoeuvre for a crew transfer with zero room for error, if unsuccessful either a re-entry strategy or rescue mission would be defunct.

The repair effort was the most promising for the time being, but the project of DIY space shuttle repair without the material or tools specific to the task was daunting but it was the only viable strategy with a chance of returning the shuttle with its crew.

And the rescue method would be risky, expensive and complex by accelerating the planned launch of Columbia by 6 weeks and prepping a crew in an incredibly short period of time, for the precarious mission.

September 17, 2007 (DAY 7)
By Day 7, the rendezvous strategy was totally abandoned, with chances of survival far lower than the option of re-entry, but both Re-Entry and Rescue had hit multiple speedbumps.

Space Shuttles did not carry a repair kit, certainly not anything that could replace an entire heat-resistant tile. So, NASA brainstormed possible solutions, just as they did 37 years ago for Apollo 13.

“No stones could be left unturned” said Shuttle engineer Frank Anderson “We pointed to every asset aboard Atlantis and asked how this could be used?”. To find what could adequately patch the gash in the shuttle wing.

Thankfully Atlantis was on a Hubble mission and was thus equipped with an actual tool kit to achieve what was often called “brain surgery in the dark using oven mitts”, the kit included a power drill (the PGT) a Grid Cutter to cut through metal strips and other tools for dealing with delicate electricals, nothing for a drastic and large repair operation like Atlantis now needed.

As for the rescue scenario, hordes of technicians, and engineers descended to the Processing Facility at Kennedy to arrange a new tight schedule for preparing the Space Shuttle Columbia for a massively accelerated launch, working in round-the-clock shifts, 24/7 to prep the shuttle for a potential launch date of October 5th, less than a week before the Co2 levels would become fatal.

View attachment 899896
(Top to bottom, left to right) Photo of the ISS, Media swarm Cape Canaveral, Space Walk training, Shuttle prep​

September 18, 2007 (DAY 8)
The world watched with bated breath, virtually all news programmes on earth were preceded with updates of the ongoing space struggle, all while the crew men and women of Atlantis and the legions of NASA, DoD and all manner of contracted help, aided in the campaign.

Progress was made in both feasible scenarios, and the crew of the potential rescue mission was selected, an all-veteran team. The ‘best of the best’ would be needed who could be counted on to have ‘The right stuff’ should the mission be ordered, and an intense period of evaluations and training needed to begin for an emergency rescue. Shortening the training period for a specific mission from a year to 3 weeks.

As the rescue crew was hastily prepared; aboard Atlantis the improvised repair kit, was slowly and delicately assembled from small metal instruments, canisters and tools, water bottles, trays and thermoses. They stripped down the ship’s payload, including its cameras, expensive spectrographs, tethers and handrails. Even personal items were plundered like flag pins, telescopes and medallions were gathered together for the patch-up.

Hundreds of man-hours into engineering had surmised that the best method for repairing Atlantis, or at least preventing a fatal burn-through, would be by filling the gash with available metal material and sealing it in with water, which would freeze in space, ironically the expensive heavy equipment, tools for repairing the Hubble would find their use, being stripped for material for the repair, before finally being covered with insulation salvaged from the would-be additions to Hubble.

All this became a painstakingly slow effort, the need to preserve oxygen and limit Co2 meant to extend the life of Atlantis the full 30 days meant that crew activity needed to be limited to the absolute minimum, and drastic measures were taken immediately to reduce exhaustion. best achieved by confining crew members to 12-hour sleeping shifts, and turning most of the shuttle functions into low-power mode, switching off lights, TV screens, cameras and non-vital computer equipment. Becoming the only beings in the solar system, not aware of the media frenzy covering them. And most of the crew remained confined to their sedentary positions to conserve oxygen, using as few words as possible to communicate with one another.

View attachment 899897
(Left to right) Simulation of Atlantis repair, Space Shuttle sleeping quarters.​

September 18, 2007 (DAY 9)
Describing the repair effort as ‘risky’ was deeply misleading, but it ended up being the line that the agency dropped to the press, as the Astronauts continued to ‘repair’ Atlantis. Describing the mission in terms of risk, meant implied some determination of safety, even approaching the gash came with the risk of electrocution, given the removed strips of insulation. The exposed pieces of jagged metal, or even just rough handholds could lead to tears in space suits, and the process of the patch job came with an unknowable number of complicating factors.

To summarize the views of Dominique Harriman, a NASA mission director at the time“Just listing out the warnings was extensive, detailing the number of things to look out for, and at a distance that would place them further from an airlock than any point in the history of the shuttle programme”.

The men selected for the repair mission were the Shuttles designated Space Walkers, Rex Walheim and Daniel Tani, while Specialist Leland Melvin would pilot the mechanical arm as a guide and Pilot Hobough commanded the spacewalk.

For 11 hours, the two men carefully crawled across the hull of the spacecraft, amidst the vacuum of space, swaddling the ship in the scrap metal insulation, communicating directly and in detail with mission control and the Charles. Using the arm to reach the wing kept leashed by a harness, but from there be placed in effective suspense, touching the void.

Each crevasse of the chasm needed to be carefully analysed for sharp edges that could snag a space suit, the metallic instruments bundled in bags, T-shirts and a deflated basketball crammed into the ship's gaping wound, all through the thick mittens. On multiple instances NASA managers considered calling off the repair effort, seeing the gash as too large to effectively patch, and the risks to the astronauts far too high, but the world's most expensive repairmen waved off such concerns “We are actually quite comfortable up here” joyfully replied Tani well into the 7th hour of the spacewalk.

The spacewalk continued after a break for 4 more hours, removing other heavy equipment, and unscrewing handholds of the ship's ladders, and the ice was shaved down to be as smooth as possible to best deflect air pressure.

In their mission diaries in Houston, The Spacewalk manager Anna Jarvis gave rave reviews to Walheim and Tani the most rookie member of the Atlantis crew who “Performed excellently” but worried that the images provided by the repair only confirmed the “poor state of the heat shield … the thermal protection is still a paramount issue for clearance … the big picture is still one of high risk”.

View attachment 899898
(Top to bottom, left to right) Astronuughts, Rex Walhem, Daniel Tani and Leland Melvin. Images of the repair effort.
​

September 19, 2007 (DAY 10)
The crew aboard Atlantis continued, the successful EVA mission gave the shuttle an extra layer of protection, but the scavenging continued, to gain every second of safety the effort might provide, measuring and stripping spare interior insulation to cover every crevasse in a second Spacewalk but before that could be arranged the order had gone out from Mission control, hold tight, stay in bed, conserve energy, while Earth determines the options.

“For every second they could save, it quite literally might save their lives” Detailed a dramatic analysis in the London Times

NASA had come to terms. The Atlantis was lost, and the analysis of the damage done by the debris strike was sufficient that a normal re-entry would be unfeasible, instead for a safe return of the crew, Atlantis would need to be slowed as much as possible to a height of 25,000 feet to allow the crew to bail out, over the ocean, in a never before tested procedure while at any moment a controlled glide could turn to an uncontrolled crash

“Team consensus is that a bailout will be performed” detailed the joint report, to the now dozen federal agencies working on the operation. “Due to uncertainty in the wing structure” dooming the Atlantis Orbiter to a preprogrammed crash landing.

The Atlantis crew had nothing to do but wait and preserve oxygen, until the final decision would be made, almost entirely confined to quarters, to watch the sun rise and set half a dozen times a day with NASA providing interspersed updates on the prospective return or potential rescue mission with Columbia.

The maintenance checks on Columbia had gone well, but an exhausted ground crew, with its own dissected mission control, was struggling to meet the launch window. If the mission were to be launched, a decision needed to be made over whether to put Columbia on the pad now and skip several pre-launch procedures, a prospect that chilled the Agency.

“This incident was already going to shake the Agency, head to toe,” Reported insider Ronald Lee, “A second disaster, on a rescue mission, could kill it, end modern space travel as we know it.”

The internal NASA debate over Re-entry or Rescue had spilt out across the whole of the U.S. government, and after that, the press and the public at large. Soon enough the identities of the would-be NASA rescue team were public knowledge too, in a Newsweek article detailing the scrambled exhaustive effort to prep Columbia for an early launch. A report that meant that even highly classified information was being leaked to feed the endless global speculation, in the world’s biggest news story.

Oxygen levels were diminishing, unlikely to stretch to the full 30 days, and given the extra uncontrollable factors (for instance the weather) a rescue launch would extend to the very last moments, meaning an exhausted, oxygen-deprived Atlantis crew would be less able to be rescued or initiate the modified re-entry if the rescue launch proved a failure.

Adding to the fervour, a former Shuttle Programme Manager Ron Whitney went on the record in a 60 Minutes interview explaining the internal debate to the public, “Doubtless the agency is devoting all its efforts, its resources and people to save the crew … but my concern is NASA risk if damage to the external is sufficient, no repair job will suffice, and the safest method is a rescue mission. .. no method is easy, or without risk, but I see it as more conceivable.”

Public concern was boiling, with NASA dropping few hints on “good spirits of the Astronauts”. Without day-to-day updates of the Atlantis crew, that gap was being filled with speculation. Commentators, pundits and bloggers, flung out far-fetched theories and ideas, and even politicians as they recited their hopes and prayers for the spacefaring heroes questioned why NASA was being so quiet. “There is an insider culture [in NASA]” said Air Force Major John Barry “They work their hearts out, but don’t open up often” a sentiment shared by other agencies tasked with the cooperation.

As the public vigils and prayer sessions built up globally, helmed by all major faith leaders, it was determined that only the executive could decide the course forward, as Agency Director Graham put the final say in the President's hands. Rescue or Re-entry.

The President had offered his prayers (a minute silence) as every other Governor, Senator and local dog catcher had, constantly and often, and had received calls from many foreign dignitaries offering their own heartfelt sorrow and what little assistance they could provide, the Pope and Dalai Llamma offered their prayers to the crew and French President Bayrou, and Canadian PM Frank McKenna whose countries both hoped for the safe return of their respective astronauts Brigadier General Leo Eyharts and Julie Payette pleaded to be placed into the loop of the top secretive effort, but now the final options lay in front of him. A potentially fatal splash down in the Ocean that could doom the crew of Atlantis to break up in the descent, or a fatally risky rescue operation that could endanger the lives of yet even more American Astronauts

The White House asked for odds on either option, but NASA couldn’t provide any, and ultimately the prospect of losing more Astronauts swayed the President to pick the Re-entry option as the best viable option, and after two separate speeches were drafted.

View attachment 899899
(Left to right) Specialist Leo Eyharts, Atlantis, Cloudy Skies over Florida, Texas Church prays for the Astronauts​

September 20- 24, 2007 (DAY 11 - 15)
For four agonizing days, the crew of Atlantis prepared for descent, shedding the orbiter of its ‘dead weight’ for the modified re-entry programme. For the best chance of a successful crash landing, the shuttle would need to land as slowly as possible, to enable a feasible escape, a tactic known as “surfing hell”, equipping the re-entry pumpkin suits, and getting very familiar with the suit's parachute and life raft capabilities.

The additional EVA was conducted to inspect, recoat and shave down the patch up, as well as disposal of the extra cargo, Mission Control (now united around the single scenario) trained the crew in the modified re-entry procedure, to prepare for the eventuality that burn-through would disrupt remote ground control and put the crew in charge of the controlled crash.

Until, the morning of September 24th when the 7 men and women, prepared for the ride down. “There was nothing like this in the simulations” flight director Ridings wrote, the closest procedure was a scenario where an orbiter's cargo doors failed to close, necessitating a different re-entry, and bailout training was well rehearsed since the Challengers' destruction, but never put into actual practice.

The steps were calm, despite the unparalleled fate that awaited them, grim-faced technicians and flight directors doubtless after many sleepless nights were gripped to control screens. NASA leadership continually refused to detail survival prospects, every minute detail was being calculated, the potential for a tropical storm to sweep them away, a bird strike on re-entry, stray cargo vessels even shark attacks were considered with U.S. Navy ships were positioned and the best path for re-entry charted.

Final notes were also made, unbeknownst to the public or press each of the crew, free from the constraints of the threat of oxygen depletion communicated with their respective families. And then on September 23rd, the Space Shuttle Atlantis, fell to Earth.

After 15 days 1 hour, 17 minutes and 10 seconds. Atlantis commenced its re-entry burn, at once the Shuttle became both lifeboat and death trap, descending at a modified re-entry to press heat away from the damaged thermal tiles, putting the decades-old shuttle to the test of 1500C ionising heat, that stripped electrons from atoms, with no margin for error.

Reaching top velocity high hypersonic speeds it glid through the atmosphere, second after second as the pressurized air beat on the craft.

400,000 feet, 350,000 feet, 300,00 feet. Facing the winds of a factor 5 hurricane, NASA and crew paid deep detail to the torque and drag of the craft's left wing, as the ice coating turned to water.

At 120,000 feet the first indicators ticked on, signalling the first detection thresholds had been tripped and the bailout procedures were prepared but were still far too high to begin to do so.

They were inside the plasma, and unlike most re-entries the modified plan would not be smooth, to relieve the damaged tile the descent would not be as comfortable as NASA astronauts were used to. They were facing “A lot more G’s” according to U.S. technician Ken Bowser, and it was “imperative for them to be strapped down”.

But minute after minute the ship stayed together. 50, 40, and 30,000 feet. The escape could begin.

The cabin was depressurized by Commander Frick and the hatch jettisoned by Specialist Eyharts, deploying a nine-foot pole out into the 200-mile winds, starting at 25,000 feet the men and women of Atlantis stepped briefly onto nothing, before being rocketed out sliding down the pile. The suit then acts as an ejection suit, the parachute triggering automatically, steering them into the wide-open deep blue seas.

“I was more afraid of the landing than the re-entry” reported back Walheim who was given the job of jump master, these were untested and never before experienced circumstances, “but I thought it was best to lead by example”

One by one the once-stranded citizens of Atlantis parachuted to safety, thousands of feet, from sky to sea where they each proceeded to deploy the lifeboats and bobbed in the drink uneasily.

“It was music to my ears” reported Payette, describing the waves of the ocean and the spotters from the U.S. Navy “I made sure to take deep breaths”.

The world was watching, by the millions as the reports of the successful re-entry and the first scenes of the little orange men being pulled from the waves surfaced.

The patch job had performed admirably, much better than expectations. And as Commander Frick was the last to depart the vessel he got the last word aboard the vessel “Thanks for getting us this far” Before his sudden departure, it continued to glide into the drink 15 Km northeast of Bermuda. Where the Shuttle met its final end, breaking up in the preprogrammed crash, forever lost.

Time Magazine Cover

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Oh thank GOD that everything went out ok, I'm sure that ITTL, they're working on a movie based on this