Space Shuttle

samcster94

Banned
In February 2003, in TTL, the shuttle lands safely due to NASA fixing some of the sands on the shuttle's bottom before takeoff. Everyone who died in OTL in the accident lives. What happens now?
 
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Philip

Donor
If you are talking about Columbia, she had a 20cm diameter hole in the the leading edge of her left wing. It was not repairable in orbit.

You need a pre-flight policy change to save Columbia. Given NASA's history with the shuttles, I feel this borders on ASB.
 

samcster94

Banned
If you are talking about Columbia, she had a 20cm diameter hole in the the leading edge of her left wing. It was not repairable in orbit.

You need a pre-flight policy change to save Columbia. Given NASA's history with the shuttles, I feel this borders on ASB.
I was talking about pre-flight.
 
Samcster94 wrote:
In February 2003, in TTL, the shuttle lands safely due to NASA fixing some of the sands on the shuttle's bottom before takeoff. Everyone who died in OTL in the accident lives. What happens now?

I was talking about pre-flight.

WHAT is the change though? This is highly important because as far as anyone knew BEFORE Columbia happened was that the Carbon/Carbon plates SHOULD be pretty much immune to high speed impacts. Because initial testing and calculations showed they should have been pretty damn tough. So tough in fact the US Army had started a program in the mid-80s to examine the use of C/C plates for both armored vehicle and body armor plates.

(In fact due to that testing the Army was well aware the plates were in fact pretty fragile in impact tests but the results were classified and NASA didn’t have a need to know since no one would be firing a “high velocity” object at the Shuttle now would they?)

So if C/C is so tough why would they need any change since it is only being hit by ‘frozen’ chunks of foam so obviously it can stand up to that kind of punishment since it’s been doing it till now… Have a piece of foam smash a bunch of tiles off instead? Unless the mission is endangered or lost, (and if it still gets back down ‘safe’ look to NASA ignoring the problem because, frankly, it was all NASA really had and they couldn’t get a replacement LV from Congress. And their lifetime had already been extended far past the ‘planned’ 15 year service life, (or in theory “100” flights but as of their retirement Discovery only had 39 flights under its belt) and as noted there was no replacement beyond some initial planning.

Say the crew/Shuttle/NASA dodge the bullet this mission? They it probably happens later to another crew and another Orbiter since the actual ‘problems’ still remain.

To solve those problems first NASA has to be aware they ARE problems AND be given both sufficient motivation and resources to fix the identified problems. In essence you need a reason to fix the light weight foam so that it doesn’t fall off during launch, otherwise what happened to Columbia will ‘happen’ eventually to someone else.

Randy
 

samcster94

Banned
Samcster94 wrote:




WHAT is the change though? This is highly important because as far as anyone knew BEFORE Columbia happened was that the Carbon/Carbon plates SHOULD be pretty much immune to high speed impacts. Because initial testing and calculations showed they should have been pretty damn tough. So tough in fact the US Army had started a program in the mid-80s to examine the use of C/C plates for both armored vehicle and body armor plates.

(In fact due to that testing the Army was well aware the plates were in fact pretty fragile in impact tests but the results were classified and NASA didn’t have a need to know since no one would be firing a “high velocity” object at the Shuttle now would they?)

So if C/C is so tough why would they need any change since it is only being hit by ‘frozen’ chunks of foam so obviously it can stand up to that kind of punishment since it’s been doing it till now… Have a piece of foam smash a bunch of tiles off instead? Unless the mission is endangered or lost, (and if it still gets back down ‘safe’ look to NASA ignoring the problem because, frankly, it was all NASA really had and they couldn’t get a replacement LV from Congress. And their lifetime had already been extended far past the ‘planned’ 15 year service life, (or in theory “100” flights but as of their retirement Discovery only had 39 flights under its belt) and as noted there was no replacement beyond some initial planning.

Say the crew/Shuttle/NASA dodge the bullet this mission? They it probably happens later to another crew and another Orbiter since the actual ‘problems’ still remain.

To solve those problems first NASA has to be aware they ARE problems AND be given both sufficient motivation and resources to fix the identified problems. In essence you need a reason to fix the light weight foam so that it doesn’t fall off during launch, otherwise what happened to Columbia will ‘happen’ eventually to someone else.

Randy
Indeed. What if there was a case in the 90's where the crew survives, but the craft is damaged(over something different)???
 
In February 2003, in TTL, the shuttle lands safely due to NASA fixing some of the sands on the shuttle's bottom before takeoff. Everyone who died in OTL in the accident lives. What happens now?
I recall my first thoughts when I heard about the Columbia disaster. First thought as the radio announced that Columbia apparently hit a wing failure while descending into the upper stratosphere was: "Awww, Sh''t. That's too high and too fast for the crew to use their escape hatch". My second thought, 10 minutes later when it wa confirmed that the shuttle had disintegrated mid-air with no survivors was:"Columbia, that's the first shuttle isn't it? So it must be how old? 25 years?? 26??? How the -bleep- was that one still flying in the first place????"

So back to the question: if Columbia's heat shield didn't crack and Columbia landed safely....

We'll, you would still have a 26 year old experimental craft sent into space time and time again because we designed the ISS around it's cargo capacity without planning for an alternative, even without planning for a new Shuttle to replace its worn-out frame. So all four shuttles would continue to go into space on an ever more demanding schedule and sooner or later something else would go wrong. May be not with Columbia but with one of her sisters, but eventually you need a catastrophe like in 2003 for NASA at that point to realise that they can't continue flying the shuttles forever. In one way we were lucky that this happened in 2003 already and not in 2010. Because we wouldn't have all those private space projects making headlines if we had 7 more years of Space Shuttle to go around.
 
The NASA plan prior to STS-107 was to keep flying the Shuttles indefinitely—plans for operation to 2020 and beyond existed. Possibly with a privatization—essentially to make United Space Alliance a private firm on NASA contract. I imagine Columbia would get decommissioned sooner or later—its greater weight made it less useful for ISS construction and servicing—but the rest will be flown until an analogous disaster occurs. Since that’s basically down to random chance (heat shield problems dogged STS since the first flight—they actually got some melting in the landing gear well on STS-1), let’s ignore it for now.

What does that mean for the 2000s in space?

No Constellation, most obviously. Neither Orion nor Ares. ISS might see the Centrifuge and Habitat modules orbited.

What else? The unmanned program, I think, will go basically as IOTL. COTS/CRS might not happen as IOTL, or maybe with only one contractor chosen as a backup to the ever-flying Shuttle. Either Orbital or Kistler or SpaceX—so the last might die in that rough period when Musk had to choose between it and Tesla.

ISS construction should be done by 2011, even with plus 2 modules. Then what? Would Obama authorize any consequential new program to launch on Shuttle? Conceivably, if Shuttle still exists, you could do something like Asteroid Retrieval Mission with it—fly up a lightweight tin can in the Shuttle payload bay, transfer crew to it, dock with a pre-launched Earth Departure Stage, and off to L1. One could even do smallish lunar missions with it, like the Early Lunar Access proposal. Of course, ramping the Shuttle flight rate up to do that and service ISS on 3 orbiters means upping the annual flight rate—maybe back to the pre-Challenger high of 8-9 per year. Which ramps up the odds of an unlucky foam strike in any given year.

Picture this: 2013. Second Shuttle-launched Low Lunar Orbit mission. Nothing too fancy—Ariane-launched hypergolic departure stage, Shuttle-launched tin can Crew Module. A lander of sorts is in development down the road, as is something like ARM. And then a Columbia-like disaster takes out Discovery or Atlantis or Endeavour as they return the crew from such a flight (Columbia herself was already decommissioned for aforementioned weight issues and age). Now the fleet’s down to 2, there’s nothing like CRS in the background, Russia’s gotten ornery as IOTL, and the existing NASA human spaceflight program is put on hold until Return to Flight—but now three separate programs depend on the two remaining Orbiters.
 
Say the crew/Shuttle/NASA dodge the bullet this mission? They it probably happens later to another crew and another Orbiter since the actual ‘problems’ still remain.

To solve those problems first NASA has to be aware they ARE problems AND be given both sufficient motivation and resources to fix the identified problems. In essence you need a reason to fix the light weight foam so that it doesn’t fall off during launch, otherwise what happened to Columbia will ‘happen’ eventually to someone else.

Randy
So, NASA must admit to a vulnerability in the shuttles and if they can't lobby for the money to correct them, the vehicles might be grounded earlier than 2011 (OTL ending). It would significantly impact the development of the International Space Station.
 
So, NASA must admit to a vulnerability in the shuttles and if they can't lobby for the money to correct them, the vehicles might be grounded earlier than 2011 (OTL ending). It would significantly impact the development of the International Space Station.

To be honest they were semi-forced to admit the problems OTL after Challenger but continued to ignore the ones not directly related to that particular accident. OTL they then had to admit the foam and C/C issues post-Columbia but since those were going to be vastly more costly to 'fix' AND both the Shuttle and ISS were in fact officially thrown under the bus in favor or Ares-V and Constellation...

Even before that O'Keefe had pushed for a version of Constellation/Orion/CEV to fly on an EELV instead of the Shuttle and to ease out of using the Shuttle as much as possible.

The thing was the Shuttle could have been fixed but it would have been expensive to do. After Challenger there was a push to make the Space Transportation System an actual "system" with maybe a new Orbiter, a heavy lift version, (Shuttle-C) and other modifications to expand and enhance the overall system but there was both no money and more importantly no incentive politically to address the issues. Worse there was almost no support from either NASA management or the Astronaut Corps due to the feeling that anything that reduced the manned flights was to be fought and rejected.

NASA couldn't admit the "shuttle" had problems still after telling everyone for decades it was going to be a cheap and easy orbital space truck when in fact it was only a first generation RLV and a pretty prototype one at that. Yet doing so and then moving on to the next generation is in fact how transport systems advance. I argue that we could have and should have done the same with the shuttle/STS (https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...le-rocket-program.455004/page-4#post-17933066) but at the same time admit that's asking for a 'leap-of-faith' on NASA's part that is unlikely at best given the 'fight' to get the shuttle flying in the first place. On the gripping-hand at the point and time under discussion NASA arguably had a better chance than any time since the end of Apollo to get the support and funding they needed to do so. While Bush's announcement of the VSE proposal went down in a roaring silence of support in January of 2004 at the same time there was a clear case for Congressional support of both the ISS and replacing the Shuttle. And while O'Keefe was suggesting an EELV based system it was clear that Congress was willing to allow the Shuttle to continue to fly till at least 2010 even with the admitted issues.

While Shuttle-II (http://spaceflighthistory.blogspot.com/2017/02/nasa-johnson-space-centers-shuttle-ii.html) was probably not in the cards the "Evolved" shuttle (looks like but is NOT the Shuttle II design btw) is arguably possible since at this point you need to replace at least two orbiters, more likely all of them. It obviously addresses the majority of the problems with the Orbiter which then leaves you with the rest of the system issues, (SRB joints, falling foam, etc) but keeps them separate from the Orbiter. Especially if you can get NASA to adhere to their own supposed 'lessons-learned' and separate the crew from the cargo. (Smaller more economic orbiter)

As noted in the linked post, once you start moving forward with an enhanced STS AS a system rather than an LV in and of itself you end up with a heck of a lot more capability all around with arguably less overall cost than trying to toss everything and start from scratch... Again.
You plausibly have an "STS" that actually does essentially cover the majority of your manned and unmanned launch needs well into the future.

Randy
 
I might have to eat my words about suggesting that Columbia would be retired for her weight.

https://web.archive.org/web/2003022..._standard.xsl?/base/news/1041675363226150.xml

As of shortly before STS-107, the official NASA plan was to have each of the four orbiters fly no less than 100, and potentially as many as 400, missions. At a flight rate of maybe 8-12 Shuttle flights per year, that implies a Shuttle fleet remaining in service until at least 2030, and possibly to about 2100.

Somewhat more realistically, there was a plan to add a fifth segment to the RSRMs (as became the plan for Constellation), to eliminate the RTLS abort option.
 
So I just learned about a rather interesting Shuttle upper stage variant Boeing proposed around 2000 called ‘Advanced Shuttle Upper Stage.’ This was in many ways a revisit of the old Shuttle-Centaur concept, with one of the big safety concerns (what to do with all that LH2/LOX in an abort) addressed. The idea was to launch the tank empty and fill it from the External Tank during ascent, after reaching a safely high altitude. Apparently, testing in 2002 showed that the rapid-chill-and-fill (under 5 minutes) technique would work, but STS-107 put an end to that.

It is an interesting idea, and it could be used to convert the Shuttle into a surprisingly-effective (if not necessarily cost-effective) tanker-and-crew-taxi for lunar access. If you could dock repeatedly with your empty Centaur-type upper stage (stretched 50%), and use the Shuttle RCS to induce a slight spin for fluid control, then a hypothetical Shuttle Orbiter with 5-segment boosters could tank up a cislunar tug with a payload to LLO (and back) of a little over 2 tonnes. Not really anything to write home about, but, if you keep the missions short to control boil-off, you give the Shuttle system the ability to send crew to LLO and back, again, and again, and again. It would look a bit ungainly during the fueling—Centaur, Orbiter, and ET, rotating about an axis through the Orbiter itself.

You could do something similar with methane/oxygen, I suppose, transferring LOX from the ET and CH4 from the payload bay, but you’d want to break it up into two stages like e of pi and I did for Right Side Up’s cislunar tug.

If you keep it to the OTL Shuttle-Centaur dimensions, and make it a throwaway stage, your Orbiter (with Five-segment Boosters) has a TLI payload of up to 10 tonnes. Not exactly good (DIVH gets a bit under 16 tonnes), but it is man-rated (by default).

This is just one example of the capability the Shuttle system could have had with some very slight incremental improvements that could have been implemented by 2010—enough, perhaps, to do exactly what SLS is supposed to do.

EDIT: Kind of spurious, but I sketched out a slightly-upgraded Shuttle stack designed for increased LEO mass, mostly propellant to transfer to a proposed ASUS-derived cislunar tug. There were some OTL proposals to stretch the ET, so running with those and the Five-Segment Boosters (called FSB in those days), I present a Shuttle Orbiter that can haul 50-odd tonnes to LEO, of which most is propellant carried in the ET. I put the LH2 tank extension where the Aft Cargo Carrier was once supposed to go, to keep the ET tip under the ceiling of the LC-39 towers.
 

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I might have to eat my words about suggesting that Columbia would be retired for her weight.

https://web.archive.org/web/2003022..._standard.xsl?/base/news/1041675363226150.xml

As of shortly before STS-107, the official NASA plan was to have each of the four orbiters fly no less than 100, and potentially as many as 400, missions. At a flight rate of maybe 8-12 Shuttle flights per year, that implies a Shuttle fleet remaining in service until at least 2030, and possibly to about 2100.

I thought this was rather general knowledge? My jaw dropped when I read this stuff at the time but really there wasn't a lot of choice given the general 'support' they were getting for any other option. Considering Columbia had just been lost and there was STILL no support for a replacement I always thought this was a way to put Congress on the spot publicly with such an insane plan. Nope, they didn't even blink before boasting it was a GREAT idea for NASA to do.... IIRC this was around when O'Keefe started pushing a capsule on the EELVs plan at which point Bush started looking to replace him but I'd have to check my dates. Anyway the ONLY Shuttle replacement Congress was willing to back was the OSP which had come down on LM's hypersonic lifting body design but which NASA was unofficially leaning towards Boeings capsule.

Somewhat more realistically, there was a plan to add a fifth segment to the RSRMs (as became the plan for Constellation), to eliminate the RTLS abort option.

Well more officially to 'offset' lower performance to the ISS orbit IIRC but yes ensuring they weren't tempted to to RTLS was a 'bonus' I suppose :)

So I just learned about a rather interesting Shuttle upper stage variant Boeing proposed around 2000 called ‘Advanced Shuttle Upper Stage.’ This was in many ways a revisit of the old Shuttle-Centaur concept, with one of the big safety concerns (what to do with all that LH2/LOX in an abort) addressed. The idea was to launch the tank empty and fill it from the External Tank during ascent, after reaching a safely high altitude. Apparently, testing in 2002 showed that the rapid-chill-and-fill (under 5 minutes) technique would work, but STS-107 put an end to that.

It is an interesting idea, and it could be used to convert the Shuttle into a surprisingly-effective (if not necessarily cost-effective) tanker-and-crew-taxi for lunar access. If you could dock repeatedly with your empty Centaur-type upper stage (stretched 50%), and use the Shuttle RCS to induce a slight spin for fluid control, then a hypothetical Shuttle Orbiter with 5-segment boosters could tank up a cislunar tug with a payload to LLO (and back) of a little over 2 tonnes. Not really anything to write home about, but, if you keep the missions short to control boil-off, you give the Shuttle system the ability to send crew to LLO and back, again, and again, and again. It would look a bit ungainly during the fueling—Centaur, Orbiter, and ET, rotating about an axis through the Orbiter itself.

Wasn't that also brought up in the 'Propellant Scavenger Module' to be fitted on the aft-end of the ET as well back in the 90s? And there was that Air Force Titan derived "booster" module that was supposed to be attached to the aft end of the ET to enhance the Shuttle payload and bring more 'residue' propellant to orbit around that same time. (I suspect that was always more about keeping Titan parts production open since they Titan-IV was so damn expensive)

You could do something similar with methane/oxygen, I suppose, transferring LOX from the ET and CH4 from the payload bay, but you’d want to break it up into two stages like e of pi and I did for Right Side Up’s cislunar tug.

You still ran into the problem that you couldn't vent anything in the bay the way the Shuttle was designed. LOX in the bay they could 'deal' with but anything that might mix with air leaking from the Shuttle and there was too much danger from what I recall.

If you keep it to the OTL Shuttle-Centaur dimensions, and make it a throwaway stage, your Orbiter (with Five-segment Boosters) has a TLI payload of up to 10 tonnes. Not exactly good (DIVH gets a bit under 16 tonnes), but it is man-rated (by default).

Well "Columbia as a means to the Moon" was suggested in '96:
https://www.wired.com/2014/08/a-1996-plan-to-use-nasas-oldest-orbiter-to-make-money-on-the-moon/

And I understand there are a couple that actually suggest ways to take the Orbiter around the Moon but we'll leave that for the moment :)

This is just one example of the capability the Shuttle system could have had with some very slight incremental improvements that could have been implemented by 2010—enough, perhaps, to do exactly what SLS is supposed to do.

At least what SLS can do if not more over time but again where there's a will, (typed "whip" like three times, maybe should lay off the LotR soundtrack a bit I suppose :) ) there's a way but first there has to be the will...
(And it's arguably rather 'scary' that Congress was confident enough that nothing would come back on them even if NASA ended up loosing another Shuttle and crew in the interim...)

EDIT: Kind of spurious, but I sketched out a slightly-upgraded Shuttle stack designed for increased LEO mass, mostly propellant to transfer to a proposed ASUS-derived cislunar tug. There were some OTL proposals to stretch the ET, so running with those and the Five-Segment Boosters (called FSB in those days), I present a Shuttle Orbiter that can haul 50-odd tonnes to LEO, of which most is propellant carried in the ET. I put the LH2 tank extension where the Aft Cargo Carrier was once supposed to go, to keep the ET tip under the ceiling of the LC-39 towers.

Er, what that supposed to be that tiny?

Randy
 
I thought this was rather general knowledge?

Maybe, but the fact that they were even talking about 400 flights is not something I knew about. 2020-2025 I get, and I'd heard. 400 flights per orbiter? That's a remarkably optimistic confidence in one's job security.

Well more officially to 'offset' lower performance to the ISS orbit IIRC but yes ensuring they weren't tempted to to RTLS was a 'bonus' I suppose :)

The articles I read seem to indicate that having abort-to-orbit capability right off the pad was the bigger interest--concerns about maximum payload size for reentry capped the maximum Shuttle payload anyway.
Er, what that supposed to be that tiny?

Randy

No--not sure what happened there. The one attached here should be more legible.
 

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Maybe, but the fact that they were even talking about 400 flights is not something I knew about. 2020-2025 I get, and I'd heard. 400 flights per orbiter? That's a remarkably optimistic confidence in one's job security.

Less "job security" and more "work with what you have since you won't get anything else" I'd think and yes in fact I was quite surprised at how many people simply didn't 'get' the amount of fights and work they were talking about :) And more importantly no one questioned either NASA or Congress on how the could be ok with the idea? Quite obviously everyone just went along and talked about what would 'replace' the Shuttle at some point but otherwise ignoring the 800lb gorilla in the room...

The articles I read seem to indicate that having abort-to-orbit capability right off the pad was the bigger interest--concerns about maximum payload size for reentry capped the maximum Shuttle payload anyway.

Well it was I supposed since it seems to have been well understood RTLS was simply unlikely to be survivable let alone possible so going 'down-range' at the very least but better to orbit was always preferred.

No--not sure what happened there. The one attached here should be more legible.

Much better thanks :) What was really scary is when I opened it the pic was even smaller than the thumbnail which I guess was due to some graphic setting of mine!

It's always really 'bugged' me that the Shuttle as a system was never really pursued. It had it's problems for sure but it had a utility that could have been used to do so much as well and frankly it's a FIRST GENERATION system and in no other transportation system have you seen basically throw the first generation away completely and start over from scratch. Only space does that. And the fact that the US has done it twice now...

Randy
 
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