Make that: One of the principal investigators of the Challenger disaster, an individual whose technical command of space flight surpasses every poster in this thread combined, expressed his shock today that NASA did not bother trying to telescopically image the orbiter.
He added that a second shuttle might have been able to rescue the crew, in a hail Mary operation.
If a rescue were possible, why didn’t they try?
I have that same problem with a lot of the “should haves” people are saying. I don’t think NASA willfully destroyed this mission.
Because I don’t believe they honestly thought they were in any real danger, so why even consider a rescue if there is nothing to worry about?
My own guess is that they knew that the loss of tiles constituted some unknown additive risk, but felt it was within operational parameters–and also believed they had no other choice.
As with the Challenger disaster, I think a dangerous groupthink prevailed during the Columbia mission, leading to the consensus opinion that Columbia could return safely, even when a minority opinion expressed concern that the loss of tiles might prove catastrophic. Good decision-making depends on good data. NASA’s operations team didn’t realize how much key data they lacked. They gave it their best shot and came up short.
In the final analysis, such dissenting opinions probably occurred on earlier missions, yet NASA managed to pull the rabbit out of the hat each and every single time before–with the glaring exception of the Challenger disaster–leading them to feel confident they could do so again, with their fingers crossed.
Groupthink or not, I doubt the “let’s ditch Columbia and transfer to another shuttle sans EVA suits” was even on the decision board. Nor would it have squared well with the American taxpayer. In retrospect, Mission Control was damned if it did, damned if it didn’t. Ultimately, NASA’s options were circumscribed by tightfisted politicians and shrinking budgets. They engineered an incredible space vehicle, but not a perfect one. NASA’s technies, of course, are made the fall guys and the tightfisted politicians are now the SOBs getting media play by reading poems and batting their eyelids.
Now I think about it, it seems odd that there aren’t any photos of the shuttle.
Imagine being one of the astronauts squatting on board the ISS, things must get pretty boring up there at times. The space shuttle floating past the window would be the most exciting thing that’s happened for weeks.
I can’t believe one of the astronauts didn’t photograph it. I thought they were allowed to take up personal cameras or at least permitted to use the onboard cameras to take pictures of interesting things?
NASA Warned of Shuttle’s Vulnerability
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**The “minority reports” I cited weren’t so minority, after all…
By MARCIA DUNN
The Associated Press
Tuesday, February 4, 2003; 8:36 PM
NASA was warned nine years ago that the space shuttle could fail catastrophically if debris hit the vulnerable underside of its wings during liftoff _ the very scenario that may have brought down Columbia.
After receiving the warning, NASA made changes in equipment and flight rules to lessen the risk of debris breaking loose, Paul Fischbeck, an engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University who conducted the analysis, said Tuesday.
“There are very important tiles under there. If you lose the tiles on those stretches … it can cause the shuttle to be lost,” he said.
Rescue is in our genes, part of our pack instinct, and hard to resist.
On one of the previous launches some foam from the tank hit a window on the shuttle and all it did was leave some streaks. I can well imagine the folks at NASA saying that, “It looked like foam, so probably all it did was leave a dirty spot on the wing.” Heck, I’d say the same thing.
Uh, maybe the reason the ISS astronauts didn’t take any pictures of Columbia is because the shuttle never got within a hundred miles of the ISS on it’s last mission… 
Eric
I am probably totally wrong on this but. when the foam fell off the fuel tank. the foam, the tank and the shuttle were all moving at the same accelleration. Therefore the speed of impact was not many thousand miles an hour but whatever the difference caused by the foam decelerating and the shuttle continuing to accellerate into orbit.
I’ve talked to a guy who worked on some spy satellites. The resolution capability at that time, and this was probably at least 10 years ago, was quite a bit better than what you claim.
I disagree with their policy. I would want to know. It’s only fair to tell the people who have put their lives on the line.
The astronauts know about it, and apparently don’t seem to be too bothered by it. You don’t hear them squawking over it.
Maybe. Maybe not.
Maybe we should just ground the three that remain. Here’s an interesting quote about the Shuttle program from Time.com:
"in financial terms and safety terms no project has done more harm to space exploration."
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030210-418518,00.html
True. But then we don’t hear them squawking about much of anything…
I don’t like NASA’s way of handling it. In a similar vein, I also don’t like it when doctors sometimes don’t tell their patients how serious their medical condition is. If I ever get a serious disease I want to know all the facts. Good or bad. But that’s just me.
You must not be listening to them, then. All of the astronauts (present and former) have been pretty vocal any time someone suggests NASA should have it’s budget cut, and I’d say that Buzz Aldrin “squawked” Bart Sibrel’s face pretty loudly back in September…
There is no joy in any of this…
You seem to have some insight into the Shuttle program. Do you have any comments about this article?
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030210-418518,00.html
“Unfortunately, the core problem that lay at the heart of the Challenger tragedy applies to the Columbia tragedy as well. That core problem is the space shuttle itself. For 20 years, the American space program has been wedded to a space-shuttle system that is too expensive, too risky, too big for most of the ways it is used, with budgets that suck up funds that could be invested in a modern system that would make space flight cheaper and safer.”
Oh. I thought you meant about NASA’s policies.
Yes. The budget is a problem. We need to double NASA’s budget, imo, and get serious about a manned space program.
Shuttle loses tiles before reaching orbit. Shuttle reaches orbit. Now what? It would seem there was nothing planned for this scenario.
Apparently not.
The astronauts do bitch about NASA’s polices when it comes to matters of safety. Numerous design changes were made to the shuttles based on the astronauts complaints after Challenger.
And while I won’t repost my comments here (they’re in this thread), I will say that the article you linked to only reaffirms what Robert A. Heinlein said about Time magazine years ago: I’ve been to several major events where Time was present, never did any of their accounts match what I witnessed.