Yet More Columbiana: COULD the crew have been rescued?

Factual Questions
21

First off my hypothetical assumes that staying in the orbiter does equal certain death. Re-entry is a certain death sentence and another orbiter can’t be made ready in time to save the crew before they die of dehydration or asphyxiation.

Second, I would hope someone at the ISS would have spacewalk experience and that there would be a tether (or something that they could cobble together as a tether) that could be brought to the shuttle so the crew could pull themselves over. Even if not I’d take my chances on a jump if the alternative was certain death anyway.

As to getting the shuttle away from the ISS afterwards I would think the ship’s computer could be programmed to start a burn at some point after the crew left. The computer does most of the flying anyway with input from the crew. We are assuming the shuttle is a write-off at this point so if it needs to be kept away from ISS I doubt that is too hard if you have no concern for what happens to the shuttle after it is out of the way of the ISS.

22

AH! My bad. Worse case scenario.
**Cant get Atlantis (or russian, french or chinese rockets) up before Columbia runs out of oxygen (even with extreme rationing)
**Cant reach the ISS (this is reality)
**Cant try re-entry

Best scenario I can think of:

ISS launches its emergency crew-return vehicle. They have those now. Have Columbia intercept, dump the spacehap payload, and catch X-38 CRV on payload bay. Load crewman into ERV by jumping into it if needed. Set orbiter to crash into pacific. Have pilot enter CRV last, NASA auto fires front thrusters to flip ERV out of payload bay and orbiter tumbles into the ocean. ERV is piloted for re-entry and picked up by Aircraft carrier.

23

Uh, not in this universe they don’t.

That X-38 is pure fantasy at this point. What ISS currently has is a Russian built Soyuz craft. This ship can only hold 3 people and has only enough fuel to depart the ISS and return to earth, so that idea is a non-starter.

PS: This of course does not apply if “They have those now” was meant to imply your hypothetical situation takes place in the future.

24

FWIW, Jerry Pournelle, the scifi writer among other thigs, is adamant in his blog last Sunday http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/view242.html#Sunday that another shuttle could have been used to save the Columbia crew.

He doesn’t say how, but if you read his CV he carries a significant amount of authority in this area.

25

The Mark III space suit is designed differently then the pressure suits .

A rondesvous with the ISS may have been more complicated then we suspect if the shuttle didn`t have any space suits on board. It seems as though the pressure suit is not at all suited for a space walk. A space suit(s) would be a must. Could they have recieved a suit from the ISS and used that? Hard to say.

26

IIRC space suits are very customized items built specifically for each person who will wear one. Needless to say they are very expensive and might be one reason (if not the reason) every astronaut doesn’t have one as a matter of course.

Maybe in a pinch if you had two suits you could haev one person go back and forth between the ISS and the shuttle and keep stuffing people into the biggest suit you have. For this purpose they don’t need utility from their suit…just protection long enough to transit from teh shuttle to the ISS.

I wonder if a pressure suit might do in a pinch anyway. You aren’t planning to spend much time in space. Maybe a few minutes if that to make the crossing. Perhaps a pressure suit would afford enough protection for those few minutes. Even completely naked doesn’t someone have something like 30 seconds to survive in space? Not a lot of time but add a pressure suit and unless it’ll explode or something it might do for the quick jaunt to the ISS.

(Again all assuming the shuttle could have made it to the ISS which has been made abundantly clear it could not have.)

27

Well, I’ve always assumed the ISS is a non-starter in these equations. Too far from Columbia, too little fuel to get Columbia there, too little fuel to get the ISS’s Soyuz lifeboat to Columbia.

Here’s more data: The maximum normal mission life is 18+ days when a shuttle has the Extended Duration Orbiter (EDO) pallet inits cargo bay.

http://www.thespaceplace.com/shuttle/missions/sts-87.html#EDO

The EDO was on board STS-107:

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/video/shuttle/sts-107/html/fd0.html

So, best worst-case scenario, the astronauts realize that Columbia is damaged on Jan. 16 (again, per my hypothetical, not per reality), they have until today, Feb. 3, to get out of that floating coffin–without any sort of power/air conservation efforts. No idea yet how long they could last with conservation efforts.

So the question remains: could the Atlantis have been prepped (for a totally new mission) and launched in just 18 days–a full month earlier than it was supposed to fly?

28

Whoops…guess not. Looks like things have changed according to the link whuckfistle provided.

29

Naked in space?

How Long Can a Human Live Unprotected in Space?

If you don’t try to hold your breath, exposure to space for half a minute of so is unlikely to produce permanent injury. Holding your breath is likely to damage your lungs, something scuba divers have to watch out for when ascending, and you’ll have eardrum trouble if your Eustachian tubes are badly plugged up, but theory predicts – and animal experiments confirm – that otherwise, exposure to vacuum causes no immediate injury. You do not explode. Your blood does not boil. You do not freeze. You do not instantly lose consciousness.

Various minor problems (sunburn, possibly “the bends”, certainly some [mild, reversible, painless] swelling of skin and underlying tissue) start after 10 seconds or so. At some point you lose consciousness from lack of oxygen. Injuries accumulate. After perhaps one or two minutes you’re dying. The limits are not really known.

References:

The Effect on the Chimpanzee of Rapid Decompression to a Near Vacuum, Alfred G. Koestler ed., NASA CR-329 (Nov. 1965)

Experimental Animal Decompression to a Near Vacuum Environment, R.W. Bancroft, J.E. Dunn, eds, Report SAM-TR-65-48 (June 1965), USAF School of Aerospace Medicine, Brooks AFB, Texas.

30

Not true. The shuttle uses the main engines to slow down when it de-orbits, so there is enough fuel for at least one good burn, since our hypothetical crippled shuttle isn’t going to attempt a descent through the atmosphere anyway. Whether there is enough fuel to reach the ISS is for engineers to answer; my point is, the main engines are used after the shuttle reaches orbit.

31

Nope. The two orbital maneuvering system engines are what fire to slow it down. After the launch and the external tank is cast, the 3 main engines are just along for the ride and not used anymore.

32

I’ll make two points and try to hold the infighting.

First, I think your scenario would rule out the ISS as a lifeboat unless it was your destination in the first place. The fuel and small launch windows are very big problems to overcome.

Second, I would question the wisdom of sending up another orbiter unless you already knew precisely what happened to Columbia and how to prevent the same thing from happening to Atlantis on its way up. If true, this would rule out a rescue mission IMO.

33

For the record, the main problem with getting to the ISS wouldn’t have been the altitude, it would have been the need to shift to a very different orbital plane. IF they had been in the same orbital plane, it is quite possible that the shuttle would have had enough fuel to boost itself up to the ISS. I haven’t even tried to do the math. Remember, the shuttle wouldn’t have to save enough fuel to get back down again.

The one thing you can be certain of is that, if NASA knew the shuttle were completely unable to de-orbit, they would have done something to rescue the crew. It would be completely against NASA’s culture to have a contingency plan of “Let them die.”

I would not be a bit surprised if NASA could have gotten the shuttle scheduled to launch March 1 up in just a few days. Lots of shuttle prep is about the payload. Plus, NASA leaves itself plenty of time when scheduling missions to ensure there are no serious delays. With the bare minimum of safety checks only for critical systems, no payload and all-hands-on-deck, I bet NASA would even surprise itself.

34

Er, from browsing through this thread, I think a lot of people don’t understand how incredibly complicated it is for two space vehicles to “hook up” in space. If a shuttle is going to dock with Alpha (ISS), it is going to need a very detailed orbital plan involving the trajectory to meet Alpha’s orbit, meet Alpha’s speed, then burn to catch up to it, burn to match it’s speed, then lots of careful manuevering burns to dock…

If another shuttle is going to launch up to it, NASA has to calculate EXACTLY where and how fast the shuttle will be at launch time, then do the same thing as above… only even more complex, because NASA already knows the figures for Alpha.

Neither case matters, since Columbia couldn’t dock with anything but the ground when it was supposed to have landed. I do not believe that anyone on Columbia was specially trained for space walking (4 of them were rookies and there was no walking planned on the flight), much less the incredibly complex walk that would be required to transfer from one shuttle to another - especially when the shuttle they originate from doesn’t have an arm, tethers, etc.

I’m sure NASA could get another shuttle launch-ready for a drastic emergency (probably a ISS disaster) within the two-week frame mentioned - this would involve dropping most of the safety checks in favor of the more vital ones, not equipping it for any payload (assuming at least one shuttle has the docking module), and assuming that they weren’t in reconstruction (as Columbia recently was). The crew would be astronauts who had previously done the type of mission they are looking at (say, docking with ISS). Their biggest problem may be shipping the fuel in time.

As for the shuttle in that situation… I think NASA would have to attempt re-entry. Come in over the Pacific aiming for Edwards AFB (NASA has the flight plans for this known), and bail as soon as possible. Getting to Alpha is out of the question, and even getting another shuttle there in time would be risking BOTH of the shuttles and their crews. The shuttle is lost anyway. A free spacewalk with untrained and unexperienced crew without tethers would be near-suicide. Look back at Apollo 13… they had no clue how extensive the damage was, and just had to go ahead with the re-entry. Obviously a different scenario, but NASA will risk it if they have to.

You can ask all kinds of similar scenarios that have always been asked about transportation… what if a plane depressurizes at 35,000 feet over the middle of the Pacific… what if a cruiser hits an ice berg in the Atlantic… what if the tire on your car explodes on the freeway…

35

Actually, I believe that two of the crew were specifically trained for EVAs. However, I am fairly sure that every astronaut has at least some training in “spacewalking.” I can’t imagine that NASA wouldn’t have at least familarized every crew member with the suit and taught them how to move around.

It is quite difficult for two vehicles to hook up in space. But it would have been a trivial matter for an empty shuttle to “chase down” a shuttle already in orbit. Actual docking would have been impossible, though, so they would have had to transfer from cargo bay to cargo bay. Not easy, but not the equivalent of having to hit a six-foot airlock from fifty feet, either.

36

I have no doubt the math needed to figure all the details of this out is mroe than sufficient to short circuit my medicore mind. Nonetheless I bet NASA does this stuff over breakfast. I’ll grant that the math and details are complicated but NASA has the computers and gobs of experience in orbital mechanics at their fingertips. If Colombia couldn’t make it to the ISS (in our hypothetical and assuming it would have somehow done some good and they wanted to try) it is because it simply didn’t have sufficient fuel to make it happen. If we pretend that Colombia had unlimited fuel to burn (just for the sake of argument) I’d bet money NASA could figure a way to get it up nice and snug with the ISS if they wanted to.

37

Well if that were the case (Columbia had unlimited fuel) then yeah, it would be possible to send Columbia to a higher orbital plane. If they can manuver within a few feet of a few tons of spinning satellite, Im sure then can get real close to the ISS without bumping it …too hard. Not quite sure if the pilot (his first mission) is qualified for such an intricate maneuver.

Once there, they could maneuver to a sychronous orbit with the ISS for the Space staion crew to either throw a tether line or jump to the orbiter with a tether line (the other Space station people could pull him up if he missed the bay. With a tether in place they can swap suits as needed to bring 5 of the crew on board.

I would probably guess that the pilot and co-commander would remain to see if they can save the orbiter. The ISS crew can send Ox tanks to keep them going. Russia can send up more soyuz craft to get the rest down or they can wait till atlantis goes up. which may not be too soon because we might have 2 orbiters stuck up there instead of one.

38

I’m just saying - I doubt they would. Even given the (rather silly) assumption of infinite fuel. I mean, we’re making a lot of assumptions here, so this “hypothetical” is getting pretty bloody silly.

39

Yes, while certainly understandable, it is pretty silly. I was going to post this as a response, but started another thread instead…

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=160539

40

A question I have not seen addressed. Since Columbia was not carrying an airlock or docking module, would they not have to de-pressurize the entire crew cabin to transfer the crew? In that case all seven must already be in suits to make any transfer(Atlantis could bring up EVA suits but how does Columbia put them on in a airless cabin?). I doubt they can open the crew hatch in orbit and reseal the cabin.