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Oh, for Columbia's crew it could have been far worse than that. There's reasonable evidence [0] that the director of NASA and ground crews knew the Columbia's

Oh, for Columbia's crew it could have been far worse than that. There's reasonable evidence [0] that the director of NASA and ground crews knew the Columbia's wing damage was bad enough to make re-entry impossible. But they had two options, tell the astronauts they were never coming home at the start of their mission, or wait until they discovered it minutes before their vehicle disintegrated. The director chose the former path, and ended up getting fired as it looked like a cover up. It was really just being compassionate. No pad abort system would have saved Columbia. But on the flip-side, while everyone is up and arms over the loss, NASA's astronauts are trained to WANT to fly. We can hem and haw and say what a tragedy, but there is a class of people who know the risks, who know the possibility of death always exists and will still pilot or crew the vehicles that we send into space. 0: http://goo.gl/vdagzb http://goo.gl/vdagzb

pja 11y ago
I wouldn’t place any trust in the Daily Mail whatsoever. Do you have a more reliable link? As far as I’m aware, NASA knew that there had been a foam / ice strike on the orbiter but had no idea how bad it was. Given those circumstances, why tell the astronauts about a theoretical risk (that turned out to be very real) ?
zipwitch 11y ago
NASA had third and fourth options as well. Have the Columbia crew patch the hole and pray while doing what little they could to reduce stress and heating on the damaged wing during re-entry, or expedite Atlantis' next launch as a rescue mission (there would have been something like a four-day margin for launching it without skipping safety checks before Columbia ran out of consumables).
- DiabloD3 11y ago
  Five days, and they could have expedited it without skipping safety checks.
knowaveragejoe 11y ago
Do you have a source besides the Daily Mail? There are other ways to get astronauts back from the ISS, if they knew about the issue ahead of time.
- mikeash 11y ago
  Columbia's last mission wasn't an ISS mission. They had a pretty limited amount of time before it became hard to breathe. There was a potential rescue option in the form of Atlantis which was already being prepped for another mission and could have been redirected to pick up the Columbia astronauts, but it would have been a big rush and would have required getting things rolling fairly rapidly after they became aware of the ice strike.
DiabloD3 11y ago
Except that is entirely bullshit. The reason everyone is up in arms, still to this day, about the Columbia "accident" is because we could have sent a second shuttle to retrieve them very easily. NASA engineers were fighting the decision for the Columbia to return because they already were assembling a plan to get them home alive. Seven astronauts died because Bush put Sean O'Keefe in as Administrator of NASA, and Sean O'Keefe decided it'd cost NASA less money to let the astronauts die instead of bringing them back alive. Sean O'Keefe personally tried to halt any work on sending Atlantis up as a rescue mission, and ended up succeeding, all in the name of budgetary concerns. He didn't give a fuck about those astronauts. And to him? It was just a revolving door. He's now working some cushy job at Airbus as their US CEO, a military contractor he made friends with when he worked for the DoD and was Secretary of the Navy (under Bush's father, the other President Bush). So, fuck him. This wasn't an accident, this was murder for profit.
- jonknee 11y ago
  > So, fuck him. This wasn't an accident, this was murder for profit. Except for the profit part? It's not like he got the Airbus job because he killed some astronauts.
  - DiabloD3 11y ago
    It pretty much is. They wanted a CEO that was a bean counter, and that's what they got. He proved on the job that he's the kind of guy that puts budget before lives.
- marvin 11y ago
  Do you have sources for this? This is the first time I hear that someone had definite knowledge of damage to the thermal protection tiles on Columbia. The review board didn't mention this, from the accounts I have skimmed through.
- deelowe 11y ago
  > sent a second shuttle to retrieve them very easily Every report I've read this, the math doesn't check out here. It takes months at a minimum to get a shuttle ready for launch and there's no proven method for accelerating that time frame or keeping people alive in the shuttle for the extended periods of time required to prep another launch. It's not like they had a second one waiting on the pad ready to go. This isn't even taking into consideration the required engineering and logistics around moving people between shuttles, which there's no procedure for. These things aren't minor details. Source: I've played kerbal space program. :-)
celticninja 11y ago
Do you mean he chose the latter?

pja 11y ago

I wouldn’t place any trust in the Daily Mail whatsoever. Do you have a more reliable link? As far as I’m aware, NASA knew that there had been a foam / ice strike on the orbiter but had no idea how bad it was. Given those circumstances, why tell the astronauts about a theoretical risk (that turned out to be very real) ?

zipwitch 11y ago

NASA had third and fourth options as well. Have the Columbia crew patch the hole and pray while doing what little they could to reduce stress and heating on the damaged wing during re-entry, or expedite Atlantis' next launch as a rescue mission (there would have been something like a four-day margin for launching it without skipping safety checks before Columbia ran out of consumables).

DiabloD3 11y ago
Five days, and they could have expedited it without skipping safety checks.

knowaveragejoe 11y ago

Do you have a source besides the Daily Mail? There are other ways to get astronauts back from the ISS, if they knew about the issue ahead of time.

mikeash 11y ago
Columbia's last mission wasn't an ISS mission. They had a pretty limited amount of time before it became hard to breathe. There was a potential rescue option in the form of Atlantis which was already being prepped for another mission and could have been redirected to pick up the Columbia astronauts, but it would have been a big rush and would have required getting things rolling fairly rapidly after they became aware of the ice strike.

DiabloD3 11y ago

Except that is entirely bullshit. The reason everyone is up in arms, still to this day, about the Columbia "accident" is because we could have sent a second shuttle to retrieve them very easily. NASA engineers were fighting the decision for the Columbia to return because they already were assembling a plan to get them home alive. Seven astronauts died because Bush put Sean O'Keefe in as Administrator of NASA, and Sean O'Keefe decided it'd cost NASA less money to let the astronauts die instead of bringing them back alive. Sean O'Keefe personally tried to halt any work on sending Atlantis up as a rescue mission, and ended up succeeding, all in the name of budgetary concerns. He didn't give a fuck about those astronauts. And to him? It was just a revolving door. He's now working some cushy job at Airbus as their US CEO, a military contractor he made friends with when he worked for the DoD and was Secretary of the Navy (under Bush's father, the other President Bush). So, fuck him. This wasn't an accident, this was murder for profit.

jonknee 11y ago
> So, fuck him. This wasn't an accident, this was murder for profit. Except for the profit part? It's not like he got the Airbus job because he killed some astronauts.
- DiabloD3 11y ago
  It pretty much is. They wanted a CEO that was a bean counter, and that's what they got. He proved on the job that he's the kind of guy that puts budget before lives.
marvin 11y ago
Do you have sources for this? This is the first time I hear that someone had definite knowledge of damage to the thermal protection tiles on Columbia. The review board didn't mention this, from the accounts I have skimmed through.
deelowe 11y ago
> sent a second shuttle to retrieve them very easily Every report I've read this, the math doesn't check out here. It takes months at a minimum to get a shuttle ready for launch and there's no proven method for accelerating that time frame or keeping people alive in the shuttle for the extended periods of time required to prep another launch. It's not like they had a second one waiting on the pad ready to go. This isn't even taking into consideration the required engineering and logistics around moving people between shuttles, which there's no procedure for. These things aren't minor details. Source: I've played kerbal space program. :-)

celticninja 11y ago

Do you mean he chose the latter?