On Sunday, February 2, 2003, at 08:27 PM, XXXXX wrote:
As some friends in the U.S. space program had privately predicted, and the New York Times is today reporting, unless the problem with the Shuttle can be quickly identified and convincingly rectified to worried legislators, the International Space Station may have to be moth balled and the NASA manned space program put on hold. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/02/science/02cnd-stati.htmlYes, there are many things which could be done if a shuttle were to have been determined to have lost a lot of tiles:
I was shocked to learn Saturday that NASA had not a mechanism to adequately inspect the exterior of the shuttles for damage before the return to earth. The reasons given seem to imply that NASA's ability for EVAs was very limited and did not generally include on most flight the possibility of such examinations. Further there was no effective ground or ISS-based observation method either.
I can't imagine that it would be so difficult to construct a small, remotely-controlled, gyro stabilized, tethered probe that would be carried on all shuttle missions and could be deployed from the cargo bay to closely inspect the exterior of the craft for possible damage. Even if the shuttle could not be immediately repaired, it could be somehow moored at some part of the station and left there till a repair mission could be effected or perhaps sacrificed by a controlled burn re-entry over an unpopulated area of the earth as some satellites have already ended their days. In any case astronauts would then not need to "live-test" a possibly damaged shuttle as those on Columbia did Saturday.
-- as you say, and as incredulous observers have been saying most of today, it is bizarre that no means of looking "under the wing" has ever been developed. NASA is saying "we never developed any method of looking under the wing because we knew that damage there is unrepairable...better just to not think about it" (I'm paraphrasing their ostrich-like words)
-- at least put N -1 of the passengers on the ISS for later retrieval; the pilot could take the shuttle down and at least reduce the danger to the others
-- as you suggest, park the Shuttle at the ISS and retrieve the crew, then fix the damaged shuttle later (even doing a temporary glue job with some extra tiles has got to be better than simply shrugging and saying "We can't do anything." If nothing else, knowing a critical number of tiles have been damaged means some crew can be take off, or a different descent path taken, or maybe even a different reentry profile followed.)
-- at least don't let it come down over the central part of the U.S., where it was only luck that the debris did not kill people on the ground (Edwards is an OK substitute, as the period of maximum aerodynamic stress occurs well out over the Pacific.)
-- as you said, it is shocking that NASA is taking the official view, "Well, we didn't look too closely because there is nothing we could do anyway."
Time to clean house. Time to kill the program. Time to kill NASA. It may be necessary to hold criminal trials for the NASA officials involved. (But since the U.S. will not do this, it may be necessary....)
--Tim May
"Ben Franklin warned us that those who would trade liberty for a little bit of temporary security deserve neither. This is the path we are now racing down, with American flags fluttering."-- Tim May, on events following 9/11/2001
