A bold plan that could save the Columbia shuttle. Part 2
The first part you can read here .
STS-107 flight crew specialists Laurel B. Clark, Rick D. Husband and Kalpan Chaula rest in their sleeping places on the middle deck. Source: NASA / WikiMedia Commons
“A power outage would leave in operation only the most basic modules of vessel control, life support and communication.”
- From Appendix D.13 of the report of the Commission for the investigation of the crash of the shuttle Columbia
')
As long as the work on earth would go on in a regime of controlled madness, on Columbia time would stretch out and run slowly and poorly. In the future, the team could wait for some short flash of activity, if they had to make a sortie to confirm the damage caused to the left wing of the shuttle. In addition, they would have to change the position of the ship, putting it upside down, because in such a state the gravity acting on the tail of the ship would help save fuel. However, after that, the team in distress could do almost nothing but wait and try not to move or breathe more than necessary.
The team would not even have the opportunity to watch television programs on how the rescue operation is proceeding, since the ship would go into a strictly limited use of energy to save its reserves. Appendix D.13 contains a description of which systems needed to be turned off and among them are “all cameras, their heaters, TV monitors and video equipment.”
Often the question is whether Columbia had the opportunity to dock with the ISS, which could share free reserves. There are a huge number of reasons why this was impossible, but the most defining of them boil down to simple physics: “Columbia” would have to perform a maneuver, which in the terminology of celestial mechanics is called “changing the orbit inclination”, directing the thrust of the engines perpendicular to the line of its orbit, to achieve an inclination equal to the inclination of the orbit of the ISS. This change requires a tremendous amount of energy, in some cases even more than is required to launch the space ship itself. Appendix D.13 excludes this possibility of convergence with the ISS in just two sentences:
“It was impossible to bring the 39-degree inclination of the Columbia orbit to the inclination of the ISS at 51.6 degrees, since this would require a translational resource of 12,600 ft / s. Columbia had only 448 feet / sec. ”
The team would enter a long game, carefully saving resources for a sharp awakening, which should have happened at the very end of the mission. As noted earlier, the very first in the list of consumed resources were carbon dioxide filters, so rest and sleep would be the main goals of the team. Columbia would have been in orbit for so long that during its quiet exile, the crew would have seen the Sun rise more than three hundred times, watching it rise from the edge of our planet.
How long would the time be for them? How many times could you play cards, how many jokes or stories to tell? How many times would they scroll through a planned rescue operation in the mind, sitting in their bed, smelling bad, unable to take a bath, among six equally smelling and scared people, counting each of 30,000 endless minutes?
These would be more than 20 days of endless and painful drift.
"The emergence of a new threat to the ship being sent and its crew would play a significant role in the decision-making process on its launch."
- From Appendix D.13 of the report of the Commission for the investigation of the crash of the shuttle Columbia
Appendix D.13 is written on the assumption that the damage inflicted on Colombia would have been detected on time, and appropriate measures were taken. However, this is only one of two assumptions underlying the rescue mission. The second assumption has a number of very important conditions of its own. Given that Columbia was disabled by a blow of foam, NASA would have to voluntarily agree to subject Atlantis to the same risk.
An approximate snapshot of the left ramp attachment point (a piece of foam) that flew off during the STS-107 flight launch. Source: NASA / CAIB Report, Appendix D.13
A terrible question that begs itself: could NASA, in the short time it had had, do anything to protect Atlantis from the same blow from the wreckage? Definitely not.
A piece of foam that broke away from the Columbia’s external fuel tank was part of the design, which is called the left two-leg ramp, one of two such parts made by hand and adjacent to the huge two-leg support that secures the nose of the shuttle to the front of the external tank . These ramps are formed by spraying an orange thermal insulating material BX-250 onto fasteners that connect the biped support to an external fuel tank. He is allowed to dry, then grinded to give it a wedge shape that covers these mounts. Together with a layer of ablative material applied over the anchorages, these foam ramps protect the joints from high temperatures during start-up, and also give them a streamlined shape.
As it turned out, the supports had already broken six times before this flight.
Increase / Number of damage on the surface of the shuttle with a diameter of more than one inch for flights from STS-6 to STS-113.
Cases in which the loss of a foam ramp was recorded are marked with a red triangle. Source: NASA / CAIB Report, Appendix D.13
The essential part of the CAIB report is devoted to discussing the features of thermal insulation of the external fuel tank. It was found out from what material it is made, how this material behaves, and how often foam broke off the tank and hit the ships before. From the report it becomes quite clear that the blow of foam was not a rare occurrence. Previously, this was a common event, which in this particular case occurred at the most appropriate (inappropriate) time to cause catastrophic damage to one of those few parts of the shuttle that did not have any safety factor.
The Atlantis rescue mission would face the same vulnerability. It would fly with a pre-prepared fuel tank, and the information from the report clearly indicates that, in such a scenario, the verification procedure will not be extended to carry out any assessment of the condition or repair of the tank used.
And this is another reason why the team would consist of no more than four astronauts: it was necessary to reduce the number of people who would be at risk.
The criterion for the success of the operation: the return of the rescue ship ("Atlantis") and both teams intact and intact.
- From Appendix D.13 of the report of the Commission for the investigation of the crash of the shuttle Columbia
The Atlantis would have three windows for the start and flight to Columbia: the first at 23:09 Central Eastern Time on February 9 (on the 25th day of the flight), the second at 22:40 on the next day, and the last in a day after the first at 22:05. The Columbia was supposed to prepare to meet its companion ship three days before the first window. Crew members, likely to suffer from carbon dioxide poisoning, would restart the shuttle systems so that their work would be enough for a small change in the height of the elliptical orbit, which would provide Atlantis with a larger set of options for rendezvous.
Columbia on Launch Pad 39A. The upper circle denotes the left ramp at the upper attachment point, the lower circle the heat shield of carbon-carbon ceramic material. Source: NASA / CAIB Report, Appendix D.13
The weather is one of the most important uncertainties during the planning of shuttle launches, not only for the launch pad, but also for many places around the world that need to be prepared for an emergency landing if the ship needs to stop its attempt to reach orbit. The CAIB report shows that in this respect, luck would have been on the NASA side: a review of the observed weather conditions on the estimated launch days showed that nothing happened in the earth's atmosphere that could prevent the launch.
However, much more anxiety would be caused by the fact that all three windows were open at night. Night launches would significantly reduce the ability of NASA to observe the damage from a similar collision of foam with the ship during its flight into orbit, which, all the more, did not bode well for the fact that this would be the reason for the rescue mission. That is why the Atlantis team was facing another outing after arriving at Columbia: they would carefully inspect both the wings and the ceramic lining for possible damage.
"Endeavor" starts from the site 39A for the STS-130 flight in February 2010. Source: NASA
Based on the assumption that everything will go as it should and the countdown will not be delayed, Atlantis would start on the evening of February 9, 2003. By this time, the Columbia team would have long ago set a historic record for the shuttle program: they would have spent 25 days in space, which would be 8 days longer than previous missions. The Atlantis astronauts selected for spacewalk needed to reduce their nitrogen content in the blood and be ready to put on their spacesuits as soon as possible, so they probably would have to breathe pure oxygen from the moment they got into the crew compartment in front of launch.
"Endeavor" on the approach to the ISS. The image shows a detailed view of the front flight deck, its upper windows designed to monitor the docking process and the docking assembly at the rear of the deck. Source: NASA.
"Atlantis" would go up into orbit along an arc trajectory, approaching "Colombia" using the "approach against the orbit line" method. This means that he would fly to her along an imaginary line that connects the point of the “Columbia” location and the center point of the Earth (as opposed to “approaching along the line of the orbit” when he would approach it along the line of its velocity vector, in front or behind, not top or bottom). “Colombia”, by this moment, would already be located in the space “up to the nose”, looking at the Earth with its rear part.
Source: NASA / CAIB Report, Appendix D.13
Ultimately, Atlantis would slow down to stop 6 meters from Columbia. He would have been rotated 90 degrees relative to her, looking at 3 o'clock in relation to the 12 o'clock of the older ship, so as not to let their vertical stabilizers strike each other.
"Atlantis" keeps docking with "Colombia". Source: NASA / CAIB Report, Appendix D.13
For the first time in history, two shuttles would be in orbit together and both of them would have to go through serious tests. The flight of the shuttles would be controlled both from within each of them and from the NASA Mission Control Center. In addition, at the same moment, the PMU was also to monitor the ISS flight. This would require multitasking at the limit of the MCC's capabilities, both from a technical point of view and from the point of view of available human resources. Moreover, Atlantis would require constant manual control for the entire docking time, because, even at a distance of 6 meters, the laws of celestial mechanics would force two vessels to move at different speeds, which would cause them to disperse rather quickly. "Atlantis", which would be at a lower height compared to "Colombia" height, would need to constantly overtake it.
Cockpit model of the space shuttle in a special simulator CCT-2 of the NASA Space Shuttle Training Simulator Center. On the console in the middle are most of the height and movement controls that the Atlantis commander and pilot would use to fly and get close to Colombia. Source: Steven Michael
While the pilot and commander of Atlantis would have settled in the control room and replaced each other in the course of fulfilling the task of holding a permanent rendezvous, the other two crew members, who were called EV1 and EV2 in the report, would have already stood in the lock chamber space suits. After receiving the command, they would open a hatch and pull out an extension pole, with which EV2 would help EV1 (EV - extra ship - interpreter) to get to Columbia through the space between the two shuttles. Together with a pair of spacesuits for the crew of the Columbia, the rescuers would also transfer additional tanks with LiOH, in order, in the literal sense, to give them the opportunity to breathe deeply. The annex notes that the spacesuits needed to be transferred, “to set up the work of their systems and seal”, in order to preserve their water reserves, which, without a doubt, would look rather unusual.
An NASA animation frame showing two Atlantis astronauts between cargo compartments of two shuttles. The EV2 stands on a portable foot rest and moves the EV1 through the free space between the shuttles. Source: NASA / CAIB Report
Two crew members (called CM1 and CM2), no doubt suffering from mental disorder due to a long stay in such conditions, by this time would have been dressed in space suits and waited in the airlock of “Colombia” in order to help transferring things from Atlantis. EV1 would transfer the supplies to the “Columbia” lock chamber, after which it would help CM1 and CM2 to get out of it and get to Atlantis.
to be continued in the third and final part ...
STS-107 flight crew specialists Laurel B. Clark, Rick D. Husband and Kalpan Chaula rest in their sleeping places on the middle deck. Source: NASA / WikiMedia Commons
The show begins
“A power outage would leave in operation only the most basic modules of vessel control, life support and communication.”
- From Appendix D.13 of the report of the Commission for the investigation of the crash of the shuttle Columbia
')
As long as the work on earth would go on in a regime of controlled madness, on Columbia time would stretch out and run slowly and poorly. In the future, the team could wait for some short flash of activity, if they had to make a sortie to confirm the damage caused to the left wing of the shuttle. In addition, they would have to change the position of the ship, putting it upside down, because in such a state the gravity acting on the tail of the ship would help save fuel. However, after that, the team in distress could do almost nothing but wait and try not to move or breathe more than necessary.
The team would not even have the opportunity to watch television programs on how the rescue operation is proceeding, since the ship would go into a strictly limited use of energy to save its reserves. Appendix D.13 contains a description of which systems needed to be turned off and among them are “all cameras, their heaters, TV monitors and video equipment.”
Often the question is whether Columbia had the opportunity to dock with the ISS, which could share free reserves. There are a huge number of reasons why this was impossible, but the most defining of them boil down to simple physics: “Columbia” would have to perform a maneuver, which in the terminology of celestial mechanics is called “changing the orbit inclination”, directing the thrust of the engines perpendicular to the line of its orbit, to achieve an inclination equal to the inclination of the orbit of the ISS. This change requires a tremendous amount of energy, in some cases even more than is required to launch the space ship itself. Appendix D.13 excludes this possibility of convergence with the ISS in just two sentences:
“It was impossible to bring the 39-degree inclination of the Columbia orbit to the inclination of the ISS at 51.6 degrees, since this would require a translational resource of 12,600 ft / s. Columbia had only 448 feet / sec. ”
The team would enter a long game, carefully saving resources for a sharp awakening, which should have happened at the very end of the mission. As noted earlier, the very first in the list of consumed resources were carbon dioxide filters, so rest and sleep would be the main goals of the team. Columbia would have been in orbit for so long that during its quiet exile, the crew would have seen the Sun rise more than three hundred times, watching it rise from the edge of our planet.
How long would the time be for them? How many times could you play cards, how many jokes or stories to tell? How many times would they scroll through a planned rescue operation in the mind, sitting in their bed, smelling bad, unable to take a bath, among six equally smelling and scared people, counting each of 30,000 endless minutes?
These would be more than 20 days of endless and painful drift.
Russian roulette
"The emergence of a new threat to the ship being sent and its crew would play a significant role in the decision-making process on its launch."
- From Appendix D.13 of the report of the Commission for the investigation of the crash of the shuttle Columbia
Appendix D.13 is written on the assumption that the damage inflicted on Colombia would have been detected on time, and appropriate measures were taken. However, this is only one of two assumptions underlying the rescue mission. The second assumption has a number of very important conditions of its own. Given that Columbia was disabled by a blow of foam, NASA would have to voluntarily agree to subject Atlantis to the same risk.
An approximate snapshot of the left ramp attachment point (a piece of foam) that flew off during the STS-107 flight launch. Source: NASA / CAIB Report, Appendix D.13
A terrible question that begs itself: could NASA, in the short time it had had, do anything to protect Atlantis from the same blow from the wreckage? Definitely not.
A piece of foam that broke away from the Columbia’s external fuel tank was part of the design, which is called the left two-leg ramp, one of two such parts made by hand and adjacent to the huge two-leg support that secures the nose of the shuttle to the front of the external tank . These ramps are formed by spraying an orange thermal insulating material BX-250 onto fasteners that connect the biped support to an external fuel tank. He is allowed to dry, then grinded to give it a wedge shape that covers these mounts. Together with a layer of ablative material applied over the anchorages, these foam ramps protect the joints from high temperatures during start-up, and also give them a streamlined shape.
As it turned out, the supports had already broken six times before this flight.
Increase / Number of damage on the surface of the shuttle with a diameter of more than one inch for flights from STS-6 to STS-113.
Cases in which the loss of a foam ramp was recorded are marked with a red triangle. Source: NASA / CAIB Report, Appendix D.13
The essential part of the CAIB report is devoted to discussing the features of thermal insulation of the external fuel tank. It was found out from what material it is made, how this material behaves, and how often foam broke off the tank and hit the ships before. From the report it becomes quite clear that the blow of foam was not a rare occurrence. Previously, this was a common event, which in this particular case occurred at the most appropriate (inappropriate) time to cause catastrophic damage to one of those few parts of the shuttle that did not have any safety factor.
The Atlantis rescue mission would face the same vulnerability. It would fly with a pre-prepared fuel tank, and the information from the report clearly indicates that, in such a scenario, the verification procedure will not be extended to carry out any assessment of the condition or repair of the tank used.
And this is another reason why the team would consist of no more than four astronauts: it was necessary to reduce the number of people who would be at risk.
Gravity Ballet
The criterion for the success of the operation: the return of the rescue ship ("Atlantis") and both teams intact and intact.
- From Appendix D.13 of the report of the Commission for the investigation of the crash of the shuttle Columbia
The Atlantis would have three windows for the start and flight to Columbia: the first at 23:09 Central Eastern Time on February 9 (on the 25th day of the flight), the second at 22:40 on the next day, and the last in a day after the first at 22:05. The Columbia was supposed to prepare to meet its companion ship three days before the first window. Crew members, likely to suffer from carbon dioxide poisoning, would restart the shuttle systems so that their work would be enough for a small change in the height of the elliptical orbit, which would provide Atlantis with a larger set of options for rendezvous.
Columbia on Launch Pad 39A. The upper circle denotes the left ramp at the upper attachment point, the lower circle the heat shield of carbon-carbon ceramic material. Source: NASA / CAIB Report, Appendix D.13
The weather is one of the most important uncertainties during the planning of shuttle launches, not only for the launch pad, but also for many places around the world that need to be prepared for an emergency landing if the ship needs to stop its attempt to reach orbit. The CAIB report shows that in this respect, luck would have been on the NASA side: a review of the observed weather conditions on the estimated launch days showed that nothing happened in the earth's atmosphere that could prevent the launch.
However, much more anxiety would be caused by the fact that all three windows were open at night. Night launches would significantly reduce the ability of NASA to observe the damage from a similar collision of foam with the ship during its flight into orbit, which, all the more, did not bode well for the fact that this would be the reason for the rescue mission. That is why the Atlantis team was facing another outing after arriving at Columbia: they would carefully inspect both the wings and the ceramic lining for possible damage.
"Endeavor" starts from the site 39A for the STS-130 flight in February 2010. Source: NASA
Based on the assumption that everything will go as it should and the countdown will not be delayed, Atlantis would start on the evening of February 9, 2003. By this time, the Columbia team would have long ago set a historic record for the shuttle program: they would have spent 25 days in space, which would be 8 days longer than previous missions. The Atlantis astronauts selected for spacewalk needed to reduce their nitrogen content in the blood and be ready to put on their spacesuits as soon as possible, so they probably would have to breathe pure oxygen from the moment they got into the crew compartment in front of launch.
"Endeavor" on the approach to the ISS. The image shows a detailed view of the front flight deck, its upper windows designed to monitor the docking process and the docking assembly at the rear of the deck. Source: NASA.
"Atlantis" would go up into orbit along an arc trajectory, approaching "Colombia" using the "approach against the orbit line" method. This means that he would fly to her along an imaginary line that connects the point of the “Columbia” location and the center point of the Earth (as opposed to “approaching along the line of the orbit” when he would approach it along the line of its velocity vector, in front or behind, not top or bottom). “Colombia”, by this moment, would already be located in the space “up to the nose”, looking at the Earth with its rear part.
Source: NASA / CAIB Report, Appendix D.13
Ultimately, Atlantis would slow down to stop 6 meters from Columbia. He would have been rotated 90 degrees relative to her, looking at 3 o'clock in relation to the 12 o'clock of the older ship, so as not to let their vertical stabilizers strike each other.
"Atlantis" keeps docking with "Colombia". Source: NASA / CAIB Report, Appendix D.13
For the first time in history, two shuttles would be in orbit together and both of them would have to go through serious tests. The flight of the shuttles would be controlled both from within each of them and from the NASA Mission Control Center. In addition, at the same moment, the PMU was also to monitor the ISS flight. This would require multitasking at the limit of the MCC's capabilities, both from a technical point of view and from the point of view of available human resources. Moreover, Atlantis would require constant manual control for the entire docking time, because, even at a distance of 6 meters, the laws of celestial mechanics would force two vessels to move at different speeds, which would cause them to disperse rather quickly. "Atlantis", which would be at a lower height compared to "Colombia" height, would need to constantly overtake it.
Cockpit model of the space shuttle in a special simulator CCT-2 of the NASA Space Shuttle Training Simulator Center. On the console in the middle are most of the height and movement controls that the Atlantis commander and pilot would use to fly and get close to Colombia. Source: Steven Michael
While the pilot and commander of Atlantis would have settled in the control room and replaced each other in the course of fulfilling the task of holding a permanent rendezvous, the other two crew members, who were called EV1 and EV2 in the report, would have already stood in the lock chamber space suits. After receiving the command, they would open a hatch and pull out an extension pole, with which EV2 would help EV1 (EV - extra ship - interpreter) to get to Columbia through the space between the two shuttles. Together with a pair of spacesuits for the crew of the Columbia, the rescuers would also transfer additional tanks with LiOH, in order, in the literal sense, to give them the opportunity to breathe deeply. The annex notes that the spacesuits needed to be transferred, “to set up the work of their systems and seal”, in order to preserve their water reserves, which, without a doubt, would look rather unusual.
An NASA animation frame showing two Atlantis astronauts between cargo compartments of two shuttles. The EV2 stands on a portable foot rest and moves the EV1 through the free space between the shuttles. Source: NASA / CAIB Report
Two crew members (called CM1 and CM2), no doubt suffering from mental disorder due to a long stay in such conditions, by this time would have been dressed in space suits and waited in the airlock of “Colombia” in order to help transferring things from Atlantis. EV1 would transfer the supplies to the “Columbia” lock chamber, after which it would help CM1 and CM2 to get out of it and get to Atlantis.
to be continued in the third and final part ...
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/216555/
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