A bold plan that could save the Columbia shuttle. Part 1

What could be done ... Source: Lee Hutchinson / NASA / NOAA



“If we die, we want people to take it for granted. We are engaged in a risky business and we hope that if something happens to us, the program will not be delayed. Space conquest is worth risking life for its sake. ”

- Astronaut Gus Grissom, 1965



“First of all, it is important to note that the crash on the Columbia occurred during that phase of the flight, which, given the current design of the aircraft, did not give the team a chance of survival.”

- From the report of the Commission for the investigation of the crash of the shuttle "Columbia"

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On January 15, 2003, at 10:39 EST, the Columbia space shuttle was launched from the 39A space at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After just 81.7 seconds, a piece of insulating foam fell off the vessel’s orange outer tank and crashed into the oncoming edge of the left wing at a relative speed of at least 640 km / h, but Columbia continued its ascent to orbit.



NASA did not observe the punch live. Only after the shuttle reached the Earth's orbit, did NASA launch an image analysis that revealed the fact that the wing had been hit. Breaking off parts during launch occurs regularly and program managers have decided not to take an orbital survey of the state of “Colombia” and a visual assessment of the size of potential damage. Instead, a special NASA team conducted a theoretical simulation of a ship’s collision with a wreck, but could not come to any definite conclusions regarding the condition of the shuttle’s wing. The mission continued.



In fact, the strike broke at least one carbon-carbon thermal insulation panel vital for the ship, which edged the edges of the wing, resulting in a huge hole in the fragile ceramic material. Sixteen days later, when the Columbia entered the atmosphere again, the superheated plasma penetrated the internal structures of the ship through a hole in the wing and the shuttle began to disintegrate.



At the Mission Control Center in Houston, operators following the descent of Columbia began to notice interruptions in receiving telemetry data from the shuttle, after which all voice communication and information exchange with the ship was lost. Even when there was evidence that a catastrophe had occurred, the operators continued to hope that they were only observing hardware errors. In the end, at 9:12 CET, Leroy Kane, the head of the stage entry stage, gave an order that everyone was afraid to hear, and which had been heard only once, 17 years ago, when Challenger fell apart. Start: " Lock the doors ."



This meant admitting that the worst had happened: the mission had now switched to Emergency. The control center doors were closed and the operators inside began to carefully record all the information from their control consoles.



Columbia was lost and all seven members of its team were dead. NASA refers to this rarest and worst possible situation as LOCV— “Loss of Crew and Vehicle”.

Full freeze

“Colombia is lost. No survivors. ”

- President George W. Bush in his address to the nation about what happened, 2:14 pm CET, February 1, 2003.



The whole world of space flight froze - first mourning the dead, and after, trying to understand what happened. Congress placed the responsibility of the investigation on the shoulders of the Colombia Disaster Investigation Commission (which, as is customary in NASA, was given the acronym CAIB, similar in pronunciation to the name Gabe). For several months thereafter, CAIB, in the course of its investigation, infiltrated all structures of NASA and its contractual suppliers.



In my own memories of what followed the catastrophe, pictures of gloomy meetings and crazy work predominate. I then was the chief system administrator of the Boeing company in Houston, and since we supported the shuttle program, we had to search and send NASA analysts a bunch of boxes with backup tapes containing everything that happened on each of our data center servers during the mission .



In August 2003, CAIB published its final report . Along with the public disclosure of the direct cause, which consisted in hitting a piece of foam, the report contained serious criticism of decisions made before and after launch, portraying NASA as an agency led by middle management, obsessed with getting high-profile results. The excessive concentration of structures on their own goals and the specifics of reporting, without additional focus on the joint work of the units and maintaining communication between them, played at least an equally important role in the crash than did the collision with the wreckage. These accusations gave a barely audible echo, already familiar to us from the events of 17 years ago, when many of them were already voiced by the Rogers Commission , which was investigating the Challenger catastrophe.



In the end, what happened to Columbia led not only to the loss of human lives, but also the end of many careers at all levels of NASA. Some of the well-known flight program managers were transferred to other positions. The collapse of Columbia also probably caused the resignation of NASA Director Sean O'Keefe. Many people who worked on the mission, including a large number of people who work at NASA to this day, still struggle with post-traumatic stress and the blame for the survivor. All scheduled flights of shuttles were suspended and three companion ships of the Columbia, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavor, were returned to Earth.



NASA turned its gaze inside itself, and we wondered if we would now fly into space again.

Choice that was not made

“To obtain a complete picture of the events, the commission asked NASA to establish whether the STS-107 flight team had the opportunity to return safe and sound.”

- From the report of the Commission for the investigation of the crash of the shuttle "Columbia"



The above describes the events that actually happened. But let's imagine an alternative history of events for the mission “Columbia”, during which NASA quickly realized how destructive the impact of the wreck was. Was there a safe way to pick up astronauts from orbit?



At the time of writing their report, CAIB asked the same question, so they asked NASA to develop a theoretical repair and rescue plan for Columbia, “based on the assumption that wing damage during launch would have been noticed at an early stage.” an exclusive collection of documents, which appears at the end of the report as “Appendix D.13”. It takes place under the modest heading " Possible scenarios for the STS-107 flight ," but the scenario that it describes would force NASA to work at its limits, conducting the most ambitious space operation of its entire existence.



The NASA engineers responsible for the planning really had one trump card up their sleeve that made this plan possible: during the Columbia STS-107 flight, Atlantis was already preparing for the STS-114 flight, which was scheduled to launch on March 1 . While the Columbia flew into orbit, the younger shuttle was in the Training Zone No. 1 (OPF-1) at the Kennedy Space Center. Three of its main engines had already been installed, although its flight compartment and hand-arm were still missing from its cargo hold. There were still two weeks of preparatory work and bringing it to a working state, after which he had to be transported through the entire space center to a huge vertical assembly unit in order to be connected to an external fuel tank and a pair of solid-propellant launching rockets.





"Endeavor" at the stage of preparation in OPF-2. Atlantis went through the same procedures when Colombia flew on its last mission. Source: Lee Hutchinson / NASA / NOAA



And it follows that rescue in orbit was at least possible, but preparing the shuttle for flight is an incredibly complex procedure that involves millions of individual steps. In order to bring the launch of Atlantis closer, the planners needed to determine which steps in which procedures could be safely skipped without endangering the life of the rescue team.

Desperate race

“The scenarios suggested that decisions on the repair of the shuttle Columbia, or the rescue of his crew, should have been made quickly and without taking the risks into account.”

- From Appendix D.13 of the report of the Commission for the investigation of the crash of the shuttle Columbia



However, even before these decisions could be made, NASA should also have assessed the amount of time they had to prepare. According to NASA's Columbia reserves, planners understood that the most critical problem for astronauts was not a shortage of something like air or water, but the production of an excess of something else, namely carbon dioxide.



Weight is a very valuable resource for a spacecraft. For every gram of mass that needs to be pushed into orbit, you pay with fuel, adding which you also add extra weight, for which you again pay with even more fuel (this vicious circle “weight adds fuel, which adds mass, which adds fuel, which adds mass "is also called the" tyranny of the rocket equation "). Not being able to receive air from space, the ship is sent on a flight with a limited amount of air inside, which they process, returning the missing gases to its structure. The space shuttle carries with it reserves of liquid oxygen and nitrogen, which are converted into gas and mixed with air inside the crew compartment, in order to maintain a ratio of 78% nitrogen / 21% oxygen, as in the earth's atmosphere. However, the team exhales carbon dioxide, which must be removed from the air.



To do this, the air in the shuttle is filtered through tanks filled with lithium hydroxide (LiOH), which reacts with carbon dioxide molecules and forms lithium carbonate crystals (Li2CO3), thus isolating the toxic CO molecules. Each of these containers contains a certain amount of LiOH, so their use is limited in time. "Columbia" was equipped with 69 such tanks.



However, it is difficult to hold on to how long these 69 tanks could hold out, because there is very little reliable information about what level of carbon dioxide a human body can withstand under conditions of weak gravity. Standard behavior rules during a mission indicate that it should be stopped if CO2 levels exceed a partial pressure of 15 mmHg. (about two percent of the air volume in the crew compartment). The engineers planning the mission believed that they would be able to stretch the stocks of LiOH tanks on the Columbia so that the team would have 30 days of flight available, without exceeding the specified threshold. However, this would require the crew to spend every half a day a day at bedtime, rest, and in general everything that would not require high metabolic activity.





Original Image Source: NASA / CAIB Report, Appendix D.13



If the team had not been able to adhere to such low activity, then according to the assumptions of NASA aviation doctors, the increase in partial pressure to 26.6 mm. Hg Art. (about 3.5% of the air volume of the crew compartment) “would not have a long-term effect on the health of crew members.” This would allow the team to work in a more normal schedule with 8 hours of sleep and 16 hours of wakefulness, at the price of possible physiological ailments, such as headaches, fatigue and other problems associated with high levels of carbon dioxide, which would have begun to appear fairly quickly.





Original Image Source: NASA / CAIB Report, Appendix D.13



The next element after carbon dioxide filters, the most limited element in consumption is oxygen. Reserves of liquid oxygen were used not only to recreate an atmosphere suitable for breathing, but also to generate electricity in the shuttle's fuel cells (which mix oxygen and hydrogen to produce not only electricity, but drinking water). The amount of liquid oxygen on board could be stretched to the same 30 days as in the case of CO2 filters, drastically reducing the electricity consumption of the Columbia.



The three remaining foods consumed were food, water, and jet fuel. Assuming a minimum of movement on the part of the team, food and water could be stretched for a much longer time than the supply of tanks with LiOH. To save fuel, the ship would need to be positioned in space so that it would need a minimum of fuel to keep the course.



When exactly the Columbia team could put these energy and oxygen conservation measures into action depended on a short decision-making procedure. In the scenario that we are considering, we assume that NASA, on the second day of the flight (January 17), determined that the impact from the debris caused damage. It would then take another day to collect images of Columbia using “national assets,” such as ground-based telescopes, as well as other space-based sources (for example, spy satellites) controlled by USSTRATCOM .





Enlarged Source: NASA / CAIB Report, Appendix D.13



If using the obtained images were able to determine the damage, "Colombia" would immediately enter the low power consumption mode. If the images did not allow to draw a conclusion, the team would undertake an EVA (extra-vehicular activity - exit to the surface of the shuttle) to visually assess the damage to the wing and then cut off power consumption.



In any case, the third day of the flight would mark the beginning of many sleepless nights for a large number of people.

No mistakes, no alterations.

“The mission of salvation, being fully realizable, would be a test for all.”

- From the report of the Commission for the investigation of the crash of the shuttle "Columbia"



Planning to exit the shuttle would take the entire 4th day of the flight (January 19), however, the use of containers with lithium hydroxide expired on exactly 30 days of flight (February 15), regardless of what happens on Earth. Therefore, at the same time, work on accelerating the training of Atlantis was to begin at the Kennedy Space Center.



"Acceleration" is too simple a word to describe the titanic effort that would be required. Activities that usually take weeks or months should have been carried out within hours or days. Officials and workers had to start working 24 hours a day, the devices had to function continuously, it would take every hour in the day for 21 days to get Atlantis through the test and prepare it for launch.



It would be three weeks of incessant and hard round-the-clock work without the right to make a mistake or fail. The teams of the Ship Preparation Zone, the Vertical Assembly Unit, and the launch pad No. 39 should have performed correctly millions of steps and each Atlantis module would have to function perfectly for the first time during the entire flight. Otherwise, all the work would go down the drain.





Source: NASA / CAIB Report, Appendix D.13



Work was coming great. First of all, the Atlantis computers had to be reprogrammed to match the changes in the mission. Fortunately, the flight software developed for docking with the ISS as part of the STS-114 flight could be adapted for docking with Colombia, even if most of the parameters would have to be changed for this. The changes would have been downloaded to the Atlantis computers during DOLILU — the Day of Launch Input Load Update, a standard software update that the shuttle receives two hours before launch. Usually, DOLILU includes an update of the control system, which is necessary to prepare the shuttle for weather conditions on launch day, but an update we are talking about would change absolutely all flight settings. This would be the largest software update ever attempted on the launch pad.



In order to quickly complete the preparation of Atlantis, we would have to skip a number of standard checks. Just 6 days after arriving in the Ship Preparation Zone, the Atlantis was supposed to get into the Vertical Assembly Unit, around the clock preparatory work in which, could save another 1 day in order to connect it to the external fuel tank and launch vehicles as soon as possible. Only 4 days later, on January 30, on the 15th day of the flight, one of the two tracked transporters would overtake Atlantis to the 39th launch complex, where it would be placed on site A or B.





Cloudy day, tracked transporter carries "Atlantis" to launch into the flight STS-129. Source: NASA / WikiMedia Commons



As soon as the ship was on the landing, the final spurt to its launch would begin. The astronauts selected for this mission would fly without counting down rehearsal. There would be no additional checks for fuel leakage. Prior to this launch, shuttles stood at the site for 14 days. The Atlantis team would have only 11 days to prepare it for the flight.



And while the workers at Cape Canaveral were trying to get ahead of schedule at an insane pace, even more work needed to be done at the Yevgeny Space Center. Lyndon Johnson in Houston, because, among other things, "Atlantis" needed a team.

Get it right

“It was very important to have confidence that astronauts can quickly adapt to a low gravity environment.”

- From Appendix D.13 of the report of the Commission for the investigation of the crash of the shuttle Columbia



On board the Columbia there were 7 astronauts who, by the 15th day of the flight, would have completed half of their unexpectedly extended mission. This was a problem for NASA: the space shuttles were designed for 5-7 astronauts on board, and Atlantis needed its own team to go on a mission to meet with Columbia. Upon his return, he would bring with him not only the astronauts with whom he had flown, but also the rescued Colombian team, therefore, in order to minimize the number of people on board, it was necessary to determine the minimum number of people required to complete the mission.



After analyzing the situation, it was established that Atlatis would need a minimum team of 4 people. Two of them, the commander and the pilot, would be needed directly for the flight, approaching the connection and control of the vessel during docking, which NASA estimates will take at least 8-9 hours of active manual piloting (and possibly more). The other two team members would put on their spacesuits and carry out a rescue mission that NASA would have to design from scratch.



As in all other tasks related to salvation, there was also no right to mistakes or the possibility of remaking something. "Atlantis" was supposed to fly with a team of veterans who were chosen based on the astronauts ’ability to quickly adapt to low gravity conditions (there was no time to fight space disease) and to work on the surface of the shuttle and during docking. The report does not provide specific names, but it does indicate the list of 9 candidates for exit, 7 candidates for the role of commander, and 7 candidates for pilots who, according to NASA, are able to start the mission in January 2003.



The four astronauts selected for the flight on the Atlantis would face an extremely tight training schedule, as well as incredible professional and psychological stress. Deadlines meant that the two astronauts chosen directly for the rescue trip between the two space shuttles would most likely have been training almost every day for the two weeks at NASA's Hydro-Weightless Laboratory, breaking all many hours in space into small actions and procedures, repeating them, until they firmly settle in the memory. In parallel with this, the two astronauts selected for piloting the shuttle would spend this time in huge simulating simulators in the building number 9 of the Space Center. Lyndon Johnson, working through every moment of convergence, maintaining the docking and the docking itself from beginning to end.





View of the NASA Hydroneweedness Laboratory from one of the test control rooms. Source: Steven Michael



It is also safe to say that the media would have exerted their own enormous pressure, trying to shove cameras and light every corner of the rooms where the training is being conducted. "Cosmic catastrophe" and "rescue mission" would be the most rated phrases. Clear Lake in Houston and Cape Canaveral in Florida would be crowded with mobile TV stations. The emblem of the first in the history of NASA rescue missions would be the main background of both local and national television.



And while the Earth would go weeks of madness, the team of "Columbia" was waiting.



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