The film did not confuse the two events, it showed both. The film depicted the shallowing, and had the crew perform the necessary course correction (over dramatized perhaps). But it also had the following conversation right before re-enty (quoting from memory)

Controller : Gene, they're still shallowing a bit in the reentry corridor, should we tell them.

Krantz : Is there anything we can do about it.

Controller: No

Krantz: Then they don't need to know, do they.

I believe that is what Nanoda was referring to. Does anyone know if this was fictional or actually happened. I have read the book Apollo 13, but it was several years ago.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: darrel_2000 on 2003-02-06 15:12 ]</font>

This is a very important point that I had not previously thought of. Thanks for bringing it up.

Aporetic

I think that was a bit of Hollywoodization.

There was consideration of a second course correction for the shallowing problem, but after the LM was jettisoned the shallowing stopped, and they were within the reentry corridor, so no second burn was done.

I just had a thought, though. A13 had the longest blackout period during reentry of any of the lunar missions. Could it be that the shallowing produced a longer reentry interface than was typical? (Obviously it wasn't enough to put them very far from their target point.) Or, could there have been some minor heatshield damage that increased and/or prolonged the amount of ablation and therefore extended the blackout?

Could it be that the shallowing produced a longer reentry interface than was typical?

That's exactly what happened.

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

It was just to make sure everyone was still awake...

Too, if they know the shuttle is going to break up and shower debris, presumably they'd re-enter over some unpopulated area, rather than Texas.

__________________
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

A little bit furher south and they'd come in over the water along the Gulf coast, assuming that's possible from the orbits they use. I was thinking about just that yesterday.

__________________
...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

I've enjoyed reading this thread for it's exceptional show of humanity. All of you have delivered creative, well informed ideas on how this tragedy might've been avoided. Sadly, NASA functions very much like corporate america, and what took place is essentially the only thing that could've happened.
Peace.

I'd think they would not want to come in over water if they could avoid it because that would quadruple the difficulty of recovering the pieces. As if picking up the pieces from the ground was not difficult enough. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_frown.gif[/img]


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Russ on 2003-02-07 13:29 ]</font>

Admittedly, that's a problem, but I think the highest priority would be to eliminate the possibility of any pieces landing on someone.

__________________
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

It might even be easier to recover pieces from the sea bottom. The ocean floor is mostly a big expanse of nothing. Pieces would be easy to spot by sonar, by divers, and by dredgers. Such was the case with the TWA800 crash off of Long Island. I think they recovered more than 90% of the plane in that case.

Following the path of the gulf coast would keep most of the wreckage in fairly shallow water too.

But as ToSeek said, I think the danger to the people on the ground would outweigh the cleanup considerations.

__________________
...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

I'd like to ask you to clarify your statement a bit. My concerns are as follows:

1) Most of us are speaking in a hypothetical manner about space disasters in general. It appears that your intention is to make a claim about the Columbia in particulat, rather than about NASA policy regarding predicted, inevitable, space flight disasters. Am I correct?

2) The phrase "corporate America" is an interesting one, with a colorful history on both sides of the proverbial aisle. In the case of your post, using it would seem to indicate that you consider American business to operate differently from business in other countries. In what substantive, topically-relevant ways does US business act differently than business in other countries?

3) Exactly how does NASA function "very much like corporate America?" One can certainly make this case, but one must be more specific.

Aporetic

Sorry, didn't mean to sound insensitive.
I'm only referring to the "cost" factors involved. Bill O Reilly interviewed one of the safety engineers who was fired from NASA sometime last year after he and several peers brought up various safety concerns; none of which are related to the Columbia tragedy, mind you. Apparently, NASA didn't see this as constructive criticism, but as a threat to their semi-smooth operations. More costs were involved for necessary upgrades and precautionary measures, and their budget is already tight.
Perhaps I should've said NASA is run more like a corporation than a publicly held entity. Since I'm sure capitalistic societies everywhere experience this "cutting of corners."

I pretty much agree with Jay's comments.

The other day Dittimore said that NASA's policy is and always has been to fully inform the crew. The commander is the man on the scene, he's the one making the calls from that end, you don't want to shortchange him of information. I recall this from previous discussion within the community. This is NASA's policy.

Regarding the Apollo 13 reentry, I don't know if that is accurate or Hollywood. I can see some justification in that particular case. It was very time specific. The data point in question was essentially during reentry. They couldn't do anything about it. There was no time to worry about possible messages for loved ones, etc. There wasn't really much time to even tell them about it. In that particular case, there is nothing to be lost (not even later trust) and you gain increasing the stress on the crew even more (than they already are stressed out). However, under every other circumstance I imagine, you tell the crew and involve them in the discussions and decisions.

Regarding the panic issue, the astronauts train heavily for all sorts of problems during missions. The mission control crews train heavily for problems. In fact, the teams take great pride in devising evil scenarios more complex than you would imagine on your worst day. This is precisely to prepare the crews (on orbit and ground) for the unexpected, and how to react while keeping their heads and not freezing up and/or panicking. There's a glimpse of this in Apollo 13, I think.

sacrelicious said:
Where do you get that assessment?

No. NASA policy is to fully inform the crew from the get go.

What justification that your opinion is what NASA would conclude? It is only logical from the viewpoint of treating the astronauts as children or mentally incompetent, not as if they are equal team members.

johnwitts said:
Norm Thagard (former astronaut) said on CNN that potentially they could evaluate some other flight profile that would lessen the heating by trading off. The profile is optimized between coming in to fast/steep and increasing surface temps/drag, and coming in slower and letting the time factor allow the heat to soak through the tiles. Perhaps (and this was off the cuff for him) you could find a slower profile and accept some heat soak through to the structure that would probably preclude the shuttle from ever being reused, but maybe allow the crew to survive.

I also have to wonder if the S curve profile induces asymmetric heating/drag due to the side to side motions, that alternately heat one wing and then the other. If so, a profile with a consistent attitude floating only to the strong side and protecting the damaged one might provide relief. Again, perhaps at the trade of sacrificing the orbiter for reuse.

Another thought off the top of my head - the deorbit burn is made to send them reentering on the first cycle. Would it be possible to use less of an OMS burn, and dip through the outter reaches on 2 or three orbits to slow before dropping into the atmosphere? Would that help at all, or just increase heat cycles and conserve prop but do nothing to improve the final reentry conditions? Thinking about it, I think the latter.

calliarcale, I agree. If they suspected early on the problem was too great to survive reentry, the only alternative is a rescue of some sort. Then they look at all options, including sending Atlantis and/or the resupply. Given the status, it is in the debatable category whether they could have rushed to launch or not. It was close enough that I put it in the margins, and an attempt would have been made if deemed the only solution (oops, you guys lost your left wing on ascent). It certainly would have required a lot of effort from a lot of people, not just the processing teams working all hands and overtime, but also flight profile teams, mass/cg evaluations, manifest issues, etc at JSC. It would have required a herculean effort, but no doubt everyone would have tried their hardest.

The first question is if there was an RMS grapple fixture anywhere on Spacehab or the orbiter. If so, the RMS of the rescue orbiter could grab ahold. If not, stationkeeping is the name of the game. I think I could devise some cobbled up transfer line between the two, assuming they held attitude and position. In fact, I'm almost certain they could come up with a grapple fixture attachment to carry up and attach somewhere to the Columbia sidewalls. Off the top of my head, maybe take a Gas Beam on a sidwall with a GF on it and then use the power tool to install it on Columbia. Hell, desperate measures, put the Manipulator Foot Restraint (MFR, a tool for holding the crew member on the RMS to work on Hubble) and grab Columbia's handrail by hand. Oh oh oh, take two bridge clamps, an active ORU grid on a jury-rigged adapter plate with hex probes, and an ISS work platform (can't recall precise name). The platform has a passive grid on the end. The platform goes on the end of the RMS, the bridge clamps go side by side on the bridge rail of Columbia, the adapter plate mounts the active half of the ORU grid to the sidewall, and then the passive grid on the workplatform mounts to the active half. Okay, I'm not sure about the loads. And that assumes a work platform can be found. Desperate measures, they'd pull out the ground training class III unit and fly it. The adapter plate would be the only custom hardware, and that could be cobbled up in 3 days tops. (They could do it in a day with no errors.) No time for testing, but it would be a try.

See, this is the type of effort that would go into the "ohmygod whatdowedo" scenario.

Russ, I can't disagree with summary 1 and 2, but there might be debate on whether to drop into the ocean or leave in orbit for future recovery. My fear on the latter, it takes a while to get your next orbiter launched, since you know you have a problem that needs resolving before launch is safe, and have a similar shutdown period to evaluate and solve the problem. In that time, the orbiter could fall out of the sky a la Skylab. Then you have uncontrolled reentry potentially over a populated area (LA? Mexico City? Hong Kong?). Do you really want to risk that? Versus controlled ditching into the ocean or the Mexican desert.

Incidently, one orbit later and the flight profile for Columbia would have been right over Houston. Wouldn't that have been a mess?

A.DIM said:
There are different sides to that situation. It remains to be seen what's what. As for NASA being run like a corporation, isn't that the mating call of the politician - "We should be running things like a business,"? That will likely come under strict congressional review. When it does, I wonder what will be said about the Congressional budgetary fights over the last 12 years or so regarding NASA's budget, including calls for upgrades to Shuttle systems that were not approved by Congress? Oh, sorry, politics leaking through again.

My point is we can point fingers and lay blame in a lot of directions right now. I think most of us would prefer to evaluate what the problem actually is before we fix it.