In 2003, the space shuttle Columbia was lost when an accident at launch – noticed but not acted upon – conspired to destroy it upon re-entry. It was a great tragedy, and one that spurred NASA to develop a contingency plan, which could have saved the stricken crew. It reads like a movie script that would make Apollo 13 look like a kids movie.
The Columbia’s demise was put down to a busted tile on the shuttle’s wing, which failed to protect the ship from the intense heat generated by returning to the earth’s atmosphere from space. That tile was broken during launch.
The resulting inquiry into the Columbia explosion resulted in NASA being asked to come up with a hypothetical rescue plan that might have saved the ship. It obviously never had the chance again to put the plan into motion, but boy, if it had been, it would have been one hell of a thing.
Ars Technica has a fantastic run-through of the plan, which would have involved rushing the Atlantis through pre-flight, getting it into orbit then transferring the crew.
Sounds easy on paper, but it would have required the entire ground team to work around-the-clock shifts for weeks. And if a single pre-flight check had failed, the mission would have been lost, because Columbia only had a finite time its crew could survive in space.
It’s a very long read, but it’s very much worth it.
The audacious rescue plan that might have saved space shuttle Columbia [Ars Technica]
Comments
One response to “NASA’s Insane Plan To Save A Doomed Space Shuttle”
But… but couldn’t it have been reposted here?
I think a summed up version would have be in order.
I just read the article and it seems to me that the biggest problem with the theoretical rescue was the time it would take to prepare the second shuttle. Wouldn’t it be better to have a second shuttle on standby EVERY time they send one up? I mean they are sending people to SPACE here!
And if they don’t do that because of the astronomical cost (literally) of preparing a second shuttle; well surely, if the second shuttle is never launched because the first shuttle goes according to plan, then couldn’t they recycle most of the resources for the next mission.