I'll play the candid here :

When Apollo 13 experienced its incident in '70, NASA came up with a scheme
for 1) investigating the situation an 2) designing an alternate process to
bring the astronauts back to Earth safely. They've definitely showed
outstanding skills at that time, bringing an almost doomed crew safely back
to Mother Earth.

Soooo ... While I'll surely refrain to wildly speculate about what went
wrong / could have been seen / could have been done / has not been done (I
am far from having the tiniest relevant space-shuttle knowledge), I'd
venture out to say that NASA perhaps decided NOT to investigate in a little
too much haste. They probably had excellent reasons for doing so.

In a nutshell, skills are not questioned. Decision-making processes may be.

I was in a chat on the night of Saturday to Sunday (European time, about
early afternoon Texas time) with someone (a NASA insider, if not employee)
who seemed to me to have some relevant experience (if not expertise) and who
told me the trickiest part of space flight is lift-off, not re-entry. The
guy also told that NASA has mastered re-entry a long time ago and that the
trickiest re-entry ever, Apollo 13's, was handled quite smoothly and without
any other incident.

Thus, can we humbly suggest there may be a chain of causes stretching back
to lift-off that finally carried its consequences forward to re-entry ?
Whether that has something to do with the piece of "something" (insulating
foam ? ice ?) falling off onto Columbia's left wing during lift-off will be
determined by the various enquiries already in progress, IMHO.

As Wirt said, NASA will probably have narrowed the chain of causes down to a
90% certainty in a few days.

In the meantime, my feelings go toward the grieving family members and all
affected people, regardless of citizenship, etc.

Christian Lheureux
Responsable du Département Systèmes et Réseaux / Head of Systems and
Networks Department
APPIC R.H.
business partner hp invent
Tel : +33-1-69-80-97-22   /   Fax : +33-1-69-80-97-14 / e-mail :
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> -----Message d'origine-----
> De : HP-3000 Technical Roundtable [mailto:[log in to unmask]]De la
> part de Kenneth Corbin
> Envoyé : lundi 3 février 2003 09:30
> À : [log in to unmask]
> Objet : Re: Shuttle Columbia problem
>
>
> On Sunday 02 February 2003 03:53 pm, Wirt Atmar wrote:
> > Joe asks:
> > > I was very surprised to hear from the director of NASA on
> both CNN and
> > > NBC interviews - that the shuttle crew is not capable of either
> > > inspecting or repairing broken/lost tiles from the shuttle!
> > >
> > >  There was no arm on this flight for an EVA - and even if
> there were, it
> > >  cannot see the 'underbelly'.  Wouldn't it be
> possible/feasible to have
> > > at least a small remote 'fly by radio' satellight camera
> to do a simple
> > > safety survey?
> > >
> > >  If they could have inspected the vehicle - and noticed
> that it was
> > >  compromised (if it was)  - then maybe they could have
> transferred to the
> > >  space station - and been rescued from there.
> >
> > In the early 1980's, when the shuttles were new, NASA intensively
> > investigated the possibilities of providing a tile repair
> kit, but they
> > gave up on the idea. It was eventually decided that an
> astronaut's attempt
> > to stabilize himself on the surface of the spacecraft would
> cause more
> > damage to the tiles than that he was trying to repair. It's
> important to
> > remember that there's simply nothing to hold onto on the
> underside of the
> > shuttle. The risk/benefit analysis fell out wholly on the
> side of risk,
> > thus the procedure was abandoned.
> >
> > As for the possibility of an EVA, it is my understanding
> that this mission
> > did not carry with it any spacesuits, thus no one could
> leave the Columbia,
> > even if it were to rendevous with the ISS. But even more
> importantly, the
> > Columbia did not have the fuel necessary to chase down the
> ISS, given their
> > various orbital inclinations. Nor did the Columbia carry
> the necessary
> > docking collar, even if a rescue shuttle could be prepared
> in time, which
> > it could not. The only easy way home for the Columbia, under any
> > circumstance, was through the atmosphere.
> >
> > But it's important to understand that no one at NASA had
> any reason to be
> > concerned about the viability of the Columbia prior to
> re-entry. Every
> > aspect of the mission was up to that time "nominal" and
> "within mission
> > parameters."
>
> I'm not so sure.   They did have imaging of something falling
> off and hitting
> the underside of the left wing on takeoff.   The impression I
> got was that
> they were concerned but decided not to investigate further
> because there
> wasn't anything that could have been done about it anyway.
> Which I'm not
> sure I buy.   NASA has some pretty sharp people, and I think
> that if somehad
> did do some checking and discovered that there was in fact
> some significant
> damage to the heat tiles early in the machine, someone would
> have figured out
> something that could be done.   If nothing else Columbia
> could have stayed in
> orbit until their consumables ran out.  Repairing the damage
> was probably out
> of the question, but another shuttle or Russion spacecraft
> could have been
> launch to resuply the spacecraft or retreive the crew.
>
> With the benifit of 20/20 hindsight, it seems almost criminal
> not to have at
> least tried to investigate the extent of damage early in the mission.
>

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