Discussion The Perpetual Space Transportation System Safety Discussion Thread

[Urwumpe]

From another thread, to stop the thread-jacking there.

Later investigation showed that the options for repair or rescue could be at least attempted; there's no guaranteee that they would succeed, but then, people in such situations are capable of great feats.

:rofl:

So, kamaz, you are hoping for a miracle. As if physics would be more favorable for you, if your life depends on them.

I know that the CAIB recommended a lot afterwards, but even their claims of success had been null or nearly null. And a lot of it was pretty optimistic. A lot like you there... hoping that physics would close both eyes, if you are just praying enough.

"One additional patch to the software would have been required to change the main engine cutoff altitude to meet external tank heating constraints." (7-8 days had been assumed in the planning for that. Pretty optimistic regarding that you are not just changing a small constant in the magnetic tape, but actually the whole targeting function of the second stage guidance.)

The rescue mission idea was especially unacceptable because it could have meant two crews stranded in space, should any problem with Atlantis take place during the mission. And STS-114 had lots of foam loss later, one of those with the potential to have caused fatal damage. There was still the possibility around that workers in Michoud contributed to the foam loss by improper procedures.

Also the CAIB report assumed that the rescue mission crew would be capable of EVA during the phase of maximum space motion sickness.

But even in their own words:

"It should be noted that although each of the individual elements could be completed in a best-case scenario to allow a rescue mission to be attempted, the total risk of shortening training and preparation time is higher than the individual elements."

The whole risk assessment was full of "assumes no failures". If go fever already caused Challenger and Columbia, what do you think go fever would do to this?

 

[kamaz]

Meh.

Imagine deorbit 1 rev later and then we will talk.

 

[Urwumpe]

Meh.

Imagine deorbit 1 rev later and then we will talk.

No need to imagine that. Somebody else has already calculated that. In hindsight. After knowing what happened. I can only imagine how the decision making would have been with the same people in charge BEFORE STS-107 overheated a bit.

I have serious doubts they would have come to a different conclusion without already knowing what happened on that flight than the flight team in the needed time to decide for a rescue mission or a repair.

And even then, I doubt they would have chosen the new risks. The repair strategy could have backfired just as much as the rescue mission. When the crew still died AFTER the repair, you would be more in peril afterwards. Was the crew killed by the damage or by the repair? The CAIB board would then have likely suggested that repairing was a bad idea and you are to blame for everything. If the rescue mission got stranded in orbit after suffering the same foam strike, you would have lost 11 astronauts, two orbiters and likely terminated both STS program and ISS program that way, simply by running out of Space Shuttles.

Hindsight always has 20/20.

 

[Col_Klonk]

Maybe a solution is to mount inboard (inside the structure) cameras, and any light detection on the way up.. an abort procedure is initiated ?..
:2cents:

 

[Urwumpe]

Maybe a solution is to mount inboard (inside the structure) cameras, and any light detection on the way up.. an abort procedure is initiated ?..
:2cents:

Something similar had once been in Columbia, a rotating IR scanner had measured the temperature of the RCC during reentry. Was part of the electronics used for testing the Space Shuttle during the early missions.

 

[kamaz]

I have serious doubts they would have come to a different conclusion without already knowing what happened on that flight than the flight team in the needed time to decide for a rescue mission or a repair.

Yes, that's precisely the problem. The leadership was unable to acknowledge that it is dealing with an abnormal situation and pushed on pretending that the flight was nominal. In fact, one of the managers even actively acted to block the request for DOD imagery which would have demonstrated abnormality. This is difficult to understand unless you factor in that the organization's culture is deeply dysfunctional.

Nonetheless, what our concerns about rigor, risk, and requirements point to are a lack of
focused, consistent, leadership and management. What we observed, during the return-to-
flight effort, was that NASA leadership often did not set the proper tone, establish achievable expectations, or hold people accountable for meeting them. On many occasions, we observed weak understanding of basic program management and systems engineering principles, and abandonment of traditional processes, and a lack of rigor in execution. Many of the leaders and managers that we observed did not have a solid foundation in either the theory or practice of these basic principles. As the CAIB noted (Vol. I, p. 223, O10.12-1), “Unlike other sectors of the Federal Government and the military, NASA does not have a standard agency-wide career planning process to prepare its junior and mid-level managers for advanced roles.” In fact, NASA’s early successes are rooted in program management techniques and disciplines that few current managers in the human spaceflight arena have been willing to study. As a result, they lack the crucial ability to accurately evaluate how much or how little risk is associated with their decisions, particularly decisions to sidestep or abbreviate any given procedure or process.

The CAIB noted an air of “arrogance” within NASA that led leaders and managers to be
dismissive of the views of others, both within the organization and, especially, from outside the Agency. A less critical way to describe the phenomenon is one of “comfort” – comfort with existing beliefs, comfort with past experience, and comfort with information developed inside NASA. As an excuse for not listening, especially to criticism from outside the agency, NASA often proclaims itself to be unique. We readily admit that few organizations of any type – governmental, academic, or commercial – do the kind of work NASA does. Although the end product may be different, however, many of the processes are not different from those found in many large organizations. Whatever the source of this apparent insularity, it is inappropriate for an agency that routinely operates in a high-risk environment. The recurrence of apparently preventable accidents and the seeming unwillingness to learn should be sufficient to instill some humility to temper what often looks like arrogance. During the past two years, we have not witnessed very much of such humility.

We expected that NASA leadership would set high standards for post-Columbia work. We
expected upfront standards of validation, verification and certification. We expected rigorous and integrated risk management processes. We expected involved and insightful leadership from NASA Headquarters. We were, overall, disappointed.

There certainly are capable leaders to be found in the Space Shuttle Program and throughout NASA. In our view, though, the return-to-flight effort, when taken as a whole, was not effectively led or managed. The absence of accountability, of having managers dedicated to program management processes, and of managers being assigned to programs only after demonstrating these skills are what we believe to be the causes of the surface-level symptoms we saw so often. In particular, leadership and managerial failures to set expectations and requirements and a failure to hold people accountable; these promoted a lack of engineering rigor, discipline, and integrated risk assessment. Ultimately, this cost the program significant time and money while producing, in some areas, suspect, disappointing and/or inadequate results. Learning the lessons of these failures is important to NASA’s future.

Final Report of the Return to Flight Task Group, Annex A.2, page 8-9

 

[DaveS]

Something similar had once been in Columbia, a rotating IR scanner had measured the temperature of the RCC during reentry. Was part of the electronics used for testing the Space Shuttle during the early missions.

What you're talking about the Shuttle Infrared Leeside Temperature Sensing (SILTS) experiment. The SILTS was housed on a specially designed pod attached to the very top of the vertical stabilizer.

SILTS along with Shuttle Upper atmosphere Mass Spectrometer (SUMS) and Shuttle Entry Air Data System (SEADS) was all part of the Orbiter Experiments Program.

 

[Urwumpe]

Yes, that's precisely the problem. The leadership was unable to acknowledge that it is dealing with an abnormal situation and pushed on pretending that the flight was nominal. In fact, one of the managers even actively acted to block the request for DOD imagery which would have demonstrated abnormality. This is difficult to understand unless you factor in that the organization's culture is deeply dysfunctional.

Trust me, as one "victim" of the VW emission scandal: Any large enough organisation has the same flaws. The same ignorance and arrogance. The same "We are pretty unique in some aspects because we do things at different scales".

Right now the F-35 fighter is again in the news with its large list of deficiencies. Like the ejection seat malfunctioning already at normal weight and being 100% deadly if you are too light. Some of the people who criticized NASA in your report are likely sitting in the project office of the F-35 and do the same errors, because "errors are only done by the others".

Of course the NASA management was doing severe errors there. It did so already in the years leading to the accident.


Now the question is: Are those criticisms in hindsight justified? If NASA would have asked the DoD to provide such images to a civilian agency, would it received it in time? Before Columbia? Highly doubtful. I remember from my space debris lectures, that military systems, as capable as they are claimed to be, are practically inaccessible by civilian agencies, including NASA. Until some carefully edited and processed image is released, weeks can pass, so the true capability of the military system is never compromised to the possible enemy.

But that is also a non-Shuttle topic again.

The key question is: Could NASA have acted and decided significantly different in the situation? And I don't see it. Any proposed alternative action requires hindsight knowledge.

If you know how bad it will be, you will take the pains and try to convince the DoD to give you some images. Even if it will take days to get them. In hindsight, you know that if it just takes 9 days to get those images and if those images are of good enough quality (at more than 5 cm resolution, the damage might have been invisible), you could still decide in time on a risky repair or rescue mission, because you already know then that situation is possibly dangerous. Again - it requires the knowledge what will definitely happen if you would not choose the other way.

In hindsight, you even know that a rescue mission would have been possible in 20 days, because masterful engineers spent half a year creating a battle plan for the CAIB how it could have been done. Would you have even thought it to be risky but possible, to turn STS-114 into a rescue mission, before the CAIB experts said so? Or would you have neglected it as waste of energy and time for a small chance of LOCV?

.

---------- Post added at 06:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:05 PM ----------

What you're talking about the Shuttle Infrared Leeside Temperature Sensing (SILTS) experiment. The SILTS was housed on a specially designed pod attached to the very top of the vertical stabilizer.

SILTS along with Shuttle Upper atmosphere Mass Spectrometer (SUMS) and Shuttle Entry Air Data System (SEADS) was all part of the Orbiter Experiments Program.

No, I also talk about sensors installed inside some RCC panels, I remember a drawing of a IR scanner installed behind a wing leading edge RCC panel measuring the surface temperature of the inner wall.

Sadly can't find it in the internet right now, I wonder where it went.

 

[DaveS]

---------- Post added at 06:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:05 PM ----------



No, I also talk about sensors installed inside some RCC panels, I remember a drawing of a IR scanner installed behind a wing leading edge RCC panel measuring the surface temperature of the inner wall.

Sadly can't find it in the internet right now, I wonder where it went.

Are you sure you're not talking about the OEX thermocouples installed in the left wing of OV-102? OV-102 being the very first orbiter had extra instrumentation added to the left wing beyond the normal OI sensors that was part of the MADS. That's why it they wanted to find the OEX recorder so badly as the normal OI sensors just wasn't telling them enough. The OEX instrumentation consisted of thermocouples, strain gauges and accelerometers all installed in the left wing.

That's why the SILTS cameras imaged the left wing, so that they could compare the SILTS data to the actual sensor data. The right wing didn't have these sensors.

 

[Urwumpe]

Are you sure you're not talking about the OEX thermocouples installed in the left wing of OV-102? OV-102 being the very first orbiter had extra instrumentation added to the left wing beyond the normal OI sensors that was part of the MADS. That's why it they wanted to find the OEX recorder so badly as the normal OI sensors just wasn't telling them enough. The OEX instrumentation consisted of thermocouples, strain gauges and accelerometers all installed in the left wing.

That's why the SILTS cameras imaged the left wing, so that they could compare the SILTS data to the actual sensor data. The right wing didn't have these sensors.

AFAIR, the thermocouples had been installed at the base of the RCC panels, where they connected to the structure.

 

[Lmoy]

You guys might have read this already, but since we're starting a "Perpetual STS safety discussion" thread I think it's a good inclusion. Gregg Easterbrook's April 1980 article fairly accurately predicting the causes of both the Challenger and Columbia accidents, as well as the excessive overall cost of the program.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/8004.easterbrook-fulltext.html

 

[GLS]

You guys might have read this already, but since we're starting a "Perpetual STS safety discussion" thread I think it's a good inclusion. Gregg Easterbrook's April 1980 article fairly accurately predicting the causes of both the Challenger and Columbia accidents, as well as the excessive overall cost of the program.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/8004.easterbrook-fulltext.html

The failures, of course, are taking place on the test stand. During development, it's assumed that some engines will blow up; pushing them to the limit is part of testing. But the shuttle engines often start flaming under normal operational conditions. And then there was this embarrassing snag that made checking their reliability all but impossible. Although the engines must fire for 520 seconds dining a shuttle flight, Rockwell's test stand held only enough fuel for 300 seconds.

For a time, engine progress looked so bleak that Congress convened a panel of National Academy of Science members to decide if the motors would ever work. Just after the engineers managed to get single engines to fire properly for the full duration, for instance, they tried to fire three simultaneously, as would be required during a launch. All three blew up; acoustic vibrations from one would destroy the next.

After reading this part I think the author is not neutral as he should, and/or he doesn't know what he's talking about. *closes article tab*

 

[Urwumpe]

You guys might have read this already, but since we're starting a "Perpetual STS safety discussion" thread I think it's a good inclusion. Gregg Easterbrook's April 1980 article fairly accurately predicting the causes of both the Challenger and Columbia accidents, as well as the excessive overall cost of the program.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/8004.easterbrook-fulltext.html

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1872/1

Judging this favorable summary of his work, I would say that he worked by Nostradamus methods. The few things he got nearly right despite writing pure fiction, are celebrated by shuttle critics in hindsight and the many things he got wrong because he was did not understand R&D or how expensive the previous rockets had really been are mostly forgotten. He even invented testing failures it seems. There was never an explosion of all three engines during the MPTA program:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPTA-098

For example, he celebrates Skylab as being much cheaper - but ignores how little science Skylab actually did in its short manned existence. He did not know about multimodular space stations at all, which is quite strange for somebody claiming to doing research. He did not know about space tugs as well. His whole "research" was sensationalist, but extremely shallow and reads like it was done by reading only news articles of other journalists and official press releases.

Also he wrote all this before the first launch... even before the first FRF, which was successful.

 

[Lmoy]

I'm not by any means saying he was right about everything, but I found the points I mentioned that he wrote on interesting, as they did closely mirror the issues that eventually came up, and were widely known enough even before STS-1 to be an apparent issue to the general public. Also, good point on those engine testing failures. I do wonder where he pulled that from.

And Skylab would have been a lot more useful if the US had had a vehicle to reboost it before it reentered, no? It still had a lot of potential if it could have been maintained longer.

 

[Urwumpe]

I'm not by any means saying he was right about everything, but I found the points I mentioned that he wrote on interesting, as they did closely mirror the issues that eventually came up, and were widely known enough even before STS-1 to be an apparent issue to the general public. Also, good point on those engine testing failures. I do wonder where he pulled that from.

And Skylab would have been a lot more useful if the US had had a vehicle to reboost it before it reentered, no? It still had a lot of potential if it could have been maintained longer.

Well likely he talked about the high number of failures during engine testing, which are always high for rocket engines, but had been much higher for the Space Shuttle because of the more extreme staged combustion cycle, which was a first for the Space Shuttle - today staged combustion is pretty much state-of-the-art. Back then, NASA and Rocketdyne even needed to buy MBB patents during the SSME development, because they had not done much research in that field on their own before.

 

[kamaz]

Trust me, as one "victim" of the VW emission scandal: Any large enough organisation has the same flaws.

Adm. Hyman Rickover would like a word.

If you know how bad it will be, you will take the pains and try to convince the DoD to give you some images. Even if it will take days to get them. In hindsight, you know that if it just takes 9 days to get those images and if those images are of good enough quality (at more than 5 cm resolution, the damage might have been invisible), you could still decide in time on a risky repair or rescue mission, because you already know then that situation is possibly dangerous. Again - it requires the knowledge what will definitely happen if you would not choose the other way.

You should take into account that since there were 3 requests for DOD imagery, then apparently people closer to the business than yourself have a different opinion. Maybe it's because that this what you believe to be impossible was already done back in 1981 during STS-1?

I came across this thread (and forum) while looking into this story and thought I should register to post what I've just heard in a class I'm taking. The professor is Dr. Hans Mark, who was deputy administrator of NASA at the time, and who was previously the director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).

Upon noticing the missing tiles on the OMS in mission control (image), he used the secure telephone in mission control to call the NRO to request they photograph the shuttle with a satellite. It took approximately 12 hours to get the details worked out and return photographs, and in the meantime they tried to decide whether or not to tell the crew.

They had decided that if the images revealed damage, they would tell the crew about the damage. Ultimately mission control did tell the crew, though it wasn't clear if this was during or after the flight. Columbia was fitted with ejection seats which could be used below 40,000 ft. Keep in mind the existence of the NRO wasn't even declassified until the 1990's.

I asked Dr. Mark (HM) about the specific asset today, and the conversation went something like this (paraphrasing):

Me: … was it a KH-11?

HM: I can't tell you that.

Me: I ask because I read an article explaining it would've been hard. There were only 3-4 opportunities, each with a ~10s window, and of course motion would've needed to be compensated for.

HM: It was hard, and the images weren't great, but they were good enough. We'd done wind tunnel tests at Ames and knew we could lose 1-3 tiles. What we were looking for was more severe damage.

Of course there's no need to believe random people on the Internet but there is an orbital analysis by Ted Molczan who says that Columbia could have been imaged at <10cm resolution both in 1981 and in 2003.

But who would believe amateur satellite watchers. :lol:

Then there's this.

AAS 04-128

Space Surveillance Contributions to the STS 107 Accident Investigation

T.S. Kelso, * R.F. Morris, † G.T. DeVere, J.C. Randolph, B.R. Bowman, R.A. Racca, N.L. Ericson, and R.G. Thurston

* T.S. Kelso, Col USAF Ret, Chief Space Analysis Division, HQ AFSPC/XPY (now with Analytical Graphics, Inc., 7150 Campus Drive, Suite 260, Colorado Springs, CO 80920-6522)
† R.F. Morris, G.T. DeVere, J.C. Randolph, B.R. Bowman, R.A. Racca, and N.L. Ericson, Space Analys is Division, HQ AFSPC/XPY, 150 Vandenberg Street, Suite 1105, Peterson AFB, CO 80914-4650
‡ R.G. Thurston, 1 SPCS/DOMA, 1 NORAD Road, Suite 8300, Cheyenne Mountain AS, CO 80914-6020

On February 6, analysis by the 1st Space Control Squadron’s Space Analysis Center (1 SPCS/DOM) at Cheyenne Mountain of element sets generated from unassociated sensor observations on their off-line CAVENET computer system revealed a previously undetected object in orbit with STS 107 starting on 18 January. 1 SPCS analysts then performed a COMBO (Computation of Miss Distance Between Orbits) run on STS 107 and the object, which gave a time of closest approach at 1559Z on January 17 (Flight Day 2). 1 SPCS immediately notified the ASAC of their findings.

These analysis results are consistent with a scenario where a piece of the orbiter floated away after a series of maneuvers. Columbia had just completed a series of maneuvers on January 17, moving from tail-first to right wing-first at 1442Z and returning to tail-first orientation at 1517Z. The FD2 piece is believed to have separated between 1500Z and 1630Z. The first confirmed SSN track for the FD2 piece was at 1857Z. It was tracked by the Beale, Cape Cod, and Eglin phased-array radars and the Naval Space Surveillance (NAVSPASUR) fence until 2146Z on January 19. Best estimates are that the FD2 piece decayed from orbit between 0145Z and 0445Z on January 20. With analysis suggesting that the FD2 piece came from the shuttle, the investigation turned to trying to determine what it might have been. Determination of the ballistic coefficient put it near 0.10 m2/kg, which would imply a relatively lightweight object. The radar cross section (RCS) analysis suggested a flat object approximately 0.4 m by 0.3 m. Exact determination of the size was complicated since the wavelength of the UHF phased-array radars (~0.7 m) was close to the size of the object.

Of the two dozen candidates considered, thermal blankets and the complete RCC panel were eliminated because they did not meet the ballistic criteria. Of the remaining candidates, the most likely candidate based on the RCS criteria was an RCC wing leading edge panel fragment. The discovery and subsequent analysis of the FD2 piece was considered in NASA’s final determination of the sequence of events leading up to the Columbia tragedy.

So, there. Note that DOD needed only 5 days after the disaster to discover that something broke off the shuttle, and they were not operating under a time pressure. (I guess that the piece was found 1-2 days after they started work, before the first few days were spent setting up teams etc.) So if Wayne Hale's request for imagery went out on Day 2 as it was supposed to (ironically the same day the piece broke off) and someone on the DOD side was bright enough to include the query for radar data, then the situation would have been known by Day 7 and probably much earlier.

Whether this would have saved the crew is something that we will never know, but it pretty much disproves your claim that there was any merit in blocking requests for DOD data.

 

[Urwumpe]

:facepalm:

On February 6, analysis by the 1st Space Control Squadron’s Space Analysis Center
(1 SPCS/DOM) at Cheyenne Mountain of element sets generated from unassociated
sensor observations on their off-line CAVENET computer system revealed a previously
undetected object in orbit with STS 107 starting on 18 January. 1 SPCS analysts then
performed a COMBO (Computation of Miss Distance Between Orbits) run on STS 107
and the object, which gave a time of closest approach at 1559Z on January 17 (Flight Day
2). 1 SPCS immediately notified the ASAC of their findings.

Common practice at the time of the STS 107 mission was to rely on NASA orbit vectors
exclusively for shuttle orbit determination. Consequently, while the SSN was tasked to
actively track Columbia, no real-time analysis (differential corrections) using the data
was required. As a result, the observations on the piece of debris which had come in
during the mission were not noticed. In addition, two of the primary sensors used for
tracking Columbia—Cape Cod and Eglin—were not sending observations to 1 SPCS for
part of January 17.

That was five days after STS-107 was already resting in pieces. Not a day too late. Almost a week. They did not even know that it existed before the additional analysis revealed a weak track. What should the USAF have said on NASA request? "Let your astronauts hold their breath for a while, while we look if our radar picked something up that we did not yet tell you?"

Again, hindsight always has 20/20.

 

[kamaz]

What's so difficult here? They did not notice the debris, because they were not told to look for it. Once they started looking for it though (after the crash), it turned up pretty quickly.

Turns out that the military also snapped these pictures without being asked:

 

[Urwumpe]

What's so difficult here? They did notice the debris, because they were not told to look for it. Once they started looking for it though (after the crash), it turned up pretty quickly.

Turns out that the military also snapped these pictures without being asked:

And do you see damage there? :facepalm:

Of course, you do. You can do everything better than NASA. After NASA finished doing it.