Launch on Need is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews.
Copyright © 2010 by Daniel Guiteras
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-0-615-37221-1
E-Book ISBN: 978-1-4392-8965-5
Published in the United States by T-Cell Books
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ignition!
Printed in the United States of America
Cover photo credit: NASA/Diametric Gerondidakis
In Memoriam
The Crew of Columbia, STS-107
Rick D. Husband Commander
William C. McCool Pilot
Michael P. Anderson Payload Commander
David M. Brown Mission Specialist
Kalpana Chawla Mission Specialist
Laurel Blair Salton Clark Mission Specialist
Ilan Ramon Payload Specialist
Columbia Debris Search Team
Jules F. Mier, Jr. Debris Search Pilot
Charles Krenek Debris Search Aviation Specialist
The crew members lost that morning were explorers in the finest tradition, and since then, everyone associated with the Board has felt that we were laboring in their legacy. Ours, too, was a journey of discovery: We sought to discover the conditions that produced this tragic outcome and to share those lessons in such a way that this nation’s space program will emerge stronger and more sure-footed. If those lessons are truly learned, then Columbia’s crew will have made an indelible contribution to the endeavor each one valued so greatly.
(Excerpt from the Columbia Accident Investigation Board’s Opening Statement.)
Columbia Payload Configuration for STS-107
NASA graphic, CAIB Report Vol. I, Page 31
For Lisa, Caitlyn and Emily
The three brightest stars
in my universe
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
In Memoriam
Introduction
Part I The Discovery
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Part II The Challenge
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Part III The Endeavor
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Epilogue
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Introduction
ON THE MORNING of Feb. 1, 2003, Space Shuttle Columbia’s international crew of seven astronauts, having spent 16 highly productive days in space, were finally ready to come home. So, to begin their one-hour journey from orbit to Earth, Columbia’s commander and pilot prepared the reentry software and positioned Columbia for a de-orbit burn. Then, at 8:15 A.M. E.S.T. during Columbia’s 255th orbit, they executed a burn lasting precisely two minutes and 38 seconds. The crew was set to touch down at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 9:15 A.M. E.S.T.
Engineers and managers at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Mission Control were monitoring what seemed like a typical reentry, when suddenly Columbia’s left wing sensors began to fail. First, four hydraulic sensors in the left wing failed; then, five minutes later, both left main landing-gear tires lost pressure. Seventeen seconds later at 8:59:32 A.M. E.S.T., the final transmission from the crew was heard. The crew and space plane were lost. Columbia had been just 16 minutes from home.
Less than two hours after Mission Control lost contact with Columbia, NASA officials formed the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. The Board’s mission was to identify the physical and organizational causes of the accident. It spent more than six months analyzing Columbia’s flight data, conducting interviews of key NASA personnel and space shuttle contractors, and reviewing communications between NASA personnel.
The Board also enlisted the help of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which directed over 250 organizations and more than 25,000 workers on a foot search of Columbia’s debris field. The field spanned an area of over 700,000 acres from east Texas to western Louisiana. FEMA alone spent over $305 million on the search. When the search concluded, 38 percent of Columbia’s dry weight had been recovered.
In August 2003, the Board released its findings in the “Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) Report.” The report is comprehensive, covering the history of the Space Shuttle Program, the objectives of Columbia’s final mission, astronaut training, accident analysis, key e-mail communications between NASA personnel during the mission and, finally, detailed recommendations to NASA for preventing another accident. The entire CAIB report can be downloaded at no cost from the government’s dedicated CAIB Web site, caib.nasa.gov.
The CAIB report is concise, often fascinating, often technical, and frequently heartrending. It succeeds in explaining the complex interplay between NASA management and engineering staff. Despite the vast depth and breadth of the report, a few key points are worth summarizing in order to provide sufficient background to the reader about what actually happened to Columbia.
As to the physical cause of the accident the CAIB concluded this:
The loss of Columbia and its crew was a breach in the Thermal Protection System on the leading edge of the left wing. The breach was initiated by a piece of insulating foam that separated from the left bipod ramp of the External Tank and struck the wing in the vicinity of the lower half of Reinforced Carbon-Carbon panel 8 at 81.9 seconds after launch. During re-entry, this breach in the Thermal
Protection System allowed superheated air to penetrate the leading-edge insulation and progressively melt the aluminum structure of the left wing, resulting in a weakening of the structure until increasing aerodynamic forces caused loss of control, failure of the wing, and breakup of the Orbiter.
(Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report, Volume I, page 49–50)
The physical cause of the accident as defined in the above excerpt, however, tells only part of Columbia’s tragic story. As the CAIB interviewed NASA managers and studied e-mail communications between NASA engineers, it discovered that NASA managers missed eight separate opportunities during the mission to investigate warning signs of Columbia’s pending doom. The “missed opportunities” centered primarily around the engineering staff’s requests for imaging (using U.S. military ground-based and/or satellite assets) of Columbia while on orbit, and NASA management’s reluctance to follow through with those requests.
The engineers had studied Columbia’s launch films within a few hours after launch, and had correctly identified the foam strike against Columbia’s wing. What they didn’t know, however, was the extent of damage to the left wing. They suggested high-resolution imaging of Columbia’s wing could offer directed views of the area in question. They even suggested that a pair of crew members could go out on the wing to inspect for damage. But these actions didn’t occur.
The Board was particularly stunned by the inaction of NASA managers throughout Columbia’s final flight, despite the fact that these managers had recurring clues and warning signs. From the organizational causes section of the CAIB report, the Board wrote this:
Even after it was clear from the launch videos that foam had struck the Orbiter in a manner never before seen, Space Shuttle Program managers were not unduly alarmed. They could not imagine why anyone would want a photo of something that could be fixed after landing. More importantly, learned attitudes about foam strikes diminished management’s wariness of their danger. The Shuttle Program turned “the experience of failure into the memory of success.” Eighteen managers also failed to develop simple contingency plans for a re-entry emergency. They were convinced, without study, that nothing could be done about such an emergency. The intellectual curiosity and skepticism that a solid safety culture requires was almost entirely absent. Shuttle managers did not embrace safety-conscious attitudes. Instead, their attitudes were shaped and reinforced by an organization that, in this instance, was incapable of stepping back and gauging its biases. Bureaucracy and process trumped thoroughness and reason.
(Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report, Volume I, Page 181)
On Flight Day Eight, an e-mail was sent from Mission Control up to Columbia’s commander and pilot informing them of an upcoming Public Affairs Office event. Since no one aboard Columbia had any knowledge of the foam debris strike, Mission Control did not want the crew to be surprised during the media event, say, if a reporter were to ask a question about the debris strike.
Keep in mind while reading the following e-mail excerpt that, at the time this e-mail was sent, concern for Columbia was building among some engineers at NASA—so much so that a request to get imaging of Columbia by the Department of Defense had been made the previous day. Sadly, that request was made and then rescinded by the Shuttle Transportation System (STS) Mission Management Chair for STS-107, Linda Ham, all within the time span of 90 minutes.
The e-mail excerpt from Mission Control to Columbia’s commander and pilot stated:
There is one item that I would like to make you aware of for the upcoming PAO event on Blue FD 10 and for future PAO events later in the mission. This item is not even worth mentioning other than wanting to make sure that you are not surprised by it in a question from a reporter.
During ascent at approximately 80 seconds, photo analysis shows that some debris from the area of the (-)Y ET Bipod Attach Point came loose and subsequently impacted the orbiter left wing, in the area of transition from Chine to Main Wing, creating a shower of smaller particles. The impact appears to be totally on the lower surface and no particles are seen to traverse over the upper surface of the wing. Experts have reviewed the high speed photography and there is no concern for RCC or tile damage. We have seen this same phenomenon on several other flights and there is absolutely no concern for entry.
[PAO = Public Affairs Office, FD 10 = Flight Day Ten, (-)Y = left, ET = External Tank] (Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report, Volume I, page 159)
Columbia’s commander responded to the above e-mail two days later. It is clear by his response that he’d been sufficiently reassured by the tone of Mission Control’s e-mail and had absolutely no concerns.
He wrote this response:
I saw the word Chine below and thought it was “China.” I guess it’s believable that you might meet someone from China by the name of Main Wing :).
As the mission progressed, NASA engineers continued to communicate frustration and worry about the debris strike. The CAIB report gives several examples of how engineers discussed worst-case scenarios and hypothetical outcomes one could expect during reentry, depending on the location and severity of damage. The following e-mail from Robert Daugherty, a shuttle landing-gear expert, to Carlisle Campbell, a shuttle landing-gear design engineer, is an example of the level of concern some NASA engineers had during the mission. This e-mail was sent four days before Columbia was scheduled to land.
Original Message
From: Robert H. Daugherty
Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2003 12:39 PM
To: CAMPBELL, CARLISLE C., JR (JSC-ES2)
(NASA)
Subject: Tile Damage
Any more activity today on the tile damage or are people just relegated to crossing their fingers and hoping for the best?
See ya,
Bob
(CAIB Report, Volume I, page 165)
Since NASA managers and engineering staff had never studied contingencies for a damaged thermal protection system, the Board decided to assign NASA the task of creating repair and rescue scenarios for Columbia. The Board wanted to know if it would have been possible to save the crew. So the Board gave a team of NASA engineers a hypothetical problem to solve. The engineers were to assume Columbia’s wing damage had been discovered early after launch, and that a decision to repair the damage or rescue the crew would have been made immediately, without concern for the cost or risk.
Two months after the initial CAIB report was released, a technical support document entitled In-Flight Options Assessment (Volume II, Appendix D.13 of the CAIB report) was released, and it contained NASA’s answer to the Board’s hypothetical problem. The document contains several options for repairing Columbia’s wing while on orbit but, more importantly, it contains a stunningly detailed timeline for a rescue of Columbia’s crew.
Readers of the In-Flight Options Assessment document are strongly cautioned by the Board to remain cognizant that the rescue scenario in particular, while plausible, would have been extremely difficult to accomplish, that it leaves essentially no room for error, and that it makes assumptions that might not have succeeded in the real world.
You mean the astronauts could have been rescued?
It’s the first question that came to mind when I read the In-Flight Options Assessment, a question that immediately gripped my imagination and has never let go. The answer, according to NASA engineers, is that it might have been possible to save the crew. I won’t reveal how they planned to rescue the crew here, because the how serves as the backbone of this novel.
Throughout this fictionalized account of NASA’s rescue scenario, careful attention was paid to keeping references to the space shuttle’s technical specifications and capabilities accurate—the space shuttle is amazing enough on its own and needs no embellishment.
Any technical errors or omissions herein about NASA or the space shuttle are my own and are unintentional.
Out of respect to the Columbia astronauts and their families, references made to Columbia’s c
rew members in the story are made only through a generic use of astronaut designations such as commander or pilot, or by the substitution of fictitious names and characterizations.
Here’s to what might have been!
Daniel Guiteras
Part I
The Discovery
Chapter 1
Kennedy Space Center
Space Shuttle Integration Office
Columbia Flight Day 2
Friday, Jan. 17, 2003
9:47 AM EST
KEN BROWN PACED the narrow confines of his private office, his gait hobbled by chronic low back pain. He thought that if he walked a bit, coaxed a little oxygen through his aging frame, he’d catch a break. The truth? He was consumed by the haunting call of his pain pills. He’d let his once-rigid six-hour dosing schedule slip first to five hours, then four and, over the past few weeks, to just three hours. Now, still twenty minutes shy of the three-hour mark, he wrestled an unstoppable opponent. He paced faster, then suddenly broke stride, reaching desperately for his sport coat and the clear plastic bag that held his yellow tablets of hope. He quickly dry-swallowed two then fished through the left pocket of his tan khakis, working skillfully around a half-dozen Coffee Nips until he found four mint-flavored Tums.
His desk phone rang as he chewed the chalky bits of grit and worked to clear the white residue from his tongue. Caller ID showed it was Jeff Sims from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama—it was a call he needed to take. On the fourth ring he held his breath, braced himself—prepared for a spike of back pain—then reached out and snatched up the receiver, beating his voicemail by a millisecond.
“Brown.” He coughed once to clear his voice.
“Seen the hi-res films from one-oh-seven yet?”
Brown lowered himself carefully to his chair, hoping to keep the pain from leaking into his voice. “Ah… no, no I haven’t.” He winced with the turn of his chair, glanced at the clock above his office door. “I was promised films within the hour, though. Why, have you got yours already?”
Launch on Need Page 1