_Live From Cape Canaveral_ - Jay Barbree [124]
After a comprehensive seven-month investigation, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, chaired by retired navy admiral Harold W. Gehman, Jr., issued a scathing report, confirming without a doubt that “the foam did it” and indicting NASA as a co-conspirator, stating that “the NASA organizational culture had as much to do with the accident as well as the foam.” The board cited eight missed opportunities to detect the problem during the flight and identified schedule pressures and communications breakdowns as contributing factors.
I had been on television for months asking blunt questions: “Why didn’t you look? Why didn’t the Mission Management Team act responsibly and identify the damage?” In fact, my questions were so pointed, lifelong associates came to me and said, “Jay, you’re losing a lot of friends. You’re unfair.” And I said, “Remember Apollo 13?”
I told the associates and our NBC viewers, let’s rewind the tape back to Columbia’s flight day three. Let’s do a little what-iffing.
Suppose after reviewing the tapes of the foam hit, the Mission Management Team accepted the recommendation of the Inter Center Photo Working Group to get more imagery. Suppose chairwoman Linda Ham had then called the Defense Department with an emergency request to use America’s spy satellites. The spy satellites’ powerful cameras would surely have revealed the damage to Columbia’s left wing. While she most likely would have had to call the White House for immediate use of the recon-satellites, President Bush surely would have responded and the Mission Management Team could have gotten pictures of Columbia’s damage. NASA would have exhausted all its resources to bring their comrades back. Flight directors and Shuttle engineers would have inventoried every item on board Columbia to determine if they had materials that could be used to plug the hole. At the same time, the Shuttle launch team would begin around-the-clock processing of the shuttle Atlantis to prepare it for the earliest possible rescue launch.
The astronauts would be directed to conserve on-board consumables such as oxygen and water, and by modifying crew activity and sleep time, carbon dioxide could be kept to acceptable levels until flight day thirty, February 15—fifteen days beyond the day they perished.
To make the repair, the crew members would hang onto a makeshift ladder from the cargo-bay door and plug the six-inch hole with heavy metal tools, small pieces of titanium, or other metals scavenged from Columbia. These heavy metals could help protect the wing structure and would be held in place for reentry by a water-filled bag that would turn to ice in the void of space, possibly restoring leading-edge geometry, preventing a turbulent airflow over the wing, and keeping the heating and burn-through levels low enough for the crew to survive reentry.
A different reentry profile could have been flown to lessen the heating on the left wing, and the astronauts would be prepared to bail out if the wing structure was predicted to fail on landing. NASA called the repair option “viable” but a high-risk long shot.
The rescue mission appeared to be the better alternative. Of course, the Mission Management Team would first have had to weigh the odds of another devastating foam hit as Atlantis roared into orbit. At that time, Atlantis was being readied for a March 1 launch.
If the decision was to “go,” working around the clock Atlantis could have been prepared for a February 10 launch without taking any shortcuts. That would provide a five-day launch window to reach Columbia’s astronauts before time ran out.
Seven commanders, seven pilots, and nine mission specialists trained in spacewalking were available. The rescue mission would have required a crew of four—a commander, a pilot, and two mission specialists.
In February, launch weather is traditionally great at the Cape, and looking back, it was beautiful for a launch