How Columbia's crew might have been rescued

[OfftheRails]

In 2003, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board's report included an appendix on what steps might have been taken if NASA had been aware that the orbiter's heatshield was damaged. It would have been a hell of a job: preparing Atlantis for launch in about a twentieth of the normal time, shutting down Columbia's systems much like Apollo 13, training a flight crew for a minimum nine hours' stationkeeping, working out the logistics of transferring seven people from one shuttle to the other, and finally working out how to re-enter with eleven astronauts spread between seven seats.

And all this while Columbia's crew were beginning to show early signs of CO2 poisoning, after twenty days of freezing cold, crap food and abject terror.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2014...at-might-have-saved-space-shuttle-columbia/1/

Fascinating article; highly recommended reading for @Dirty-Lex among others.

 

[cplmac]

I still don't understand how the ISS wasn't an option.

 

[RainMotorsports]

I still don't understand how the ISS wasn't an option.

They had no way to dock. Docking equipment is not standard issue for the shuttle. If the mission does not call for it, its way too heavy to launch with for no reason. The only option would have been 1 person at a time and having the fuel and equipment to pull it off is pretty questionable.

 

[OfftheRails]

I still don't understand how the ISS wasn't an option.

Couldn't reach it. The shuttle carried enough fuel to get into orbit and not much else. Changing orbital inclination is expensive. If the shuttle's orbit wasn't extremely similar to the ISS (and it wasn't) then it might as well have tried to reach the moon. By comparison, the amount of fuel required to get back to Earth was negligible; the orbiter only had to slow down enough to intersect the atmosphere and physics would do the rest.

Post-Columbia flights always launched into a 56 degree inclined orbit to match the ISS, enabling a rendezvous in an emergency. For the final Hubble flight, a whole 'nother shuttle was standing by just in case.