[AR] Re: Columbia etc. (was Re: Valley Tech...)
- From: "Jorge R. Frank" <jrfrank@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2020 22:41:54 -0500
On 3/27/20 13:55, Henry Spencer wrote:
On Thu, 26 Mar 2020, ken mason wrote:
I know the official story Bill but It is common knowledge such imagery
was used in a earlier mission were tiles were dislodged from the aft
end of the orbiter, can't remember the mission but it's on record. So
it would be ludicrous that they wouldn't utilize such assets again.
Note what Bill said: yes, such imaging was done on other occasions (the
missing-tiles incident you're thinking of was probably STS-1), but this
time, the risk was thought slight and it didn't seem worth the hassles
of trying to talk the spooks into doing short-notice imaging. These
weren't *NASA* assets, remember: it meant asking for a big favor from
some difficult people.
Right. NRO doesn't re-task their birds to take pictures of shuttles for
funsies... they only do that upon specific request from NASA. And since
the CAIB report (Volume 1, Sections 2.5 and 6.3) states that NASA
managers denied the internal request, that's pretty much the end of it.
Ken may be confusing the internal request for spysat imagery with the
*ground* imagery taken from Maui (which showed nothing useful since
Columbia was pointed topside to the Earth at the time) and from New
Mexico during entry (CAIB Vol 1. Section 3.6, low res imagery which
showed excess heat on the left wing, but not processed until after the
disaster).
I also remember the chatter about preparing Atlantis for a
rescue mission... Why would such discussions of a rescue take place if
no damage wasn't plausible?
The discussions took place because some people were worried, especially
early on.
The discussions did not take place during the mission. This was an
after-the-fact exercise on whether a rescue mission would have been
feasible, requested by the CAIB (Volume 1, Section 6.4).
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