I’m laughing pretty hard over here.
Later this year, our last shuttle mission to the Hubble Space Telescope will take place. Ever since the Columbia accident, NASA has had a policy of enabling any shuttle to extend its mission by several weeks in case of serious damage to the heat shield, thus allowing another shuttle to launch and rescue the astronauts. Normally, this ‘safe haven’ takes place at the space station – however, Hubble is in a decidedly different orbit and the damaged shuttle would have no way to getting to the station to await rescue. Hence, for this mission NASA will have another shuttle ready to launch within a few weeks if a rescue is needed.
Should this happen, the two shuttles will maneuver to within a few dozen feet of one another and one shuttle will grab the other using its robotic arm. Since my division is in charge of all robotics activities, the experts on this operation sit in the offices adjacent to mine.
Today, I was asking one of these experts what would happen to the damaged shuttle once both crews were safely back on earth. He replied that it would be de-orbited over an ocean to crash far from any populated area. I asked what kinds of modifications would be needed to enable the shuttle to land on its own (surprisingly few), but he assured me that even were this possible without modifications, it would never be attempted due to the risk of flying a damaged, unmanned vehicle over a populated area.
“In fact”, he explained, “NASA’s contingency plans identify the second most catastrophic scenario as a crash landing of the shuttle into the Miami convention hall during the annual trial-lawyers convention.”
“Really?” I asked? “What’s the most catastrophic scenario?”
“If the crash happens during lunch when not all the lawyers are in the convention hall.”
:-)
