NASA wasn't ready to rescue astronauts

I'm sure you are just as tired of hearing about the space shuttle disaster as I am. I think the TV media displayed shamefully bad taste on that fateful morning.

They were ghouls, continually running pictures of the Columbia breaking up. What I'm going to talk about today is how the deaths of our astronauts could have been prevented had NASA been prepared for such a failure.

Those of you who have been reading my columns over the years know I am a former aerospace engineer and am a pilot. And you who remember my columns on the French Concorde accident a couple of years ago know that what I predicted as the probable cause of that accident was eventually confirmed.

And what I predicted to be the fix, and the future of Concorde as a viable supersonic passenger carrier, has also been verified. I mention this only to reestablish my credibility before commenting further on the space shuttle program.

Perhaps this will surface now that the shuttle heat shield tiles are suspect, but during the early stages of the program Aviation Week, the industry bible, published an article claiming that a better material than tiles had been developed for the heat shield.

Why, then wasn't it used? Because the program was already too far downstream for a major redesign. And NASA couldn't live with such a delay because of the politics of its budget.

But this isn't unusual in high-tech engineering. No aircraft flying today incorporates the latest thinking or the newest systems. An aircraft making its maiden flight today is already two years obsolete and will be continually retrofitted. The odds are you will now see a retrofit program replacing the tiles.

Now, what I'm about to say has no bearing on whether or not the tiles, or the absence of them, turn out to be culprit. Where I'm coming from is that the astronauts' lives could have been saved, in spite of missing or faulty tiles, had a rescue plan been in place. NASA screwed up royally!

Pilots in command of civilian and military aircraft have the final word in emergencies and can override FAA instructions in the interest of safety. Of course, they have to justify their actions later in a hearing.

Perhaps the lines of final authority are different in a space-aircraft but I believe the shuttle pilot should have been advised of possible serious damage to the underside of his left wing. And then he would have had the option of calling for a space-walk inspection.

In fact, future shuttle launches should require space-walk damage inspections as standard procedure before performing any other task.

Let's pretend that the Columbia mission commander performed such an inspection and found severe tile damage to the underside of the left wing root. What then? After discussing it with mission control's structural specialists, it could have been determined whether or not a safe reentry could be made.

Let us now assume that the diagnosis indicated that reentry was not possible. What would have been the next step? Probably nothing, because NASA wasn't ready.

Here is where I am convinced that NASA has always been negligent in its execution of space shuttle missions. For every shuttle mission there should have been a back-up space shuttle sitting on another launch pad ready to go except for fueling. The sole purpose of this back-up shuttle would be to rescue astronauts who are stranded.

In this scenario, had a Columbia astronaut performed the space walk visual inspection before doing anything else and found severe damage, he could have called for rescue, the crew performing mission experiments while waiting.

The Columbia should have had enough oxygen and life sustaining materials to easily last until the back-up shuttle could have been fueled and launched. The back-up shuttle would only require two pilots whose mission would be to establish a close enough proximity orbit to Columbia to facilitate a short space walk for Columbia's astronauts to change shuttles.

Then the back-up shuttle would return to earth leaving the Columbia to orbit, during which time a far-out salvage plan might be devised to launch a later shuttle, equipped with tools and materials to patch the heat shield tiles, and then bring Columbia home again.

Never underestimate engineering when the chips are down. We can no longer afford to fund all of NASA's activities. It is time to scale back its programs and fund only the most vital ones to assure ongoing safety upgrades.

By the way, if you were to ask NASA why it hasn't implemented a back-up rescue program as I've outlined here, it wasn't because it hadn't considered it. Sadly, it was strictly a money decision.