'Dying All Tensed-Up': 30 Years Since the Troubled Secret Mission of STS-27 | Hacker News Reader

'Dying All Tensed-Up': 30 Years Since the Troubled Secret Mission of STS-27

americaspace.com

145 pointspinewurst55 comments

Somewhere in the shuttle design is a lesson about not cramming too much into the MVP. Many years ago, in some high school engineering camp, I remember a university professor who had been involved in the STS design talking about feature creep in the shuttle program in very uncomplimentary terms.

According to the prof, the shuttle as originally envisioned would have had about 1/2 the cargo volume, and less throw weight, but in return a higher orbit at engine cut-off, much better serviceability, and a simpler design. In order to get the support of the military, the cargo requirement was pushed to what was just-barely-heroically-possible engineering in order to launch the military satellites desired by the spooks.

This decision compromised the program in every way imaginable. The schedule stretched out. The launch-pad weight ballooned, forcing the solid booster design into barely-possible territory. The original goal of "recycle for weekly launches" became a pipe dream. The re-entry heat shield design became very complex. The unit cost ballooned. The cost per launch ballooned.

The right answer all along would have been to tell the spooks: "No, damn it, design satellites that fit the payload bay or take a hike." The spooks would have had many years to refine and compact ever-better satellites. We paid a high price for poor program management decisions at the top.

The lesson I take out of it: As engineers, we need to think about risk budget at all times. Pushing the envelope on something is probably necessary to beat the competition. Pushing the envelope on everything is poor risk management. As an engineering manager, be very intentional about where risk is allowed. Concentrate your management efforts on de-risking the risky, and delegate the low-risk to clear your mind for managing the unpredictable.

I will admit that I have not always done that, and have collected the scars that I deserved.

You have to have a lot of power to do that. In most cases you'll just be removed.

In the end, feature de-creep turned out to be a bigger safety problem than feature creep. The early STS design proposals called for a titanium airframe which could have withstood reentry temperatures. But to reduce costs and speed up manufacturing they switched to an aluminum airframe covered with ceramic tiles. Those tiles were fragile, leading to one crash and several near misses (like this article).

https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4221/ch8.htm

Also the performance of spy satellites is dictated by optics. In order to get sharper images you need larger lenses. That's just physics. Smaller will always be worse.

Regarding the feature creep Pentagon Wars come to mind :)

Another answer is modularity of design, like Falcon Heavy. Though granted it is much harder for a spaceplane concept and may as well be an ultimate feature creep.

Launching a (classifies) satellite into a useful-for-spying orbit is one level of secret, although clearly something which could be done with unmanned rockets (as was done later).

One of the super secret missions they used to sell the shuttle program was capture (and theft, or tampering and replacement?) of foreign in-orbit satellites. There isn’t any solid evidence this was ever done, but it was a unique capability of something like the shuttle.

>> One of the super secret missions they used to sell the shuttle program was capture

No. That is the easier-to-swallow purpose. The logistics of capturing an enemy sat, one that might defend itself by changing orbit, are ridiculous.

What shuttle could do was bring friendly sats back. Why? Well it would have to be something that you couldn't let burn up in the atmosphere but neverthless needed to come home. Shuttle could have serviced space-based nuclear weaponry, the one type of friendly sat that couldn't be destroyed in the atmosphere or sent into a disposal orbit.

A fleet of nuclear-tipped reentry vehicles in orbit would have required constant up-and-down servicing. Russia saw the US biulding a vehicle capable of servicing such a fleet. Fearing a capability gap, Russia developed Buran. But when various treaties and understandings mooted space-nuke concepts, Buran lost its purpose and was parked. Shuttle continued.

Other aspects of shuttle also came from never-flew military missions. Those giant wings were to permit a polar-orbit overflight of russia with return to the launch center, a cross-range capability. It didn't need such massive wings.

>A fleet of nuclear-tipped reentry vehicles in orbit would have required constant up-and-down servicing.

Nukes in orbit was long out of question by the treaties. The Star Wars was all the rage (SDI). It is those satellites and their components which were going to be huge and be nuclear powered and thus couldn't be just burned in the atmosphere.

Not just nukes. There were some tentative plans to use the shuttle with recon satellites. Either for on-orbit replacement of consumables (putting in more film), or returning a satellite to earth for reservicing and eventual reuse (which could also make getting the film back to earth much simpler)

True. Shuttle was begun long before digital imaging and asymmetric encryption did away with film. Of course shuttle could also be used as a recon platform itself, one that could alter orbit radically as needed to conduct surprise overflights. The MOL/Almaz programs, manned spying stations, were still in the back of people's minds.

Pre-digital, the film from spy satellites was parachuted to earth and captured mid-air by recovery aircraft.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-air_retrieval

This is probably the most coherent reason for Shuttle existence. Thank you!

> Launching a (classifies) satellite into a useful-for-spying orbit is one level of secret, although clearly something which could be done with unmanned rockets (as was done later).

(As was done before, during and after the space shuttle program.)

In this case the story says the satellite required ad hoc human intervention in order to become operational which does support the idea that the STS was needed.

However given the amount of propaganda around both the STS program itself and of course the NRO and other intelligence agencies it's difficult to know what to believe, and I pretty much agree with the opinion (yours too I believe) that the STS was a significant drag on the US space program.

(What's the chance that purpose built "satellite retrievers" might already have been constructed? The current crop of micro satellites would be seemingly easier to retrieve and return to earth using a "corona-style" mechanism (drop and collect in air via aircraft) -- something impossible with the older refrigerator- or bus-sized ones.

> What's the chance that purpose built "satellite retrievers" might already have been constructed?

If you google "inspector satellite" you'll see that in current events, people are questioning whether they've been deployed.

Isn't that exactly what people think the X-37 is up to?

https://www.airspacemag.com/space/spaceplane-x-37-180957777/

I think the only thing that we know it's doing up there is what the Air Force does best, burning money.

> One of the super secret missions they used to sell the shuttle program was capture

That would work once. After you successfully capture one satellite your adversary would add a special explosive payload to a subsequent satellite and then "leak" a salacious detail about said satellite to make you attempt to capture it. One shuttle braking up in orbit later and you'd never use it for that purpose again.

Hmm.. if only you had a tiny unmanned shuttle...

I'm pretty certain any such mission would have leaked by now. At least the fact of it, if not the details.

On-orbit servicing of friendly recon sats was considered pretty seriously, though: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3390/1

You’d think the victims would have complained if it had ever happened, too. You can’t hide something like the Shuttle in orbit, so it’ll be clear to anyone who cares to observe.

Soviets would not cry that someone took one of their reconnaissance satellites. That would just underscore how far behind they are in space race/star wars.

I can't believe I'm about to defend the Russians here but... Not only were they first to pretty much everything space-related, they're the only country still flying manned missions. How are you defining "behind", exactly?

Don't forget the Chinese program.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhou_program#Missions_laun...

From what I understand the Soviet's Buran shuttle was far ahead of our own.

It wasn't ahead, but on the contrary it was behind.

They didn't managed to add engines to their copy and US launcher had reusable parts, but "Energiya" was strictly for single-time use.

Are you being sarcastic? It completed one unmanned flight in 1988, that's all.

It was pretty sophisticated. The fact that it was able to make an unmanned flight is an example of something that was superior to the Shuttle. It just didn’t get the resources needed to keep flying, which is a separate issue.

Not to argue that the Buran was "far ahead" of the Space Shuttle, but reasons for not continuing to use the Buran include many others beyond it not being advanced enough. Whether or not it was useful or economical to continue using it are also legitimate (and probably more likely) reasons for it to have been discontinued regardless of its technological achievements. One could imagine the Soviet Union wanting to continue flights even if it weren't more advanced if it were otherwise reasonable to do so. (And that also ignores internal politics.)

The sophistication was in realizing the entire design is pointless and abandoning it early.

I don't think the soviets were behind, and in fact they were far ahead in some capabilities (e.g. heavy launch). The program has suffered from neglect since the end of communism though, while the US has made some progress.

And it isn't like the US program hasn't suffered from neglect either. The best thing for US space efforts, both orbital and not, has been the end of STS.

Not to mention that being ahead or behind has nothing to do with whether someone could steal one of your satellites. Avoiding it is pretty easy: put a small bomb on your satellite, rigged to go off if it detects tampering. A couple of pounds would be plenty, spacecraft are fragile. I don't think anyone ever did this, since this wasn't a serious threat.

If they are putting your sat in an enclosed area, you don’t even need to do that, just vent your hypergolic fuel, 1 part out each side of the sat.

You then claim that they must have damaged a fuel line when they touched the satellite.

Also, "accidental" damage is far easier to explain than putting munitions in orbit coughOuter Space Treatycough

Why even bother going to the great expense and danger of capturing someone else's satellite? Surely it's relatively easy to determine its capabilities by looking at the data being transmitted?

Might be hard to intercept those data. They are likely encrypted. Plus you may want to learn about their technical capabilities.

>I'm pretty certain any such mission would have leaked by now. At least the fact of it, if not the details.

How do you know it hasn't? For example, it would seem to be within the capbilities of the rumored Blackstar:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstar_(spacecraft)

A couple of thoughts.

> Flight controllers were convinced from the grainy images that the damage was not severe and that the crew were mistakenly seeing damage in conditions of poor lighting.

I can't help but wonder if they had to say that because there was no real way to either fix the shuttle or retrieve the astronauts.

> If the heat shield was damaged, it could spell disaster during the fiery return to Earth and Gibson’s was instructed to use RMS cameras to acquire imagery.

Why wasn't this SOP until after we lost another shuttle crew?

Supposedly (I can't find a reliable source), Neil Armstrong was once asked what he would have done with his final hours on the moon if the ascent engine had failed and they had been stranded. His response was that he'd have spent his final hours trying to fix the engine.

The point is that there's always something to try, even if it's improbable. Pilots are told to fly as far into the crash as possible, because it never helps to give up, and there might still be something you can do.

It's possible that they chose to say that because they thought there was no way to save the astronauts, but they definitely did not have to. And if that's really how it was, they definitely shouldn't have.

Supposedly NASA was aware of the tile damage to Columbia before re-entry in 2003, but purposefully didn't tell the astronauts because they believed there was indeed no way to fix it; the Shuttle's TPS tiles are right on the bleeding edge of being capable of protecting the craft, just barely thick enough to do their job (thin to save weight) and completely unable to resist impacts. Supposedly the philosophy was such that NASA management would rather the astronauts be completely oblivious to the impending failure during re-entry, carry out a successful mission, and thus experience only a short period of pure horror during re-entry, as opposed to informing them there was nothing to be done and that re-entry would kill them.

I have never understood NASA management. It's been responsible for both Shuttle disasters (pushing Challenger to launch despite unsuitable weather). NASA demonstrated what I think is humanity's finest engineering-your-way-out-of-a-problem with Apollo 13, which couldn't benefit from satellite imaging, robot arms or other inventions since, but they seem pretty complacent after that.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaste...

> Pity they didn’t learn the lesson and maybe Columbia in 2003 could have been saved. But again, mission controllers and engineers ignored the information as “insignificant".

That was in the comments. That is the best part of the article. We have a long road to go about learning from things that worked ok by pure luck. But, as usual, we barely learn from mistakes...

I don't think any engineers deemed any available information about Columbia as "insignificant", not that there was very much information to go on due to lax execution by camera tracker teams. Management on the other hand was... not effective.

I think that's really the crux of your statement. Humans seem to be terrible at working together in large organizations, or at least running them. Organizations seem to learn from mistakes only temporarily, or at all (as you pointed out). Consider the self-driving car group at Uber as a recent example.

Yes, and I agree with you. In my experience, even using some kind of protocol to prioritize which problem should be taken care first, it's easy to miss really important things because someone thought that "time to repair" should give the same score as "severity of consequences", and then we begin to fix things that are "easy and fast", not that are "relevant"

"But, as usual, we barely learn from mistakes... "

As in, for example, public warnings by countless actual hackers back in the 80s and 90s about how vulnerable most US systems were. (For which, in return, they were persecuted and prosecuted. With no apologies as said warnings came to deserved fruition.)

Which should definitely make one worry about our ability to produce self-driving cars that are safe[0].

[0] Yes, safe is relative. Are they safer than humans is one measure. But should we stop there? No. Can we truly even get there? ...

"One tile on the shuttle's belly near the nose was completely missing and the underlying metal - a thick mounting plate that helped anchor an antenna - was partially melted. In a slightly different location, the missing tile could have resulted in a catastrophic burn through."

https://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts119/090327sts27/

> During their training, they earned the nickname “Swine Flight” from the astronaut office secretaries, and were even given novelty pigs’ snouts, as a result of Gibson’s penchant for making animal-like snorts whenever attractive women were in the vicinity.

Gross. I'm glad culture, as well as technology, has evolved since the 80's.

It has, but let's not confuse that with it being good now. A lot of this sort of thing still goes on at a lot of very high profile places. I've personally seen it happen--and worse!

I am wondering why the images of the damage had to be encrypted - what sort of secret about the mission could they reveal? My only guess, which I don't find very convincing, is that it would reveal some modification that had been made to the robot arm, or its camera, for the purpose of the mission.

I suspect all of the comms were encrypted.

I had not thought of that, but there are a couple of quotes that suggest that clear images were technically an option[1]:

Shuttle Commander Gibson: "So in other words, the resolution on the encrypted video was that bad that they based a conclusion on it that was in gross error. ... If I had said hey, I think this is important enough for us to break the encryption and send you guys clear video, oh, it would have been pandemonium down there at DOD. But in hindsight, oh man, that's what we should have done."

Ascent-Entry Flight Director Wayne Hale: "We were struggling in those days to try to maintain the security classification, so on and so forth... When the crew reported they saw this stuff, we had a long negotiation as I recall with the customer to say well, can we look at the TV? Because we weren't supposed to see any TV from on orbit. (They said) absolutely not. Could we look at the bottom side of the shuttle? That was the agreement, that we could, but we used this special slow-scan TV. And it was grainy."

So it looks like a case of "the rules are the rules, period."

[1] https://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts119/090327sts27/

SOP for a Mil mission. Photos could have revealed info on the payload.

Note the benefit of having a shuttle - the ability to fix the satellite after launching. Too bad the shuttle design (attached to the tank etc) is not ideal.

I don't think one needs a shuttle for that.

I wonder what kind of payload had to be deployed with the shuttle rather than an unmanned rocket...

It was almost certainly a matter of policy (pre-STS-51L, there was still quite a strong push towards the shuttle taking over all US launches) rather than strict necessity. Some flights (STS-41D, for instance) launched civilian comsats which surely can't have had any terribly exotic requirements.

It was the first of the Lacrosse satellites; the remainder were launched on the Titan IV, though the first launch of that wasn't until a year later.

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