What a dreadful choices

[EternalOptimist]

you would get a chance to talk to your family and say goodbye.
You get a chance to go out on your feet not your knees.
you might actually have a good idea and fix just as they did in Apollo 13 and the other tiles issue.

You're right.
I am sitting here looking at my ham sandwich, thinking. tough luck piggy, I hope you had a chance to say oink to the missus

[NickFitz]

The Mail gets it wrong as usual.

From the Mail: "NASA has revealed that the Columbia crew were not told that the shuttle had been damaged and they might not survive re-entry." This is attributed to "Wayne Hale, who went on to become space shuttle program manager" writing on his blog.

On his blog: "This blog represents the personal opinions of Wayne Hale only. It does not represent the opinions of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration or Special Aerospace Services, or their clients." So NASA hasn't "revealed" anything; a retired former employee has.

They then quote Hale, quoting Jon Harpold: "If it has been damaged it's probably better not to know. I think the crew would rather not know. Don't you think it would be better for them to have a happy successful flight and die unexpectedly during entry than to stay on orbit, knowing that there was nothing to be done, until the air ran out?"

However, if you read the blog post from which they have taken that quote, it's clear that, at the time Harpold said that, the Mission Management Team were of the opinion that no damage that would lead to the destruction of the orbiter had occurred, because they were expecting such damage to be elsewhere and had reasonable certainty that it had not occurred. (Hence the title of the blog post, "Working on the Wrong Problem".)

Harpold, when he said that, was talking in the abstract, about what to do if such a situation arose; he was not talking about the specific situation Columbia was in, because that situation was not known on the ground at that time. This is completely clear from the blog post. So either the Mail's journalists are incapable of understanding plain English, or they have deliberately distorted facts for the sake of a "better" headline.

[SimonMac]

If they knew on take off there was a problem, how could they have not scrambled one of the other shuttles in the 16 days that Mission Control knew they were going to die?

[Robinho]

If they knew on take off there was a problem, how could they have not scrambled one of the other shuttles in the 16 days that Mission Control knew they were going to die?

Useless PM?

[mudskipper]

I was reading about the death of a kayaker earlier in the week, his father said "If there was a way you could wish to die then he would have wanted to die doing this". I'm sorry to say that as an ex-kayaker, getting caught in a full-flood strainer is a horrifying way to die and I'm pretty that he would not have wanted that.

But if that thought helps those left behind, so be it.

(I've never been so terrified of death during diving that I had during kayaking.)

I think the sentiment is "He died doing something he loved".

[SimonMac]

Useless PM?

Oi!

I'll have you know that thanks to our PM we went live in PROD for the first deliverable, hang on I wonder if anyone has actually told him what "he" has achieved today.

[centurian]

The Mail gets it wrong as usual

WHS. They didn't think there was a problem.

And also the official report made it clear that a rescue mission was difficult, but possible, if it had been initiated early enough - and if the crew started conserving resources at the earliest possible opportunity.

[Cliphead]

WHS. They didn't think there was a problem.

And also the official report made it clear that a rescue mission was difficult, but possible, if it had been initiated early enough - and if the crew started conserving resources at the earliest possible opportunity.

Some people in NASA suspected there was a real problem and voiced their concerns. Several scenarios were looked at and a real rescue mission or in place fix was possible but the bean counters deemed them all too expensive.

Finance killed the crew.

[NickFitz]

From Wayne Hale on Twitter:

"Sensationalist media have misunderstood some of my blog posts and now I get to try to clean up the mess. Oy vey!"

- https://twitter.com/waynehale/status/297149802481844225

[EternalOptimist]

i have been thinking about this today. and honestly, as a 'dreadful choice' , its bolks.
even if it was genuine (which is disputed), is a sh1tty choice, but only exceptional because it's a million miles from earth.
loads of people have to make dreadful choices, much closer to home.

in fact, there was something on here recently about pink shirts.

dreadful. absofckinglutely dreadful