“You’re thinking we blow the sidehatch?” Gaines finally asked, incredulous. “Is that even possible?”
“You know it’s possible, that can’t be your question,” Pollard shot back.
“I guess what I mean is,” Gaines said, “is it a good idea?”
“That’s why we’re here. To table all ideas and solutions. Find the best way to move forward.”
Everyone in the group understood what Pollard was proposing, and what Gaines was questioning. They knew that blowing the sidehatch could very well be the way the airlock problem would ultimately get solved, but they also knew there were a mind-boggling number of items to be considered before any action could be taken.
The option to jettison the sidehatch of any orbiter was not intentionally designed; it resulted from the need to save the crew of a doomed vehicle. For the first four shuttle flights, when crew size was only two astronauts, ejection seats had provided a means of emergency escape. As crew size increased, the ejection seats were removed. The next 22 flights, including Challenger’s final flight, provided no means of escape. During the two-and-a-half-year post-Challenger accident stand-down, the remaining orbiter fleet—comprised of Columbia, Atlantis and Discovery—were retrofitted with a crew escape system. This system was designed to be used during reentry, below 30,000 feet, and was intended for use only in the event that the orbiter couldn’t make the runway.
Each crew member was equipped with an altitude-protection suit that provided emergency oxygen and included automatically operated pilot, drogue and main parachutes, with manual backup. Supplemental equipment included a seawater-activated life raft and flotation devices. Survival gear, carried in lower leg pockets, consisted of a PRC112 radio, signal mirror, chem lights, pen gun and pen gun flares, Scop/Dex motion-sickness pills, mittens, strobe light, day/night signal flare and crew member color-coded ID. The suit and related gear together weighed approximately seventy pounds.
If during reentry ditching were to become necessary, the crew first would depressurize the cabin, and then the orbiter sidehatch would be jettisoned. The astronaut designated as the jump master would deploy a two-section escape pole through the open hatchway. Before jumping from the open hatch, each astronaut would connect a lanyard hook assembly to the pole. The curved, 3.5-inch diameter pole would extend nearly 10 feet below the sidehatch opening and would guide each crew member down and below the orbiter’s left wing. NASA predicted that a seven-person crew could escape in 90 seconds, jumping at 12-second intervals, and that all would be out before the orbiter dropped to 10,000 feet.
Pollard was already cleaning her white board. “Okay,” she said, turning around to face the group of engineers. She readied her marker. “I want to hear all of your concerns for crew extraction via the sidehatch. We need to think of everything. I want to hear anything that comes to mind.”
“In the interest of time, shouldn’t we build a procedure list as we go, handle problems as they come up?” Gaines asked.
“We can do it that way if you like,” Pollard said. “I’ll write the steps on the board so we can all follow and review, but I think we should also create a text document as we go. It’ll speed things up in terms of distribution when we’re finished.”
“I’ve got it,” Tim Levy said, pulling out a chair and opening his laptop.
“Thanks, Tim,” Pollard said.
Senca felt his cell phone vibrate. He motioned to Pollard that he’d take it out in the hallway, be right back.
Pollard nodded to Senca. “Give us step one,” she said, motioning to Levy.
Levy had been picked for this impromptu tiger team because of his expertise in human performance in space. He was known to act like a doting parent as he watched crew vital signs during spacewalks, exercise sessions and sleep cycles. He logged what crew members ate, and nagged them to drink adequate amounts of water.
“Okay,” Levy said. “I’m not sure if this is step one, since it seems like a lot of things will need to be done in parallel. Anyway, assuming the sidehatch is the only way out, my first concern is for Mullen and Garrett. Before we blow Columbia’s sidehatch, we need to have Mullen and Garrett in a safe place. I don’t want them hanging out in Columbia’s payload bay during the fireworks.”
“Why not?” Gaines asked.
“Well, it’s not really my area,” Levy replied. “But I’m assuming Columbia’s gonna move as a result of the sidehatch being jettisoned. I just wonder how safe that will be for Mullen and Garrett.”
“Ah,” Gaines stumbled, surprised he hadn’t considered the jettison effect on Columbia. “Good point, maybe we better look at what that force will be before we move on. We have no experience with jettisoning the sidehatch in microgravity—or jettisoning the sidehatch ever, for that matter. But, we can easily calculate the effect it will have on Columbia.”
Pollard resembled Dizzy Gillespie as she filled her cheeks with the full volume of a frustrated sigh. The pace was killing her. Unable to contain herself and hoping to move things along, she blurted out, “Mass times velocity equals mass times velocity. Levy is right, Columbia might move enough for it to be of concern.”
Pollard knew that no one in the room questioned her ability to do the calculations in her head, but she sensed the group wanted a little more than just her “because I said so” approach.
“Alright. Gaines, what does the sidehatch door weigh?” Pollard asked.
“Ah, it’s in the high two-hundred-pound range.”
“Alright, let’s say it’s three-hundred pounds. How fast does it get jettisoned?”
“Fifty feet per second.”
“Fine. Levy, what does Columbia weigh empty?”
“Ninety tons.”
Pollard wrote the following on the board:
Levy marveled at how a simple equation could represent such a charged situation. A simple proportion, just plug in the numbers and…
Pollard rewrote the equation with numbers this time and crossed out a bunch of zeros. “So that’s what?” she said, leaning back. “Point-oh-eight, followed by a bunch of threes.”
“Only slightly slower than the orbiter final docking velocity at the
