4 Astronauts Will Be on Emergency Standby<br /><br />Four Astronauts Will Be on Emergency Standby, Ready to Rush to the<br />Rescue of Next Shuttle<br /><br />By MARCIA DUNN<br />The Associated Press<br /><br />Mar. 19, 2005 - What if the next space shuttle winds up in trouble,<br />too? What if, like Columbia, it's damaged at liftoff and the<br />astronauts are up in space with a maimed rocketship? Could they be<br />saved? When Discovery is launched in a few months, a four-man rescue<br />squad will be standing by.<br /><br />It's a plan for the unthinkable.<br /><br />"It's a place where we don't want to go. We're training for a mission<br />we never want to fly," says the team's commander, Air Force Col.<br />Steven Lindsey.<br /><br />A rescue mission which might require the president's approval is<br />fraught with complexities:<br /><br />A second launch would have to be done hastily without all the usual<br />tests, possibly putting the rescue shuttle Atlantis and its crew in<br />harm's way.<br /><br />The astronauts on the first shuttle, Discovery, would hole up at the<br />international space station. Designed to house three people, it would<br />be crammed with nine. And everyone would hope the station's<br />often-broken oxygen generator would do its job.<br /><br />Discovery would have to be pushed off by remote control into the ocean<br />to make room for Atlantis at the space station.<br /><br />If all worked as planned, Atlantis would return to Earth holding an<br />unprecedented 11 people.<br /><br />And even if NASA managed to pull off this nightmare scenario, it would<br />likely mean an end to the shuttle program five years before its time.<br /><br />Never before in 44 years of human spaceflight has NASA gone to such<br />lengths to have a spaceship ready to rush to another's assistance.<br /><br />At Kennedy Space Center, hundreds of employees are toiling 24/7 on<br />this possibility. Discovery can't lift off unless Atlantis is ready to<br />fly one month later. It is a self-imposed requirement for the next two<br />shuttle flights and goes beyond the list of recommendations from the<br />panel that investigated the Columbia accident.<br /><br />And so it is that Atlantis and Lindsey's minuteman team stands poised.<br />If Discovery goes up in mid-May as planned, NASA says it could launch<br />Atlantis as quickly as mid-June, a month sooner than scheduled.<br /><br />"I'm ready to do it and I figure probably in that one-month period, I<br />wouldn't go home anymore, probably sleep in my office," says Navy<br />Cmdr. Mark Kelly, Lindsey's co-pilot.<br /><br />If seven friends were up in space and needed to get home, Kelly says,<br />"I'm willing to take a lot of risk to do that, and I understand that,<br />and it's not a decision I will have to make later. I've already made<br />that decision."<br /><br />It is this cool steadfastness and unwavering ability to focus on the<br />ordinary mission a service call to the space station in mid-July as<br />well as a nightmarish one, that makes Lindsey, Kelly, Piers Sellers<br />and Air Force reservist Michael Fossum seem as though they've stepped<br />out of "The Right Stuff."<br /><br />As it turns out, the four were not hand-picked because of their<br />larger-than-life flying skills or lightning-fast thinking.<br /><br />They just happened to be next in line for launch.<br /><br />All four are in their 40s with children. All but Sellers is an<br />engineer; he has a Ph.D. in biometeorology. All but Fossum have flown<br />before in space.<br /><br />Lindsey and Kelly are former test pilots, and Kelly whose identical<br />twin brother, Scott, is also an astronaut flew combat in Operation<br />Desert Storm more than a decade ago.<br /><br />The British-born Sellers joined the crew a half-year late, replacing<br />an astronaut who was yanked for undisclosed medical reasons.<br /><br />As Lindsey sees it, the odds of Discovery being gouged by foam debris<br />from the fuel tank at liftoff and its seven astronauts being stranded<br />at the space station, are very low given all the improvements in the<br />two years since the Columbia tragedy.<br /><br />"I'll tell you what, if we aren't absolutely as confident as we<br />possibly can be that we have fixed the tank, which is our primary<br />rationale to go forward, then we have no business in launching," he<br />said.<br /><br />Lindsey has promised his wife and three children if he senses anything<br />unsafe for this mission or any other, "I'll walk, I won't fly."<br /><br />Earlier this month during a simulation of Discovery's upcoming flight,<br />NASA's mission managers held a dry run of the debate that would take<br />place if Discovery were damaged on liftoff. In the make-believe<br />scenario, the shuttle was struck at launch presumably by breakaway<br />foam insulation just as Columbia was.<br /><br />With the clock running, flight managers had to decide whether the<br />craft could make it home with patches or whether the astronauts needed<br />to move into the space station and await rescue. The managers opted<br />for patch work.<br /><br />"Hopefully, the probability is so low that we are just covering<br />ourselves, belt and suspenders," the shuttle deputy program manager,<br />Wayne Hale, said during the simulation.<br /><br />In real life, back in January 2003, no one knew that a chunk of foam<br />had punched a sizable hole in Columbia's left wing. NASA knew the foam<br />hit somewhere, but discounted the possibility of catastrophic damage<br />and, after being proved wrong, contended there was nothing they could<br />have done to save the crew even if they had known about the damage.<br /><br />The Columbia accident investigators didn't buy that. An exhaustive<br />study found that contrary to NASA's initial claims, the space agency<br />could have launched another shuttle to rescue the seven astronauts who<br />ended up perishing on their way back to Earth.<br /><br />If Atlantis is called upon for rescue, launch director Mike Leinbach<br />says he would use the same engineering and weather criteria he always<br />uses to get that shuttle off the pad. But from a personal perspective,<br />the countdown would be unlike anything before.<br /><br />"It would just be another one of those, I don't want to say, empty<br />feeling like I had the day that Columbia didn't come home," Leinbach<br />says. "It's impossible to describe the emotional feeling that everyone<br />would have launching the rescue mission. But we would do it if so<br />told."<br /><br />NASA's main concerns, for now, are getting Discovery ready for a<br />mid-May launch and Atlantis ready for a possible mid-June emergency<br />launch, and keeping the space station running without more major<br />breakdowns.<br /><br />Being stuck at the space station and awaiting rescue would have its<br />own problems. One of Discovery's astronauts, Andrew Thomas, who lived<br />aboard Russia's space station Mir seven years ago, says it's the<br />psycho-social aspects that would concern him most.<br /><br />"What would we do on a day-to-day basis?" Thomas asks. He points to<br />history for the answer. Successful missions in tough situations have<br />hinged on crew members constructively working on their own day-to-day<br />survival. "You just have to look at what Shackleton did," Thomas says.<br /><br />In the classic survival tale, Sir Ernest Shackleton in 1915 guided his<br />crew of 27 back to safety after their ship became trapped in the ice<br />of Antarctica. To keep up morale, he staged concerts, holiday<br />celebrations and sports matches.<br /><br />A piano keyboard is up on the space station, "and maybe one of us<br />could learn to play the piano while we're there," Thomas says with a<br />chuckle. "You remember that movie, 'Groundhog Day?' That's what the<br />Bill Murray character did when he was caught in sort of a supposed<br />never-ending cycle."<br /><br />But then Thomas turns serious again: "It would be a stressful<br />situation."<br /><br />He is convinced the astronauts could be saved, but the danger would be<br />the premature death of the shuttle program, which is to be phased out<br />in 2010.<br /><br />"It would be hard for me to imagine that were there another major<br />failure like this that Congress would not look askance at the shuttle<br />program and say, 'Hey, we're done with it.'"