Discovery landed..

[KigAir]

I'd find it hard to believe that NASA couldn't send it up on "auto pilot" without anyone on board.

Anyone know?

-mini

Good question. How much "flying" does the crew actually do?

 

[flyboy]

If a retrieval flight was necessary it would be done with minimum crew I would think. If you'll recall the first shuttle flight was done with only commander and pilot, a crew of two. That would open up 5 seats or so in the back. I suppose they would have room to put two more seats in. As for repair, that would mean the original crew would have to do the repairs.

 

[P-Dawg_QX]

Good question. How much "flying" does the crew actually do?

All of it...raw data, I think.

Actually, I heard from someone who heard from someone who heard from someone (read: no factual basis) that during the launch, the crew is mostly along for the ride. They throw a few switches, but it's almost completely automated. Again, that could be completely untrue.

 

[EagleRJ]

Has anyone ever imagined how many shuttles were damaged on launch and returned to earth with enough damage to disentigrate during return but didn't. The crew of Discovery was told that if the shuttle was damaged enough on lift-off, they will be rescued by Atlantis. Why wasn't the crew of Columbia offered the same advice even though the engineers knew the shuttle's wing was damaged during lift-off?

Every Shuttle mission has returned with some degree of tile damage. Most of it has been limited to small chips and dents from on-orbit debris. The damage to Columbia was unprecidented in its severity, and NASA definitely would have performed a spacewalk to repair it had they known about it. The trouble was, we weren't checking the tiles for damage in orbit, which was foolish.
Now that we're doing what we should have been doing all along, I doubt if we'll have any more problems from missing tiles.

Columbia's crew was told of the problem while they were in orbit. The shuttle could have docked with the space station and another shuttle launched to rescue the crew. This was as much a possibility now as it was two years ago. NASA knows the world is watching.

Columbia was not only too heavy to reach the station, it was in a different orbit. Columbia was launched into a 28 degree inclination (the maximum angle between the orbit and the equator), while the ISS was orbiting at 51 degrees. The orbit's inclination is decided at launch, and changing it just a little once in orbit requires a huge amount of fuel.
Sending a Shuttle to the ISS requires mission planning starting well before launch. You can't just decide to drop by once you are in orbit.

 

[EagleRJ]

Actually, I heard from someone who heard from someone who heard from someone (read: no factual basis) that during the launch, the crew is mostly along for the ride. They throw a few switches, but it's almost completely automated. Again, that could be completely untrue.

True. The launch is mostly automated.

Some orbital maneuvering is hand-flown, but the rest is automated. During landing, I don't know the point at which the pilot "clicks off the autopilot", but the re-entry is automated, and the landing is hand-flown.

 

[UnAnswerd]

Has anyone ever imagined how many shuttles were damaged on launch and returned to earth with enough damage to disentigrate during return but didn't.

Good point. It's also well known that prior to Challenger exploding in 1986, other shuttle missions using the exact same O-ring design on the solid-rocket boosters came extremely close to exploding as well. It was literally a disaster waiting to happen.