Re: 4 Astronauts Will Be on Emergency Standby, Ready to Rush to the Rescue of Next Shuttle

From: Jorge R. Frank (jrfrank_at_ibm-pc.borg)
Date: 03/22/05 

Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2005 18:06:37 -0600

"Andrew Lotosky" <skylon@gmail.com> wrote in
news:1111423304.072903.185090@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:

> On another note, would a rescue mission to recover a shuttle crew
> stranded at ISS really require two mission specialists?

All shuttle flights, including the rescue flights, are required to protect
for contingency EVA. With the rescue flights being fairly short notice, it
is preferable to keep the EVA MSes on the crew since they are already
trained.

> I understand
> the STS 107 rescue scenario, where you had to fly formation with
> another shuttle AND have someone EVA over, but if the goal is, fly
> over, dock and pick-up it doesn't seem necessary to have more than the
> CDR and PLT.

Rendezvous, prox ops, and docking is trained as a "3+1" activity; three
rendezvous-qual'ed crewmembers, plus one non-qual'ed crewmember to handle
cameras and the like. This is an artifact of shuttle prox ops being
dependent on closed-circuit TV cameras and laptop PCs, both of which
require a certain amount of babysitting by the crew.

There was a proposed cockpit upgrade that would have integrated all that
more fully into the shuttle's flight software, and would have turned
shuttle prox ops into a two-man job. But that got canned when the VSE was
announced and the shuttle's retirement date got accelerated to 2010.

> And shoving seven people into the mid-deck just always sounded iffy to
> me.

It is creating some ECLSS challenges, to be sure, but it's not *quite* as
cramped as you might think - remember, the internal airlock is gone now.
The big challenge is going to be keeping enough airflow through the
"trench" where the internal airlock used to be to prevent CO2-rich "dead
spots" from forming. 

-- 
JRF
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