But that’s exactly what happened with Challenger

And Columbia, too, when they made the decision to reenter without inspection, and reenter instead of waiting for rescue.

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fishgoesblub 14 hours ago | parent [-]

A rescue was impractical and potentially riskier no?

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paleotrope 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Riskier? Didn't they all die. Maybe if you ended up with 2 stranded shuttle crews, but correct me if I'm wrong, and I probably am, but couldn't the shuttle fly without any crew?

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idlewords 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It couldn't, for a funny reason. Everything on a Shuttle flight could be automated except lowering the landing gear just before touchdown, which had to be done by hand from inside the cockpit.

There are rumors (that I've never been able to run down) that the astronaut corps insisted on this so the Shuttle could not be flown unmanned.

	▲	gambiting 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		And Buran(soviet copy of the shuttle) could and in fact did fly completely unmanned. In a way it's a shame the collapse of the soviet union killed that program, because a crew less shuttle would have been a huge asset to have.

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renewiltord 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You can do a less risky thing and die or do a more risky thing and live. What happened doesn’t determine which thing is riskier just like I can call a 1 and roll dice and land it and you can call tails and flip a coin and not get it.

The outcome doesn’t determine the risk. I agree that this kind of office politics / face savings definitely is the cause of these two things.

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gambiting 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm sure I watched a documentary that said it basically wasn't feasible to launch the other shuttle. All checks and preparations would have to be done in absolute record time, with no mistakes and under timelines never attempted before. But even if they tried, you have the obvious question of - we know the core issue isn't solved and we're about to launch the second shuttle with the exact same design into orbit, if it suffers the same problem then what? But afaik the second one while important wasn't as much of a blocker as the first one. It just wasn't possible in time - it's not like the first shuttle could stay in orbit indefinitely too.