Houston, you have a problem
Published on Sep 12, 2008 at 10:21 am.
4 Comments.
Filed under NASA, Uncategorized, atmosphere, space station.
When an explosion blew out the side of the Apollo 13 Service Module and threatened the lives of three astronauts on the way to the Moon, they radioed back to Earth that they had a problem. Scientists and engineers in the Johnson Space Center’s Mission Control worked tirelessly to come up with a series of solutions to the problems created by the explosion in order to bring the astronauts safely back to Earth. Well, now it is the people at the Johnson Space Center who are in jeopardy. Hurricane Ike is steadily moving towards the Texas coast, with the forecast track aimed right at the Houston area. Ike is a huge storm, with hurricane force winds extending 120 miles from the center, so even if the center of the storm passes some some distance away from the Galveston/Houston area, they will still get a major hit from the storm. At the present time, Ike is still rated as a category 2 hurricane, but the latest satellite photo that I saw shows an eye reforming. This happening over the warm waters of the western Gulf of Mexico could mean that the storm may intensify to category 3 status: a major hurricane.
However, wind is not the chief problem. The strong winds will do significant damage, of course. The buildings at JSC should be strong enough, though, to weather a category 3 hurricane, and they have, in fact, done so before. The same might not be true for the homes of the people who work at the space center, though. The Johnson Space Center was not build in the middle of Houston. Rather, it was built in the suburbs, in the vicinity of Clear Lake City, Nassau Bay, Kemah, Webster, etc. The city of Houston quickly annexed a small trip of land down to the swampy coastal area where the space center was being built. And, it is at the coast. Clear Lake, an inlet from Galveston Bay, extends right to the corner of the Space Center property. That means that there is also the problem of storm surge at the space center. If the hurricane stays on its projected path, it will make landfall right at Galveston Bay. The hurricane is currently moving west northwest. It should take a more northerly turn as it approaches the coast. Just when that happens determines the actual point where the center of the storm makes landfall, and that is crucial. If the landfall is to the southwest of the inlet to Galveston Bay, the storm surge will be far more extreme (the northeast quadrant of these storms is considered to be the “bad” side, since the wind, rain, and storm surge tend to be far worse there). The storm is so large, that the storm surge could possibly be significant. Worse, the predicted landfall is a little before midnight, right near high tide. Even worse, the Moon is getting close to full, so the high tide will be larger than average, anyway. A landfall southwest of the inlet to Galveston Bay would allow the winds to push water right into the bay, and into Clear Lake. Again, the space center, itself, is built with this possibility in mind. Many of the critical systems are not at the ground floor level. Mission Control is several floors up in its building. However, the people who live in the area could face severe damage to their homes. Galveston, itself, is in dire jeopardy. Storm surge estimates range all the way from 12 to over 20 feet, depending upon how much the storm strengthens before landfall and just where it makes landfall. The Galveston seawall is only (nominally) 17 feet high. In places it is a bit less than that, since there was confusion over whether to measure the height from mean sea level or from the average low tide mark. If the hurricane makes landfall at high tide, that discrepancy becomes very important.
NASA built the Johnson Space Center with hurricanes in mind. There is even backup power available. However, communications will be affected during the height of the storm, so Mission Control operations will be impossible. And, of course, it would be unreasonable to expect the people working there to concentrate on their jobs while their homes were possibly being destroyed. So, Mission Control ceased operations yesterday at noon, local time. Control for the International Space Station was shifted to backup centers in Austin, Texas, and Huntsville, Alabama. Also, the Russians have their own control center. So, the space station crew are not cut off from Earth. But, this does impact operations for the space station, since the backup facilities are not quite perfect duplicates of the primary Mission Control in capabilities.
I spoke with a colleague at the Johnson Space Center on Wednesday, and she was leaving work that afternoon and had no plans to return on Thursday. Many other JSC people were doing the same thing, leaving only mission critical people working Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning. Most NASA aircraft were moved from neighboring Ellington Field to El Paso. People living in the low lying areas of the coast were leaving home and seeking shelter inland, including in the area where I live. The storm will still pass here, but it will be much weaker, and we are so far inland that all we have to worry about is some wind, rain, and tornadoes. Already, I could see the outermost circulation in the clouds on the drive to campus this morning. The decision as to whether to close the college for the storm will be made overnight, once the track inland is known (we closed for Hurricane Rita, and it veered away and we got nothing but a moderately stiff breeze). The earliest that we’d get anything here would be during the day on Saturday.
What happens after the storm depends on how bad it is and how much damage it does. Operations at the Johnson Space Center could be fairly quick to get back to normal, or it could take a long time. If people’s homes are destroyed, then it would unreasonable to expect them to simply go right back to work on Monday as if nothing happened.
I have family and friends in the direct path of the storm, so I’ll be keeping tabs on what is happening. I am also scheduled to be at JSC in January to actually do some research. We’ll see if that has to be rescheduled, too. But, I’ll get a chance to see what damage still remains when I get down there. The most important thing, though, is not the damage done to property, even to NASA, the space program, and the Space Center. The most important thing is that people are safe. There are a lot of people in the path of the storm. And, let us remember that even if the people are physically safe, they will receive a major blow mentally from this, particularly if they have substantial property damage and loss. And, many of these people are living in harms way because this is where the government chose to build one of its premier space centers. If you want to work for NASA, you need to be where NASA does its work. So, keep the residents of the Houston-Galveston area in your thoughts and prayers as this dangerous storm bears down on them.
-Astroprof
Images courtesy NOAA, NHC
Ed Davies on September 12, 2008 at 5:22 pm: 1
“When an explosion blew out the side of the Apollo 13 Command Module…”
Pedantically, it was the Service Module which had its side blown out. The command module was not damaged directly by the explosion.
Astroprof on September 12, 2008 at 8:24 pm: 2
Ed, thanks. I corrected the typo. Someone was talking to me when I went back and wrote that first line, so I must have not been paying enough attention to what I was writing. And, thanks for being a good reader and catching the other errors that I seem to inevitably make when I get rushed.
John S. Wilkins on September 12, 2008 at 8:29 pm: 3
Which is why they were able to radio Houston…
Mark Pritchard on September 15, 2008 at 11:45 am: 4
Clear Lake is not an “inlet” of Galveston Bay, but a natural lake separated from the bay by half a mile of Clear Creek. The lake itself (map: http://tinyurl.com/5r4nuo) is about two miles long and about half a mile wide.
Nassau Bay, on the other hand, is not a body of water at all, but a subdivision along some of the bayous that feed into Clear Creek, which in turn feeds into Clear Lake at its western end.