Reflections
On the Death of Columbia
On the Death of Columbia
It doesn't take much to make heroes in America.
Simply underfund programs for decades,
ignore reformers and punish whistleblowers,
and sooner or later something predictably horrible will happen that will
kill those merely performing their jobs in the simple faith that everything
reasonable had been done to keep them safe.
All too many disasters of recent times have had that theme in common: from the Apollo 1 fire and the Challenger explosion to 9-11, and now the Columbia tragedy.
NASA has been living on scraps from the budgetary table since the passing of the glory days of Apollo. Nixon and just about every president since has tried to strangle the golden goose but it's done a heroic job at the bottom of the federal food chain making more with less. Yet, once again, it appears that the miserliness of penny-pinchers, particularly in Congress but also in the Executive Branch, has caused the death of the best this planet has to offer. Like Challenger's crew, the Columbia seven were sacrificial victims on the altar of expediency, determined by insufficient funding from the very beginning of the Shuttle Program. And NASA, it has been revealed, was quite willing to fudge the facts and lie to Congress to ensure it.
Challenger, which spectacularly perished almost exactly seventeen years before, was doomed due to to cracked, frozen O-rings, which separated the sections of the solid rocket boosters, strapped onto the sides of the huge orange-foam-covered fuel tank. Watching the launch preparations for Challenger on the previous day on NASA TV (coincidentally the date of the first fatal American space disaster, the Apollo 1 launchpad fire), I was puzzled at the way the support crew fumbled around; even opening the hatch was an overly-long and complicated process. Even more amazing were the icicles hanging off the bottom of the spacecraft. Up until the very moment of launch, I really didn't believe they would dare.
As it turned out, the now-deified President Ronald Reagan had planned his State of the Union speech for that very night, and wanted to boast about Crista McAuliffe, the first teacher in space. Thus, supposedly for the first and only time, a technical decision to not launch was overturned, and all the schoolchildren in America got to see the horrific result on live TV.
Safety, it seems, is a trade-off. During the Space Race with the Soviets, NASA became used to gambling, and the stakes were deemed high enough to justify such risks. But is partisan politics? How about the desire to cut costs?
It now turns out that the estimated
expenses for development and operations were deliberately and extensively
low-balled. NASA, which had wanted to do it right, like in the Werner von
Braun-inspired epic, The Conquest of Space (1955 – tagline: "See how it will happen — in your lifetime!"), was forced by President Nixon to abandon most of its plans. Just a few short years after the magnificent vision of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), the dream had
already been abandoned due to a massive failure of will. So long, Mars;
farewell lunar colony, bye-bye giant revolving space station.
The only project NASA had left of its dreams was a low-Earth-orbit pickup truck, and barely even that. To actually be built, the same cheapness that forced the engineers to design solid rocket boosters held together by giant rubber bands rather than as single tubes also inspired the brainstorm to use ceramic tiles weaker than those in your shower to protect the crew from the heat of re-entry, rather than a liquid-cooled shield or other more expensive system. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize the designs are inherently flawed.
Damage to the tiles on the left wing during lift-off has already become the leading theory for the loss of Columbia. If true, the real horror here is that the crew was thus doomed from the start. Even if Mission Control suspected a problem, there was no way for the crew to get out of the spacecraft to inspect the afflicted area — no airlock, handholds, robot arm, nor flying pack — and no way to fix it even if they could. No wonder the flight controllers so wanted to believe that that the debris from the external tank was not at all dangerous that they didn't bother even to check by telescope.
Such a situation, in my view, is simply outrageous. Space travel is inherently dangerous, but to ask men and women to risk their lives without escape capsules or any hope of repair or rescue when such could be provided is close to criminal.
If we wish to honor these seven shining souls, we should give those who follow after them the best tools for the job. Give them the funding to do it properly.
There is no better reason for the immediate disclosure of the alien presence. The black programs should release their exotic toys to the space effort. Not using any flying saucers we may have stashed away is as equally blameworthy as slow starvation, if such use would make the astronauts' jobs any safer. After all, interacting with alien civilizations in their own element means we're going to need our spacefarers even more in the future, not less.
But NASA, it seems, is too deeply involved in the cover-up of the extraterrestrial presence to the point that it has destroyed possible evidence of life on Mars. Indeed, if there is a secret saucer fleet, the space program is nothing but a sham. With antigravity drives, rocket technology is as obsolete as it is dangerous. Perhaps that's why there is no successor to the Shuttle, even at this late date.
The crash at Roswell proved that fatal accidents can happen even to the most advanced technology. But our brave astronauts deserve and need the very best vessels that we can give them. Something better, at least, than these flying bombs built by the lowest bidders.
Even if monuments to fallen heroes are cheaper than reliable spacecraft.
UPDATE: August 9, 2005 — After a closer examination and more anxiety than has ever surrounded a Shuttle mission, Discovery now sits safely back on Earth. Even though a true disaster was thankfully avoided, it seems that all the agonizing safety improvements had been for naught, as chunks of sprayed-on insulation spun off again during launch.
Even while Discovery was in orbit, NASA announced that there would not be another mission until the foam problem was solved. Really solved, this time. Yet there were also problems with several pieces of "gap-filler material", insulating strips between the tiles that were shaken loose, so that they protruded. A first-time-ever repair spacewalk was undertaken to remove them.
Curious. It was due to gaps between the tiles that Columbia disintegrated, or so we have been told. Yet it was found to be necessary to remove filler?
Also, with all the improvements to the insulation, the huge orange tank was left unpainted, doubtless to save weight. Yet, in the earliest test flights, the tank had been painted white. What about foam chunks then? Could the paint have held the foam in place? Is this yet another example of cutting corners despite the risk?
And this time, there were uncounted numbers of cameras watching. The Shuttle even performed a special end-over-end roll as it approached the Space Station to it could be more carefully examined. Why had this never been done before?
It seems, then, that wishful thinking still plagues the space agency. For NASA to announce an end to flight operations even while a mission is underway, was extremely ill-thought out , for as Richard Hoagland pointed out, it distracted the minds of all those dedicated workers who should only care about completing the mission with sudden worries about job security. What on Earth were the administrators thinking?
There can be only one appropriate response, though it pains any believer in human spaceflight. Scrap the program. NOW!
Whether we move on to exotic black-project spaceplane technologies or back to big dumb rockets doesn't matter. The Space Shuttle was an experiment that has long outlived its usefulness. It should be ended before a third Space Shuttle disaster permanently ends American manned spaceflight.