The Columbia Accident Investigation Board released its report on August 26, 2003. The investigators blamed the loss of Columbia as much on NASA’s politics and culture at the time as on hardware failure. The report chided the White House and Congress for squeezing NASA’s budgets so tightly that safety was at risk. The report cited issues in NASA’s transparency, diligence, and oversight dating back to the Challenger disaster (and even the Apollo 1 accident in 1967), but which were never fully and permanently corrected in NASA’s culture.
