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June 26 - July 9, 2022
Here is a warning of the dangers of complacency and suppressed debate.
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.
We were working on fixing the foam problem, but in hindsight, not nearly as aggressively as we should have been. NASA chose to press on in order to meet the unrealistic and self-imposed deadline of completing the core of the ISS by February 2004. The urgency to finish the ISS overrode the urgency to fix a potential safety issue.
NASA’s decisions—and nondecisions—ultimately caused the loss of Columbia, took the lives of her crew and two searchers, endangered citizens on the ground, resulted in the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars for a recovery and reconstruction effort, and delayed ISS assembly missions for three years.
As with Challenger, the agency’s culture eroded over time into one of “prove to me why it’s not safe to fly.”
the shuttle’s design was inherently flawed. Too many problem scenarios were possible from which a shuttle crew had no way to escape or survive.
The CAIB recommended that NASA accelerate steps to replace the space shuttle.
It had been already too late for a rescue.
Without a rescue capability, Sean O’Keefe felt that the risks to human life did not justify prolonging Hubble’s life by a couple of years. On January 16, 2004, he canceled the final planned Hubble servicing mission.
In a roundabout way, what we learned from the Columbia accident had once again contributed to the advancement of scientific discovery.
Fundamental questions resurfaced. Did the benefits of sending humans into space outweigh the risk and expense? Maxime Faget—the legendary engineer who designed America’s Mercury space capsule and managed the design of every other American manned spacecraft—felt that the country should immediately halt all human spaceflights until a safer vehicle could be built.
In late 2003, program managers and leaders at the NASA centers began identifying the changes to hardware, processes, and practices to address the findings in the CAIB report, as well as other findings that came to light during the investigation. Engineers at Marshall Space Flight Center reeducated the workforce in the proper procedures for applying foam to the external tank. Johnson Space Center engineers developed hardware and techniques for inspecting and repairing a shuttle in orbit. The first several days of a mission would now include a complete inspection of the shuttle’s heatshield,
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Shuttle Program managers implemented sweeping changes to address the organizational culture issues the CAIB identified. Mission managers would be required to attend specialized training sessions about how to foster full and open debate on any issue. Searching out dissenting opinions became the norm and was embraced throughout the program. No longer would lower-level employees feel reluctant to speak up if they had an issue or alternative opinion.
I can recall post-Columbia program-level meetings where we could not adjourn until at least one dissenting opinion was presented. It was a little awkward, but it was the right thing to do—to really show...
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Evelyn Husband and Donna VanLiere, High Calling: The Courageous Life and Faith of Space Shuttle Commander Rick Husband
