Flawed NASA Culture Blamed for Columbia Disaster

[Fali_G]

WASHINGTON — A flawed NASA culture is to blame for the Columbia shuttle disaster, according to a detailed, 200-plus-page report released Tuesday.

Earlier Tuesday, NASA (search) leaders were bracing for a storm of criticism.

"The report is going to be embarrassing," physics professor Robert Park of the University of Maryland told Fox News.

Space shuttle Columbia broke into pieces on Feb. 1 upon return into the atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard.

Members of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (search) completed the report late last week after spending seven months probing the technical facts of the space tragedy and interviewing scores of engineers and other space workers to attach the fundamental blame.

"The language is frank and direct and there may be some surprises," John Logsdon, a CAIB board member, said Monday.

Sean O'Keefe (search), who heads the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, warned space workers earlier this summer that they should prepare themselves for a report that will be "really ugly" as it outlines flawed engineering decisions that led to the destruction of Columbia as it returned to Earth following a 16-day mission.

O'Keefe said Monday that the report "is going to have no fuzz on it, no gloves. It is going to be straightforward." To prop up morale, the NASA administrator said he was telling space workers "we need to not be defensive about that and try to not take it as a personal affront."

Retired Navy Adm. Harold W. Gehman Jr., the CAIB chairman, said about half of the report would deal with management and engineering decisions that failed to prevent the accident. Included was an analysis of flaws in NASA traditions and processes that might have contributed, according to those familiar with the report.

"There has been a subtle change at NASA," Park told Fox, adding that in the control room at the time of the accident he'd been told that "there were no NASA employees. It was all contractors."

Lawmakers are now faced with the decision of what to do about NASA's funding and whether the space shuttle program should go on. Astronauts and family members of the seven who died aboard Columbia say that in spite of the dangers, they want the shuttle to keep flying.

"There are a lot of things that are worth risking your life for," Apollo astronaut Walter Cunningham told Fox News.

Most of the work of the investigation board has been in the open, with members conducting frequent public hearings and news conferences. Gehman followed his plan of releasing information as it became known and the board weeks ago announced its "working scenario" of the physical facts of Columbia's loss.

The board concluded that Columbia came apart because there was a break in a heat shield panel on the craft's left wing. The friction heat of re-entry, soaring to 3,000 degrees, penetrated the wing and shattered the craft.

Tests suggested that the heat shield was broken by a lightweight chunk of foam insulation that ripped off the shuttle's external fuel tank and smashed the wing at high speed during launch.

Although the foam impact was captured on film, engineers evaluating the issue concluded it represented no threat to the spacecraft. Managers did not ask for spy satellite pictures that could have given information on the damage even though some lower-level engineers requested it.

The conclusions came after the 13-member board examined the key parts of some 84,000 pieces of the shuttle, including an on-board data recorder, that were recovered by thousands of workers who spent weeks scouring forest lands in Texas and Louisiana. Experts on the board used sensor data signals and charred remnants to trace the searing path of re-entry heat that tore through Columbia's wing and melted it from the inside.

To test their theory, members of the board directed experiments that fired chunks of foam insulation at a mock-up of the space shuttle wing. One high-speed collision smashed a 16-inch hole and some board members called it "the smoking gun" of Columbia's destruction.

During its investigation, the CAIB issued preliminary recommendations that NASA should follow before returning to space. These included developing a way to repair damaged heat shield panels while the shuttle is in orbit, improved photos of the craft during launch, the routine use of pictures of orbiting space shuttles taken by some of the nation's spy satellites, and a sharper system of inspections to detect flawed or failing parts.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

[norraad]

They always use alot of words to cover-up, enough to anesthetize the average intellect.

Or in the Warren Commission;

"...use the whole bottle, damn it!

[Jeff Chandler]

Ping.

BTW, how was your flight?

[Monty22]

Yep, and no surprise. They'll yack about vague stuff like 'culture' and so on, but they'll never say 'it was the environmentalist foam that caused it, here's how, and we have to undo it forever'.

They may change the foam, but it'll be done quietly.

[Orangedog]

If that airliner was built with 1970's materials/technology AND it had to withstand temperatures of over 3000 degrees and airspeeds exceeding mach 20 every time it was used, yes, I would retire it way before 25 flights.

[snopercod]

The airframe never gets over 200 degrees, and what the heck does the airspeed have to do with anything. Do you think the aluminum structure cares how fast it's moving?

The stress on a shuttle airframe is much less than on your typical airliner, since the shuttle is not pressurized. The airframe will basically last forever.

Better technology might be a reason to retire the shuttles, but so far, nobody has invented any.

[snopercod]

The reason for the high cost is political, not technical.

[Orangedog]

One of my college professors worked on Gemini and Apollo and had some interesting stories about the agency back then. Like how the attitude (up until the Apollo 1 fire) there was "waste anything but time." Back then they had a goal, a timeline and leadership that would make a decision without having to committee or task-force ideas to death. Things might have gone over budget, but at least the got done and were on schedule.

As far as today's NASA is concerned, they need to pretty much scrap most of it and develope the next generation spacecraft in a "Skunk-Works" type of operation off in the desert. We actually HAD a functioning space plane at one time, the X-15. But everyone was in love with rockets back then and now we're stuck with an aging fleet of well-intended concepts that never filled their promise.

Big, hulking monsters like the Saturn 5 are great at hauling big heavy things into orbit. X-15 type space planes are the most feasible means of getting humans into orbit. The two concepts should not cross until the private sector is ready to step up to the plate with something that doesn't cost $10,000/pound to put something in orbit.

[mvpel]

Aren't you glad that Hillary wasn't able to impose this kind of bureaucracy on the US health care system?

[MalcolmS]

Arthur C. Clarke wrote a short story about this years ago.

Plot Summary

By 1960, the Soviets knew communism and central control was not a viable system.

They did not want the U.S. to dominate space, and assumed it would have had natural evolution of technology with the involvement of private industry taken place.

They started the space race with no intention of going to the moon, but to provoke a US response.

Kennedy responded, creating a huge (Soviet style) central-planning bureaucracy called NASA to go to the moon.

This subsidized behemoth then dominated the space niche preventing the involvement of private industry by its very existence.

Curiously, at present, the US does not dominate space.

[JoeSixPack1]

"There has been a subtle change at NASA," Park told Fox, adding that in the control room at the time of the accident he'd been told that "there were no NASA employees. It was all contractors."

Contractors are temp employees hired and fired for one specific job. All the other reasons are secondary to an employee pool that works "on call" and knows exactly when they will be fired.

Nasa's use of this tactic for their employee pool has destroyed any hope for morale, commaraderie or quality control among their workers. Contractors do nothing more then required because of the short lifespan of their employment. And to raise concerns of possible malfunction or unsafe practice could and usually does shorten even further their time of employment.

Been there, saw it first hand while machining shuttle parts outsourced to private firms around the space coast. Nasa saves big bucks on payroll, equipment and employee benfits but has alienated their entire employee pool that do everything and anything for income while waiting for NASA's call to return.

[Erik Latranyi]

First, while the issues with the reformulated foam need to be investigated and exposed, there is a much larger issue here.

NASA administrators (especially O'Keefe) vehemently denied the possibility of the foam strike being the cause of the accident. This took place in the first hours after the accident.

NASA administrators made the decision after liftoff that the foam strike was not worth looking into when there was substantial information indicating that such a strike may cause serious damamge to the shuttle.

NASA administrators, even after being confronted with the clear evidence that the foam strike led to the accident, stated that even had they bothered to check the exterior of the shuttle for damage with the high resolution military cameras that if damage was found while in orbit...

"...there was nothing we could have done to save them."


We've come a long way from


"Failure is not an option."


Erik

[Erik Latranyi]

First, while the issues with the reformulated foam need to be investigated and exposed, there is a much larger issue here.

NASA administrators (especially O'Keefe) vehemently denied the possibility of the foam strike being the cause of the accident. This took place in the first hours after the accident.

NASA administrators made the decision after liftoff that the foam strike was not worth looking into when there was substantial information indicating that such a strike may cause serious damamge to the shuttle.

NASA administrators, even after being confronted with the clear evidence that the foam strike led to the accident, stated that even had they bothered to check the exterior of the shuttle for damage with the high resolution military cameras that if damage was found while in orbit...

"...there was nothing we could have done to save them."


We've come a long way from


"Failure is not an option."


Erik

[Orangedog]

The airframe never gets over 200 degrees, and what the heck does the airspeed have to do with anything. Do you think the aluminum structure cares how fast it's moving?

It gets well over 200 degrees and cares a great deal when enough of those tiles come off. The tiles were a neat concept but someone should have been given a moment of pause when they saw how easily a pencil can go through them. Ablative shielding may have been old school, but it worked, was durable and didn't cost a fortune.

The shuttle should have been a stepping stone that they there should have only been two of. Once they saw that the costs and turn around time was so high they should have said "Okay, we leaned a lot from this, now lets take what we've learned move on to the next level."

The shuttle was a good concept that the agency and politicians clung to for way too long.

[Alter Kaker]

Oh well, maybe when the Chinese start their manned space program in a couple of years we'll get some real leadership at NASA.

Not couple of years. China says it will put man in space this year. We believe this, oddly, is good thing.

[norraad]

Yeah. another good point, the flying bread truck was a great idea,

towards the end of the last century!

(Triumph the insult comedy dog style delivery)

[Orangedog]

I never thought that I would actually miss not having the Soviet Union around.

[OldFriend]

The legacy of Daniel Golden..........billclinton's butt boy. Funnelled millions of dollars into the russian space program because they refused to pay their share of the international space station.

I always suspected billandboris simply split the money and had a good laugh at the taxpayer's expense.

[OldFriend]

This is the way it was 20 yrs. ago and I doubt it has changed. A large company bids on a contract for NASA....they subcontract the job out to the lowest bidder.

Anyone know if that has changed?