Columbia Space Shuttle

Columbia Final Mission

Wayne Hale, Deputy Shuttle Manager

Wrote:

“Last year we dropped the torch through our complacency, our arrogance, self assurance, sheer stupidity and through our continuing attempt to please everyone”. “Seven of our friends and colleagues paid the ultimate price for our failure. Yet the nation is giving us another chance…..We must not Fail”

More then three years ago the Space Shuttle Columbia went down in flames, due to the damage caused but not limited to, a piece of insulating foam that broke off the external tank and struck the wing’s leading edge. The foam struck with enough force to create an opening in the wing which allowed hot plasma to enter during reentry. No one though that foam could cause this much damage since nothing like this had resulted from previous instances where the foam had come off.

In the beginning NASA was faced with a tight budget given to them by the government. This budget was large enough to build a state of the art air craft but wasn’t enough to develop an escape system that might of proving to be useful in this case. The culture of NASA was a factor that created this mistake, “The mantra “Prove to me that there’s something wrong”. The chain of command was not equal; the small guys couldn’t voice their opinions and concerns because of the position they held in the organization. Another concern was that they miscalculated the risk of the foam creating any damage just because it never destroyed another shuttle. The facts were clear that the foam had the ability to create some damage, and this was apparent in many other space shuttle launches. Foam debris was classified as an “in-family” event- a problem within NASA experience base that was not considered a safety of flight issue. NASA even knew that foam debris tended to fall off the left bipod ramp and that ten percent of the fights recorded loss foam from this area. Over the years NASA decided to put their concerns of foam damage to the side and called it an acceptable thing to happen during common flight procedures instead of finding a way to prevent it.

On its first day in orbit NASA engineers came to the conclusion that the foam debris that hit the left wing might have caused severe damage to the shuttle and could prevent it from a safe reentry. Due to budget cuts they couldn’t retrieve the correct photos needed to show proof of the damage from different angles. The foam was recognized as unusually larger then any that had been see before. The first sign of miscommunication and lack of it was when Wayne Hale voiced his concern to MMT about the debris being potential harmful. MMT relayed this memo to MER and they recorded it as a low concern. NASA did devise a team call DAT that had the sole purpose to finding out what could potentially happen to the shuttle in concerns with the foam. DAT views weren’t looked upon as correct because who they reported to wasn’t clear and they weren’t even sure where to obtain more information from. DAT was supposed to report its finding to other organization and then relayed back to MMT. For the most part this lack of communication was the man factor throughout this case. Information on day five brought from DAT to MER manager Don McCormack in regards to the TPS plans was not complete and MMT had no idea what