Posted on 02/23/2003 11:39:56 AM PST by SwimmingUpstream
"Find the problem. Fix it. Fly again."
During the past few weeks since that terrible February morning, we have all heard of this noble tradition among those who work to help man slip the surly bonds of earth. When one of their number perishes in the endeavor, the rest do all they can to see to it their comrade did not die in vain.
NASA is now following that noble tradition, diligently searching for the root cause of the catastrophe that took the Columbia's crew from us. And one of the questions they are asking is: Was Columbia's left wing compromised by debris striking it 80 seconds after lift-off?
NASA does not know for certain one way or the other, and may never know for certain.
But it ought to know. It could have known -- long before Columbia disintegrated during re-entry.
It could have known -- but for another tradition within NASA.
Years before Al Shepard soared away from Cape Canaveral atop a harshly vibrating Redstone rocket, a tradition was developing within NASA of making the astronaut as redundant as practicable in controlling the flight of manned spacecraft.
This tradition was not developing out of animus or envy towards the astronaut corp. It was developing as a matter of practicality, efficiency, mission requirements, and a natural bias among engineers in favor of the machine.
For their part, the astronaut corp have acted, traditionally, as a counter to this tradition. But the complex nature of the machine that carries them into space weighs against the astronaut as a continually active pilot of the spacecraft. And for all but a few minutes in any spaceflight the astronaut is a back-up component in the flight control system; many an astronaut aboard the spacecraft is merely a passenger, as far as flight control is concerned.
This traditional engineer's bias towards astronaut-as-back-up-component was very much in evidence during Columbia's last flight. It affected the entire structure of NASA's methodology in assessing the condition of the shuttle's thermal tiles from the instant the shuttle left the pad.
From the moment NASA became aware of the fact that something had struck Columbia's left wing during ascent the agency leaned away from involving the astronauts and towards relying on engineers in ascertaining the condition of the shuttle's thermal protection system. The agency's initial response was to begin an analysis of what might have happened to the tiles as a result of the debris impact -- an analysis based on guestimates about the size and weight and hardness and trajectory and speed of the debris.
And toward what ultimate end was this engineering guestimate undertaken? To determine whether a condition of risk to the crew probably existed that required NASA to modify the plan for a normal re-entry?
If this was the aim of the guestimate, what options existed for getting the crew home safely?
Was a rescue of some of the crew, and a time-buying provisioning for the rest, possible via a hastened launch of a Russian Soyuz?
Was an orbit change possible that could allow Columbia to rendevous with the Internation Space Station?
Was a time-buying provisioning possible by the Russian Progess vehicle that was already scheduled to be sent to the International Space Station in early February?
Was a wing-sacrificing re-entry scheme feasible given the compromised condition of Columbia's thermal protection system?
Would NASA have chosen any of these options without an eyeballing of the shuttle's left wing, either by an astronaut or by some telescopic means?
If not, then why did NASA wait on the results of the engineering guestimate, losing precious days to mount a rescue or re-entry modification in the event the guestimate indicated the wing was catastrophically compromised?
The answer is that the traditional bias towards astronaut-as-back-up-component had led NASA to omit training and properly equiping the astronauts to inspect the thermal tiles on the underside of the shuttle while on orbit. Consequently, the risk the atronauts would have had to assume in order to go over the side of Columbia and eyeball the thermal tiles was significantly increased. If the thermal tiles proved to be relatively undamaged and one or more of the astronauts was lost during the now relatively riskier inspection, or if an astronaut caused significant damage to some tiles during the inspection, NASA management would come under a lot of fire.
Therefore, NASA thought it more prudent to wait for the engineering guestimate than to immediately ask an astronaut to take a risky look at the tiles. And as it happened, the engineering guestimate concluded that it was unlikely the thermal tiles were catastrophically compromised.
So, no one bothered to look at Columbia's left wing while the ship was on orbit.
We don't yet know whether the debris that struck Columbia's left wing during ascent is the root cause of the catastophe that befell Columbia's crew on February 1st -- whether the shedding of that debris is the problem NASA is now diligently looking for in order to fix so we can fly again.
But another problem that needs fixing has already been discovered -- NASA's reluctance to use the astronauts more fully in assessing the condition of the shuttle's thermal protection system while on orbit.
NASA needs to fix this problem, as well as whatever problems it finds, before we fly again.
They owe it to Columbia's fallen crew, and to all the brave souls who will venture into space after them.
Eastport, Maine
February, 2003
He said astronauts would have been ''standing out in the hallways to volunteer.''
We don't want any of these manly heroics. We've got to keep these antics squashed in favor of the impersonal "hands off" approach. It's the impersonal "hands off" approach that makes "markets" the thing of beauty that they are, after all.
NASA never gave 'em a chance. Christ, what a price we pay for some mistakes -- indolence, indifference, etc.
Kindest Regards
May 28, 2003 07:01 PM ET
By Jeff Franks
HOUSTON (Reuters) - A subtle cultural change at NASA that shifted emphasis away from safety likely contributed to the Feb. 1 destruction of shuttle Columbia, which fell apart over Texas minutes before the end of its 16-day mission, investigators said Wednesday.
In their final news conference in Houston before moving to Washington to write their findings on the tragedy that killed seven astronauts, members of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board said they would highlight a number of problems at the U.S. space agency. They include safety impediments within its culture.
In NASA's earliest days, the agency was known for its macho "right stuff" attitude that put a premium on daring and risk. However, that was replaced by a widespread safety consciousness after the shuttle Challenger exploded after takeoff in 1986.
Over time, as dozens of post-Challenger shuttle missions were conducted successfully, safety apparently moved off center stage, the board chairman, retired U.S. Navy admiral Hal Gehman, told reporters.
"Some people have characterized it as a change in posture from one in which you had to prove that it was safe to fly to one in which you have to prove it was unsafe to fly," he said. "In other words, the people who had doubts about anything were essentially outside the circle and had to work their way in rather than the doubters being inside the circle."
"There is ample reason for us to be concerned and to look at it very, very carefully," he said.
It was in that context that flight managers downplayed the seriousness of insulating foam that flew from the shuttles' external fuel tanks and banged into the orbiters on several flights, including Columbia as it lifted off from Florida on Jan. 16.
NASA engineers viewed the foam as a maintenance issue, not a safety risk and did little to address it, board member Major General Kenneth Hess said.
"There is a kind of a lack of appreciation for the total risk involved," he said.
The leading theory for the shuttle disaster is that foam struck the edge of the shuttle's left wing, which damaged its heat shield and led to the orbiter frame heating up and falling apart as Columbia reentered the earth's atmosphere.
The shattered shuttle fell in thousands of pieces over a broad swath of Texas and Louisiana.
The board members also said there appeared to be deficiencies in preflight preparations that were attributable in part to the need for more safety inspectors.
Gehman said the investigation board, which has compiled two tractor-trailers full of documents, would move to Washington this weekend where it will work on what he promised would be a "very, very thick" report on the demise of Columbia.
He said the board hopes to complete the report before the U.S. Congress summer recess starting July 25.
-- Reuters.
WASHINGTON -- Lawmakers on Capitol Hill will have access to secret testimony heard by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB), sources tell SPACE.com.
Discussions between congressional staffers and the board are continuing on the mechanics of meeting both the needs of Congress to conduct thorough oversight of federal agencies and the board’s pledge to protect the identities of key witnesses who provided important information.
CAIB chairman Harold Gehman, a retired Navy Adm., said the board granted privacy not so much to ensure truthfulness, but to encourage witnesses to volunteer information they might otherwise hold back.
"It cannot be done any other way in our opinion," he told lawmakers concerned about the practice, promising that the end result will be "a better product."
Gehman told reporters after a hearing before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee in Washington that the board has promised anonymity to some 200 individuals who have given testimony to the accident investigation board.
While the board intends to honor its agreements with those individuals within the fullest extent of the law, Gehman said he also believes a solution can be reached that will allow lawmakers to exercise their full oversight responsibilities without making the sworn statements public.
Some lawmakers took exception with the idea of privileged testimony in the first place.
"It’s not going to be credible with the American people unless it is made public. Secrecy may be policy in military investigations, but NASA is a civilian agency," said U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who flew aboard Columbia in 1986.
According to congressional sources, accommodations will be made whereby a limited number of congressional staffers will be permitted controlled access to the complete witness statements.
A staffer assigned to one of the Congressional oversight committees with responsibility for NASA said this week that the details are still be worked out.
Past experience such as when members of Congress need access to classified military information, suggests appropriate staffers will be able to examine the statements, for example, in a central location with controlled access but not be allowed to make copies of the documents.
The option of holding privileged testimony was made possible by putting all CAIB members on the federal payroll, a move that also raised eyebrows and prompted some to question the independence of the five civilian board members who are now being paid with a NASA check.
"NASA does not pay our salaries, you pay our salaries," Gehman told lawmakers, many of whom had voted earlier this year to add $50 million to NASA’s 2003 budget to defray the cost of the Columbia accident investigation.
"NASA keeps the books for me but I spend that money, so somehow suggesting that members of this board are influenced by the book, by the way the records are kept, I find to be somewhat naïve," Gehman said.
For the record, Gehman is being paid an annual rate of $142,500 for chairing the board. His check comes from the Office of Personnel and Management.
Seven of the board members were already on the federal payroll when they were assigned to the CAIB.
The remaining five board members -- four professors and one retired business executive -- are now receiving checks issued by NASA. Their annual rate of pay is $134,000.
John Logsdon of George Washington University and Sally Ride of the University of California at San Diego are on unpaid leave from their employers. Douglas Osheroff of Stanford University is not. A spokesman for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology did not return a call asking about Sheila Widnall's employment status.
Jim Banke, Senior Producer in the Cape Canaveral Bureau, contributed to this report. -- space.com
"There is a kind of a lack of appreciation for the total risk involved," he said.
From outside of the space program, I still find this statement extremely difficult to believe.
In my opinion, risk analysis is fairly routine and has been a stable practice since at least the early '60s.
Engineers do not normally drop the risk analysis ball, in my experience.
But IMHO bean counters do-- and often.
The only ways in which engineers could drop the ball IMHO is if they had severe pressure from management, or else a complete changing of the guard, so to speak, a mass replacement of experienced personnel by green college hires with no training.
I would be skeptical of any outside review coming to the conclusion that engineers were at fault without a lot of supporting details.
IIRC, the early NASA reports also fingered the engineers.
But quality (reliability, safety) is not a bottom-up issue! Without management support, safety is *non-existent*. Management support is *not* outsourcing the safety department or relocating it from one end of the country to another without adequate encouragement of personnel to move.
My impression remains that the accident and the subsequent investigations are an indirect expression of the political will of the public that the current rate of accidents is within acceptable limits. Unfortunately for those whose job it is to fly those things!
[Rant off]
the political will of the public that the current rate of accidents is within acceptable limits
This is the first accident the public knows about since the Challenger, right? The rate of accidents is simply not something the public can form an attitude about.
Quick, is ensuring safety a management issue, or an engineering issue?
I mean: safety *engineering* is relatively cut and dried. With the result now in, the conclusion is obvious: not enough safety engineering was applied-- a prioritization problem. Management sets the priorities. It appears that the priority that they set is about the same as in 1986: an engineer who worries unduly about safety risks his career.
The Major General's remark is the problem. Engineers are assigned to specific tasks, such as safety or maintenance. There should always be a safety engineer or a safety engineering department involved in all aspects of the shuttle operations (including maintenance). The Major General's remark strongly implies that this was not the case. The "spin" of the remark is away from management and towards someone in the trenches. Whatever-- the guys in the trenches don't have the authority to make cross-disciplinary calls.
This direction is towards another whitewash.
This direction is towards another whitewash.
Definitely. A government agency cannot go in any other direction.
The foam dislodgement was a recurring problem that was being looked at by both engineering and management.
The "accident" wasn't the foam dislodgement, however. The shuttle disintegrated because nobody got out to look at the wing, and the wing was damaged and disintegrated on re-entry. The "risk assessment" was done by a new crew -- from Boeing -- using outdated software.
As to my quip about the "markets", it was just an analogy and a look at what impersonal modes of operation result in -- namely, disregard of much that is human.
Kindest Regards
The Missing Link?
Wing Test Could Offer Breakthrough in Columbia Inquiry
By Gina Treadgold and Lisa Stark
May 30
- It may be the missing link for investigators trying to figure out why the space shuttle Columbia broke up over Texas in February.
A test conducted Thursday at Southwest Research in San Antonio could provide the first scientific evidence of just how damage occurred in the shuttle disaster.
Foam fired at a fiberglass shuttle wing loosened a seal between critical heat panels that protect the leading edge of the wing from searing gases on re-entry.
The foam was fired at the same speed - more than 500 miles an hour - and the same angle as the piece of foam that hit the shuttle Columbia on lift-off.
The impact jarred one of the seals between the thermal panels, leaving a gap 22 inches long, ranging from the thickness of a dime to a quarter of an inch.
On the Columbia, an object that was seen floating away from the shuttle on day two of the mission may have further widened that gap, which would have later exposed the shuttle to the extreme temperatures and thermal stresses of reentry.
Missing Piece of Evidence
Investigators knew foam flew off the external fuel tank attached to Columbia 82 seconds after lift-off. And as ABCNEWS first reported, sensors from a data recorder on Columbia recovered after the disaster showed heating at 120 seconds into flight, which indicates the left wing was critically punctured during liftoff.
They also knew the shuttle burned up on re-entry probably due to a breach in the leading edge of the wing. But proving that the foam strike had actually caused that breach has been difficult.
"It's not an 'aha' moment," says Lt. Col. "Woody" Woodyard of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, "but it certainly is important."
The wing section used in Thursday's test was made of fiberglass and is from the shuttle Enterprise. Enterprise was a prototype and never flew in space. Fiberglass is two and a half times stronger than the carbon composite material used on the real shuttles. So damage to Columbia's wing may have been even more dramatic.
Earlier this week there was also evidence the breach in Columbia's wing may've been a missing seal. The investigative board says extensive analysis has shown that an object that floated away from the shuttle during its second day in orbit matches the profile of half of a seal.
Further testing is planned at Southwest Research, in which foam will be fired at panels just like those on Columbia. This test will duplicate as closely as possible the incident on lift-off. The board considers the test so significant, it has moved up the test date to early June.
Copyright © 2002 ABC News Internet Ventures
-- ABC News
The Associated Press
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA inspectors charged with making sure space shuttles are safe to fly were forced to buy their own tools and prevented from making spot checks, a Columbia accident investigator says.
The investigator, who spoke with The Associated Press in interviews over several days, said NASA's program that oversees shuttle inspections will "take a pretty big hit" in the Columbia accident report due out in late August.
Air Force Brig. Gen. Duane Deal, one of 13 members of the board investigating the cause of the shuttle accident, says he obtained crucial information by offering confidentiality to the 72 NASA and contractor employees he interviewed over months.
"They'd be fired" if their bosses found out what they confided, said Deal.
He said his findings seemed to indicate that some NASA managers were out of touch with the level of shuttle inspections needed for manned spaceflight.
Deal said that nearly 9 out of 10 workers interviewed said the investigation board should review the space agency's quality assurance program at Kennedy Space Center in Florida and other NASA installations.
He called the program "poor" because the number and kinds of inspections have been cut back.
Mike Rein, a NASA spokesman at Kennedy, declined to respond directly to Deal's assessments, but noted that ever since the accident, the space agency has been reviewing practices in all areas and making improvements where necessary.
Deal, who has taken part in about a dozen investigations into military aircraft and rocket accidents, said NASA quality assurance inspectors were not allowed to do everything in their job descriptions. For instance, he said, they were not allowed to do spot checks, "to just wander around and see what you can see."
He blames the NASA hierarchy for this "fairly serious" problem.
Bureaucracy is also the reason NASA quality assurance inspectors were denied the necessary tools to do their jobs, Deal said.
Meanwhile, NASA should be able to recover from the Columbia accident and safely return the shuttle fleet to space within "six to nine months," the space agency administrator says.
In a meeting with reporters Tuesday, Sean O'Keefe said that most of the issues to be addressed in the Columbia Accident Investigation Board report are known and that NASA is already taking action.
"There is nothing that we have seen so far that will preclude" a return to space "in six to nine months," O'Keefe said.
NASA engineers are already studying ways to make repairs in orbit if the space shuttle is damaged during launch. O'Keefe said engineers are also redesigning part of the space shuttle external fuel tank to ensure that a large chunk of insulation will not fly off and hit the shuttle during launch, an event that is thought have brought down Columbia.
Sabin Russell, Chronicle Staff Writer
Astronauts aboard the doomed space shuttle Columbia might have been saved by a "simple" space walk inspection, followed by a risky rescue mission using a second orbiter, a key member of the accident investigation board confirmed Thursday.
G. Scott Hubbard, director of the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, was the sole NASA representative on the 13-member Columbia Accident Investigation Board, which on Tuesday released a stinging indictment of the space agency's complacency in its final report.
Returning to work at Ames after a seven-month stint on the board, Hubbard told reporters during a wide-ranging press conference that he was in full agreement with the report's conclusions. The board found that flaws in NASA's management of safety concerns were as much to blame for the disaster as the chunk of foam that fell off 81 seconds after lift-off and punched a hole in the leading edge of Columbia's wing.
That breach allowed hot gases to enter the wing during its re-entry over the Pacific Ocean on the morning of February 1. As the shuttle streaked over California, evidence now shows, the plasma was eating away wiring and support structures inside the left wing, and seven minutes later, Columbia broke apart over eastern Texas.
Had NASA managers taken the foam strike as seriously as the engineers who detected it on a review of launch films, Hubbard said, an extraordinary rescue scenario might have been possible. The report cites eight "missed opportunities" to make a closer visual inspection of possible wing damage, including turning down requests to seek the use of Department of Defense spy satellite cameras.
Hubbard said NASA managers had made critically incorrect assumptions. Based on prior experience with numerous smaller foam strikes, they assumed the latest one was no more dangerous. NASA managers also told reporters repeatedly after the accident that, had they known about the damage, there was nothing that could have been done about it. That assumption was also wrong, he said.
"Decisions were made in the hallways, without sufficient data," Hubbard said.
A spacewalk to inspect for damage would have been "relatively simple," he said. Had it been completed before the fourth day of flight, according to the report, there would have been time to speed-up the preparations to launch the space shuttle Atlantis, which was only 41 days from its own launch date.
The scenario laid out by the investigation board concludes that Atlantis could have been readied for a rescue mission by February 10 -- five days before Columbia's air cleaning systems would begin failing. Weather records show that the Atlantis would have been safe to fly any of those days.
A four member crew would fly Atlantis into orbit for a rendezvous with Columbia. As the two orbiters flew in formation, back to back, the seven Columbia astronauts would be ferried to the rescue ship. Columbia itself would be either ditched into the Pacific, or boosted to higher orbit in the hope that another mission to repair it could be mounted later.
Hubbard told reporters that an alternative plan, to repair the wing damage in orbit, "probably would not have been successful." However, "if everything fell just right, a rescue mission would have been possible."
The NASA engineer also examined, with Air Force general and fellow accident board member Duane Deal, the prospect of sending a smaller rocket into orbit to Columbia, bearing supplies of air-scrubbing chemicals, food or other materials to stretch the time the crew could survive in orbit. But they concluded it wouldn't have worked, either. "Given the complexities of docking with the shuttle, it would not have been possible in the time available," Hubbard said.
Nevertheless, there are studies going on at NASA to develop a crew rescue vehicle for the International Space Station, whose crews are currently limited to three members because -- with the shuttle fleet out of action -- no more than three can return safely to earth on Russian space capsules.
Hubbard said that the goal of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board was to find out what went wrong, rather than to assess blame. Although the 248- page report cites mistakes by numerous named NASA managers, it lays blame only on the organizational "culture" of the agency. Hubbard acknowledged that Congress, which will soon hold hearings on the accident, might demand more accountability.
A key mistake, made by numerous NASA engineers and managers, was discounting the damage that could have been inflicted by a two-pound chunk of foam, traveling at more than 500 mph.
In the early days of the mission, engineers at NASA and shuttle subcontractor Boeing began focusing their attention on possible damage to the underside of the shuttle, rather than on the leading edge, where the photo- analyst team correctly calculated the foam had struck. "What seemed to have happened," Hubbard told reporters Thursday, "was that experts consulted in hallways, using tools that were inappropriate."
The only analysis of a debris strike on the carbon panel was a computer program designed to model strikes of tiny ice pellets, "not a block traveling 500 miles an hour," Hubbard said. "Not enough hard questions were being asked by the right people."
Hubbard also said that his experience on the board "changed me in ways that I don't fully understand yet." He said he was returning with a new understanding for how organizations work, or don't.
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