Shuttle Columbia: Who Dropped the Ball

donath.org ^ | 3/3/03 | Carl Donath

[ctdonath2]

Shuttle Columbia: Who Dropped the Ball

Recently a set of NASA emails were released to the public, detailing the internal discussions among engineers and lower management about whether and how the possibly damaged spacecraft could suffer a catastrophic failure upon re-entry and landing. Interestingly, nobody in the media has picked up on the "smoking gun" buried within these emails, showing who made the fateful decision that ultimately doomed the craft and crew.

Here is the critical tidbit:



Translation: someone at NASA asked the USSTRAT (part of the military) to use a spy satellite to examine the suspected damage. Higher management had not approved that request, so Steve J. Stich told USSTRAT to cancel the request. Upon reflection (before the deaths of the crew), Mr. Stich was more concerned with looking like he "cried wolf" than whether lifesaving information might be obtained.

The upshot is that Steve J. Stich deliberately blocked the action which would have, in all likelyhood, revealed the serious damage which resulted in the loss of craft and crew. Why Mr. Stich has not been publicly called to account, by NASA nor by the media, for his actions is bewildering.

[ctdonath2]

I'm surprised the media has not bothered to ask who made the key decision to officially not determine whether Columbia could come back safely - despite knowledge that engineers had expressed a distinct concern that the shuttle might not survive re-entry.

Much has been said about the emails among NASA engineers, but it seems few bothered to actually read them.

[ALASKA]

With no way to repair damaged tiles, the inability to reach the Space Station, and no rescue options, what does it matter?

[TXBubba]

I guess my question would be. If they knew of the problem then what could they have done about it? My understanding is that there is no way to fix the thing while in space. They can't reach the other side of the shuttle from the cargo bay. Could they have stayed up for any amount of time to get rescued? I guess they could have given the crew time to say "goodbye" but that would have been rather morbid if they weren't sure there was a problem. I would focus more on how to re-design future shuttles to avoid the damage done during take-off.

[TXnMA]

With no way to repair damaged tiles, the inability to reach the Space Station, and no rescue options, what does it matter?

As a failure analyst, I can assure you that, in trying to unravel what happened (so it can be fixed), that data would be of immense value.

And I'll bet that Mr.Stich has heard the same (albeit less pleasantly) from his F/A colleagues at NASA...

[bvw]

They was a herd of blustering bloviationists rollicking around the early shuttle threads saying that we had NOT such imaging capability.

[OldFriend]

This entire concept of crying wolf leaves me puzzled. If a request is made, it should be granted and NEVER considered frivolous.

[libertylover]

It seems to me that you've jumped to the conclusion that the foam striking the wing on liftoff damaged the tile enough to cause the disaster. I know that's one of the theories, probably the leading theory, but it's far from conclusive at this point.

[John Valentine]

Frankly it looks to me like Steve Stitch is only the messenger here.

The operative parts of the e-mail read: "The SSP did not want any data" and "there never was a formal MOD request made from the FDOs.."

It looks to me like the decision not to pursue the imaging was not made by Steve Stitch.

By the way, who knows the meaning of the term "SSP"?

[ctdonath2]

This fatalistic "what could they have done? better to let them be ignorant and die" attitude is appalling. If nothing else, go watch "Apollo 13" again and see how we indeed dealt with such a potentially fatal situation. America is supposed to be the nation of CAN DO, not "dunno, oh well". Give the engineers, scientists, and astronauts the chance to fix the problem and they most likely will! Since when is a few seconds of ignorance preferable to thousands of man-hours of passionate creativity?

[ctdonath2]

It seems to me that you've jumped to the conclusion that the foam striking the wing on liftoff damaged the tile enough to cause the wing on liftoff damaged the tile enough to cause the disaster.

If you read the referenced emails, you'll see that a whole bunch of NASA engineers jumped to that conclusion too. "Not a good day" was a recurring theme by people who actually did know what they were talking about, and what they perceived and predicted is awfully close to what actually happened.

[eno_]

NASA has officially claimed that there were rescue options, such as hurrying another shuttle into orbit, that would have been considered if they had evidence that a landing attempt would be very risky.

[ctdonath2]

Frankly it looks to me like Steve Stitch is only the messenger here.

Only partially. He may have delivered the "cancel that request" message, yet he also obviously knew what that meant, had the authority to deliver that message, and was the last person who had a chance to NOT deliver that message. Even if he was "just following orders", there is a certain responsibility in knowing whether it is right to follow that order.

Steve wrote that he himself delivered that message, AND lamented that he should have let the original request for data go unhindered (if only to avoid "crying wolf"). Steve knew that he could have chosen to not deliver that message.

[Fiddlstix]

Bump

[Atlas Sneezed]

"With no way to repair damaged tiles, the inability to reach the Space Station, and no rescue options, what does it matter?"

Two words: Rescue Mission.

(And such would have done more for NASA's public image than the Apollo 13 movie has. A great potential PR triumph.) After the Atlantis rescue, image the tile damage, remotely boost Columbia up to the highest orbit possible (or send extra fuel on a future launch) and then prep the repair tiles. Send a repair crew, and a couple heroic (unmarried) pilots to take the risky spacecraft down to earth. It would make the Hubble repair look boring, and be a great national triumph!

(It would also give these billion-dollar Greyhound buses something noteworthy to do for a change.)

[eno_]

So this is interesting:

The naysayers that claim there was nothing to be done are contraticted by NASA feeling the heat for not having plans in place. NASA says "Yes, we could have flown a rescue mission."

It is now firmly established that some level of NASA management explicitly did not want to know.

So, like most disasters, it isn't the event - foam sloughing off the tank and hitting the wing - that is deadly, it is the human decision process that kills.

[TXBubba]

Could they have stayed up for any amount of time to get rescued?

I believe I asked this question in my post. But you chose to ignore it. Do you know how many DAYS it takes to move a rocket or shuttle into place for launch? And that would be if the rocket or shuttle was ready to be launched in the first place. Why don't you answer my question about whether it was feasible to be done before jumping all over my response? You almost sound like you live in a fantasy movie world not based on reality. Yes, they solved the Apollo 13 crisis but I didn't see them send up another rocket to get them. I also don't remember any part about sending the astronauts outside to replace part of the rocket. And if they hadn't solved it then those guys would have been just as dead as the crew of the shuttle.

[thepainster]

NASA did state that there was two things they could have done to minimize the stress on the left wing if they had evidence it was damaged and posed a threat during re-entry.

1) Cold soak the left wing prior to re-entry. This involves rotating the shuttle so the left wing was not exposed to the sun while in orbit. This would lower the temperature of the left wing considerably prior to re-entry.

2) Bring the shuttle in at an angle that minimized the heating on the left wing during re-entry.

Neither of these would assure a positive outcome, but it would be better thatn doing nothing at all.

[ctdonath2]

I believe I asked this question in my post. But you chose to ignore it.

I didn't ignore it, you ignored my answer.

Faced with the problem that would have been revealed by the spy satellite, ten thousand engineers and scientists and managers and others would have been thrown at the problem with nearly unlimited resources. Given the chance to exercise extreme creativity, they could have solved the problem. They could have rigged a docking or spacewalk to the space station. They could have tapped oxygen reserves otherwise intended for re-entry. They could have patched the damage. They could have supercooled the wing. They could have changed re-entry trajectory. They could have found little-known documents addressing precisely the situation, or related abort-mission solutions. Given the basic problem and the freedom & motivation to solve it, the crew could have been saved. If nothing else, all options could have been exhausted and the crew lost with all knowing "we did the best we could".

Yes, they could - possibly - have stayed up for long enough for a rescue. You don't know for absolute fact that they could not have. Your defeatist "dunno, so let 'em die in ignorance" attitude, shared by a certain Steve Stich & co., denied the astronauts and their support crew the opportunity to solve the problem.

[ctdonath2]

Why don't you answer my question about whether it was feasible to be done before jumping all over my response?

BECAUSE NOBODY WAS GIVEN ADEQUATE OPPORTUNITY TO DETERMINE IF IT WAS FEASABLE. A million man-hours of expert creative analysis is, indeed, superior to ten seconds of ignorance.

[ctdonath2]

Almost two weeks after I found this info, and over a week since I published it, Drudge is reporting that NYT will report on who dropped the ball.

Amazing how slow reporters are getting, even when the story is practically handed to them on a silver platter. They reported the infamous NASA emails, but seems the reporters did not read them!