Columbia Accident Investigation Board: Final Report

ssclift writes "After nearly 7 months the Columbia Accident Investigation Board has released its final report into the February 1st loss of the Shuttle Columbia and all 7 crew members. This is more than a technical assessment of the immediate causes of the accident. Once again, sadly, the world's flagship space agency gets a thorough and grim review. Press briefings will begin at 11:00 EDT along with a webcast."

Comments

The future of NASA

[Liselle]

NASA appears to have fallen from a great height. I wonder if this means that the space program is going to become more and more privatized. It also makes me curious: if there was more public interest in space program in general (ie: more tax money for NASA), would this sort of thing still happen, or would it just be on a larger scale?

Lessons learned

[byolinux]

Hopefully there can be some valuable lessons learned from this tragedy. Hopefully something like this will never happen again.

Re:Lessons learned

[sphealey]

Hopefully there can be some valuable lessons learned from this tragedy. Hopefully something like this will never happen again.

While no one is in favor of needlessly throwing away life, do consider that the bones of a good percentage of the settlers who tried the Oregon Trail can still be seen along the sides of that trail today. For the ones who made it, Oregon was a good life. But quite a few did not make it, and that is the nature of exploring/pioneering.

Also consider that that same week 90 people were roasted/squashed to death while attempting the life-altering experience of seeing "Great White" live on stage. Seems to me that space exploration is worth a bit more risk than that event.

sPh

Failure is not an Option?

[tinrobot]

Funny how the History Channel special on the early space program came out this week. After watching it, I realized how much different NASA is today. They have no fire in their belly, seems like they're more interested in keeping their jobs than anything. If we want to continue sending men into space, we had better start doing it right once again.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[Frymaster]

Sound familiar anyone?

of course. now how would you or anyone build a system that was more open? even the japanese "tan" system has failed...

the suits will always be there and they will always want "yes men".

Time to shrink NASA

[chroma]

I used to be a big believer in the NASA Myth: that they were the only ones capable of doing big space launches and that space access for humans was inherently expensive.

Then I heard Jerry Pournelle speak a couple years ago at a convention. He said something that shook me: NASA has many good people and does many good things but needs to get out of the business of launching people and robots into space. It surprised me because here is a guy who is in favor of space exploration but against NASA.

NASA as an organization doesn't really care about cheap, reliable space launches, because that would mean that their budget would be cut! The shuttle accidents are a symptom of bureaucratic mentality. Think on this: the Russian space agency will charge you about $15M for a trip to the space station. It costs between $500M and $1 billion just to do a shuttle launch.

NASA does a great job building Mars rovers and such, let's keep them doing that. But we should turn everything else over to private industry.

Re:Time to shrink NASA

[solarlux]

How this parent get modded to 5?

> NASA as an organization doesn't really care about cheap, reliable space launches, because that would mean that their budget would be cut!

NASA has quite a few projects under research and development. See NASA Projects -- NASA is researching cheaper ways to conduct space launches. Believe me, it behooves them to do so. Cutting costs in ANY area leaves more to apply to additional research. Congress doesn't ask NASA for bill based on the "cost of exploring space" -- they toss whatever crumbs they can spare from the budget. Granted, congress monitors how the money is spent, but to say cost savings = budget cuts is a massive oversimplification.

change of mindset

[mks180]

It seems to me that somewhere along the way NASA has changed from an operation mode where you had to prove that something was safe to proving that something is not safe.

Reminds me a lot of Apollo 1 disaster

[MtViewGuy]

The final report on the loss of Columbia reminds me a lot of the Apollo 1 fire that killed three astronauts in January 1967. =(

It appears that NASA frequently ignored safety warnings about the fragility of the shuttle tiles, and it appears that in a way that the switch to a more environment-friendly external tank foam material in 1997 may have contributed to the accident due to the fact the new foam had a tendency to shed material at an alarming rate. It reminds me a lot about the issues that caused the Apollo 1 fire in the way NASA engineers tacitly ignored the serious fire dangers of exposed wiring, flammable materials and 100% oxygen atmosphere on the ground.

Re:Feynman said exactly this 16 years ago

[ChuckDivine]

Sadly, you could be right about NASA not changing.

There are, however, some hopeful differences. Let me list a few:

• There have been a lot more obvious blunders committed in the public eye. Consider Hubble's focusing problems, the crash on Mars of probes because one group was using metric and the other English units, space station woes, the X-33 failure.
• Compared to 1986 there are more people with real knowledge about the agency who are willing to speak up about the agency's problems. In 1986 extremely interested people were far more willing to cut NASA a break. That's not true anymore.
• Significant politicians (e.g., Mikulski) are more aware of the problems and are willing to take action.
• The CAIB's citing of a "culture" problem marks an important step. People are no longer looking just at technology, but at the organization that creates and uses the technology.

This event is being viewed as NASA's Vietnam. That's a real wake up call.

Yes, things could still go wrong. There are plenty of well entrenched people who have turf to protect. But that's going to be much harder now.

And, I suspect, a lot of the good people who still manage to work in aerospace are also going to work to change things.

Oh so familiar...

[RetiredMidn]

NASA's problem is a reflection of the institutional behavior I have seen at my last 4-1/2 employers (the least recent morphed into a pathological organization while I was there); it has become more important to appear to have a product or strategy (or quality) than to actually have it. Nothing Scott Adams hasn't been saying for years.

BTW, the mindset did not start within NASA. In the 60's, the mandate was to spend what was necessary to build the best solution that could be conceived; starting in the 70's, it was all about compromises.

It Would Be Nice if NASA could be given a mandate and execute on it in such a way to once again set an example on How It Should Be Done, but I think we ultimately need to fix our broader culture about the standards of how we conduct business.

Using a BETA product for Production

[Uncle Op]

The second speaker, who was charged with reviewing the history of how the accident could have come about, observes that it's dangerous to use beta tools for a long time as if they are production ready.

The shuttle is and was an experiment. It's effectively a very functional prototype, but the completion - or at least the ongoing refinement - of the shuttle program has been in stasis for too long. We're not driving Model-T's anymore for a reason.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[cybercuzco]

There is a culture of NASA. I had a professor tell me a story about how they came up with the toilet on the shuttle. Aparently they already had a perfectly good toilet design from skylab, and it actually worked nearly as well as a conventional toilet, you didnt have to strap yourself down or anything. Just hold on and a centrifugical pump in the bowl takes care of everything. At any rate, it was designed at Marshall Spaceflight center. Of course the shuttle was beign designed at Johnson Spaceflight center (or maybe it was the other way around, dont quite remember) At any rate, Johnson couldnt use ANYTHING that had been designed by Marshall (and vise verse) So Johnson deisgned a completely new toliet, at very great expense to the program (~$10mil) When they could have used an existing design for much cheaper(probably still ~$1mil, but hey thats 10 times less). Similar thing happened with the flooring of the ISS. Again same two center, but reversed in stupidity. Skylab had an "isogrid" flooring system which basically was a bunch of aluminum triangles. You put a rubber triange on somebodys boot and voila, you canstand wherever you want and work without floating away by jamming your boot into the floor. Well that wasnt designed where the ISS was being designed so that was out the window. I think they use some sort of seat restraint system and velcro on the ISS now. Velcro is fine but it wears out over time, and of course seat restraints are more expensive than the floor you have to put in anyways. NASA needs to get rid of the Not Invented HERE (tm) syndrome and use the best ideas available and not whatever will boost a certain centers prestige.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[Marc2k]

The visible difference being that most large organizations are not funded by the government, and do not strap men and women to tons of explosives and try to get them back without any danger to the astronauts or the people of Earth.

Re:NASA is no longer a flagship

[introverted]

You know why we lost the Columbia? Because NASA regulations didn't allow anyone to go out and look at the damned wing in orbit without specific orders.

They didn't have the necessary maneuvering equipment (a "rocket pack" if you will) for an EVA that would allow them to look under the wing. An astronaut going outside without one would have no way of moving around to look at the shuttle's lower surfaces. An EVA under those circumstances would have been useless.

Another "obvious" options that wouldn't have worked would have been to go to the ISS for a lookover. The problem there are that ISS is in a different orbit and they didn't have enough fuel to make that orbital change. And even if they did, they'd still have had no way to get aboard the ISS - Columbia had no docking equipment and the lack of EVA equipment would have left them with no way of making the transit. (Jumping between ship and station is nicely dramatic for the movies, but not a terribly good idea in real life.)

The one option they could have used would have been to ask the Military to redirect one of their telescopes and take a look. Sadly, at the time, nobody seems to have thought the foam impact was likely to have caused significant damage.

Is shuttle fligh safe?

[kurtkilgor]

People are commenting that if 100 flights took place in a year instead of 4, we wouldn't worry about safety so much. But I think what's frustrating about the Columbia and the Challenger accidents is that they were caused by seemingly simple problems which were known before the accident occurred. Not a single astronaut has been killed by any of the things that make space dangerous: asteroids, radiation, etc. They have been killed by essentially terrestrial things that we expect to happen on a passenger car (leaky seals, cracked body panels) but not a multi billion dollar spacecraft. It's like sailing out of a storm alive and then drowning as you step off the boat.

Re:Starved for money and lacking direction

[fmaxwell]

all your answers are wrong....

No, all of my answers are right and yours is a great addition to them.

your first step is to get all the asshats out of washington DC that are intent on killing NASA...

GWB is one of them.... most of cingress is the other place to start....

That would be a great first step, but whoever replaces the "asshats" should seriously consider the steps that I've outlined in order to resuscitate the ailing agency.

Re:Physics question about foam impact

[crawling_chaos]

The foam stopped accelerating with the Shuttle as soon as it broke off and began to fall. Meanwhile, the Shuttle kept accelerating, thus increasing the relative velocities. The difference in velocity was measurable by looking at the time it took for the foam to strike the wing. The distance is known, and the time could be captured from the film. Of course, it was a bit approximate, but the foam strike test that did so much damage was well below the maximum velocity determined from the tape. The tests were conservative.

From the Executive Summary

[podperson]

The organizational causes of this accident are rooted in the Space Shuttle Program?s history and culture, including the original compromises that were required to gain approval for the Shuttle, subsequent years of resource constraints, fluctuating priorities, schedule pressures, mischaracterization of the Shuttle as operational rather than developmental, and lack of an agreed national vision for human space flight.

Emphasis mine.

Nasa funding and Pentagon

[wimbor]

In the previous comments, a lot of people made the argument that NASA costs to much for the results it achieves. I don't have an opinion on this, since I do not know all the facts. There are important factors to consider though if you want to have an opinion on this.

A BBC program (I think) recently touched on the fact that the Shuttle has been made a lot larger (and hence more expensive) than originally designed by NASA because the Pentagon wanted the craft to be able to launch heavier (military spy)satellites, and apparantly the Shuttle also harbours some other non-specified defense technology. I lost the name and original air date of this program, but you can trust me on this. :-) I may believe previous writers that NASA is too large/bureaucratic/whatever/..., but not all blame for the Shuttle program should be laid on NASA. The Pentagon also has a responsibility here.

NASA's budget may be huge... but its total budget is only as large as three DAYS of budget of the Pentagon... Maybe the US government should change something there, and jumpstart the space program: exploring space instead of other countries...

Before I get flamed, please consider this: Let's admit it, ONE of the reasons why the US likes the Army is because it generates jobs, not only directly (soldiers) but also indirectly in the defense contrators that supply the Army. The Army has a huge impact on the US economy. I can understand that the US doesn't want to cut the budget, certainly not in economic troubled times.

Changing the budget from the Pentagon to NASA would have the advantage that have all those clever defense contractors and engineers work for benevolant technologies (hopefully) for the benefit of all mankind. At the same time the effect to the US economy and workforce would be limited... In the long run new technologies and discoveries could even strenghten the economy.

What's *right* with NASA.

[Unknown Kadath]

For my senior thesis, I helped design a proposed Mars mission. I was working at Johnson when Columbia broke up, but I've since graduated and am no longer associated with NASA, and can speak freely.

I'm not sure to start on what's wrong with NASA. Many other posters have covered that in detail, and I think many of them are spot on.

But there is one thing very, very right--the people. From janitors and groundskeepers, all the way to the directors of the various centers, NASA employees are passionately devoted to the job they do. Losing Columbia hurt like losing members of their families, hurt their professional pride, hurt that part of their souls where they keep their their dedication and hope. They will continue because there is still work to be done, because the journey is still unfinished, because that's what their fallen comrades wanted. This spark is fundamental to NASA--the institutional culture cannot extinguish it, but I fear that it may become impotent.

Space travel is costly and risky. It will be centuries before we can consider it routine. The people of NASA have the expertise and the will to carry on, but will they be permitted to do so? I say, Stand aside and let your scientists and engineers work. Let your astronauts fly. They may greatly fail, but it will be because they have greatly dared.

We've forgotten courage, I think.

-Carolyn

The wrong solutions to the wrong problems

[Shadowmist]

1. Bush tried the inpiring goal bit with his announcement of a "Mission to Mars." Which lasted until he was presented with the price tag on the order of $450 billion dollars. The Mission to Mars did not survive the ongoing crusade of "Tax Freedom", not to mention the expense of the war of Iraq and new military adventures in a "War on Terrorism" which has no forseeable end.

2. NASA's separation from the military is nothing more than a relic of Cold-War propaganda. If you check much of the pre-60's literature, you'll notice a prevailing assumption that the first craft on the moon would bear a USAF emblazon. (all of the Mercury-Gemini-Apollo commanders were Air Force.) For a long time there was government sentiment to simply fold NASA into the Air Force and be done with it. The main reason this was not done was as a PR counter to the Soviets' space program which made no pretense about it being anything but an arm of it's military.

3.What's adequate? The big question is what are you willing to pay for and what do cut? The Apollo and Shuttle programs are chump change compared to the kind of bill a Manned Mars program will run up. And contrary to popular belief, the orginal space program did not return it's monetary value in spinoffs. It paid for itself in delivering our greatest symbolic victory over the Soviets, but not much beyond that. The United States is awash in red ink, trade deficits and social and physical infrastructures which are going to pot, and we have severe energy and economic issues which continue to be deferred. Can you honestly tell the American people that we have a half trillion dollars to throw away on a Mars program with no expectation of significant return?

4.One of the best comments I ever heard about the moon shot was one describing it as a "21st century feat done with 20th century technology." The Shuttle is very much like that. The problem with the Shuttle is very much that of the International Space Station, both very high tech expensive projects looking for missions to solve. ISS was fought by critics that new it would become an orbital White Elephant. What does the Shuttle do that an expendable rocket can't? Ferry large parts up for ISS assembly. What does the ISS do? No one really seems to have come up with an answer that justifies the price tag.

In the end, NASA's mission needs to be defined, or better yet, redefined in today's terms, in realistic manageable goals, based on the pot we're willing to bring to the table. Where we can, we should take advantage of the work of other parties to avoid needless duplication. Invite the China, Japan, and India to participate as partners as we already have with the Russians and the European Space Agency. And maybe recognise that some goals should be left to our children or grand children and devote the resources and leadership to ensure that they have the means to work on their aspirations when they inherit what we leave behind.

Our foremost responsibility as a civilisation and a species is to leave an inheritance worthy of the future. The scorn that we otherwise deserve shall not lighten the consequences if we come up short in this.

Re:Columbia was lost no matter what

[Alomex]

BS. Once the breach had been identified, any number of out-of-the-box solutions could have been worked out to go and rescue the astrounats... E.g.

- resuply with a Progress ship
- rescue with a Long March
- send space-age duct tape with an Atlas
- send more fuel to the escape pod in the SS, then use the scape pod to ferry astrounats from the shuttle to the SS
- dust off an Apollo re-entry capsule from the Smithsonian and send it on an Ariadne 5 to be used as re-entry pod

and on and on... With so many options available chances are we could have found a way...

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[EvilTwinSkippy]

If you want a good read on organizational dynamics, especially in regards to Engineering, take a flip through The Mythical Man Month by Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.

The book is a series of Essays that illustrate the problems inherent in trying to use techniques for managing unskilled labor on a skilled workforce. The book is primarily structured around Software design, but it's teachings are readily adapted to most Engineering disciplines. It's chock full of un-intiuitive facts of life in engineering projects:

• There is a point in a project where adding more people pushes the project even further behind schedule. It takes time to bring new people up to speed on a project, doubly so on a project that is mostly completed.
• Engineers need to be structured like a surgical team, with definite roles and supporting functions to play. They aren't like day laborers that can be dropped in a cubical and hammer out equations.
• Projects need to constantly go back to the original vision.
• Development work is often like carrying a baby. Assigning 9 women to the task will not make it take any less than 9 months.
• A clear line in the sand needs to be drawn between the Architecture and the Implementation. The Architecture should leave Implementation details fuzzy. Implementors have a practical experience that often allows them to meet needs in creative and ingenious ways unknown to the Architect. Architects also need to listen to Implementor's when told a particular feature will require a tremendous number of resources to bring to fruition, and adjust accordingly.
• It is far better to let a schedule slip than to try to hurry it up. Hurrying up introduces mistakes, added expense, and more often than not an unsatisfactory product.
• (At least in software) 1/2 of the project is testing (1/4 component testing and 1/4 systems integration testing). 1/3 is planning. Only 1/6 should be spent on the actual design and fabrication.

Re:A rare opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

What we need to do is give NASA a goal and time table that are completely unreasonable. Going to the moon by the end of the decade was ludicrous when Kennedy first said it, but we still got there because we had brilliant people who were very well motivated (not just by money) working for a common goal that "can't be done".

If you told all the NASA engineers that you wanted a Mars colony by 2015 and that 1) money was no object and 2) all the idiot suits were out of a job as of now, you'd not only get a Mars colony in late 2014, but you'd also see some really cool new technology. It'd be the stuff that had to get invinted to make the goal happen.

Re:Columbia was lost no matter what

[tmortn]

Resupply with progress.... intresting notion but progress can't make Shuttle's primary orbit which is where Columbia was. That is the reason for ISS's odd orbit, it is the compromise position between shuttles ability and soyuz.

Rescue with long march... ummmm they havn't even sent a person up yet that I know of in a long march. Also questions about orbital inclnation possibilities.

SPace age duct tape.. right let me go down to wally world and pick some up. It dosn't exist. Tile is custom fitted and fixing the projected hole on orbit ad hoc simply wasn't an option. Docked at ISS with full EVA and both arms ( SHUTTLE and STATION ) would be almost as useless. Vacume and conditions in space make it extremely difficult to effect repair operations. COuld they weld, could they apply fixatives in the temprature environment, could they seal and control the temprature at the necesarry areas to do so ? These are questions that have been around for ages regarding space construction and they have no answer as yet.

Escape pod in the SS ???? What the hell are you talking about ?

Dust off an Appollo. feasible but problematic. One is time to 'dust off', two is docking, three is can you fit 7 people in one much less how to get any of them at all.. probably 8 seeing as a truly dusted off Appollo module would likely have ot have at least a pilot to even try to rendezvous lets not even talk about the fact the quesiton of who the hell would fly it. perhaps Jim Lovel or another one the Appollo era who are the only remaining people trained to fly the thing ?

From a Can do attitude the best option was Atlantis, possibly with a docking node and a spare node to install on columbia ( no idea if thats possible ) with a canada arm. Possibly loaded with payload assist modules to boost to ISS orbit.. not sure if the delta V needed would be possible to achieve, I know its out of the question with a fully charged OMS system once your on orbit.

If you could launch and install a docking collar on orbit and carry enough boost capacity in one form or another to match ISS orbit what you do is install the docking collar transfer the crew and boost Columbia to ISS orbit if possible and dock it there while you try to figure out what to do with it. Everyone else returns on Atlantis. If ISS is impossible then you use assit modules to boost the shuttle to as high an orbit as possible and figure out what to do with it later, or do a planned re-entry ditch.

In either case launching Atlantis incurrs the exact same risk that Columbia had just run afoul of. To launch Atlantis you risked having two injured birds and even more crew loss. I would choose to launch the rescue had we known Columbia was incapable of re-entry and had at least a real snowball's chance in hell of succeeding. However, thats becasue I think trying to rescue and fialing is easier to deal with than some chilling dcision to cut losses.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[BigBir3d]

When or not a large organization is or is not funded by the government makes no difference whatsoever, market arguments notwithstanding.

I have to dis-agree with you here. It is not just a matter of office politics (a factor in all big organisations), but also national and international politics.

The problem with NASA is that the geeks and nerds are no longer in control of the big decisions. Most responsible scientific minded people are horrified by the nature of NASA today. Most people my age that could have gotten a job there, chose not because of the atmosphere there.