Shuttles’ First Engineers Exasperated
Some of the original architects of America’s space shuttle program told investigators Wednesday that they never designed the spacecraft to withstand a forceful strike from any object, much less the large chunks of foam insulation that pounded the Columbia 16 days before it disintegrated.
At a boisterous public hearing that at times felt like a production of “Grumpy Old Engineers,” several men who helped NASA realize its dream of building a reusable spacecraft 25 years ago said they were flabbergasted that today’s space agency shrugged off the threat posed by the liftoff accident.
Independent investigators now believe the foam insulation, which fell from an external fuel tank and struck the edge of the shuttle’s left wing after liftoff, opened a breach that allowed superheated gas to penetrate the craft and bring it down two weeks later.
NASA has known since at least 1997 that pieces of foam insulation periodically “popcorn” off during liftoff and strike the shuttle.
Robert Thompson, 77, former vice president of the shuttle program for contractor McDonnell Douglas and the manager of the shuttle program in its formative years, said he believes today’s NASA engineers were lulled into complacency because early foam insulation strikes were harmless.
The strike on Columbia was crippling, Thompson said, because of the large size of the foam insulation and the fact that it came 81 seconds after liftoff -- meaning the insulation struck the wing while traveling at 700 feet per second. Thompson told the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, the independent panel charged with finding the cause of the Feb. 1 disaster, that it took an understanding of “high school physics” to grasp the impact of that incident.
“That’s a hell of a speed bump,” Thompson said.
Aaron Cohen, a former director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston who oversaw the first four flights of Columbia, pointed out that space shuttles are rugged aircraft but were not designed to withstand “large hits.” That made it puzzling that NASA did not address the problem of “popcorning” foam insulation as soon as it started, said Dr. Milton A. Silveira, 74, a principal engineer at the El Segundo-based Aerospace Corp. and NASA’s former chief engineer.
“There were indications that there was a problem,” he said. “And people didn’t address it fast enough. People didn’t understand: this can do a lot of damage.”
Many NASA engineers now agree that the catastrophic events that led to the accident began with the foam insulation incident, and the space agency has begun reviewing methods of redesigning its external fuel tanks to prevent future problems.
The remarks came hours after Ron Dittemore, the space shuttle program manager at Johnson Space Center, told his staff that he will resign his post. The announcement had been expected for several days.
Dittemore, a 26-year NASA veteran, has served as the program manager for longer than four years. He became the public face of the agency in the weeks following the Columbia disaster. Colleagues in Houston have described him as a bright and tireless engineer, but some of his positions -- including his assurances that the foam insulation did not wound the Columbia fatally -- raised some eyebrows this spring.
Dittemore said he plans to remain in his position until NASA has devised plans to get the grounded shuttle fleet flying and the investigative panel has finished its investigation. The panel is expected to release its final report this summer. Dittemore is expected to seek a position in the private sector, officials said.
“My decision to leave the space shuttle program has been a very difficult one, but it is a decision that I began struggling with long before the tragedy of the Columbia accident,” Dittemore said in a statement.
Dittemore announced his decision following a meeting in Washington with retired Air Force Gen. Michael Kostelnik, the deputy associate administrator for the space shuttle and international space station programs.
“Together we have overcome hailstorms, dodged hurricanes, resolved numerous technical problems, experienced the joy of victory and success, and, sadly, we’ve suffered the agony and pain associated with devastating loss,” Dittemore wrote in a memo to his staff. “I am confident that we will find the root cause of the Columbia accident, fix it, and return to flight soon.”
Kostelnik said Wednesday that one of the three remaining space shuttles could launch again within a year -- a timetable that could ease a shortage of resources and supplies on the international space station.
The shuttle, traditionally, is a key provider of personnel and resources to the space station. While the investigation into the Columbia accident continues, Russian transport vehicles are supplying the station with supplies, including all-precious drinking water. And this weekend, the space station’s three-person crew will swap out with a two-person crew.
Some investigators and analysts, though, are beginning to raise questions about that timetable -- and about NASA’s claims that the space shuttle can continue to fly for another 20 years. Retired U.S. Navy Adm. Harold Gehman Jr., the chairman of the investigative board, said in a brief interview Wednesday that his panel might recommend curtailing the use of the shuttle sooner than that.
Wednesday’s extensive public hearing was intended to shore up the investigative board’s pledge to produce no mere summary of the Columbia disaster, but a critique of NASA’s management and culture and a blueprint of future space exploration. Increasingly, some investigators are looking to the past -- to the space shuttle program’s other fatal disaster -- for clues.
Diane Vaughan, an associate professor of sociology at Boston College, said she has begun to detect many similarities between the events leading up to the Columbia disaster and the events the led up to the 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. A book by Vaughan published in 1996 lashed out at communication breakdowns and the decision to launch the Challenger even though engineers’ concerns had not been resolved.
The Challenger explosion, like the destruction of the Columbia, killed all seven crew members aboard.
Vaughan pointed to batches of internal e-mails released by NASA this spring showing that, hours before Columbia was scheduled to land in Florida, the agency’s engineers were still questioning whether the foam insulation might have caused serious damage to the shuttle.
“Something systematic is going on,” Vaughan told the investigative board. “The problems that existed at the time of Challenger have not been fixed.”
A NASA spokesman in Houston, Kyle Herring, said it was inappropriate to comment about the investigative board’s deliberations before its final report is released. And there were suggestions that fixing NASA’s culture is more complicated than removing the agency’s red tape and rigid hierarchy.
“How else can you resolve literally thousands of engineering issues except in a hierarchical manner?” Gehman asked. “I don’t know how to do that.”
