Space museum turns to tragedy

Curators at the National Air and Space Museum are wrestling with the delicate question of how to present the Challenger and Columbia tragedies.

Specifically, should an exhibition on the space shuttle include pieces of wreckage?

Doing so would be a departure for the museum. Until now the tragedies of airplane and space travel have been dealt with briefly -- as concise mentions in explanatory panels or the display of simple artifacts, such as a crew patch.

“Triumph and tragedy have been there for years,” said Valerie Neal, the museum’s curator of space history. “But the primary story of the space race has been one of triumph, and there is an occasional and rare subtext of tragedy. When it happens, it is shocking and cataclysmic to the families and the public.”

Yet, tragedy “is a new topic for us,” Neal conceded.

The discussions taking place now at the museum are the first steps in developing an exhibit. The show -- about the 22 years of space shuttle flights -- is still three or four years away. But curators are deciding now whether to collect and show wreckage from the space shuttle Columbia, which exploded on reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere in February.

Roger Launius, chairman of the space history department at the museum, said the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) controls remnants of the Columbia accident, as well as wreckage from the Challenger flight, which exploded shortly after liftoff on Jan. 28, 1986. The agency also has all the artifacts from the Apollo 1 accident, in which three astronauts were killed by a fire on the launch pad in 1967.

Launius, who worked for NASA as a historian, says something more than a brief acknowledgment of misfortune has to be done by the museum.

“I think so. Yet I go back and forth. I have a real sensitivity to the family members and the folks at NASA. I don’t want to do something that is ghoulish. I think it is appropriate that we could have some definable piece from Challenger and Columbia, maybe the hatch,” said Launius.

Jim Hull, an exhibit and artifacts manager at NASA, said the space agency and the museum have always been partners in selecting artifacts. That would continue in developing materials for an exhibition on the shuttle, but there are unusual hurdles. A lot of the materials are recycled from shuttle to shuttle and are still in use. The number of iconic relics, such as space capsules, are dwindling. The disposition of objects from the Columbia flight is open-ended. The wreckage is now in a hangar at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

“There is a debate on how to treat this. The families and the agency are responsible,” Hull said. When a decision is made about what, if anything, could be displayed, he said, “the Smithsonian has the first right of refusal.” The wreckage of the Challenger was buried in an underground silo at Cape Canaveral, Fla.

When the Challenger exploded, the world was shocked. Seven astronauts lost their lives. On Feb. 1 the Columbia exploded, killing its seven-member crew. More than 70,000 items from the shuttle were recovered over a swath of Texas and are held by NASA as the investigation continues.

But people expect the museum to take an active part in remembering, as well as educating. When an accident occurs, people flock to the Air and Space Museum and the staff assembles a simple memorial to allow them to express their feelings. After the Columbia accident, 2,000 people from 55 countries signed the condolence book in six languages.

When retired astronaut Alan Shepard, the first American to travel in space, died in 1998, his capsule was retrieved from the storage facility and brought to the museum. It was displayed with his portrait.

Throughout its 27-year history the museum has emphasized the celebratory -- the accomplishment of flight, the missions into space and the achievements of the men and women who made the advances possible. Telling those stories and displaying famous aircraft have made Air and Space the most popular museum in the world.

At the same time, the museum has mostly left accounts of events that horrify and fascinate the public to the media and eventually the historians. There are exceptions. For years there was an exhibit on the Hindenburg, the famous airship that was destroyed by fire in the air over Lakehurst, N.J., in 1937, that included film of the explosion.

In 1994 the museum attempted to display part of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1946. A preliminary script that emphasized the consequences of dropping the bomb set off a firestorm of criticism from veterans groups and politicians. The show was revamped with a straightforward script centering on the plane and crew.

The current discussions are centering on how to realistically present the history of the shuttle and the space station, with or without any major artifacts.

“We want to look at the development, uses and impact of the shuttle and space station. Within the shuttle portion of the story we would very likely address the question of risk and risk management,” Neal said.

The museum has had the Enterprise, the test vehicle for the shuttle program, since 1985 and will display it for the first time at the new facility at Dulles International Airport.

In addition, the tragic ending for Columbia provides an opportunity for the museum to chronicle another piece of history: the story of the investigation.

Launius, the museum curator, argues that something of a forensic nature is appropriate. “I would like to have the leading edge of the left wing where the problem started. You could do a forensic analysis. Here is what happened. The foam struck the left wing between Panel 8 and 9.”

But that would be possible only if NASA agrees to lend some of the wreckage to the Smithsonian. After the Challenger investigation was finished, the space agency did recover some flags and patches from the ocean and a few are on view in the museum’s space hall.

The wreckage of the Columbia has been impounded until the end of the official inquiry into the accident. “We have talked to them and they are willing in theory. Ultimately it is their choice,” Launius said.

This debate at the Smithsonian is not new. The National Museum of the American Indian, which opens on the Mall in September 2004, has developed guidelines so the exhibits emphasize the total history of 25,000 years in the Western Hemisphere, not just the horrors of the 19th century.

“Aspects of our exhibitions deal openly and frankly with the relationship between the U.S. government and the Native Americans that were not uplifting. Yet there is a much broader context,” said Richard West, the museum’s director. The museum has decided to let tribes tell their stories -- with guidance from the curators.

When the staff at the National Museum of American History was asked by Congress to collect objects from the Sept. 11, 2001, tragedy, the curators initially rejected the idea of an exhibit. “We just didn’t think it was appropriate,” said James B. Gardner, the museum’s associate director for curatorial affairs. The staff asked visitors what they would expect the museum to do and the visitors said the museum should display as much as it could. About 30 objects were displayed for several months. “In these cases you try to feel your way through it. No one has the right or wrong answer. You just make sure you are honoring the people who were part of the tragedy and the story,” Gardner said.

Neal of the Air and Space Museum understands its obligation to present a complete picture: “We are trying to be responsible and have the darker side of technology acknowledged.”