NASA management screwed up BIG time. Now what?

Sep 27 03:15 UTC 2003

It was Tuesday, Jan. 21, five days after the foam had broken loose
during liftoff, and some 30 engineers from the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration and its aerospace contractors were having the
first formal meeting to assess potential damage when it struck the
wing.

Virtually every participant -- those in the room and some linked by
teleconference -- agreed that the space agency should immediately get
images of the impact zone, perhaps by requesting them from American
spy satellites or powerful telescopes on the ground. They elected one
of their number, a soft-spoken NASA engineer, Rodney Rocha, to convey
the idea to the shuttle mission managers.

Rocha said he tried at least half a dozen times to get the space
agency to make the requests. There were two similar attempts by other
engineers. All were turned aside. Rocha said a manager told him that
he refused to be a "Chicken Little."

The Columbia's flight director, LeRoy Cain, wrote a curt e-mail
message that concluded, "I consider it to be a dead issue."

New interviews and newly revealed e-mail sent during the fatal
mission show that the engineers' desire for outside help in getting a
look at the shuttle's wing was more intense and widespread than the
Aug. 26 final report of the board investigating the accident
described.

The new information makes it clear that the failure to follow up on
the request for outside imagery -- the first step in discovering the
damage and perhaps mounting a last-ditch rescue effort -- did not
simply fall through bureaucratic cracks, but was actively, even hotly
resisted by mission managers.
 
More at http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/world/2120733

response 2 of 71:

Sep 27 14:33 UTC 2003

Saying "the Shuttle will break up on re-entry and the astronauts die
either way, so why bother to check?" is not a position that will fly
with much of the American public.  NASA is a very public agency of
our democratic government; no NASA official should need to be told
that this idea is a no-go.

Assuming that you'd want to keep the Shuttles flying after a disaster,
getting the best data you could on the damage & its consequences would
be obvious basic engineering.

From what i've seen, that there were "no possible options for repair or
salvage" (how about just rescue of the astronauts?) was established only
in the minds of pointy-haired bosses at NASA, and only after they went
looking for excuses to cover a decision that they'd already made.  NASA
engineers have saved or partly saved a great many missions gone wrong by
sundry feats of technological make-do & heroism.  "Saving the American
Shuttle's crew" would have great world-wide appeal, with huge political
pay-offs for heroes.  What might the Russians have done for the national 
glory of pulling a Russian rocket full of emergency supplies up to 
America's crippled Shuttle two hours before the oxygen ran out?  (Whole
world glued to TV's seeing our final approach and listening to good news
phone call from Kremlin to White House, Ivan.  Make sure side with huge
Russian flag is right-side-up on cameras!) 

response 4 of 71:

Sep 27 15:23 UTC 2003

Another example of how managerial incompetence can subvert attempts to
eliminate inefficiency, no matter how much $$ is or isn't thrown at the
problem.

response 6 of 71:

Sep 27 23:11 UTC 2003

Re #1:

>What the hell is the point?  It was already established that there were 
>no possible options for repair or salvage.

Yes, but nobody knew that until the post-crash analysis was done.

There are two points worth reiterating here:

1.)  The damage caused by the impact was of unknown severity.  If the
     damage was such that a modified re-entry profile could have
     saved the vehicle and crew, we should have taken that course.

2.)  If the damage was sufficiently serious that a safe return was
     impossible, at least we would have known what kind of damage
     was caused by the foam impact.  Right now we are still guessing,
     because most of the evidence was destroyed by the re-entry.

As one who believes that Columbia should have been in a museum
instead of in orbit this past January, I think that taking steps
to see if it could have been saved would have been very worthwhile.

response 8 of 71:

Sep 28 14:02 UTC 2003

        If it was known that there was that much damage within 24 
hours of launch, then the crew could have gone into long survival
mode, possibly extending consumables beyond the mission profile
timeline (plus the safety timeline for delay in landing) while
either supplies could be sent up (food, water, oxygen) or/and
rescue attempts be made.
        If we had the 7 person space station emergcy return
vechile at the space station, instead of trash pile of 
congressional funding, could it have been used.

response 12 of 71:

Sep 28 17:19 UTC 2003

It is really easy to look at how things could have been handled 
differently after a disaster. Certainly the decision making process 
should be examined for flaws but I dont think it is fair to say that 
management was incompetent in this case without much more information. 

response 14 of 71:

Sep 28 17:55 UTC 2003

Well they *do* have a better success rate than the Ford Pinto ;)

response 16 of 71:

Sep 28 18:59 UTC 2003

This wasnt something as clear as that. This would be more like I am on 
the phone with a store and the person on the other line tells me 
someone creepy just walked in. Ok, does that mean anything? If that 
person is later murdered and it is discovered that they told me that 
someone creepy walked in just before something bad happened, I am sure 
there would be people saying, "That's outragous! How could she have 
done NOTHING." As they say, hindsight is 20/20

Here is a situation where foam hits the shuttle and an engineer things 
that there *might* be a possibility that could cause problems. 
Management ignores the warning most likely due to cost pressures. It is 
completely possible that the engineer never fully communicated the 
probability that the foam could have caused a problem. It is entirely 
possible that the management made a decision because they believed 
there was only a very very small chance that the foam caused a problem 
and it would cost them a lot of money to find out for sure. 

response 18 of 71:

Sep 28 20:34 UTC 2003

They should have a mini-robot to fly around the ship and inspect it. That
doesn't  seem like it would be much of a technical challenge, or very
expensive. 

response 20 of 71:

Sep 28 21:13 UTC 2003

In general, NASA is incredibly careful; I think very few shuttles have
launched on time, ever, because they don't want to risk anything going wrong
in the launch.  In a culture where anybody can stop the launch at any time
for any reason (slight hyperbole), the fact that so little investigation was
done in this case seems uncharacteristicly negligent.  I do not, for example,
blame Bush for "not putting the pieces together" about 9/11, despite my strong
leftie leanings.  I'm much more willing to blame NASA for screwing up, despite
being a fanatic supporter of the space program, because it's so unusual for
them.

response 22 of 71:

Sep 29 00:01 UTC 2003

 TOp management simply blew it off. As far as the foam is concened, A prior
flight had a "DENT" in one of the solid booster casings from a foam strike.
These are the can solid fuel boosters, that after being jettisoned, fall FROM
that height, and crash into the Atlantic to be recovered AND reused. HOW much
brain power does it take to extend the shown damage to the aluninum of the
solid boosters to the fragile tiles and carbon-carbon wing edge?

        Tope management blew it. the only nice thing THIS time, is the
reassignment and forced retirement of 11 of the fifteen Managers involved in
the failure to even THINK about the issues they were paid to resolve.

response 24 of 71:

Sep 30 02:14 UTC 2003

Re #17:  Yeah, it would have cost a whole 'nuther Shuttle
mission, because Columbia was not carrying any EVA suits.