The Columbia Shuttle Accident
On February 1st of this year, the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated while re-entering the earth atmosphere. The shuttle, as well as the crew, were lost. At first it seemed like a horrible and unavoidable accident. Later, as information about the shuttle program began to come out, it seemed more like an accident waiting to happen that may well have been prevented.
It might have been prevented if only NASA had followed its very own requirements. One of those requirements was that it was unacceptable to have anything ever hit the shuttle craft, either during launch, while in orbit or during re-entry and landing. Yet several times, during launch, the shuttle was hit by insulation foam from the main fuel tank. But at NASA, what was considered unacceptable, over time became acceptable if the result was not a serious or catastrophic accident. The feeling became, we survived it before, we should have no problem surviving it again, even though the size of the debris was larger than at any time before. This is almost too similar to the Challenger O-ring degradation in the 1980's where a failure of the 1st ring was considered acceptable, and then on January 28, 1986, the 'acceptable' became the source of a catastrophic failure.
NASA, for all its built in checks and balances, seems to view what was initially deemed unacceptable, to be acceptable once it's happened. The previously unacceptable becomes an "in-family" anomaly that is only a shuttle refurbishment problem after landing and before its next flight. Rather than running-to-ground what initially was considered an unacceptable occurrence, becomes an acceptable "in-family" anomaly -- an expected occurrence. The fact that these "in-family" occurrences were, in fact, the shuttle dodging a bullet, was just not something those at NASA seemed capable of recognizing.
NASA needs to be much more vigilant of unacceptable occurrences and in-flight anomalies. They cannot be tolerated and their investigation and resolution cannot be postponed. The possibility of another Challenger/Columbia accident cannot be tolerated of the nation's space program.
04/24/03 ( 508 )
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