This human mindset also resulted in the Challenger accident. This is called “normalization of deviance”, where you get used to a potentially catastrophic situation when it does not result in disaster. The issue of foam breaking off was not exclusive to the Columbia launch, occurring on various shuttle launches before, and the shuttle engineering office maintained that because of the prior incidents resulting in successful missions, no further imagery or examination was required of Columbia, and at most would need minor repairs upon landing.Īirbus A380: The Most Ambitious Airplane Ever Rocha later received a response from the manager shuttle engineering office saying that he “wasn’t going to be chicken little about this”. 8 days into the mission, the crew was alerted via email of the debris strike, but were told it was no concern for worry, and that they wanted to give them a heads up in the event a reporter asked them about it on landing.
Taking it a step further, Rocha emailed the shuttle engineering office, requesting the astronauts be contacted to make a visual inspection of the damaged wing. shut down these requests and considered it to be “a dead issue”. Rodney requested, at least a dozen times, for American satellites to produce images of the damage caused but several NASA managers–not the flight director–turned down the imagery requests. NASA Astronaut Mike Mullane on Spacex, Life in Space & the Challenger & Columbia Disasters NASA Astronaut Ron Garan on a Career in Space, the Chinese Space Program & Flying an F-16 vs a Space Shuttle
In a routine meeting assessing potential damage of the shuttle on day 5 of the mission, NASA engineer Rodney Rocha knew that this had potential to become a larger issue. Team managers at NASA were alerted to this impact, and reviewed the footage the next day, only to decide that the damage was not significant enough to cause any problems. Post launch, multiple photographs were analyzed and one such revealed a solid brick of foam around one foot by 2 feet, striking the left wing of the shuttle at around 500 miles per hour about 82 seconds post-launch. But as it fell it could strike the orbiter at speeds of several hundred miles per hour. Unfortunately it fell off due to trapped air under the foam expanding. The problem was that fragments of this foam from the tank would fall off and strike the orbiter hanging on the side of the tank. The foam insulation was always sprayed on over the entire tank. An unintended side effect was the dried foam shooting off at a high velocity during launch. Hoping to curb the potential for fragments to fall off, they sprayed foam on in compromised areas.
containing supercooled hydrogen and oxygen to aid in propulsion during takeoff. The shuttle had a massive capsule, this was the external, liquid fuel tank containing liquid O2 and H2, the propellant supply for the 3 main engines. Challenger was lost due to a booster design flaw and bad decision-making. The external tank was always insulated with spray-on foam, part of the shuttle’s original design. Beginning with the Challenger Space shuttle, which also ended in disaster and took the lives of 7 astronauts, NASA began to insulate their shuttles with spray on foam. To better understand the problems associated with Columbia’s landing, a basic understanding of the space shuttle’s anatomy is needed. Interview with NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly: An American Hero
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