Columbia was torn apart in a plasma hurricane over an early-morning Texas sky, with seven crew aboard.
My immediate thoughts were recorded here for posterity. Some thought them heartless, but I disagreed.
That event precipitated the recent chaos in space policy, because the Bush administration made a commitment to end the Shuttle program last year (though it has been extended into this one) without a realistic plan for replacing it. The Obama administration came up with one last year, but the porkers in Congress insist on continuing to waste money on dedicated NASA solutions that will almost certainly never fly. But this will all have to come to a head, in months if not weeks, when the fiscal reality finally hits NASA along with the rest of the federal government.
I had more thoughts a little later on the flight director’s dilemma.
Here’s a haiku contest I hosted shortly afterward on the subject.
Meanwhile, on a lighter note, here’s a golden oldie from that era about the hypersensitive left:
Leftist Groups Decry NASA Demonization February 5, 2003
HOUSTON, Texas, USA (APUPI)
A number of progressive, liberal, and socialist organizations have banded together to protest the latest slanderous attack on them, and their noble unquestionable principles, this time by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Some of the more prominent groups include Postmodernists for Peace, the World People’s Liberation Front, the Liberation Front Of The People of the World, Socialists International, the American Communist Party, International ANSWER, Stalinists for Trotsky, Trotskyites for Chomsky, the NAALPOC (National Association for the Advancement of Liberal People Of Color), the ACLU, and the Green and Democratic parties.
In a press conference in Clear Lake City, outside the front gates of the NASA Johnson Space Center, Emilio Litella, the spokesman for the newly formed “Coalition For Social Justice And Leftist Anti-Defamation” complained that even before the investigation into the Columbia disaster was completed, they were being blamed for it.
“NASA has already started to leak rumors that it was caused by the left wing,” he said. “Once again, we’re being unfairly libeled by reactionary conservatives with an anti-human, anti-peace agenda. It’s obvious that this is part of an ongoing effort by right-wing baby-killing pencil-necked geeks to demonize all progressive forces, just as our pro-peace, no-war-for-oil message is starting to resonate with the American people, on the eve of a brutal and unjust war on the people of Iraq and Palestine.”
In Washington, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, a noted expert on demonization of progressive forces by the conservative media, was asked if the Democrats agreed with this complaint.
In a soft, pained, reasonable-sounding-yet-whiny voice, he replied, “Well, I have to say that I’m very disappointed at this rush to judgement on the part of the space agency. They claim to be objective, and that they aren’t going to say anything definitive until the investigation is complete, but anyone who reads the papers knows the direction that the investigation has been going.”
“Then shrill voices on talk radio and the internet pick it up, and make it sound as though those of us who are for truly compassionate policies, and are against tax cuts for the rich, are responsible for the destruction of the space shuttle. It’s just a continuation of the politics of personal destruction.”
“I and my family have received several death threats about this in the past hour alone, and that’s not even considering the normal daily ones from Bob Torricelli and Jim Jeffords. That was most disappointing.”
Senator Hillary Clinton, who happened to be in Mr. Daschle’s office measuring the draperies, added, “It’s just part of the ongoing vast, right-wing conspiracy against me and my husband, that I still wish that some enterprising reporter would go and dig up the real story on, instead of tarring voices for fairness with innuendo about blowing up space shuttles.”
When asked if she had ever had any involvement with the nation’s space program, she replied, “Well, I did want to be an astronaut, before I went through the period when I wanted to be a Marine, but the reactionary neanderthal rat-bastards at the space agency told me that girls need not apply. But other than that, I’m afraid I don’t recall.”
Back in Clear Lake, following the press conference, in response to queries, Kent Lovebreed, a crewcut spokesman from NASA’s Public Affairs Office, responded, “We regret that anyone feels that they’re under personal attack by our critical investigation into the cause of Saturday’s tragedy. We wouldn’t want to imply that there is anything sinister here. We are simply objective scientists and engineers, gathering the evidence, and following the trail wherever it leads. Right now, unfortunately, the left wing has to be considered the leading cause of that catastrophe.”
Asked if, as a result of the preliminary results of the investigation, NASA was considering laying down a design requirement that all future space vehicles have only right wings, he said, “It’s premature to make any kind of recommendation like that, but in light of our experience now, it certainly has to be one of the options on the table.”
[Copyright 2003 by Rand Simberg]
Some things never change.
[Update late afternoon]
Clark Lindsey has collected some more links.
Slightly off topic, but you reminded me of an old aviation problem – that of the hangar queen – an aircraft that sits in the hangar and doesn’t fly. The longer it sits, the more problems they have with it – typically with hydraulic systems and various seals. Airframes are meant to get flown regularly, and the longer they sit without flying, the more maintenance problems you end up having with them once they return to the regular schedule. Sometimes they get to be such a large pain in the backside to maintenance that they rarely make it out of the hangar.
I have wondered that perhaps the problem with shuttle was that we never flew it enough and allowed the fleet to become a fleet of hangar queens. Add to that the various “fixes” from NASA and the support structure most of which made it harder rather than easier to fly on a regular basis. Most airframes move thru the operational life cycle to a point where the owner / operators / maintainers figure out how to turn the sorties quickly. Space systems seem to go the other direction, getting more difficult and expensive to fly over time – which is the problem.
I don’t have a link, but I remember reading somewhere that the chemical composition of the foam was changed in the mid-90s for environmental reasons, and the problem with foam shedding became worse after that.
Thanks, Rand, for the link to your 2003 post. That was long before I found this site, so it was sort of like a trip in a time machine.
My favorite comment was by Pamela Watkins:
These were scientists and career military people. These were people who by the level of success they achieved probably did not suffer fools lightly. If there is a heaven it would seem to me that their first question at the gate is “what happened?” and “can we look at the data.”
ET SOFI composition changed in 1995 to no longer use CFC-11 due to EPA enforcement of Clean Air Act provisions. As the new ETs started flying, postflight inspections started seeing a substantial increase in impact divots on the shuttle belly tiles. I heard a factor of ten used to describe the increase. Here is a url that describes the ET SOFI change: http://www.worldlingo.com/ma/enwiki/en/Space_Shuttle_external_tank
If you are a complete cynic, the EPA helped down both shuttles – ET SOFI without CFCs and no asbestos in the SRB field joints.
The thing is that the old guys didn’t worry about ice falling off rockets coming off the pad. Look at the old Saturn launches, all the large stuff falling off is ice. The threat did not register at all because of what they had done for over 40 years.
no asbestos in the SRB field joints
No asbestos in the upper floors of the World Trade Center, either.
To paraphrase an old one-liner:
“Sometimes, Dr. Freud, a left wing is just…a left wing.”
Technically correct, but not a factor in the accident since the foam that struck Columbia’s wing came from the bipod ramp. From the CAIB report:
(emphasis added)
Was it you, agimarc, who first referred me to this blog all those years ago? Now that I see your handle here I seem to recall that it was.
McGehee – If you be the (in)famous proprietor of the McGeHeeZone, you are correct. How are things in HotLanta?