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The Columbia Disaster

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Submitted By slipvayne9278
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English 101: College Composition
14 May 2015
The Columbia STS-107 Disaster: Why Did It Happen and Why Wasn’t It Prevented? At 9 a.m. on February 1st 2003 NASA’s (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) Space Shuttle, Columbia STS-107 disintegrated over the southern United States upon re-entry. There was some controversy surrounded this disaster, mainly how the Mission Management Team (MMT) (leader, Linda Ham handled the entire situation. Could this disaster been prevented? NASA could have prevented the issue with all the new age technology that they posses. How are teams like Debris Assessment Team (DAT) and MMT prepared now to take action against problems that arise in the future? This disaster should not have occurred but it did, why did it? Who is responsible? Will it happen again? If more time was spend of trying to rectify the issue before it got out of hand, maybe the crew of the Columbia would have landed safely as it was supposed to. The space shuttle Columbia STS-107 launched on January 16, 2003 from Kennedy Space Center. During the launch a briefcase-size chunk of foam insulation fell away from a bi-pod ramp on the ships external tank 81.7 seconds after liftoff (Harwood). The foam chunk with velocity smashed a hole in one of the protective shields panels that make up the left wing leading edge. Photos and video shows this happening very clearly. What you cannot see is where the foam actually hit. The only thing that is visible is when the foam explodes after it hits the wing. So at this point the damage is done, NASA knows about it, MMT knows about it, and DAT knows about it. The engineers were getting worrisome with not knowing the extent of the damage. Then they all concluded that the foam did not pose a safety risk. As MMT Chairlady Linda Ham famously said at one point, "it's not really a factor during the flight because there is not much we can do about it." (Harwood). During the morning of February 1st 2003. The Columbia was heading back into the Earth’s atmosphere. The damage was extensive enough to destroy the heating protection for re-entry. When the Columbia entered the “peak-heating”, which temperatures are 3000 degrees Fahrenheit; the ship could not withstand the high temperatures and broke apart in mid air. We watch spaceships launch all the time. Not thinking about any accidents. When they do and someone loses their life, we want answers. In 2003 records about the Columbia STS-107 accident were released under the Freedom of Information Act. In these documents the minutes were recorded. What of the records showed the decision not to abort the mission? The records don’t mention names as to who made this decision, but who did? If NASA wanted to they could have sent a rescue team to bring the Columbia crew home. Leroy Cain, the flight entry director for mission STS-107 was quoted in an article written by William Harwood as to saying:
"I have wracked my brains over this. There was no way we were getting that vehicle back. If we'd gone and taken some pictures and done whatever else anybody could think of, it wouldn't have changed the outcome for Columbia."
How would Cain know this for sure? They didn’t take pictures, they didn’t assess the
Damage. The Columbia crew could have also easily docked at The International Space Station and wait for a rescue shuttle. In the wake of the Columbia disaster, a Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) was formed to investigate all aspects of the mission. Their final report included the section "STS-107 In-Flight Options Assessment," which provides a possible rescue-and-repair scenario for the shuttle and her crew. (Davis). So a rescue mission could have been sent up. NASA states that it would take up to eighteen months to have a rescue mission ready. Even though the shuttle Atlantis was being scheduled to launch in March.
Of course we send space shuttles into outer space all the time and they return safely most of the time. We do not normally think about space shuttles exploding or having serious issues. In the past we had space missions that have failed. According to NASAs own website the space shuttle Challenger exploding seventy-three seconds into its flight on January 28th 1986 (NASA.Gov). The most famous Apollo 13 in which an on board explosion forced them to abort the moon landing and come back to Earth in 1970. Accidents happen, there is nothing that is fail safe. We know this, we take these chances, but when it comes to the Columbia disaster all of this could have been avoided. When it comes to any disaster which involves fatalities most people are quick to point their finger at who is responsible. As stated before, accidents happen. Some things are out of our hands. When it comes to the Columbia disaster, it was unavoidable, but steps could have been taken for safe re-entry. So who is truly at fault? Is it the MMT’s chair woman Linda Ham? Or is it the DAT team? Or maybe the crew of the Columbia is at fault. No one can really pinpoint the blame. Meetings took place about the foam breaking off. The minutes of these meetings were recorded. Some meetings that took place behind closed doors were not recorded. These are the minutes we want to know about. What was said, what was done, and who said it. What we do know is; NASA and their teams knew about the damage, spoke of the damage, but did nothing to repair it. Ham decided that the foam strike was inconsequential (Surowiecki). Why? Because she felt there was not much they could do about it. The DAT team made it very clear that there was reason to be concerned. They wanted pictures of the damage so they could assess the extent of it. Five years earlier the space shuttle Columbia STS-87 was hit with a similar strike and suffered “fairly significant damage” (Surowiecki). So there was reason to believe that the Columbia STS-107 shared the same fate. We can sit here and blame everyone, but the fact of the matter is; everyone had a job to do. Not everyone can do everything. Could this disaster have been prevented? Of course it could have. People who hold high offices have tough decisions to make on a daily basis. This doesn’t excuse the lack of trying though. This was an accident and to put the blame on one persons shoulder is completely unfair. If we were to blame anyone for this, it should be everyone from Ham to the engineers to the crew. After the accident, the independent team that investigated the accident, CAIB, found a number of factors, from the safety culture at NASA to the design of the shuttle that led to the disaster. (Moskowitz). What the CAIB found was a number of flaws in the crew cabin, including seats, seatbelts, spacesuits, and life support systems. This was just inside the cabin. Dustin Gohmert, NASA crew survival engineering team lead, at Johnson Space Center in Houston said "The seats were one of the weaker links during the Columbia accident. We wanted to make these seats formfitting so they had a true fit to the body's shape." (Moskowitz) With all these safety measures being changed and fixed, why now? After the 1986 Challenger disaster none of these safety measures were implemented. Is it because it was determined that two rubber O-rings, which had been designed to separate the sections of the rocket booster, had failed due to cold temperatures on the morning of the launch? (History.Com), or was it because it wasn’t warranted enough to do a full on investigation of other safety measures? Either way the signs were there. There is room for improvements in everything. Does making formfitting seats really going to help when a shuttle explodes? No it will not. It’s great that these safety measures are put into place, but what happened on the Columbia STS-107 had nothing to do with non-formfitting seats. What NASA needed to do, was get the pictures that the DAT team wanted and figure out from there what could be done. Instead Linda Ham decided that nothing could be done and no pictures were ever taken. Like most companies and private contractors, everything is about money, quantity not quality. If parts or pieces break they can easily be replaced. Unfortunately, when it comes to human life, it cannot be replaced. So by not taking the time to assess the damage instead of shrugging it off, the Columbia may have returned safely to earth. February 1st 2003 was a tragic moment when; * Commander: Rick D. Husband, a U.S. Air Force colonel and mechanical engineer, who piloted a previous shuttle during the first docking with the International Space Station (STS-96). * Pilot: William C. McCool, a U.S. Navy commander * Payload Commander: Michael P. Anderson, a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, physicist, and mission specialist who was in charge of the science mission. * Payload Specialist: Ilan Ramon, a colonel in the Israeli Air Force and the first Israeli astronaut. * Mission Specialist: Kalpana Chawla, an Indian-born aerospace engineer who was on her second space mission. * Mission Specialist: David M. Brown, a U.S. Navy captain trained as an aviator and flight surgeon. Brown worked on scientific experiments. * Mission Specialist: Laurel Blair Salton Clark, a U.S. Navy captain and flight surgeon. Clark worked on biological experiments (NASA.Gov)
All perished over the southern United States on the space shuttle Columbia STS-107. There is not one person to blame for this accident, but many. Pictures of the extent of the damage were requested and denied. Linda Ham proclaimed that it was not a concern because nothing could be done about it. Yet facts after the disaster proved that the crew could have been saved and returned to Earth safely. It has been twelve years since the Columbia exploded. No disasters or fatalities have happened since then, but what about the future? Are our astronauts safe? Can a disaster like this happen again? Hopefully the answer is no. NASA has seem to have gone to extremes to make sure something like this and other incidents will never happen again, but accidents happen and nothing is fail-safe.
Works Cited
Davis, Lauren. “How NASA might have been able to rescue the Columbia crew from orbit”. iO9, 26 Feb. 2014. Web. 13 May 2015.
Harwood, William. “Columbia could not be saved, NASA study shows”. Spaceflightnow, 30 April 2003. Web. 13 May 2015.
Harwood, William. “It broke up! The shuttle broke up! : Remembering Columbia”. CBSNews, 1 Feb. 2013. Web. 13 May 2015.
History.com Staff. “Columbia Disaster”. History.com, 2010. Web. 13 May 2015.
History.com Staff. “Challenger Disaster”. History.com, 2010. Web. 13 May 2015.
Howell, Elizabeth. “Columbia Disaster: What Happened, What NASA Learned”. Space.com, 1 Feb. 2013. Web. 13 May 2015.
Luscombe, Richard. “Columbia Anniversary: NASA managers struggled with telling crew of danger”. The Guardian, 1 Feb. 2013. Web. 13 May 2015.
Moskowitz, Clara. “How the Columbia shuttle disaster changed spacecraft safety forever”. Space.com, 29 Jan. 2013. Web. 13 May 2015
NASA.Gov. “NASA Honors the Crew of STS-107”. NASA, 23 Aug. 2006.Web. 13 May 2015.
NASA.Gov. “STS-107 News”. NASA, 18 Aug. 2008. Web. 13 May 2015
Surowiecki, James. Committees, Juries, and Teams: The Columbia disaster and how small groups can be made to work. New York: Doubleday, 2004.

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