Columbia report will be gloves-off tough on management, engineers
Posted on: Tuesday, 26 August 2003, 06:00 CDT
WASHINGTON (AP) -- An investigation board is targeting the engineering and management decisions that led to the space shuttle Columbia disaster in a bare knuckles report that already has NASA leaders bracing for a storm of criticism.
Members of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board completed the 200-plus-page report late last week after spending seven months probing the technical facts of the space tragedy and interviewing scores of engineers and other space workers to attach the fundamental blame.
The report was being released Tuesday.
``The language is frank and direct and there may be some surprises,'' John Logsdon, a CAIB board member, said Monday.
Sean O'Keefe, who heads the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, warned space workers earlier this summer that they should prepare themselves for a report that will be ``really ugly'' as it outlines flawed engineering decisions that led to the destruction of Columbia as it returned to Earth following a 16-day mission.
O'Keefe said Monday that the report ``is going to have no fuzz on it, no gloves. It is going to be straightforward.'' To prop up morale, the NASA administrator said he was telling space workers ``we need to not be defensive about that and try to not take it as a personal affront.''
Retired Navy Adm. Harold W. Gehman Jr., the CAIB chairman, said about half of the report would deal with management and engineering decisions that failed to prevent the accident. Included was an analysis of flaws in NASA traditions and processes that might have contributed, Logsdon said.
Most of the work of the board has been in the open, with members conducting frequent public hearings and news conferences. Gehman followed his plan of releasing information as it became known and the board weeks ago announced its ``working scenario'' of the physical facts of Columbia's loss.
Columbia was returning to Earth on Feb. 1 when it broke up in shower of hot metal that fell over Texas and Louisiana. All seven astronauts aboard died.
The board concluded that Columbia came apart because there was a break in a heat shield panel on the craft's left wing. The friction heat of re-entry, soaring to 3,000 degrees (1,650 degrees Celsius), penetrated the wing and shattered the craft.
Tests suggested that the heat shield was broken by a lightweight chunk of foam insulation that ripped off the shuttle's external fuel tank and smashed the wing at high speed during launch.
Although the foam impact was captured on film, engineers evaluating the issue concluded it represented no threat to the spacecraft. Managers did not ask for spy satellite pictures that could have given information on the damage even though some lower-level engineers requested it.
The conclusions came after the 13-member board examined the key parts of some 84,000 pieces of the shuttle, including an on-board data recorder, that were recovered by thousands of workers who spent weeks scouring forest lands in Texas and Louisiana. Experts on the board used sensor data signals and charred remnants to trace the searing path of re-entry heat that tore through Columbia's wing and melted it from the inside.
To test their theory, members of the board directed experiments that fired chunks of foam insulation at a mock-up of the space shuttle wing. One high-speed collision smashed a 16-inch (40-centimeter) hole and some board members called it ``the smoking gun'' of Columbia's destruction.
During its investigation, the CAIB issued preliminary recommendations that NASA should follow before returning to space. These included developing a way to repair damaged heat shield panels while the shuttle is in orbit, improved photos of the craft during launch, the routine use of pictures of orbiting space shuttles taken by some of the nation's spy satellites, and a sharper system of inspections to detect flawed or failing parts.
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On the Net:
CAIB: http://www.caib.us/
NASA: http://www.nasa.gov
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