NASA centers across the country paid tribute to the crews of Apollo 1 and space shuttles Challenger and Columbia Jan. 26 during a Day of Remembrance, and a special talk at NASA Armstrong Feb. 9 by Assistant Director for Strategic Implementation, Steven Schmidt.

“Even though the incidents of the three accidents were not related, the root problem was,” said Schmidt. His frank and sobering talk focused on the tragedy of Columbia. “We need to think about what happened leading up to those days.”

Columbia’s first flight took place April 12, 1981, with a two-person crew: Commander John Young, a veteran of Gemini and Apollo, and pilot Bob Crippen.

On Jan. 16, 2003, Columbia took off on its 28th mission from the Kennedy Space Station with seven astronauts: Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, Kalpana Chawla, David Brown, Laurel Clark and Ilan Ramon.

During the launch of STS-107, a piece of foam broke off from the propellant tank and struck the left wing of the orbiter. When Columbia re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere, hot atmospheric gases penetrated and destroyed the internal wing structure causing the spacecraft to disintegrate.

Schmidt formed the board that investigated the accident from Feb. 1-Oct. 31, 2003. “I was the first guy in and the last guy out.” The commander of the mission, Rick Husband, went to the same school as Schmidt, so the disaster was close to his heart and he was very committed to the investigation.

Instead of lessons learned, Schmidt said they were more like lessons noted. “Back in 1984, Columbia was considered operational after four flights — in reality that’s not true. They were never operational, they were X-airplanes — they were experimental from the first flight to the last. All the shuttles may have looked the same, but they were all different.”
Showing real and animated video, Schmidt said that the application of the foam had been changed and some voids and debris were found in the foam. “It was only 1.6 pounds but it was traveling 700 feet per second.”

It was noted that foam had hit the shuttle six times in previous missions, however, those in the know said it was still safe to fly since nothing happened. When a problem was mentioned about the foam during an Atlantis mission and photos were requested, an engineer was told he needed to bring up the issue through the proper chain of command. It was considered a maintenance issue and not an in-flight anomaly, which would have impacted a particular launch.

On Feb. 1, 2003, citizens from Dallas to Louisiana filmed debris falling from the shuttle and volunteer organizations helped to search 2,600 square miles to recover pieces for investigation purposes. “You can see the type of people involved in collecting debris — out in wintertime in February, running around in marshes and swamps, in snake infested areas – 40,000-pounds of 223,000 were recovered; about 30 percent,” Schmidt said.

Having several friends die in Air Force test missions, Schmidt confirmed aerospace is a dangerous business. “We push the limits. The Air Force pushes the limits of aircraft to insure the pilots have an airplane they can use. We push in the areas of technology that haven’t been touched yet.”

He said that all of the UAV (unmanned air vehicles) knowledge could be put in a basket since there is so much more to learn.

“Space flight assent and descent is measured in minutes. We have been flying since the 1960s but it is measured in minutes. Our time in aircraft is measured in years. We are still learning about it. We don’t know everything there is about aircraft flight, if we did we wouldn’t be doing this.”

The three tragedies are unrelated and completely different but the underlying line issues behind them such as budget, schedule and political pressure and sometimes arrogance, are the same.

“If you don’t get something done on schedule, they will cut your budget.

President Kennedy said by the end of the decade there would be a man on the moon — don’t you think there was pressure on that one? There are pressures in programs and projects we do today. There is undo stress because nobody wants to say they can’t do something — at NASA we can do anything — well, that can also be one of your biggest downfalls,” he explained.

He recalled being on programs and also working for other companies where everyone was waiting to see who would call chicken or hoping that inclement weather would scrap a flight so they would have more time to add instrumentation or confirm another test point. “Nobody wants to call off a mission but sometimes it is necessary — it is better to be safe than sorry.”

Since January 2004, 58 percent of NASA’s workforce are new and have never been involved in a flight tragedy.

“It’s something you never want to experience. We don’t want to reinvent the wheel but we do if we don’t learn from past mistakes — its lessons noted not learned.”

He encouraged new engineers and employees not to be afraid of calling out if they feel something is not right. “If you think you have a schedule problem, wait until one hits the ground, then you will get all the schedule delays you can stand and you will get all the help you don’t want. There are no stupid questions in this business — we do aeronautics, and we do that job very well — don’t be afraid to speak up.”

NASA and other aerospace companies have hotlines in case employees feel something is wrong or unsafe, and want to voice concerns anonymously.

“We need to be ever diligent. A bureaucracy far removed from operational realities has presented us a potentially dangerous paradox: pressure to reduce cost, a mandate to increase risk, all within the context of a core value system that supposedly considers safety the foundation for mission success.

Remembering and honoring is ok,” concluded Schmidt, “but it is what lead up to that day, that we shouldn’t forget.”