The New NASA

[Erin Rapacki]

Originally posted by Adam Y.
Errr I know I may sound sarcastic but if there were so many safety precations then why did the space shuttle blow up in the first place. From a television show I saw it seems like Nasa experienced the same mentality that happened when the Apollo-1 disaster struck.

The Apollo program started 40 years ago. Since then, tragedies have occured and lessons have been learned. As you may have noticed, the same tragic problem has not occured twice.

Today, we would not go to back to the moon the same way we did in the Apollo days. It was just too unsafe and too risky. If you watched the show on the history channel "Failure is not an Option," it told you that missions 11, 12, + 13 all had catastrophic failures. However, they all were fixed because of the brilliant people at mission control, and a lot of luck.

I am typing this post on my last day as an intern with the EMU program at Hamilton Sundstrand. I have been going through Engineering Changes for the Space Suit all summer. Trust me, with the lessons learned in the past, and the engineering of today, absolutely no part, design aspect, method of assembly, production, handling, packaging... everything is checked over and over again.

I even had to go through a 13 page report about changing the paint used to label a part!

There is a mentality to be as safe as possible. Why wouldn't they do their best to prevent loosing billions of dollars to a $1000 fix?

That's right... they do their best. But they're only human. And sometimes, it's just communication that's the problem. (But new procedures and being developed all the time)

People knew that Columbia was in danger because of the tile hitting the wing, but the word just never go through. Also, that issue has never come up before in the past twenty years of flight, and Analysis showed that it would still safe to land.

Engineers were calling the White House to stop the Challenger from taking off. But once again... nobody was there to hear it.

NASA is getting older, and many of the old-timers agree "the youth are very talented, but they lack leadership."

Maybe the problem is that as the pioneer engineers start retiring and younger people are brought in to take their place, these new people just don't understand the full picture of everything that could go wrong.

Here, the guy who sits next to me was responsible for getting the Apollo 13 guys home. He was the figurehead for developing the procedure and analysis for the device they had to build to scrub CO2 from the LM (round tube in a square hole).

NASA is getting safer by the day. They want to explore space as "risk free" as possible. But, they are also doing something that nobody has done before. So they can only presume what could go wrong... it's hard to tell what WOULD go wrong.

To solve the tile problem, they are adding a third long Boom Arm with a camera in the cargo bay so astronauts can look at the underside of the shuttle and check for tile damage. If any damage has been done, an EVA will be planned to go out and fix it.

Loosing Columbia is a tragic loss. Had word got out about the tile damage, it would have been possible to plan a rescue mission using shuttle Atlantis. It's sad to think of all the good PR NASA would have gotten if the rescue had worked (Similar to the sudden public interest in Apollo 13).

But once again, a lesson has been learned and NASA will continue to grow safer.

p.s. I think funding will stay the same if not increase over the years.