Shuttle Columbia Probe

Read the Full Transcript

• RAY SUAREZ:

  Today in Houston, the panel investigating the loss of the shuttle "Columbia" released its early conclusions about what happened to the spacecraft.

  ADM. HAROLD GEHMAN (Ret.), Columbia Accident Investigation Board: This is a broad sketch that is wide enough to capture most of the data we've developed

• RAY SUAREZ:

  But so far, the leading theory is that a chunk of hard foam insulation broke off the external fuel tank during liftoff on January 16 and struck the shuttle's left wing. Damage to the wing's protective tiles, or seal, would have left the spacecraft vulnerable to hot gasses upon liftoff and reentry. Ever since the space shuttle "Columbia" disintegrated in the skies over Texas on February 1, investigators have been trying to pinpoint what caused the disaster. All seven astronauts onboard perished. Extremely valuable evidence survived the crash. The shuttle's data recorder was found last month in east Texas. It contains information about pressure, temperature, vibration, and other measurements that could provide clues to what caused "Columbia" to break apart.

• SPOKESMAN:

  If you find anything, let one of us know and do not move…

• RAY SUAREZ:

  Along with the data, investigators have closely examined the physical evidence. Over the past three months, local and federal agencies and even volunteers have gathered tens of thousands of pieces from the shuttle in a debris field stretching from California to Louisiana. "Columbia's" wreckage is being analyzed and reassembled in a hangar at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The shuttle carried about 60 science experiments. At least one survived the disaster. Last week, hundreds of worms were discovered alive amid the pieces at Kennedy Space Center. Within 24 hours of the accident, NASA tapped retired Navy Admiral Harold Gehman to head an independent investigation board charged with figuring out why the shuttle broke apart on reentry. One theory: The spacecraft may have been hit by a piece of space junk or a tiny meteor while in orbit. But the foam strike and ensuing wing failure is where most of the attention has been going. Admiral Gehman said the board could not draw a definitive link between what happened on launch to the disaster.

• ADM. HAROLD GEHMAN (Ret.):

  We are careful not to say that the foam knocked a hole in the leading edge of the orbiter because we can't prove it. Now, that's not to say we don't believe that's what happened, but we were careful here to base our working scenario on agreed facts. I would say that the board is certainly leaning in the direction, or the board is certainly suspicious that the foam had something to do with this. But we were very careful to not make a statement that we couldn't live with.

• RAY SUAREZ:

  Demonstrating on a model, Gehman explained how hot gasses could have permeated the shuttle's wing.

• ADM. HAROLD GEHMAN (Ret.):

  Once it gets in here, this is all open. You can go through here. These are just little struts, and the heat can go any way it wants to, and then it starts cutting wires.

• RAY SUAREZ:

  Gehman was asked what it would take to prove that the foam caused the shuttle's disintegration.

• ADM. HAROLD GEHMAN (Ret.):

  If we found a piece of debris, if we found a piece of leading edge RCC with a lot of foam embedded in it, that might convince us of something. But the answer is, I'm not sure what it would take to prove that the foam did it.

• RAY SUAREZ:

  Investigation board members said they hoped to provide NASA with recommendations that would make space shuttles safer to fly.

• RAY SUAREZ:

  For more on the "Columbia" shuttle investigation, I am joined by Donna Shirley, former manager for Mars exploration at NASA. She now teaches aerospace engineering at the University of Oklahoma. And Jerry Grey, director of science and technology policy at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics; he is also a visiting professor of space science and technology at Princeton University. Well, Admiral Gehman was very careful today to call what he had a working hypothesis that fits the evidence rather than a complete answer. Professor Shirley, did the train of events presented today strike you as plausible?

• DONNA SHIRLEY:

  Oh, very plausible. I think they're being extremely careful not to say that this was actually the cause of it. But what the scenario lets them do then is to focus on the analyst he's that would either prove or disprove it or would go a long way toward proving or disproving it. Of course the thing that they're most interested in is how to keep it from happening again.

• RAY SUAREZ:

  Professor Grey, is the data that's coming on the of that flight recorder in general agreement with the scenario that was presented today when heat and where heat rose in the capsule, that sort of thing?

• JERRY GREY:

  I think it makes sense. Actually it's the broaching of the — or the breaching I should say of the thermo protection system that caused the failure. Now exactly what caused the breach, Admiral Gehman is still leaving open. They think and the evidence seems to point to the fact that it was a piece of foam. On the other hand, there are other possible explanations. There could have been flaws in the leading edge itself, but the main thing is not so much what actually did happen but what could happen in the future. So even if the exact cause of this failure is pinpointed, which may or may not happen, NASA has got to make sure that all possible scenarios are prevented for failure.

• RAY SUAREZ:

  Well, you're talking about some of these big hanging questions that remain. With only 36 percent of the craft recovered, is there a possibility that, in fact, you may never be able to know in any definitive way what happened?

• JERRY GREY:

  It's my opinion that we'll never actually find out exactly what happened, but again I don't think that's critical. What is critical is to make sure that anything that could have happened is prevented from doing so in the future. For example, the Gehman board has already made two recommendations that NASA has accepted. One is to conduct a non-destructive evaluation of the carbon-carbon leading edge in the future to see if there are any flaws that might have contributed to the failure and also to have satellites and other telescope facilities photograph the Orbiter to make sure or detect if major failures have occurred before reentry. Now NASA has got to do a lot more than that, however. They have got to be able to conduct an inspection of the thermal protection system and if they find serious damage to be able to repair it on orbit. I suspect the shuttle life extension program, which was planned before "Columbia" failed incidentally, includes consideration of what could be done in the event of a potential failure of the thermo protection system.

• RAY SUAREZ:

  Professor Shirley, do the things that Professor Gray was just mentioning mean really a comprehensive redesign of what we've come to know of as a space shuttle?

• DONNA SHIRLEY:

  Well, not necessarily. What I think it does mean is that they're going to have to look very carefully at their quality control procedures, their repair procedures, their inspection procedures. You know, if the shuttle foam… if the foam has been hitting the shuttle and the Gehman Commission said there's been at least six and probably more like nine or ten instances in which the foam did come loose and hit the shuttle but nothing ever happened before so they sort of got perhaps according to the commission a little complacent, NASA did. So now they have to go back and look at their procedures and see if the processes that they have in place are indeed going to make sure that the things are safe in the future.

• RAY SUAREZ:

  Well, in the past couple of weeks, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas talked about how concerns about those foam strikes stayed bottled up in certain places in the engineering community and that there wasn't a free flow of information on some of these subjects until the "Columbia" was aloft. Does it also mean a human reengineering in addition to redesigning the spacecraft?

• DONNA SHIRLEY:

  One of the things that Admiral Gehman said was that they have levels of things they're going to look at. One is the basic cause, which may or may not have been foam hitting the shuttle. But if they can establish that, it would be great. But then what are the contributing factors is what they call them, which is, okay, so if that happened, why did it happen? And there he talked about the NASA culture, the NASA quality assurance procedures, the NASA test procedures and so on. So now then you have to get to, hey, did they do stuff in the right way? One of the questions that was brought up was that the budget for maintenance of the shuttle has been dropping, that the number of NASA personnel doing oversight has been dropping, and that they've tried to institute procedures like something called ISO-9,000 which is a process generally used in manufacturing and of course someone pointed out at the briefing that manufacturing itself is hundreds and thousands of items, and the shuttle flies a few times a year per shuttle. And so do the procedures that you've set up for testing, for sampling, you know, for taking little samples of how things are going to work, work for something which only flies two or three times a year? So there's going to be a considerable amount of in-depth look at the NASA culture, the NASA policies, the contractor practices and so on.

• RAY SUAREZ:

  Professor Grey, is that a tough thing to do?

• JERRY GREY:

  Yes. You've got to remember one thing though. We do all we can to prevent accidents. We don't want accidents to happen, but this is a risky business. Accidents are going to happen. For example, the shuttle since "Challenger" was much safer than the shuttle that flew before "Challenger" because, as Dr. Shirley said, people took a very careful look at all of the processes involved, made sure that the procedures that we used were the best possible under the circumstances. Now, what happens if another accident occurs? And it's very likely to occur despite all that we do to prevent it. People have suggested and NASA I suspect will be taking a hard look at the prospect of designing the shuttle, changing the design slightly– it doesn't have to be a major design– to allow the flight deck to be ejected as a capsule, reducing the shuttle crew to four people, all of whom could ride in the flight deck. Therefore, they could be saved in case of an accident during either launch or reentry. Another prospect which would not take very much effort at all would be to convert the shuttle to autonomous operation. Right now it's almost autonomous. It's just the proximity operations around the station and the final landing that are manually controlled.

• RAY SUAREZ:

  What do you mean by autonomous, self-operating in space.

• JERRY GREY:

  Run by computer. Right now the bulk of the shuttle flight is already run by computer. In fact, the progress vehicle that the Russians use to supply the space station docks automatically — nobody's hands on the controls. The old Russian… the Soviet Duran, their shuttle made its entire flight automatically. So it's not a difficult job to do this. This would allow the shuttle to fly on those missions that it didn't have to carry a crew with much less attention to safety inspections and other things than we pay when we have a crew on board.

• RAY SUAREZ:

  Professor Shirley, Congress would like the final report before it goes on recess in August. Given how far they've come so far with this preliminary report, is that a reasonable time frame for this kind of work?

• DONNA SHIRLEY:

  Well, I think it's a reasonable time frame to winkle out the most probable causes whether they'll feel as Dr. Grey said that they can say this is what actually caused it. Nevertheless they'll have many recommendations I think to make which will be very useful to Congress in trying to provide some direction for NASA. None of these things are ever completely solvable. You arrive at the most likely solution and then you carry on from there. Otherwise you just stop and test forever. And they have some very intensive test programs and analysis programs which were spoken about at the press conference — like they're going to be shooting pieces of foam at simulated shuttle wings and things like that, plus doing analysis to say, gee, if there was this much melting in the wing there's… this is the kind of hole size that it would have taken to make that happen. So there's a lot of work to be done. Even though they're not necessarily finished with every little detail by August, I think they'll have a pretty good story.

• RAY SUAREZ:

  Donna Shirley, Jerry Grey, thank you both.