A NASA top official wrestled with what hethought was a hypothetical question: What should you tell the astronauts of adoomed space shuttle Columbia?
When the NASA official raised the question in 2003 just daysbefore the accident that claimed seven astronauts' lives, managers thought —wrongly — that Columbia's heat shield was fine. It wasn't. Columbia, NASA'soldest shuttle, broke apart over Texas 10 years ago Friday upon returning toEarth after a 16-day mission.
But the story of that question — retold a decade later —illustrates a key lesson from the tragedy, says Wayne Hale, a flight directorwho later ran the shuttle program for NASA.
That lesson: Never give up. No matter how hopeless.
And to illustrate the lesson, Hale in his blog tells for thefirst time the story of his late boss who seemingly suggested doing just that.The boss, mission operations chief Jon Harpold, asked the now-retired Hale awhat-if question after a meeting that determined — wrongly — that Columbia wassafe to land despite some damage after takeoff.
"You know there is nothing we can do about damage tothe (thermal protection system)," Hale quotes Harpold a decade later."If it has been damaged, it's probably better not to know. I think thecrew would rather not know. Don't you think it would be better for them to havea happy successful flight and die unexpectedly during entry than to stay onorbit, knowing that there was nothing to be done until the air ran out."
When Harpold raised the question with Hale in 2003, managershad already concluded that Columbia's heat shield was fine. They toldastronauts they weren't worried about damage from foam insulation coming offthe massive shuttle fuel tank during launch, hitting a wing that allowedsuperheated gases in when the shuttle re-entered the atmosphere. No one wasaware of the seriousness of the damage at the time.
This was a what-if type question that conveyed a fatalisticattitude about the heat shield system being unfixable, which was "awrong-headed cultural norm that we had all bought into," Hale said in aThursday telephone interview.
"There was never any debate about what to tell thecrew," he said.
In fact, NASA officials were overconfident in the heatshield on Columbia. A day after launch, NASA saw video of the foam from theshuttle's fuel tank hit the shuttle wing, something that had happened before.NASA officials studied the damage and determined it wasn't a problem.
NASA managers even sent the crew a 15-second video clip ofthe foam strike and "made it very clear to them no, no concerns,"according to the independent board that later investigated the accident. Eighttimes, NASA had the opportunity to get a closer look at the damage— usingmilitary satellites — and NASA mistakenly ignored those chances to see how badthe problem was, the accident board concluded.
And had NASA realized the severity of the problem, the spaceagency would not have just let the astronauts die without a fight or a word,despite Harpold's hypothetical question, Hale said.
"We would have pulled out all the stops. There wouldhave been no stone left unturned. We would have had the entire nation workingon it," Hale said. Ultimately, Hale said he thinks whatever NASA wouldhave tried in 2003 with limited time and knowledge probably would have failed.
And the astronauts would have been told about the problemand their fate had engineers really known what was happening, Hale said.
When NASA started flying shuttles again, Hale told the newteam of mission managers: "We are never ever going to say that there isnothing we can do."
NASA developed an in-flight heat shield repair kit.
The space shuttles were retired in 2011. Harpold died in2004.
Hale said he is now writing about the issue because hewanted future space officials not to make the mistakes he and his colleaguesdid. The loss of the Columbia astronauts — people he knew — still weighs onHale.
"You never get over it. It's always present withyou," Hale said. "These are people I knew well. Several of them, Iworked closely with. I was responsible for their safety. It's never going to goaway."