“A bad day” is the euphemistic phrase NASA folk use to describe
catastrophes like the Shuttle Columbia met over Texas
Saturday morning. But like most disasters to complicated machines,
or countries, the bad day may have begun days ago, 16 in the case
of old Columbia.
On launch, films showed a chunk of foam or ice flaking from the
big external tank and whopping the shuttle’s left wing on the way
down. Did it damage one of the heat-absorbing tiles? NASA worked
that potential problem with a couple of expert teams and decided it
was not a “safety concern.” For future reference it asked the
Columbia astronauts to film the big orange tank as it fell
away from the shuttle more than 8 minutes into the flight, to learn
more about the wayward chunk. Photos no man will ever see.
Shuttle program manager Ron Dittmore says there was no way the
astronauts could have inspected the wing by taking a space walk,
and no way they could have repaired any damage; they don’t take a
tile repair kit with them.
The liftoff damage theory is pure speculation. The last prior
event which cast the future for the Columbia occurred on
the morning of re-entry: a 2 minute 58 second burn of the deorbit
engines that sent it drifting back to the clutches of the
atmosphere which, in the moments to come, would tear it and its
crew to pieces. The spacecraft skin temperatures reached
3,000°F as it plowed into sensible air molecules 207,135 feet
above Texas. It was in a rolling bank dictated by onboard computer
when Mission Control lost left wing sensor telemetry and moments
later, all contact. Commander Husband had said “Roger,” assenting
that the sensor loss was noted in the cockpit, then something
garbled….
It was like the others. The bad day had prior roots. The
Challenger launch in 1986 had been delayed by bad weather,
cold temperature. And above the Cape, 73 seconds into boost phase,
it exploded. But its fate was sealed early, a faulty O-ring in a
solid rocket booster had allowed a burn-through on the pad at
ignition. The sequence was pre-ordained. Cold weather launch
criteria would have to be changed.
It was unthinking design that earlier, in 1967, saw three
astronauts, White, Grissom, and Chaffee, burn to death in a static
test of the Apollo spacecraft that was designed to take men to the
moon. But designed with a complicated door that could not be
swiftly opened, and a wealth of interior velco that was not
fireproof, and wiring at the foot of the astronauts that could be
kicked loose.
Ed White’s Air Force brother, John, attended his funeral at West
Point, above the groaning ice in the Hudson. Then he went to
Southeast Asia, flew an F-105 over Laos, and was never heard from
again.
Why, reporters ask, do they do it at all? The answers are as
numerous as the stars in our flag. In coming days they will mention
again “the surly bonds of earth” and “touched the face of God.” And
they will not, as President Reagan did not in his
Challenger crew eulogy, credit the author of those words,
John Magee, the young American son of missionaries, born in China,
who joined the RCAF in 1940 and was killed in a Spitfire in 1941.
But not before sending his folks a little poem, “High Flight,” he’d
written on the back of an envelope.
Why do they do it? The answer also lies again in a kind of
prophecy, years before the fact. A man who thought a lot about
flying wrote: “Once you have flown, you will walk the earth with
your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you
long to return.”
He was Leonardo da Vinci. A nation called to mourn once more
knows he was right.
