Repost: And More of our African American Astronauts

Reposted from my Today blog in 2009:

For those of you who were surprised how many African American astronauts there were, let me tell you, you didn’t know the half of it because I have eight more to tell you about.  If someone ever tells you black people can’t do the math or the science or handle complex concepts (as if Obama isn’t sufficient evidence to the contrary), take a good look at some of the talent NASA has been proud to accept into one of the most difficult and most elite technical jobs there are.  

As I mentioned on the comments on yesterday’s blog, most astronauts have multiple degrees, even multiple PhD’s.  Some are medical doctors, most are pilots (some are both).  And our astronaut corps is wonderfully diverse.

So, without more ado:

Frederick D. Gregory is not only a former astronaut, he is also a former NASA administrator (acting during the lag between Sean O’Keefe and Michael Griffin).  Another pilot and test pilot, he was accepted into the corps in 1978.  He was the pilot for STS-51B in 1985 (SpaceLab mission).  He was also the first African American to command a flight which he did for STS-33 (Department of Defense mission) and then commanded STS-44 (another DoD mission). He was also, at one time, my boss at HQ.  He led Office of Safety and Mission Assurance for nine years at NASA.  When I rocked the boat in 1996, he’s the one that backed me all the way to the top and made changes to how we fly that are still in practice.
Bernard Anthony Harris, Jr. set another first for African Americans in space.  A flight surgeon and a

clinical scientist, he worked on research for the effects of low gravity on people and countermeasures for it.  He was selected for the astronaut corps in 1990 and flight as a mission specialist on STS-55 in 1991 and flew again on STS-63 in 1995 where he was the first African American to go on a spacewalk (but not the last!).  Harris retired from the astronaut core in 1996.

  
Mae Carol Jamison was the first African American in space, but she had a pretty exciting life even beyond that.  She danced.  She entered Stanford University at 16.  She got a BS in chemical engineering four years later and her medical degree four years after that.  She worked as a Peace Corps Medical Officer.  Inspired by Nichelle Nichols, Jamison was accepted into the astronaut corps in 1987 and flew her only mission on STS-47 in 1992.  She retired from NASA in 1993 (to NASA’s dismay) and has the distinction of being the first real astronaut to ever appear on Star Trek (The Next Generation).  And she’s done much more besides.  Check out the link for more.
Joan Elizabeth Higgenbotham has multiple degrees and flew as a payload

specialist on STS-116, the first mission with two African American crewmembers (including Robert Curbeam from yesterday).
Leland Devon Melvin has degrees in Chemistry and Materials Science Engineering and played football as a wide receiver at the University of Richmond and even “drafted” by the Detroit Lions in 1986 (Yes, kids you can be athletic and smart, too.  Astronauts prove it regularly.), but repeated injuries killed that career. After working as an engineer at Langley Research Center, he was selected as an astronaut in 1998.  Since joining NASA he has been co-manager of NASA’s Educator Astronaut Program, no doubt inspiring children and reminding them about why we need a space program.  He flew as a mission specialist on STS-122 in 2008.
Robert Lee Satcher Jr . (born on September 22, 1965) is a physician, chemical engineer, and NASA astronaut.  He has an MD as well as a doctorate in Chemical Engineering, with experience in oncology and biomedical engineering.  He hasn’t yet flown, but he’s ready to go.

Winston Elliot Scott has a masters in aeronautical engineering, a 2nd degree black belt in Shotokan karate and plays the trumpet.  He’s also a navy pilot with 4000 hours flying 20 different aircraft, including helicopters, fighter aircraft and civilian craft.  Oh, and he’s also an astronaut, flying on STS-72 in 1996 where he performed a spacewalk and STS-87 in 1997 where he performed two more.  He retired from NASA in 1999.
Stephanie Diana Wilson is the second African American woman to go into

space.  She has a master’s degree in aerospace engineering.  Before becoming an astronaut, she worked for Martin Marrietta and then Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the Galileo spacecraft.  She was selected to be an astronaut in 1996 and has flown as a mission specialist on both STS-120 in 2007 and STS-121 in 2006, both ISS assembly missions.  She is currently training to fly on STS-131 in 2010.

As can be readily seen, there’s a wealth of talent and intelligence here, as well as countless hours of hard work.  And, in the end, that’s what you really need to be an astronaut.

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Repost: Some of our African American Astronauts

Report from former blog:

As a departure from the tragedies of the past week, I would like to embrace and celebrate Black History Month.  In fact, I’m all for celebrating the achievements of people at any opportunity.
I am not black and, to the best of my knowledge, I have no black ancestry.  It wouldn’t bother me if that were not the case, but, there it is.  However, I would like to take the opportunity to celebrate the achievements and accomplishments of those of African or Aboriginal (would some Asian races qualify?  Could someone clarify this?) throughout the world and throughout history.  I think it will be a journey for me, since Africa is perhaps the continent I know the least about.  I do want to know more.

This is an opportunity for me and I hope you enjoy the journey since I intend to share it with you.
In keeping with my rocket scienciness, I’m going to start by telling you about some of NASA’s African American astronauts:

First, as a sad note, Michael Phillip Anderson , the African-American astronaut to perish on STS-107 (Columbia).  Physicist, communication expert and pilot, he flew on STS-89 in 1998 (Shuttle-Mir mission) and was the Payload Commander for STS-107, where he perished with the rest of the crew on February 1, 2003. On Challenger, we lost another African-American astronaut, Ronald Ervin McNair , Ph.D.  Another physicist, with a Ph.D. from MIT, Dr. McNair was a well-rounded individual with a fifth degree black belt in karate who happened to play the saxophone [Ed:  musical talent is actually fairly common among the astronauts].  Recruited by NASA by actress Nichelle Nichols (of the original Star Trek fame), he flew on STS-41B in February 1984 (also on Challenger) where he played the saxophone for posterity.  He flew again, briefly, on STS-51L and perished with his crew on January 28, 1986. 

Robert H. Lawrence, Jr . (Ph.D.) was actually the first African-American to be accepted into the astronaut corps.  With a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry and a background as a test pilot, he was well qualified to become an astronaut, and was accepted into the astronaut corps in June 1967.  However, a tragic accident during a training flight with him as instructor ended in his death only months after joining the program. Guion “Guy” Bluford, Jr. (Ph.D) is the first African American* to go into space.  With a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering (and a minor in laser physics), 144 combat missions of flying experience in Vietnam, he became an astronaut in 1979.  He first flew on STS-8 in 1983, then flew three other missions,  STS-61A in 1985, STS-39 in 1991, and STS-53 in 1992.  He retired from the astronaut corps in 1993.

Charles F. Bolden, Jr . was a naval aviator that flew more than 100 sorties into North and South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, in the A-6A Intruder during the Vietnam war.  Impressive enough credentials, one might think, even without the degrees in electrical science and systems management.  NASA thought so too and accepted him into the astronaut corps in 1980.  Between that and his retirement from the corps in 1994, he served as pilot on two missions: STS-61C in 1986, STS-31 in 1990 (Hubble Space Telescope launch) and commanded two other missions: STS-45 (first SpaceLab mission) and STS-60 (the first joint US/Russian Shuttle mission). He is now the Director for ALL of NASA.
Yvonne Darlene Cagle is a medical doctor and female astronaut currently assigned to the Life Sciences Directorate at JSC.  Apparently, she likes to write historical novels.  How cool is that?

Robert Lee Curbeam, Jr . joined the astronaut corps in 1994, another naval aviator with degrees in aerospace and aeronautical engineering, he has flown on three missions: STS-85 in 1997, STS-98 in 2001 and STS-116.  On STS-116 he set the record for the most spacewalks (EVAs) on one flight - four.  EVA takes a great deal out of one, so that’s no mean achievement.  I happen to have worked with Mr. Curbeam and it was a real pleasure - he’s talented, intelligent, pleasant and a pleasure to work with.  He announced his retired from the astronaut corps in 2007. B. Alvin Drew is a Command Pilot with 3000 hours flying time in over 30 types of aircraft, including helicopters and fighter craft for both rescue and combat missions in the middle East. He also has degrees in both physics and aeronautical engineering.  Selected for the astronaut corps in 200, he has flown one mission, STS-118 in 2007.

But, wait, there’s more.  And tomorrow I’ll include the rest of the African American astronauts.  Note that the links are generally to Wikipedia because they link to many other useful places.  Revel a bit in the talent NASA has drawn.

*The first person of African descent in space was actually a Cuban cosmonaut,  Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez .  Recruited from the Cuban Air Force through the Soviet Intecosmos program, he was launched on Soyuz 38 with Yuri Romanenko to rendezvous with Salyut 6 on orbit in 1980.

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So, I'm Presenting Another Paper at Another Conference

Been a while (since before the divorce), but it's my favorite conference to frequent, the Sixth Conference of the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety, this time in Montreal in May. I'd missed the last one, but I've presented at least one paper to each of the other four. And, will to this one, too.

The topic is Spaceflight vs. Human Spaceflight and I'm actually pretty excited because it's one of the subjects that gets me stoked. Too often, people talk like human spaceflight is no big deal, I mean we send satellites up all the time, even spacecraft to other planets. So, what's so special about HUMAN spaceflight?

Which is the point of my paper.   (Hint, do a search on how many unmanned spacecraft have a return element, even including suborbital hops with animals and you might get a flavor for what I'll be talking about.)

Anyway, y'all might not be interested, but I thought I'd tell you anyway, since it was a Rocket Scientist topic and I haven't written anything here in quite some time. It's also one reason why I've been too busy to troll through blogs recently or contribute.

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Enjoy Your Retirement, Space Shuttle

I know many of you space loving types thought I should have written something on this subject a long time ago. I don't blame you. I'm a rocket scientist, I'm very familiar with the Space Shuttle, and its retirement is a very big deal. So, why haven't I talked about it.?

There are several reasons. One is that the ending of the Shuttle, dictated back in 2004, has become confused and mired in the political infighting that's engulfed NASA. I'm not going to point fingers except to say that wrangling and fighting over a budget for something like NASA and what to do with it is a wonderful way to spend money without accomplishing anything and let irreplaceable technical minds slip away. You can't do space in half measures. But I digress, because the Shuttle's retirement isn't about that, though many people have put them together.

The Shuttle was retired because, with the second catastrophic mission in Shuttle's history (Columbia STS-107), we had to come to grips with just how dangerous it was. By design. And that's a key point. Not that it was designed with the intent of being dangerous, but because the design is inherently dangerous and there's nothing that can be done at this point to change that. It's also aging, not just in technology (computers leapt forward so far in the time it's been active, it's not even humorous), but also in the physical components that are either worn or old and/or so obsolete replacement parts are almost nonexistent. In many cases, the Shuttle program had bought out all the remaining stock in the whole world of some items because no one was going to make them any more.

I was not against the retirement and still am not for the reasons I just described. And those were the reasons the Shuttle was to be retired by 2010.

Having said that, I have to marvel at this remarkable spacecraft and remember that, for all the risks and challenges in the design, the Shuttle is unique to space and does what no one else has ever done. Ever. That is take tons and tons of people and hardware out into space - and bring them back. Despite the many aspects of reusability that were touted as fantastic that, truly, never came to fruition (like simplicity, and easy of rework for next flight and cost), this aspect is the one that makes the Shuttle stand out. And it will continue to stand out until we've found a new way to do the same thing.

Because that's the real trick, isn't it. Anyone can send hardware into space (well, not anyone, but you know what I mean). We have dozens of rocket designs that can take either heavy hardware a good ways or lighthardware out into the cosmos, lots of rockets that are built on the same principles and the same basic designs and do the same jobs. Not just "us" but the Chinese and Japanese and Europeans and, of course, the Russians, not to mention India and now Iran. Flinging it out there is not big deal, relatively speaking and, because it isn't that dangerous once it's launched, redundancy and extreme safety measures aren't required. But, see, the trick that really means something, that says you've beaten space, is bringing someone or something back. That's where the real challenge is.

The Russians and Chinese have brought people back (though not much else). The Japanese and we have brought some dust back, I think. But no one else has ever brought back much more than data on what they're doing. Not experiments or samples or what have you. Pictures and data streams, yes, but it's not the same as bringing back the real samples, testing it on the ground. It's not the same as examining the LDEF for years and studying what the surface pitting and effects really meant.

Admittedly, the Space Shuttle had limitations, most definitively that limitation of being in the low portion of low earth orbit. It was a large craft and the lack of pieces to fall off, like most expendables, meant it couldn't go so far, but the coming back part, that was a unique capability. (Russia's Buran, in theory, could have carried more than the Shuttle there and back, but since it only had one test flight and never actually did so, I'm not giving it credit).

I'm not sorry she's retired. She ran a long time. She did some incomparable stuff, things we won't be able to do again until we come up with something as fantastic as she was when she was shiny and new. The problem with a reusable, though, is those that use her get hidebound. Everything's about keeping her running because you're using the same old hardware, so improvements are few and far between or just impossible. She gets old and you get in the mindset of accepting more and more risk because fixing the problems are too hard, too costly or could turn around and cause more problems just by messing with her.

It would have been great if we had graduated from the Shuttle into a next generation Shuttle, one that could bring things back like she did but go places she couldn't, further or more capable, perhaps to a station where other spacecraft would leap from to reach out further into space. That would have been something and we could have used the lessons we learned the hard way, the things that didn't work as we planned and the amazing things that did the otherwise impossible.

But we didn't. Too often her proposed replacements were underpowered, undersized facsimiles of what we already had, rather than a next generation, despite all the inroads made in computers, software, controllability, material science, etc. We were working backwards, not forwards, and always at tremendous cost. No wonder those programs kept getting cancelled.

We can do it. The Shuttle's proof and kudos have to be provided that she flew so well so often and safely despite her many handicaps, not only to the ship herself but the phalanxes of hard-working people who made it so (many of whom are currently looking for new jobs). We can do the impossible or at least the improbable. I believe that.

I also believe, that until we do what the Shuttle did again, take up tons and bring it back, we will never really be in a position to conquer space. We'll be, at best, dabblers.

Because, in the end, people have to go, or it's just data. We have to bring soil and other samples back or we're just speculating. If we want to take advantage of the unusual aspects of space, create new materials, do meaningful biological research, we're going to have to bring our experiments and our results back down to the ground.

That's why I believe in manned spaceflight. And why I haven't given up. There is knowhow in this world and someday, someone's going to figure out to go the next step beyond the Space Shuttle.

We're just not there yet. But we could be.

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RS Classic: Remembering NASA’s tragedies - Columbia Accident

Yes, I'm still shut down, but this is an important week for NASA, something we all must remember lest it happen again. Today is the anniversary of the Columbia break up during reentry and a post I wrote two years ago.

This is the hardest anniversary for me. Not that the others weren’t just as tragic, just as painful, that those lost weren’t just as brave and their deaths just as untimely. But I wasn’t even born when Apollo 1 burned so horribly. And I was just a kid in college when Challenger was torn to pieces. I wasn’t responsible.

But STS-107 was my flight. I was the EVA Safety Flight Lead for this flight. I knew the crew personally. I knew the team supporting them. I’d watched them practice in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab. I was there as the flight went through delay after delay. I went in the Mission Evaluation Room (one of the back rooms at Mission Control that supports “the Front Room”) and spoke to the folks manning the safety console every day. There were no scheduled EVAs so I wasn’t working shift. In fact, unless a contingency EVA was needed, neither was I. But I checked in physically at least once a day.

And I never saw this coming. I never heard any of the feverish concerns going on in different areas. And, sadly, I wasn’t even watching the landing. After all, nothing had gone wrong.

I was actually sleeping in, that morning of February 1, 2003. My husband of only a few months had (and this never happens) gotten up early that Saturday morning to watch cartoons. I was barely pregnant at the time - I don’t think I even knew it yet - and was feeling lazy. My daughter was at her father’s house that weekend. And Lee called out to me from the living room. “Uh, hon, I think the Shuttle just disintegrated.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” I snapped.

“I’m not joking.”

I may have mispoken when I said I never saw it coming. I had dreamed of it and it was one of those extremely rare dreams of mine that I remembered: a Shuttle coming in and breaking into fiery pieces. Whatever dreams I might have generally, I have no remembrance of them when I wake up. But this one, I remembered.

I had been worried about a potential risk. The program and my management had become comfortable with what they knew. I had not. But I had moved on to a different area and only kept track of what was going on sporadically. And I had dreamed of just such a disaster.

Of course, there is considerable evidence that the culprit that damaged the sensitive RCC panels was foam, rather than what had worried me, but that didn’t make it better. We’d been hit by foam repeatedly over the years and had talked ourselves out of worrying about it. We saw the hit before we landed, and we didn’t do more. All of this is well documented in the CAIB report . We fell into the same trap and the same causes culture-wise were cited in the CAIB report that we had heard in the Rogers Commission report from Challenger.

When Columbia reentered, the plasma began burning through the wing, first tearing off the protective RCC panel, then tearing through the structure, hydraulics and wiring, even the tire, behind it. In minutes, the Orbiter began to break up and rain debris over Texas and Louisiana.

To be honest, I’m not sure that we could have saved this crew if we had recognized the danger before they came down. I know we would have tried, would have pulled out all the stops, killed ourselves to save them if we had known what was to happen. I believe that absolutely. But, and this is the lesson we need to take forward into our future endeavors, the best way to have saved them was to keep this from happening.

We learned a great deal in the years that followed this tragedy, more about the materials we use to protect the Shuttle and the limitations and capabilities we have of bringing the Shuttle down safely if something like this ever happens again. And we know more about the risks that scared me and about the foam and ice on the ET and we have steps to address that, too.

Seven Astronauts paid for that lesson: Rick D. Husband, William C. McCool, Michael P. Anderson, Ilan Ramon, Kalpana Chawla, David M. Brown, and Laurel Clark. I must also note two others who died during recovery efforts: Jules F. Mier Jr. and Charles Krenek

Have we learned enough to preclude a recurrence? I don’t know. I hope so. I hope we tuck the lessons like Apollo, Challenger and Columbia in the corner of our minds whatever else we do and we resolved “Never again!” I don’t want us to grow complacent that such tragedies are inevitable, the price of going where no man has gone before. I want us to kick and fight and claw our way forward, unwilling to give an inch to fate, unwilling to accept defeat and any more deaths.

In the end, time will be the true judge on how well we have learned from these tragedies. Here’s hoping this is truly the last for human spaceflight. According to our previous Space Shuttle Program Manager , we still have work to do.

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RS Classic: Remembering NASA’s tragedies - Challenger Accident

Yes, I'm still shut down, but this is an important week for NASA, something we all must remember lest it happen again. Today is the anniversary of the Challenger accident and a post I wrote two years ago, though for some reason newspapers have been writing like it was the 27th. I have no idea why.
Apollo 1 is not as well-known as some of the other NASA tragedies and, because it happened 42 years ago, many people don’t remember or even know about it. I doubt that’s true of the events that happened on this day, January 28, 1986, 23 years ago today [25 now]. On that day that STS-51L ended 73 seconds after launch, disintegrated, taking all those on board to their deaths.

The Shuttle Challenger’s stack lifted off, but, as soon as the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) ignited, smoke could be seen escaping from the stack as the heat from the flames from burning solid fuel escaped past O-rings in the joint of the SRB that had shrunk and become brittle in that cold January morning. Within only a few seconds, the O-rings had been vaporized by the escaping hot gases but an aluminum oxide layer had acted as a temporary seal. However, as the Shuttle approached Max Q (that point where they reached maximum dynamic pressure), the Shuttle also was hit with the highest wind shear seen to date in the Shuttle program, which disrupted the temporary seal. That’s when the plume first appeared.

Plume during flightThe joint’s plume impinged on the external tank within a second. Less than 4.5 seconds later, the external tank was leaking. This was happening too fast and the visual evidence had not been “noticed” except by cameras for controllers or crew to understand what was happening. Less than 8 seconds after the External Tank began leaking, the leaking SRB started pulling away from its rear strut. The pilot’s last utterance, “Uh oh.” Less than a second after the SRB first started pulling away, after the hydrogen tank blasted into the oxygen tank and the SRB slammed into the external tank structure, the Shuttle, yanked from it’s proper attitude and was torn to pieces by aerodynamic forces.

The crew cabin, though not airtight, survive the initial break up intact. There are indications that the crew survived the immediate g-loading and might have even regained consciousness during the 2.5 minute trip to the ocean surface. The impact with the ocean, however, at roughly 334 km/h (208 mph) was not survivable.

For just over a minute, we had a launch and then, nothing but bits of debris and remains.

Again, this was a preventable accident. The by-blow and and extrusion were known phenomena as were the characteristics of the O-rings (or at least uncertainty about them). Engineers with the SRB contractor, Morton Thoikol, had had concerns, but they had been dismissed by both contractor and NASA management.

Although the Rogers Commission made many recommendations about safety, management decisions, the real star, in this humble safety person’s opinion, was Richard Feynman, the physicist, who, while the commission was taking their tours and talking to managers, was wandering about unsupervised and talking to the engineers who knew what the problem was, who had spoken up and been dismissed. He wrote an appendix to the commission’s report that should be required reading for anyone working safety in any capacity, including commercial space flight (I hope you’re listening).

This kind of accident was preventable. Our assurance that something couldn’t go wrong because it hadn’t before was faulty (and, sadly, we had to learn this a second time). Seven people paid the price for that short-sightedness: Ellison S. Onizuka, Sharon Christa McAuliffe, Greg Jarvis, Judy Resnik, Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, and Ron McNair.

On this, we learned, but I don’t think we learned enough for many of the issues cited in the Challenger report, were repeated in the Columbia report. But then, that’s Sunday’s tale. There is an excellent video on this link . It’s 44 minutes and it’s painful to watch. I never watch it without weeping, but it is beautifully done and very informative.

Learning by attrition is not the way to learn.

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RS Classic: Remembering NASA’s tragedies - Apollo 1 Fire

Yes, I'm still shut down, but this is an important week for NASA, something we all must remember lest it happen again. Today is the anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire and a post I wrote two years ago.

This is a tough week for NASA and for those that care about safety and space. In the space of six days, we have the anniversaries of each of the worst space disasters resulting in loss of life (though we have lost ground support personnel in other accidents): Apollo I, STS-51L (Challenger) and STS-107 (Columbia). It’s a sad time for us, a time to reflect on what we’ve done wrong and on the brave and talented souls that paid the ultimate price for our mistakes.

The sad thing, as I mentioned in a comment for yesterday’s blog, is that all three of these accidents were preventable. Of all the lessons we should be taking home, that is the one we must not lose sight of. There are issues and unexpected bad things that can always hinder us in space, things we can’t necessarily be fully prepared for; we must not add those risks we can correct.

But, as sad as it is to discuss these, they stand as lessons that may have helped us further down the line, that, hopefully taught us things that have saved other lives. If we have learned too late, at least we learned. But those of us who care passionately about the safety of the crew, those of us who are responsible for the lives of others, we must look back on these mistakes periodically, not only to make sure those lessons are still fresh in our minds, but also to remind ourselves why we work so hard to do the right thing. To prevent tragedies like this.

If I’m sometimes critical of our human space program, I have to say that a huge portion of what everyone does is to protect human life. These accidents remind us why that effort is worth it.

Charred crew module interior after the fire, NASA image42 years ago today, on January 27, 1967, the crew of AS-204, which they called Apollo 1, climbed into the crew module for the new Apollo missions, the first involving three crewmembers for a plugs-out test, which was not expected to be hazardous. The module was pressurized to 16 psia, higher than ambient, and was 100% oxygen, which the contractor recommended against. The crew module had a number of known but uncorrected flaws and the crew had expressed concern about fire hazards. The astronauts had also lobbied successfully for an outward opening door, but that design change was not incorporated here. Still, flawed or not, the hope was to successfully pass the test today and launch it three weeks later in February.

At 6:31:07, *before the test had even started*, the first cry of fire came from the cabin. For about 10 seconds, one could hear frantic movements followed by Chafee yelling, “We’ve got a bad fire! Let’s get out! We’re burning up! We’re on fire! Get us out of here!” Then, a scream of pain and the end of the transmission, seventeen seconds after the first report of fire. The crew module ruptured from the pressure and toxic black smoke poured from the module.

It took another eight minutes before they could open the hatch, by which time the fire had gone out. It took 7.5 hours to remove the crews remains, as they were fused in place by the melted nylon of their suits. It was not a fun way to die.

In the end, a number of key factors were called out as potential causes and contributors. The high pressure oxygen environment was very dangerous from a flammability standpoint (”in which a bar of aluminum can burn like wood” according to Wikipedia). There was a wealth of off-gassing flammable nonmetallics like nylon and velcro. Wiring and plumbing was substandard (note that 1407 wiring *design* problems were corrected after Apollo 1) with a stripped and abraded wire near a leaky coolant line (a potential exothermic explosion) but just the static electricity from their suits were found sufficient to have started a fire in that atmosphere. We were not short of smoking guns and no single cause was ever determined as *the* cause.

We were feckless, we were sloppy and we thought that the success with Mercury and Gemini at 100% oxygen made us bulletproof. Astronauts Edward H. White II, Virgil I. Grissom, and Roger B. Chaffee paid the price.

You’ll be pleased to know that nonmetallics are given careful consideration before flight, requiring both toxicity and flammability off-gassing tests (if not a previously flown material). Even the simplest ground tests are done with emergency personnel on site, with procedures for rescuing test subjects practiced and in hand (and that have saved lives since, but that’s another story), a thorough safety review before proceeding. We fly with an air mixture (except in the suits) and wiring and materials are held to very high standards. Materials used, particular “on” the crewmembers must be self-extinguishing (and materials developed for space use are also in use by firefighters all over the world).

But, as we move forward, we must remember these lessons and not get complacent. It’s been a long time since such a thing happened and, especially as we move to commercial human spaceflight, these lessons should be revisited. I hope everyone with the intention of shuttling people into space has read and understood the lessons in this one tragic not-quite-test.

May we never forget.

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RS Classic: Manned vs. Unmanned

Since I was asked about why manned spaceflight is so expensive, I thought I'd replay this post that told why I think it's worth it.

Reading the ScienceDebate2008.com responses to the responses, I was struck by something that scared me a little. Somehow, between Apollo and today, many scientists decided that manned space isn’t necessary. I mean, I knew that many regular folks, using their cellphones and watching the hurricane photographs on cable TV, were under the impression that space was of no interest, but I didn’t realize that scientists, perhaps the bulk of them, feel that way. Frightening.

That tells me two things: NASA’s PR stinks and we (I mean scientists, too) bought into a bunch of myths on what’s important. All of us. If scientists aren’t going to fight for space exploration, who’s going to do it?

Few (or at least few in science and engineering) were naysaying that when Apollo was at it’s peak. You want to know what we did on the moon? Let me tell you, we did plenty, plenty like our little robots are working away to do on Mars and plenty those robots will never be able to do. You can read about it on the Apollo Lunar Surface Journals (and I recommend it for any space nuts). This is the real deal and I think we owe it to those pioneers to read those again and remind ourselves why it was we sent people to the surface of the Moon in the first place.

I know the arguments against human spaceflight on the taxpayer’s dollar. I just don’t agree with them.

What has human spaceflight ever done for us? (Usually followed by a list of important issues more deserving of money) A great deal. Space requirements drove solar power, recycling methodologies and waste management systems, remote medical operating systems (used all the time), nonflammable materials, pressure vessels, fuel cells, etc. We found out more about our planet by bringing soil home from the Moon than we ever would have found out otherwise. We’ve learned more about physiology, more about acceleration and low gravity on people. And manned spaceflight inspired us to do so much more in space than we ever would have, including communication for all those fun every day devices that people depend on and think come from who knows where.

Let private industry do it. Folks, I’ve been working in manned spaceflight for nearly 20 years. It isn’t easy. Space is unforgiving and we’ve learned a lot of really really hard lessons along the way. NASA was largely successful, not because they were willing to accept death and failure along the way but because they weren’t. This cavalier attitude by those trying to do it in the private sector, describing rockets that blow up seconds after launch or put equipment in the wrong orbit as “successes,” talking about acceptable losses among paying customers, just demonstrate they really don’t get it. SpaceShip One went up and barely kissed space for a tiny instant, and came down, oscillating wildly. Twice (only one time on the oscillating, I think). That is hell and gone from letting someone spend an appreciable amount of time in the uncompromising and harsh conditions of space, and it didn’t require nearly the same systems that a true spaceship will need. Let me put it a different way. I’ll believe it when I see it. [Editor's note, I've become somewhat more impressed with some commercial work since then. I hope they succeed, truly.]

Part of the problem here is that scientists see manned spaceflight as competing with unmanned scientific space flight endeavors. They see that because that’s exactly what has happened. Space and space endeavors are badly underfunded, with goals that change with the politicians in office, plans that sounded great on paper that are ungainly, expensive and impractical to the point of impossibility in the light of day, contractors get paid whether they work or not and a wealth of technological and scientific decisions are made by political “necessity.” You rob Peter to pay Paul all day, every day, it’s not mystery what you’ll accomplish: not a damn thing. That kind of thinking leads to foreclosure and a cardboard box under the underpass for regular people. In gov’t, it means you spend a lot of money to walk away with very little.

When manned programs, which are expensive, need more than they’re alloted, unmanned programs get crunched. But that isn’t manned spaceflight’s fault - it’s bad management (which is at least a whole blog of its own that I’ll do later) by the government. If you spent all your money on your electricity bill so that you can’t pay the water bill, does that mean you shouldn’t have electric lights? Or that you just haven’t managed your money correctly.

Unmanned space exploration is an excellent investment for any industrialized nation. There are things you can learn about the sun and radiation and astronomy and the weather that human spaceflight will never teach us. And vice versa, especially if we start actually exploring with people again. It isn’t that one can give us everything and one can’t. Neither can get us everything, but they complement each other wonderfully. It is foolish and unnecessary that they’re competing.

We spend hundreds of billions on the military every year, 10x more than any other nation and more than the rest of the world combined. Hundreds of billions. We spend 20-25 billion on space. In my opinion, it isn’t that we should have to choose between them, it’s that we need to find a smart way to do both.

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RS Classic: Single Point Failures

Written in 2008.

On NASAWatch, they noted loss of a single component brought down the entire NASA email system (this just after they were down for nearly a week because the server goes through JSC only, so the hurricane [Ike] affected all NASA mail). There are few things, technologically, more irksome, more certain to fail, and more embarrassing when they do so, than single point failures.

Failure tolerance is a good thing. It’s the best defense there is against Murphy’s law. At one time, NASA strived to meet the principle of Fail Operational, Fail Safe. That meant that any single failure did not affect function (or at least not critical function). A second failure might leave the hardware nonfunctional, but it would leave it safe - if the function is critical, of course, nonfunctional is not safe. Even more, it ensured that there were at least three failures required before reaching an unsafe condition.

Now, of course, that isn’t always possible. A nuclear reactor containment vessel is unlikely to be redundant. Extra wings on a plane in case one shears off is likely less than useful. Sometimes adding redundancy and additions paths adds so much complexity, weight, etc. that the design becomes ridiculously unwieldy.

But, in general, it’s a good thing. If 12 bolts can bear all the stress necessary, adding one or two other bolts allows for failure without compromising the overall capability. (This is especially important in space endeavors where a stripped or broken bolt may not be recoverable). If one can accommodate redundancy, especially with unreliable equipment, it’s smart engineering practice to do so. This is more true when hazards can result from failure.

So, if a complex or key system fails because of a single component or a readily foreseeable circumstance, that argues poor engineering. Bad in real life…

But it’s damn useful in science fiction. You want to make an interesting story, twist the plot, add hardship, shake things up a bit? Have a critical component fail. You want to add tension, pressure, up the excitement? Make your critical item one of a kind, no spares, hard to come by, made of something scarce and/or requiring interaction with someone hostile to recover it? Do so, and suddenly things are hot and exciting.

Just remember not to use this little trick too often because, if you do, your engineers will look like total morons or it will become cliché. Not that it isn’t a little cliché already thanks to Star Trek and the like. But it’s still good for excitement if you can exercise a little restraint.

Having said that, I'm not a personal fan of changing the two fault tolerance (fail operational/fail safe) philosophy to a more amorphous fault tolerance highly dependent on probabilistic risk assessment (PRA(and design to minimum risk (which can not be applied to all hardware). NPR 8705.2B, the standard for human rating required by NASA, used to dictate 2 fault tolerance for catastrophic failures. By requiring that, vendors and designers were required to provide redundancy or justify each instance where it was not provided [paragraph 3.1.1 in Rev A, 3.2.2 in Rev B]. In the version released in May 2008, this was undone. Rev B is the current version.

Old version: "Space systems shall be designed so that no two failures result in crew or passenger fatality or permanent disability." [Note that there were caveats in the next requirement for exceptions, but the exceptions had to be brought to management]

New version: "The space system shall provide failure tolerance to catastrophic events (minimum of one failure tolerant), with the specific level of failure tolerance (one, two or more) and implementation (similar or dissimilar redundancy) derived from an integrated design and safety analysis (per the requirement in paragraph 2.3.7.1)(Requirement). Failure of primary structure, structural failure of pressure vessel walls, and failure of pressurized lines are excepted from the failure tolerance requirement provided the potentially catastrophic failures are controlled through a defined process in which approved standards and margins are implemented that account for the absence of failure tolerance. Other potentially catastrophic hazards that cannot be controlled using failure tolerance are excepted from the failure tolerance requirements with concurrence from the Technical Authorities provided the hazards are controlled through a defined process in which approved standards and margins are implemented that account for the absence of failure tolerance. "

I'm not objecting because PRA isn't usefuluseful (it is) but because I've seen a great deal of misuse of good models with bad assumptions or limited understanding of the uncertainties and caveats. Not necessarily by the analysts but by those feeding them data and those wanting "an answer" without taking the trouble to understand what that answer really means. And, I have to say, changing a straight-forward requirement into a morass of legalese, well it just gives this old safety engineer the willies. Requirements should be clear and verifiable.

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RS Classic: Sometimes I Don't Understand Stuff

Another recycle and one I really liked writing. I wrote more on this topic at a later date.

I have never understood why some of the best stuff gets overlooked and other things, that make no sense or are clearly horse manure, are embraced (no, I will not be talking politics - ever, I hope).

My sister, shakespeare, reminded me of this by mentioning two movies that came out at nearly the same time and based on the same concept: Deep Impact and Armageddon. My sister thought the reason Deep Impact was overlooked was in the title, or at least in part. Me, I think the title Deep Impact is just fine. I think the real problem was that it was actually realistic.

The biggest thing that irked me was that NASA (which really should have known better) let the Armageddon crew film in NASA facilities and slap the NASA meatball on every visible surface. Normally, they are reluctant to do so (and I don’t think it was used in Deep Impact, or, at least, it was less prevalent.) So, here is this apparently NASA endorsed movie released at the same time of another movie. You’d think it was more “true” and believable. Well, you would be wrong.

Let’s figure out why (from my memory, so don’t expect perfection - especially since I’ve been trying to scrub Armageddon from my mind for some time).

Deep Impact - Detected impactor years ahead of time and focused on a single plan (from scratch) to get it done. Even with the best will in the world, this would have been a challenge. The fact that we have, in the past done the incredible (Apollo/Gemini/Mercury) in the short term with focus and the right minds, says it is not implausible.

Armageddon - We find out weeks/months ahead of time. Believe me, we’re completely boned. No way, not even the Russians or using military resources - even if we had rockets handy that could send something that big that far, we couldn’t do it. We have nothing to put people in that could take that.

Deep Impact - Select astronauts have been training for this difficult and challenging task for years. Duh! The unknowns alone mean that we need talented and capable people who have extensive experience and can adapt to ugly new challenges.

Armageddon - Ignore your talented astronaut corps and drag in some oil drillers from an off-shore oil platform, letting them call the shots and saying you can train them effectively in low/no gravity in suits in a matter of weeks to use a hand operated drill on a new surface. Brilliant! After all, we all know the offshore drilling is done via hand operated drill and I know, if I was going to drill on a far distant asteroid with only one chance, I’d be much more comfortable stressing the drilling experience. Because, after all, drilling expertise is almost unknown whereas familiarity and training with space gear and suits is a common skill. (I’ve worked with many astronauts, know how dedicated these people are. They are capable and confident people who also know how to keep their egos in check for the good of the mission. This movie offended me on their behalf.)
Armageddon - they launched a handily available titanium Shuttle and “refuel” it at the Mir Space Station (which they accidentally blow up) that has apparently grown large cryogenic fuel tanks somehow. Then, they store up enough “hydrogen/oxygen fuel” in their shuttle and zip off through meteoroid laden space, dodging meteoroids, then land on the asteroid. After landing, they are “trapped” in the payload bay and “shoot their way out” of the titanium Shuttle bay with a convenient machine gun on the “rover.” Alright, folks, do I have to explain how idiotic this is? The Mir didn’t have tanks or any way of “filling up” a Shuttle (and space born cryogenic tanks are not an easy thing to whip together, even for the innovative Russians). Shuttle engines can’t be started in space (which is why they aren’t being used for Ares). The Shuttle has no tanks (none) and no place to put them since the payload bay is filled with drilling equipment. Since meteoroids come screaming through here at 20-70 km/s (that’s 40x-140X the speed of a bullet), even Han Solo couldn’t dodge ‘em. As for the machine gun? Oy! Even my ex, redneck that he was and complaining about my complaints, looked up at that and said, “Alright, that’s stupid.”

Deep Impact - None of that kind of stupidity, so I couldn’t compare it, but they did show people planet side making some hard decisions that you would not like to see free people having to make. I personally think that the fact they did this is what made this movie less than successful - people didn’t want to believe that necessity might mean hard choices. I also think it’s what made this movie realistic. People think nature is gentle. Think of Hurricane Katrina. Think of the recent earthquake in China and all only children lost. Think of Hurricane Mitch. Think back to the tsunami that devastated the rim of the Indian ocean two years ago. Nature is not forgiving and physics has no pity.

Deep Impact - for all their planning, things went amiss and the crew had to sacrifice themselves to make a second opportunity that was partially successful. This is exactly the sort of thing I could expect an astronaut crew to do. No muss, no fuss, just do what they could to save humanity. And, to me, perfectly plausible. Although complete destruction was avoided, a pretty horrible prospect remained that will kill millions.
Armageddon - Our drilling crew (after screwing up repeatedly in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab), *gasp* screws up and our oil drilling hero decides to stick around to save humanity although people try to talk him into leaving. At the last minute, it blows up but the rest of our heroes can go home to an untouched planet. Uh, yeah. I’m so buying that.

It occurs to me that it’s dreck like Armageddon that makes it so hard to accomplish things for NASA. NASA knows life is like Deep Impact, full of tough choices and real physics. Politicians and the populace think that it can all be taken care of with bailing wire and guts (which are relatively cheaper). Problem is, it can’t and they can’t forgive NASA for not living up to expectations that are unrealistic, while NASA gets sent down one blind stupid alley after another to suit the vagaries of the people they answer to and end up - nowhere. What a waste!

I think this is pertinent on many levels today. People want things "cleaned up", someone to wave a magic wand and have it all go away. Reality bites.

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Commercial Human Spaceflight

The Falcon 9 test flight, just launched successfully, is unmanned (as all the best test flights are), but it's a very important test flight. At this time SpaceX is an outlier on the notion that commercial ventures can make effective heavy lift rockets and, potentially, send people into space.

This is thrilling for many. It's probably a bit scary for several still entangled in the Constellation Program, especially given its uncertain future. Some (many of whom were all warm and fuzzy about commercial human spaceflight until it became competition) are probably a bit worried or frustrated.

I'm not. I'm thrilled it was a success (though I don't know yet how successful it was).

This is a great thing. Not just for SpaceX. Not just for commercial spaceflight (human or otherwise). Not just for America or any other country. Why?

Because every time space becomes more accessible, every time we find a new way to get there (especially given the dearth of truly new rockets the past few decades), every new option we open up, makes the possibility of really exploring the universe, really making a home in space, really colonizing the moon or orbit . . . just a little less impossible.

Will Constellation, in some slimmed down form, survive? I have no idea. But having another possibility, another option out there not only forces NASA to compete and excel, but it does the same for Space X. Best case, when we need to get astronauts back to the ISS or, perhaps, even send out a vehicle to do more, we may have another option than we did before.

Now, I feel strongly that the NASA standards out there for safety, redundancy and reliability, for operability and control of manned space vehicles is still pertinent even to commercial ventures, especially if we're putting astronauts out there.

But it's a key step. In the end, for space travel to mean something, it's going to have to belong to all of us, not just a handful of specially trained highly educated specialists or pilots. And this, this is a step along that path.

Congrats.

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RS Classics: What About the Hubble Space Telescope?

Yep, it's another classic, this one written before the last (and wonderfully successful) Hubble Servicing Mission. Since I know my way around Hubble, EVA-wise, I'm adding it to the list.

Kathleen asked how we were going to service the Hubble and the ISS. It’s a fine question with an easy answer, but I think a lot of people will be dismayed to realize that Hubble is going to be out of reach for future servicing. After all, the gorgeous photographs coming from Hubble are one of the ways NASA touches regular folks. For those that are worried, don’t be.

For Hubble, the upcoming servicing mission (4, sort of) later this year, it’s unlikely we’ll ever service Hubble again. There were only planned to be four servicing mission (this will actually be the fifth). Of course, we had to make repairs and adjustments we never planned, like the corrective optics installed on Servicing Mission 1. Servicing Mission 3 also became servicing missions 3A and 3B because of the need to replace ailing gyros sooner rather than later (SM 3A). Unfortunately, the time in safe mode affected the electronics, so additional fixes were required for SM 3B, in addition to planned upgrades. As the EVA Safety lead for the last two missions, SM 3A and SM 3B, I can tell you they’re tough. Usually at least EVAs back to back, that are long, arduous, complicated and challenging. Fortunately, the Hubble folks are very responsive at finding ways to fix what was never planned to be fixed and we usually have exceptional EVA astronauts doing the work. It was a pleasure to work with all of them.

Hubble is the only one of the Great Observatories that had a low enough orbit to service or required it. The other great observatories: The Gamma Ray Observatory, The Chandra Observatory, and the Spitzer Space Telescope. Those were all in orbits out of reach of the Shuttle or, in fact, any manned craft today. All but the Gamma Ray Observatory is still in service.

But never fear, Hubble lovers, work is underway building the James Webb telescope (in fact, one of my colleagues is working that now) that will do more than Hubble. They’re planning to launch that in 2013 and hopefully Hubble will survive until then.

Now, ISS is a real problem. The hope is that we will have another crew vehicle within a few years of the Shuttle’s retirement and people are working to achieve it. But the Crew Escape Vehicle (CEV) is a multipurpose craft that must also support Lunar missions. Multitaskers are not only challenging to build, but also tend not to be optimized.

In addition, the Russians can still send up Soyuz and Progress crafts, and the European Space Agency has already launched one Automated Transfer Vehicle (no crew) and JAXA, Japan’s Space Agency, is planning to launch their transfer vehicle, H-II Transfer Vehicle next year.

Having said that, none are a true replacement for Shuttle. She brings up more and brings down more: experiments, samples, crew, logistics, and even modules for assemblies. When the Shuttle retires, assembly will be effectively complete. We’ll be stuck with what we have unless it can be brought up in an automated fashion. And that will make a difference.

The Shuttle was definitely filling a niche and we just don’t have anything to replace her. Not now, probably never…

Unless the Commercial Human Spaceflight folks figure out something we haven’t. But, then, that’s an entirely different blog.

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RS Classic: Space Shuttle Primer

As I recover from my son's near death and try to kick start my creative brain, I'm more and more tempted to post some other classics here. So, I will unless I find I have something new and at least remotely clever to say. Though, if I do, it would probably be best if I put it in the novel currently lying fallow.

Baron Rochester asked me about Shuttle reusability. I gave him a quick answer, but, really, I think his question deserves a more complete answer because the Shuttle is a rather unique vehicle.

As the Apollo program came to an end (and you don’t want to ask me how I feel about that), much of the space focus turned to the highly lucrative but very expensive world of satellites. Up until then (and in fact, continuing on today), most space craft were launched into space using staged expendable rockets. From the beginning, an orbiting space station built with help from the Shuttle was part of the vision, but the US was also very interested in finding a more cost effective method for getting satellites into space and even bringing them back down. Additionally, they hoped to use the Shuttle as an orbiting laboratory for larger scale experiments than ever possible before. It cannot be stressed enough that, with the possible exception of being “cost effective,” the Space Shuttle system has achieved all of these far reaching goals.

The Space Shuttle is a complex system. It includes the reusable Orbiter, the refurbishable Solid Rocket Motors, and the expendable External Tank which supplies the fuel (cryogenic oxygen and hydrogen) for the Orbiter’s main engines. The Orbiter’s main engines are among the most efficient chemical engines ever.

There were a total of seven Orbiters built. The first one, Enterprise, was used for testing but never flew in space (sorry, Roddenberry).The other five were put into use as they were completed: Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and, after Challenger was lost, Endeavour. We are down to three now, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour.

Of course, I could talk more about the Orbiter, about their lightweight, but delicate thermal tiles and surfaces, some capable of withstanding nearly 3000 deg F (1650 Deg C), which are engineering marvels all their own, despite their vulnerabilities. But Kathleen asked a good question and I have to get to that.

Even so, I have to mention the two Orbiters we lost, with their full complements. The first, on January 28, 1986, was the Challenger accident when the Shuttle broke up 73 seconds into the launch due to a leak/burnthrough of the Solid Rocket Motor. We lost seven astronauts on that flight: Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe (a teacher), Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik. I wasn’t here for that. I was a freshman in college and it’s still hard to believe that it happened more than 20 years ago.

Then, there was the loss of STS-107, Columbia, the oldest of our Orbiters during reentry. I was here for that one. In fact, it was my flight (EVA Safety Lead). Columbia was destroyed when damage to her wing leading edge lead to burnthrough and eventual destruction of Columbia on her way in. I knew this crew personally and I still can’t think of it without tears coming to my eyes. Those lost were David Brown, Laurel Clark, Michael Anderson, Ilan Ramon, Rick Husband, Kalpana Chawla, William McCool, another seven.

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Risks

There's a risk in my business if you spend too many years in safety or any critical profession (and, by critical, I mean looking over other people's work for flaws or problems). After a while, all you see with something is what's wrong with it. Where is could be safer or faster or more effective, the failings you found the hard way, the limitations, the dangers. Sometimes, it spills into your real life and you find yourself obsessing about what isn't there, what isn't working, what wasn't good enough. I have to constantly watch for it and I still fail quite frequently. I suspect I'm not easy to live with.

But I believe we're a necessary evil, as it were. Gil Stern said, "Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute." At NASA and, in fact, any organization where they strive to push the envelope and do what is unaccountably difficult, where doing the impossible is just one of the balls one has to juggle, nothing can happen without the dreamers, the ones who refuse to believe it's impossible, who stride forward undaunted no matter what the challenge.

That can be very very good. We would never have walked on the moon or driven robots on Mars without such dreamers and genius. The world was changed by the people who did these great things, who challenged the emptiness around our world in ways most people don't appreciate in the slightest.

But those accomplishments were not without price and many lost or nearly lost their lives to teach the rest of us hard lessons to carry forward to the next step. And it's times like these, when the old guard, who first conquered aspects of space-faring, are almost gone among us and all are left are those who have Shuttled to and fro to low earth orbit for the last two decades. They have accomplishments but they are incremental, tapping the opportunities in what is, space-wise, our own backyard. No new ships have been designed for man by either Russia or the US in decades.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't try—perish the thought—only that we are at our most vulnerable when it comes for forgetting the lessons of the past, the times we got lucky (and the over-designing that forged that luck) and the times we didn't.

That's what my paper is all about that I'll be presenting this week at the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety Conference.

That also means I may not be back here until the weekend. Have a good one.

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Bringing It Back to Earth Part 2

The problem with the technical posts is that I have to go fetch all the specifics to put them together. So they take longer. Still, I want to get this out so I'm continuing with it.

Clearly, given that the needs required to allow humans to return to earth are so significant, throwing a bit of hardware or samples in with the rest is relatively benign compared to effort to do so on an unmanned mission. By definition (for all manned missions where we expect our crew to return), the vehicle needs life support systems, heat shields, attitude controls rockets and/or flight controls, deorbiting rockets (and fuel), some sort of slowing down mechanism (chutes, retrockets, flight surfaces, etc) and, frequently, some sort of transponder so that we can find them. Add a few kg of extra equipment/samples/experiments, etc is really no big deal.

But, if you have an unmanned satellite or space vehicle, you are talking about adding ALL of this equipment that otherwise wouldn't be necessary - except the life support system. For a remote spacecraft (outside earth's orbit) just the rocket for return alone is a huge added weight and complication.

But, before the advent of the Shuttle, the US and the Russians were still limited to, at most, a few hundred kg of additional baggage as it were. Most Russian spacecraft, those that aren't manned, are designed to burn up during reentry. There was one model that could return unmanned but it's payload was tiny relative to the trouble (~150 kg). Soyuz TMA, the manned Russian craft used for the ISS, can return 50 kg (and sometimes a smidge more).

The Shuttle, however, can bring down tens of thousands kg of payload, in the payload bay and/or the middeck. Trash, experiments, satellites, equipment, modules. Of all the precedents the Shuttle inaugurated, a world where equipment that failed could be returned and evaluated (as has been done extensively with repaired items on the Hubble Space Telescope - and even refurbished and reinstalled), this accomplishment is perhaps the greatest triumph of them all.

Oh, don't get me wrong, it's impressive that it's largely reusable, but there are some down-sides to that. And it has a pretty impressive payload capacity to begin with, no doubt. But, a big enough rocket, we can get that much payload, and more, as far or farther. Getting it back down? I wonder if we'll ever be able to do so much again. I doubt it will be in my lifetime.

I hope I'm wrong about that.

There are many triumphs particular to the manned portion of space exploration, not the least of which is that sending man into space means you have to lick two tough problems - how to get him out there and how to get him back. History makes it pretty clear which one's tougher.

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Bringing it Back to Earth Part 1

On Wednesday's post, I recycled an opinion I'd had about the space program nearly two years ago. As the sun sets on the Shuttle program, my opinion hasn't changed; however, what I've learned the past two years about proposed alternatives has brought a particular characteristic to mind. And I feel I have to note what the Shuttle has done better than any vehicle that proceeded it and probably any that will follow (with the possible exception of the Buran which only flew once in a test configuration and shouldn't really count the same). It is also, notably, a side effect of human spaceflight, space exploration will never be complete without it.

Return capability.

Big deal, you might think. So what?

Except it is a big deal. As hard as it is to get objects into space and flung to the far corners of the solar system, it's relatively straightforward, almost childlishly simple compared with sending a ship just a little way up and bringing even part of it back intact. It's an easy thing to ignore.

Do you know how many non-human missions have gone up and returned with any samples or results or anything other than bits of space garbage (not counting unmanned test flights for manned spacecraft?). Me either, but I bet you can count them on one hand. [Looks up her beloved Wikipedia] Looks like there have been five to date and one in progress:

• Luna 16 (101 g) - Soviet 1970
  
• Luna 20 (30 g) - Soviet 1974
  
• Luna 24 (170.1 g) - Soviet 1976
  
• Genesis (which collected solar wind samples of unknown mass but g likely embedded in solids though it weighed 275 kg) - US 2001-2004 - failed during landing.
• Stardust (again unknown mass of dust but g only most likely embedded in aerogel) - US 1999-2006

Japan is also going to try to collect samples from it's asteroid rendezvous (which didn't manage a planned landing) in June of 2010. Again, we're talking grams.

Compare that to the lunar dust collected per Apollo mission:

• Apollo 11 (22 kg + film etc + crew)
• Apollo 12 (34 kg + film etc + crew)
• Apollo 14 (43.5 kg + film etc + crew)
• Apollo 15 (77 kg + film etc + crew)
• Apollo 16 (96.6 kg +film etc +crew)
• Apollo 17 (115 kg +film etc +crew)

There's more to this story but I think it's bigger than a single post. Consider it to be continued.

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Remembering a Needless Tragedy

I wrote this for a different blog a year ago today. I can't improve on it, not because I don't have more to say, but because I don't want to go on forever. It is deeply personal to me.

This is the hardest anniversary for me. Not that the others weren’t just as tragic, just as painful, that those lost weren’t just as brave and their deaths just as untimely. But I wasn’t even born when Apollo 1 burned so horribly. And I was just a kid in college when Challenger was torn to pieces. I wasn’t responsible.

But STS-107 was my flight. I was the EVA Safety Flight Lead for this flight. I knew the crew personally. I knew the team supporting them. I’d watched them practice in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab. I was there as the flight went through delay after delay. I went in the Mission Evaluation Room (one of the back rooms at Mission Control that supports “the Front Room”) and spoke to the folks manning the safety console every day. There were no scheduled EVAs so I wasn’t working shift. In fact, unless a contingency EVA was needed, neither was I. But I checked in physically at least once a day.

And I never saw this coming. I never heard any of the feverish concerns going on in different areas. And, sadly, I wasn’t even watching the landing. After all, nothing had gone wrong.

I was actually sleeping in, that morning of February 1, 2003. My husband of only a few months had (and this never happens) gotten up early that Saturday morning to watch cartoons. I was barely pregnant at the time - I don’t think I even knew it yet - and was feeling lazy. My daughter was at her father’s house that weekend. And Lee called out to me from the living room. “Uh, hon, I think the Shuttle just disintegrated.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” I snapped.

“I’m not joking.”

I may have mispoken when I said I never saw it coming. I had dreamed of it and it was one of those extremely rare dreams of mine that I remembered: a Shuttle coming in and breaking into fiery pieces. Whatever dreams I might have generally, I have no remembrance of them when I wake up. But this one, I remembered.

I had been worried about a potential risk. The program and my management had become comfortable with what they knew. I had not. But I had moved on to a different area and only kept track of what was going on sporadically. And I had dreamed of just such a disaster.

Of course, there is considerable evidence that the culprit that damaged the sensitive RCC panels was foam, rather than what had worried me, but that didn’t make it better. We’d been hit by foam repeatedly over the years and had talked ourselves out of worrying about it. We saw the hit before we landed, and we didn’t do more. All of this is well documented in the CAIB report . We fell into the same trap and the same causes culture-wise were cited in the CAIB report that we had heard in the Rogers Commission report from Challenger.

When Columbia reentered, the plasma began burning through the wing, first tearing off the protective RCC panel, then tearing through the structure, hydraulics and wiring, even the tire, behind it. In minutes, the Orbiter began to break up and rain debris over Texas and Louisiana.

To be honest, I’m not sure that we could have saved this crew if we had recognized the danger before they came down. I know we would have tried, would have pulled out all the stops, killed ourselves to save them if we had known what was to happen. I believe that absolutely. But, and this is the lesson we need to take forward into our future endeavors, the best way to have saved them was to keep this from happening.

We learned a great deal in the years that followed this tragedy, more about the materials we use to protect the Shuttle and the limitations and capabilities we have of bringing the Shuttle down safely if something like this ever happens again. And we know more about the risks that scared me and about the foam and ice on the ET and we have steps to address that, too.

Seven Astronauts paid for that lesson: Rick D. Husband, William C. McCool, Michael P. Anderson, Ilan Ramon, Kalpana Chawla, David M. Brown, and Laurel Clark. I must also note two others who died during recovery efforts: Jules F. Mier Jr. and Charles Krenek

Have we learned enough to preclude a recurrence? I don’t know. I hope so. I hope we tuck the lessons like Apollo, Challenger and Columbia in the corner of our minds whatever else we do and we resolved “Never again!” I don’t want us to grow complacent that such tragedies are inevitable, the price of going where no man has gone before. I want us to kick and fight and claw our way forward, unwilling to give an inch to fate, unwilling to accept defeat and any more deaths.

In the end, time will be the true judge on how well we have learned from these tragedies. Here’s hoping this is truly the last for human spaceflight. According to our previous Space Shuttle Program Manager , we still have work to do.

More resources

Wikipedia
CAIB Report
CAIB Hearing transcripts
Columbia Crew Survival Investigation Report
Stifling Dissent

1. # Monica on 01 Feb 2009 at 4:41 pm

   I still remember - as just a normal citizen who felt a loss as well.

   ~M

   Thank you for writing on this.

2. # Roy Hilbinger on 01 Feb 2009 at 6:49 pm

   I followed your link to Wayne Hale’s blog and watched the video he linked to. Yeah, that’s not good. And the scary thing is, NASA isn’t the only institution/company that runs that way. I’ve worked in retail for 30 years, and I’ve run into the scenario depicted in the video twice - with FW Woolworth’s and with The Home Depot, two of the worst-run companies I’ve ever had the misfortune to work for and observe. And of course, these days Woolworth’s is defunct and THD massively downsizes every couple of months (and I’ll be willing to bet - you heard it here first - that THD files for Chapter 11 within the next 6 months).

   I’m really hoping the scenario in the video isn’t widespread in NASA. If it is, that’s scary! I’ve been through that “proper channels” and “that’s really not how we do things here” BS too many times, that pressure to conform, conform, conform, don’t make waves, don’t stick your head up above the herd. If that’s how NASA’s being run, it needs an overhaul, now. A space program has to, by its very nature, be open to innovation and the open sharing of ideas. If it regularly squashes that, it’s doomed.

   What scares me even more is that you’ve run into that pushing safety. Safety should be hard-wired into every consideration NASA makes. If safety concerns are getting the “yeah, yeah, yeah, we know, we’ll deal with it” treatment, something is dreadfully wrong, and something needs to be done to address it. I sincerely hope that the scenario in the video isn’t widespread in NASA. And if it is, I hope Wayne sent a copy of that video to every director in NASA.

   And finally, big hugs to you on a day that I know is a bad, bad anniversary for you.

3. # stephanieebarr on 01 Feb 2009 at 7:59 pm
   

   These we were losses for all of us, M. This is our program; it belongs to all of us. This wasn’t my personal loss. It was a loss for all of us.

   Thank you for your kind words.

4. # stephanieebarr on 01 Feb 2009 at 8:18 pm

   I think this kind of thinking is more widespread than NASA, assuredly. If other agencies and government offices (or even the public as a whole) were willing to question authority more seriously, perhaps we wouldn’t be in the wars we’re in or the financial nightmare we’re in.

   Truth is, I think this kind of thinking is widespread in many places, many avenues.

   I don’t want you to think I spent eight years in safety and was always obstructed - far from it. There are good reasons for pushback as well, but, one thing I discovered was that, if I could convince the program that what I wanted WAS the right thing to do, I never had to fight that battle again. In many organizations, that isn’t the case. And they didn’t have to be told again. They made that change part and parcel of their existing workload.

   There are some great people working for NASA, some of the most remarkable minds and people, most with superlative ethics. But, no, there are still problems. I hope we learn from videos like this.

   And thanks for the hugs. I’ll take ‘em.

5. # Brian on 02 Feb 2009 at 12:57 am

   “I know we would have tried, would have pulled out all the stops, killed ourselves to save them if we had known what was to happen. I believe that absolutely.”

   Stephanie, I believe this absolutely too. I have tremendous admiration for people in NASA and don’t question their dedication. The problem is that it is a human organization, that has inherent human problems. Yet the amazing part for me is is not the flaws, but seeing people rise above their short-comings to do incredible things on behalf of others. I have the same respect for firefighters, policemen, and soldiers who risk their lives for the sake of others. Each of these organizations, like NASA, has flaws, sometimes deep flaws. But despite the flaws, there are individuals and teams who perform astonishing feats that make me ever grateful. Not complacent. But grateful.

   Peace to you on this terrible day.

6. # stephanieebarron 02 Feb 2009 at 1:05 am

   Thanks, Brian.

7. # flit on 02 Feb 2009 at 1:12 am

   Definitely a harsh way to make the point that safety has to come first

   I had no connection to any of it and it sickened me…. can’t imagine how people that worked anywhere near any of it managed… the horrible sense of loss

8. # ravyn on 02 Feb 2009 at 1:18 am

   I’m not sure what I can say that hasn’t already been said.

   I hope in the future you have a chance to change things and see your impact on them–to know that what you’ve learned, that what you’re willing to share now, prevents something much worse from unfolding. That you can see the fruits of the changes you’ve made already, and that you find peace from it.

   Thank you for writing this. My thoughts are with you.

9. # attygnorris on 02 Feb 2009 at 2:22 am

   Oh, wow, Stephanie. Such a personal recount of the events of this tragedy. Since it was your flight and you knew the crew personally, I know this had to be really hard to write about… I’m so sorry. I hope, as you do, that enough was learned to prevent a recurrence. Thanks for sharing this.

   Davida

10. # stephanieebarr on 02 Feb 2009 at 8:12 am
    

    Learning by attrition is always painful, flit. Thanks

    My thanks also to you, Davida and ravyn. I’m not alone in being torn by this. Every year at the memorial, tears are shed. Nor am I alone in wanting this to be the last tragedy NASA ever has, to honor those who died and to reward the trust placed in us by the people who fund this: the citizens of the United States. This is their space program. I appreciate your sympathy.

11. # mpaulin on 02 Feb 2009 at 7:02 pm

    It was a sad day for all. I love the space flight program and I was at work when this happened. Thanks for sharing this post.

12. # Cambios on 02 Feb 2009 at 10:01 pm

    This was as truly horrible tragedy. Our astronauts are some of the best, brightest, and bravest people of our nation. To lose any of them is just unrecoverable.

    Thanks for writing this point to remind us all of the anniversary.

    -Michael
    Muckbeast - Game Design and Online Worlds
    http://www.muckbeast.com

13. # TLE on 03 Feb 2009 at 6:22 am

    I wasn’t expecting to read a personal account of what happened. I thought it was just about the tragedy, not such a close take on it. It does make a huge difference for with time, these things become numbers and then we forget the lessons again.

    Thanks for taking the time to write about this. May we all remember.

14. # stephanieebarr on 03 Feb 2009 at 9:40 am

    It is a hard thing for me to write about and I still get weepy when I do. Heck, I still get weepy when a Shuttle lands safely on the runway.

    I mentioned, on a previous post, that we had a sacred trust to do everything in our power to keep these brave and talented people alive. I sincerely hope I never have to add another sad anniversary to my list.

    Thank you for the kind words, mpaulin, Cambios and TLE.

15. # Adrian on 03 Feb 2009 at 10:24 pm
    

    I’m going to say something totally obvious here that is in no way intended to diminish the feelings everyone must have remembering incredibly brave people losing their lives in such a “spectacular” way. The fatality rate per astronaut has obviously been way higher than the fatality rate per traveller on the highways. But if we only cared about numbers of fatalities, we would put even more effort into reducing the more than 40,000 fatalities that occur each year on USA roads alone. And I don’t remember the details of the helicopter crash that killed the last two you mention, Stephanie, but somehow that makes me feel even more sick than the immediate Columbia tragedy itself, because it should surely have been easier to avoid. Ultimately I find it completely astonishing that anyone makes it out into space and back again, ever.

16. # stephanieebarr on 03 Feb 2009 at 10:57 pm

    There are thousands of preventable deaths each year for any number of causes, Adrian, and I don’t think your comment diminishes anything. I try to do my part there, too, but driving sensibly and when necessary only and I never EVER drive while impaired. But your point is not lost.

    There are people dying all over the world who don’t have to. Their causes and their deaths are not less tragic and I think you were right to remind us of that.

17. # Bob on 04 Feb 2009 at 6:29 pm

    I remember it well, I was stunned wen I saw it on tv. The report you linked to was very interesting. There will be more loss of life no matter how vigilant everybody is,when you are talking about space there are just to many unknowns. In Gus Grissom’s own words,

    “The conquest of space is worth the risk of life, our God given curiosity will force us to go there ourselves, because in the final analysis only man can fully evaluate the Moon in terms understandable to other men.” you can replace moon with whatever term you want, thing is there is a risk and the astronauts now about it and accept it, we can only minimize it, not remove it by being ever vigilant.

18. # stephanieebarr on 04 Feb 2009 at 9:26 pm

    I agree with that. All the more reason, since we can’t remove risk, not to let our own actions add to it.

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