My first real introduction to space journalism came on the morning of February 1, 2003. An editor from the Houston Chronicle called me at home on a Saturday morning and asked me to rush to the Johnson Space Center to help cover the loss of the Space Shuttle Colombia.
Little did I realize at the time that this tragedy would set the course for the rest of my professional life, that of thinking and writing about space travel, and that it would become the overriding passion of my career.
I have of course thought a lot about Colombia in recent weeks. While the parallels between that Space Shuttle mission and the first manned flight of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft aren't exact, there are similarities. Most significantly, after the Space Shuttle's launch, there were questions about the safety of the vehicle's return home due to foam hitting the leading edge of the spacecraft's wing.
Twenty years later, many more questions remain, both publicly and privately, about the viability of Starliner's propulsion system after irregularities during the vehicle's flight to the space station in June. NASA officials made the wrong decision during the Colombia accident. So, now that we are faced with another hugely important decision, is there any reason to believe they will make the right one with the lives of Starliner astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams at stake?
A poor safety culture
Understand Colombiawe have to go back to 1986 and the first Space Shuttle accident where ChallengerAfter that catastrophic launch failure, the Rogers Commission investigated and identified the technical cause of the accident, but also concluded that it was rooted in a poor safety culture.
This report led to major changes in NASA's culture, designed to give lower-level engineers the freedom to raise spacecraft safety concerns and be heard. And for a while, it worked. But by the time Colombiawhen the shuttle had flown dozens of successful missions, NASA's culture had returned to Challenger-like postures.
Because foam impacts had been observed during previous shuttle missions without consequences, observations of foam loss from the external tank during Colombia's launch were not a significant cause for concern. There were a few dissenting voices who said the problem deserved more analysis. However, the chair of the Mission Management Team that oversaw the flight, Linda Ham, blocked a request to obtain images of the possibly damaged orbiter from U.S. Department of Defense assets in space. The message from the top was clear: the shuttle was fine to come home.
The loss of Colombia resulted in another investigation board, known as the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. One of its members was John Logsdon, a prominent space historian at George Washington University. “We saw that there had been changes after Challenger and that they were gone, and they didn't last,” Logsdon told me in an interview this weekend. “NASA fell back into the pattern that it was in before Challenger.”
In fact, it was antibodies within the NASA culture that limited dissent.
Benefits for decision makers today
If it doesn't repeat itself exactly, history certainly echoes. Two decades later ColombiaStarliner is currently docked with the International Space Station. As with the foam bursts, problems with reaction control system thrusters are not unique to this flight; they were also observed during the previous test flight in 2022. So once again, engineers at NASA are trying to decide whether they can be comfortable with a “known” problem and all its implications for a safe return to Earth.
NASA is the customer for this mission, rather than the operator: the space agency buys transportation services to the International Space Station for its astronauts from Boeing. As the customer, however, NASA still has the final say. Boeing engineers have input, but the final decisions are made by NASA engineers such as Steve Stich, Ken Bowersox and Jim Free. Ultimately, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson could have the final say.
