NASA conducted two investigations after the first spaceworthy Space Shuttle orbiter, Columbia, was lost with all hands over east Texas ten years ago today. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board's report quickly identified the root cause of the accident and recommended immediate changes to the program to return the shuttle to flight. A later exhaustive forensic investigation of how the disaster happened, and how to improve the safety of future spacecraft is online here:
The Columbia Crew Survival Report
Columbia was in a very bad place when she came apart. Air becomes a devilish thing at 18 times the speed of sound, even as thin as it is 200,000 feet above the ground. As former Space Shuttle Program manager Wayne Hale later recounted, the Challenger disaster showed that the orbiter's crew cabin was built to last. Even with the rest of the shuttle stack breaking up around it at rifle bullet speed in the thick of the lower atmosphere, Challenger's cabin rode it out and the kept her crew alive and working all the way down. Shuttle crews wore pressure suits and parachutes after that, to maintain some hope of survival as long as they breathed, but Columbia just wasn't built to take the punishment she received a decade ago.
The lessons from the crew survival report aren't all dreary and forensic. There are practical suggestions there, too. As brutal as the environment around a reentering vehicle is, there's nothing magical about it, and with the right preparation an accident like Columbia's could be escaped successfully. Nine and a half years after the loss of his wife aboard Columbia, Jonathan Clark (one of the authors of the report) helped Felix Baumgarter set a new record for the highest and fastest freefall by a spacesuited astronaut. It's a good start toward honoring Husband, McCool, Brown, Anderson, Chawla, Clark, and Ramon by making sure theirs is not the fate of those who come after.
Per aspera ad astra.
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