Jump to content

Columbia Disaster, New Report To Be Released Today.


interstellar

Recommended Posts

The report: Columbia Crew Survival Investigation Report

 

Some analyses:

From http://blogs.discovery.com/news_space/2008/12/the-columbia--1.html

“Clearly the accident was not survivable under any circumstances, but (the report) will probably help for designing things for future spacecraft -- and maybe even aircraft,” said David Mould, NASA’s assistant administrator for public affairs.

 

Keith Cowing (nasawatch.com) summarizes the report at http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1314:

The report goes into excruciating detail about the events that led up to the breakup of Columbia and the crew's death. ... Of course, learning lessons from fatal accidents is nothing new. Often times, it is all that can be gleaned from loss of a vehicle and its crew - whether they be at sea, in the air, on the ground or in space. Indeed, sometimes virtually nothing can be learned due to the nature of how the accident occurred.

 

With regard to Columbia, as was the case with the loss of her sister ship and its crew, its loss was eventually attributable to both human and mechanical error albeit with two totally different portions of a Space Shuttle's mission. One happened at the very beginning of a mission, the other at the very end.

 

Accidents are things to be avoided. However, by the very nature of how we currently send humans into space and return them to Earth, there is a substantial amount of risk involved. Much of that risk has been identified and is manageable. But not all of it. Of course, when you hear this discussion, someone inevitably says that the only way to make these things risk free is not to do them.

 

Well, we have decided to do these risky things, now haven't we?

 

Inevitably, when the accidents happen, we need to work our way through them, pause and reflect on what happened, and then press ahead. To be certain there is never a good time for a bad thing to happen. But not to benefit from the information that can arise from studying an accident's cause only serves to remove value from the sacrifice that a crew has made.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.