Engineers at NASA are not expected to reveal their conclusions about possible lethal damage to the space shuttle Discovery’s heat shield until later today at the earliest. There is understandably considerable concern that protective foam, again seen breaking away at launch from the first stage rocket, may have damaged the shuttle’s heat shield. It was just such a mishap that led to the destruction of the Columbia upon re-entry in 2003.
That disaster forced a two-year flight suspension while significant design changes were made to the shuttle and its launch vehicle. Yet when the Discovery flew again last year, pieces of foam broke away once more during the launch. The same anxious computer-aided modeling of the damage and its likely impact when the space vehicle re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere was done then as is being done now. Discovery of course landed safely last year but it is puzzling that the same problems now have to be addressed on its latest mission.
NASA chiefs are always between a rock and a hard place. Congress votes billions into a whole range of the space agency’s programs but there is always pressure from the legislature to rein back on these gigantic expenditures. The prestige and new science of these projects may be considerable but whenever presidents and congressmen look aghast at the gargantuan federal budget deficits, which seem almost to have become systemic, cutting back on NASA’s money is an easy option. The space agency therefore spends a great deal of time and money trying to present itself and its achievements in the most deserving light. Disasters like the loss of the Columbia and now the continuing problem with the fracturing foam undermine this campaign.
So why, it must be asked, has NASA been unable to fix the trouble? Even admitting the immense complexity of space travel and the enormous achievement, principally of American and Russian space scientists and engineers, there ought to be enough technical knowledge and expertise at NASA to have ended the foam problem by now. There seems to be only three answers. The first is that somehow, despite stringent security and apparently minute monitoring of every item on the shuttle and its launcher, the space vehicle is being sabotaged. The second is that perhaps because of political struggles higher up in the organization, demoralized NASA engineers have grown sloppy so the organization has become riddled with bad practices as these delicate machines are built, serviced or moved. The final answer could be that NASA itself is spending too much effort and too many dollars on political spin to protect itself from legislators and not enough on the nitty gritty of space flight itself. These are unpleasant thoughts, especially for the seven crew members of Discovery, six of whom are now scheduled to return to Earth on July 16, the seventh staying on the International Space Station. Every NASA mission has thousands of people behind it but only the pilot and crew actually put their lives, rather than just their jobs, on the line.
