Before we schedule the next launch. In other words, again, they were thinking it was more of a turnaround issue. And so, it wasnt preventing Shuttle Flights from going forward. The pressure on the Management Team to stay on schedule and the concept of, its just foam is leading the charge through all of this. So, it wasnt like they werent talking about issues at all, but there certainly was a Big Focus On The on the schedule. Heres an email, its tuesday january 21st, this was sent six days into the columbia mission. This is a private exchange between Linda Ham and ron dittemore, two of the top managers in the program. The rationale for flight for the Sts112 Loss of foam
I felt like it was my responsibility to talk about the foam strike, to get it out there in the public. If you take a closeup here, that bipod is the place where they think a little piece of foam fell off and hit the leading edge of that wing. I talked to the folks in the control room, and i said, you know, can you cue up the Launch Replays . Alright. Lets take a look at this launch. Look what happened a minute after launch. Got this very, very slow look at that piece of foam right there that struck the shuttle as it came off. The question was, what did it do . I didnt know for sure. I still was the armchair analyst. But challenger was deep in our memory. And this was kind of a similar scenario. In the wake of challenger,
Hey, we see Foam Loss all the time. And it never did any damage to the vehicle. We dont have to worry about it, its only foam. Two missions before columbia it happened on sts112 atlantis. A significant strike hit the skirt of the solid Rocket Booster and actually put a dent in it. Prior till the launch of columbia, and a couple of the meetings, the topic of foam coming off 112 came up. Theres probably, erm. 15 to 20 people around the table and then theres a lot of other people at nasa in the room. We talked about starting to look into this a little bit more because weve seen it come off on, you know, more than one flight now. We should understand if theres a way to prevent it
Transcripts for CNN Space Shuttle Columbia The Final Flight 20240604 04:12:45 archive.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from archive.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Late october of 2002, after sts112 atlantis, i went to a meeting about that flight. I had put together a report about the Foam Loss and the damage to the solid rocket booster. And i presented the case that said, that amount of foam, that mass, in one chunk coming off Shuttle Atlantis this was the vehicle telling us something is wrong, heres your warning. At risk of being insubordinate, i said to the heads of the Shuttle Program sitting around the centre table, i was adamant at that meeting, either fix the problem or dont fly an external tank on the next launch, which is impossible. From that meeting, i never heard any discussion of lets get a better understanding of this