-for the second time in nasa s history, a space shuttle has been lost along with its entire crew. once again, we are asking ourselves, how could this have happened? -do you have any idea how big that piece of foam was that came off? -we d heard some reports that during launch there had been some concerns that some debris hit the wing. is that true and is that any cause of concern and that could have caused today s problems? -it is true. it was judged that, erm , that event did not represent a safety concern. -this happened under my watch, but i didn t have the answers. in every public forum i m gonna have to be in, how am i gonna explain this to anybody? at this time, we have no indication that the mishap was caused by anything or anyone on the ground. -nasa never wants to look stupid. nasa wants to be the agency with the answers. -my thoughts are on what we missed, what i missed to allow this to happen. -but if you overlook something, it will come to bite you one day or anot
i only learned later that there really were people outside of our team that were trying to do something about it. -i had no idea what was happening because there was no communication. i m not in the loop, i m not in the know, nobody s talking to each other, so nobody knows what s going on. -the problem that we had in nasa culturally at the time was people would not speak up with their concerns. it was the most anti-dissenting opinion place that i know of. people were scared silly to speak up. -nasa is a series of fiefdoms, and there isn t necessarily a lot of exchange of knowledge across those silos, you know, frankly, the system is not designed for good communication. but that s not an excuse, because this foam problem was a not a new problem.
The system is not designed for good communication. But thats not an excuse, because this Foam Problem was a not a new problem. It was ignored right up until an opportunity to intervene presented itself, and then that opportunity to get a Spy Satellite to take a look was dismissed. To sort of stick to your guns of convincing yourself that its ok. It just made matters worse. Ii could i could only deal with the data that was presented to me. The whole situation was a case of people doing their jobs as they understood them. But i think everybody was operating with good faith. There was no, er