-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
that there were over a half a dozen occurrences of foam strikes recorded. so, we turned that in into the investigation board. -1983 was the first bipod ramp foam loss. 1990, 1992, 92 again, 1994. as well as those bigger pieces, we saw small pieces of foam fall away all the time. what we call popcorning . when popcorn pops, it pops up and comes out and so that s what we call it, popcorning. they weren t very big so you re not talking about much damage to the tiles. and so, it had become the norm at nasa. this mantra it s only foam, it s only foam. hey, we see foam loss all the time. and it never did any damage to the vehicle. we don t have to worry about it, it s only foam.
I was shocked to find that there were over a half a dozen occurrences of foam strikes recorded. So, we turned that in into the investigation board. 1983 was the first bipod ramp foam loss. 1990, 1992, 92 again, 1994. As well as those bigger pieces, we saw small pieces of foam fall away all the time. What we call popcorning. When popcorn pops, it pops up and comes out and so thats what we call it, popcorning. They werent very big so youre not talking about much damage to the tiles. And so, it had become the norm at nasa. This mantra its only foam, its only foam