Space Forum / Shuttle / February 2006

I got to go to the book signing in Barnes and Noble and it was
fascinating. When I arrived Philip Chien was talking to this kook who
insisted that there were other reasons for the Challenger accident.
Phil treated the guy politely enough and explained - patiently - that
his book was about Columbia, not Challenger. Not sure the guy
comprehended that.

The next guy in line was one of the NASA mid level managers mentioned
in the book, Scott Thurston. He and Phil obviously knew each other and
they talked about their almost identical experiences on the day of the
accident. Apparently they were about 20 feet from each other at the
viewing area and both came to the same conclusions based on the same
data - loss of comm through TDRSS no big deal. But when capcom Charlie
Hobaugh called "Comm check on UHF" great concern because that was a
totally separate radio and how could two radios go bad. Then the final
confirmation - lack of C-Band tracking. Phil was telling Scott that the
most surreal portion was how the public affairs announcements made no
indications that anything was wrong and so many members of the press
and newbies, epsecially among the VIPs didn't realize anything was
wrong. That explains how some of the press innocently broadcast that
the shuttle was late for landing, not realizing the significance of
that statement.

I still recall being in my dorm room and wondering why I didn't hear
the sonic booms in Orlando. We don't always hear the booms depending on
the weather conditions and the path the shuttle's taking so I wasn't
concerned. But then I heard Christopher Glenn on CBS radio report that
the shuttle was late and realized that something really strange had
happened because there was no way a shuttle could be 'late' and went
online and found out what had happened.

I talked to Phil for about 15 minutes and he had some fascinating
things to say about the 107 crew, he really did know them well. I told
him how much I appreciated that his book concentrated on the people and
the mission and not as much on the accident.

We did talk a little about the accident and Phil said that his biggest
annoyance is the myths and half truths which are spread by the media
and others. I was surprised that he was saying bad things about the
media, but he noted that there are many in the media who are more
interested in telling a sensational story to get lots of viewers than
telling the truth. He said specifically he was annoyed at those who
imply that if the MMT had listened to the requests that a spy satellite
be used to take photos of Columbia that it would automatically mean the
crew would, or even could have been saved. He said that even if the spy
satellite photos were taken, and even if they had enough resolution to
absolutely determine that Columbia was doomed, it would all have to
happen extremely early in the mission for any rescue scenario outside
of a Hollywood movie to work. It gave me some interesting things to
think about, especially after all of the sci.space.shuttle discussions
where the difficulties Phil mentioned were just glossed over or
ignored.

The other interesting topic was the top to bottom problems within NASA
- Phil acknowledged that they existed and contributed to the miindset
of the workers which contributed to the decision at the STS-113 flight
readiness review to continue flying. However he strongly disagrees with
the CAIB's comments that the reason for that decision was the schedule
pressure to finish space station in February 2004. He noted that with
just as much pressure to keep the shuttle flying the decision was made
in June 2002 to ground the entire fleet because fo the flowliners and
his belief is that NASA just didn't recognize that falling foam was a
potential for fataling damaging the shuttle.

He told me that in all of the efforts by the CAIB to find mismanagement
and faults within NASA they only found one key item where somebody made
a conscious decision to intentionally reduce safety, and that was the
2001 KSC decision to redefine "operational FOD" as acceptable since it
would increase the contract awards to United Space Alliance. (normally
Foreign Object Debris is considered unacceptable and a penalty to a
contract, but KSC redefined FOD as two categories - flight equipemnt
FOD (which was still considered unacceptable) and other FOD (which
didn't affect contract awards). He didn't say it outright but I got the
impression that if had it his way, the mangers who proposed the changes
to the FOD rules, and the higher level mangers who approved those
changes should be put up on criminal charges for intentionally
consciously reducing safety within the shuttle program. Phil said he
would have liked to have gone into that matter more in the book but he
wanted the book to concentrate on the STS-107 crew and their mission,
not on the accident. He did refer me to his website which he said
included his thoughts on the limitations in the accident investigation
and where they didn't get it right.

In any case I finished reading the book before I went to the book
signing and I'm glad I had the opportunity to tell him how much I liked
it and I got a CD-ROM from him which I'm going to check out this week.
I told him how grateful I was that he wrote the book and it really
helped make me feel like I knew the STS-107 crew much better.

Hail Columbia, Rick, Willie, Dave, K.C., Mike, Laurel, and Ilan. And
Hail Phil for going to this effort.

Alex Harris