Of course hypothetical questions about what would have happened if
something had been done differently are always uncertain. You can't say
that the hole would have definitely been seen if they had looked, but you
can demand that they do everything to find out, and then work with the best
information they can get, instead of deliberately closing their minds to
possibly useful information.

And the question of what would have been done if the hole had been seen is
even more controversial, since both possible answers open Pandora's Box.
If you decide there's nothing that can be done, because the only option is
an unrealistic rescue mission, then you're giving up without ever trying.
But if you demand that a rescue mission could have been mounted, then
you're assuming that a very low probability mission could have been
successful.

In the first case, you seem cold and uncaring, which is how Linda Ham was
labeled, having decided that there was nothing that could be done anyhow,
so why bother discussing it.

Remember that Apollo 13 was in a very difficult situation, with antique
technology and a lot farther from home, but some very creative NASA
engineers, "flying" by the seat of their pants, solved the problem. If
NASA had had the opportunity to try to find an answer, there's no telling
whether they would have succeeded or not. But the important thing is not
to give up without making an effort. They succeeded on Apollo 13, and NASA
aren't quitters.


(Gary W. Swearingen) wrote in
:

cndc writes:

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/11/

Thanks for the link. A very interesting couple of articles there.


Some comments on the main article and its subject:

He said that had photos of the Shuttle been allowed, the would have
shown the leading edge hole, while I've gotten the impression from
watching lots of C-SPAN coverage back then that the NASA managers
had reason to believe that photos would not have been able to show
the damage, and that the photos would not have shown it. (He did
mention that the managers had clearances for the photos while those
who asked for them did not, but that's only a supporting clue that
the managers might have known what the photos could do.)

I think he concentrated too much on the photo decision and the "wrong"
decisions during flight, while I'm not nearly as convinced as he that
there was much chance that anything useful could be done at that time.
Those decisions seem to me at worst simply wrong choices made in a
time of high stress and maybe even reasonable, and not a result of
arrogance and other flashy criticisms the author seemed to enjoy
flinging at NASA management from time to time.

He barely mentioned what I consider the more important failing: that
of finding the previous foam failures and damage to be fairly
unimportant and of low priority to get fixed, when there was zero
engineering on the ability of the leading edge to tolerate foam
strikes of any size, nor carefully estimate it's margins of safety,
simply because the margins had not yet been exceeded in previous foam
strikes. These were engineering decisions which should be inexcusable
as they should have been considered as standard operating procedure in
the ample time they had to do careful studies of their safety margins
related to possible consequences of continued foam strikes.

NASA higher-managment's failure was to not cause previously-noted
problems to be well-enough studied nor to devote a large enough
fraction of their budget to pure improvement and safety investigations
by teams with enough authority to make changes happen. The author did
note that NASA failed to learn much from Challenger and forgot much of
the rest, but he didn't delve into what they should have been doing
differently.