News: Families of Columbia crew await shuttle report....

Families of Columbia crew await shuttle report and want it to make a
difference


By JUAN A. LOZANO
The Associated Press
8/10/03 12:19 PM

HOUSTON (AP) -- Seeing the thing that brought down the space shuttle
Columbia filled Jon Salton with sadness.

His sister, Laurel Clark, was one of the seven astronauts who died
when the shuttle shattered on its return to Earth more than six months
ago.

He viewed the video of the impact test in July that showed a chunk of
foam insulation knocking a giant hole in shuttle wing parts.

"It's hard to watch that," he said. "It's utterly obvious now that
type of impact could cause an orbiter to break apart.

"It didn't make me angry. It just made me sad."

NASA officials who didn't believe foam could do such damage "really
missed the boat," Salton said in a telephone interview from
Albuquerque, N.M., where he lives. The breakaway foam that slammed
into the shuttle's left wing during Columbia's launch is being blamed
for creating a hole that let in hot atmospheric gases that led to its
destruction.

Once employed by a NASA contractor, Salton has been watching closely
the work of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, which will
issue its report on the shuttle disaster at the end of this month.

Part of him wants NASA to feel the sting of the report's criticism.

The other astronauts' families have been watching, too, not all as
intensely as Salton, nor with such a critical eye. Some like Evelyn
Husband, wife of Columbia commander Rick Husband, and Barbara
Anderson, mother of astronaut Michael Anderson, are simply awaiting
the final report.

"I'd like to wait until they finish the work of the investigation
committee. Then I'll get a better picture," said Eliezer Wolferman,
the 80-year-old father of Israel's first astronaut, Ilan Ramon.

"We have read (about the investigation) in the newspapers. I'd like to
have something official," he said in a telephone interview from his
home in the Israeli town of Omer.

Most family members who spoke with The Associated Press said they
simply want the shuttle fixed and able to fly again more safely. Some
said they appreciated the candor of the accident board. The family of
astronaut David Brown could not be reached for comment.

Laurel Clark's husband, Jonathan, said he was grateful for the foam
test because it confirms the cause of the accident.

"I felt it was great they were able to find a more definitive answer,"
he said. "I really don't look at it emotionally. I look at it
analytically. I'm glad we found what did this."

Some peace of mind has come from the ongoing investigation and the 13
board members' work, said Clark, a NASA flight surgeon at Johnson
Space Center.

"Talking to other family members, (we have) been very pleased with
their thoroughness, their professionalism," he said. "They truly are
an independent, free-thinking group. For that we're all very
grateful."

Clark, 50, thinks the preliminary recommendations the board has
already made, including finding ways to do in-orbit inspections and
repairs and better preflight safety checks, are very prudent.

Still, he says, "It's one thing to say it but another to do it."

Both he and Salton pointed to a NASA culture that may make questioning
decisions difficult.

"There's this cultural mind-set that's present here," said Clark.
"It's not an evil thing. It's great to have that 'let's go' spirit,
but sometimes you push things to beyond where you should. But this is
not about fault, it's about cause."

Salton worked five years at NASA designing tools used on spacewalks.
He said that while he believes there was nothing malicious about the
space agency's faulty assessment of the foam strike, he thinks it fell
prey to a cultural attitude that's existed since before the 1986
Challenger accident.

"You want to succeed so badly that you tend to justify things that may
not be logical to a more objective party," he said. "All the technical
recommendations seem somewhat obvious. The biggest thing that I'm
anxious to see is what they say about the cultural practices. Those
are much, much more important."

Salton, 37, who now works for Sandia National Laboratories in
Albuquerque, said he hopes the board's final report will have
accountability measures.

While he wants shuttles to fly again, he is bothered that NASA has
already set a time frame to return to space. Overall, he has been
pleased by the accident board's work.

"The report should be a sharp, kind of stinging feeling to NASA. I
like the fact the board has been pretty candid. It's a good example of
the kind of integrity that NASA could follow," he said.

The reactions of others are more tempered.

Husband, 44, who lives in Houston, doesn't fault NASA or anybody for
the accident.

"Hindsight, like they say, is 20/20," she said. "So now it's easy to
say, 'Oh we should have done that."'

Later in a statement she issued after the foam impact test, Husband
said: "My prayer is that NASA will fix it and get back into space.
That is what my husband Rick would have wanted."

Michael Anderson's mother, Barbara Anderson, also does not cast blame.
Her son was a pilot almost 20 years. "There was danger there," she
said from her home in Spokane, Wash. "It could have happened in a
plane as well as in a shuttle. We accepted it."

Audrey McCool of Las Vegas has only followed in a general way the
investigation into the accident that killed her son, William McCool.

She looks forward to the report and a detailed explanation of the
cause. But she is philosophical.

"What's done is done," she said. "No repairs will bring Columbia back
but you want to prevent future disasters. These seven people will have
died in vain if we do not carry on with the work they were committed
to."

The Chawla family, too, wants to see future shuttle flights. Girish
Chawla of suburban Atlanta, younger brother of crew member Kalpana
Chawla, said his family "has accepted that this was an act of
existence or an act of God."

"Mother said the show must go on. Father was sometimes emotional,
saying it was a stupid thing that caused the accident. But it was just
the mood of the moment," Chawla said. "Just because Kalpana died
doesn't mean it shouldn't go on."



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