MSNBC (Oberg) - Deadly space lessons go unheeded

MSNBC - Deadly space lessons go unheeded

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6872105/

Apollo 1, Challenger, Columbia tragedies have much in common

COMMENTARY

By James Oberg, NBC News space analyst

Special to MSNBC // Updated: 5:56 p.m. ET Jan. 26, 2005



HOUSTON - At the end of January, NASA faces a triple anniversary of
space catastrophes: the three times that astronauts have been killed aboard
space vehicles.

On January 27, 1967, during a pre-launch test, an unexpectedly ferocious
fire suffocated Grissom, White, and Chaffee. On January 26, 1986, an
unexpectedly brittle booster seal destroyed shuttle Challenger and killed
Scobee, Smith, Resnik, Onizuka, McNair, Jarvis, and McAuliffe. And on
February 1, 2003, unexpectedly severe heat shield damage destroyed the
shuttle Columbia and killed Husband, McCool, Chawla, Clark, Anderson, Brown,
and Ramon.

As with the disasters themselves, this calendric coincidence was created
by the confluence of independent trends and conditions that conspired to set
the stage for disaster. But in each space case, these impersonal forces were
merely backdrop to the human decisions that through their flaws were the
immediate causes.

It was at this stage --- the choices made or not made by human beings --
that each of these three disasters could have been averted. That the NASA
space team failed to do so not once or even twice but three times is the
true disaster. None of these people needed to die; their deaths taught NASA
nothing that it shouldn't already have known. And that's the true tragedy of
these three events.