Fixing Space Disasters
My Thoughts on Decreasing Astronaut Deaths on the Anniversary of the Challenger Disaster
On January 28, 1986 a nine year old named Jimmy McCoy sat in a third grade classroom thinking excitedly about the fact that there was going to be a teacher in space. He wasn’t sure - precisely - why he was excited about that. His depth of knowledge of the history of the space program was about what you would expect from the average child his age. In other words, nearly zero. What interest little Jimmy had in history at that point in his life involved watching war movies with his dad and his grandpa and watching it unfold on the evening news with pretty much the same people.
Jimmy knew something was up when the phone on the wall of the classroom rang. He had never seen that before. This was new. His teacher, Mrs. Clinton, picked up the phone, spoke two words into it, spoke four words. “I see. Thank you” then turned to class and said “The space shuttle has exploded.” and left us to go back to doing math problems.
Little Jimmy, being a nine year old, nitwitted, knucklehead immediately realized that he’d be able to go home and see the shuttle explode on the news. He was excited. He had never seen a space shuttle explode before! This was going to be so cool! It didn’t occur to him until a day or so later when someone made a truly tasteless joke. (What does NASA stand for? Need Another Seven Astronauts.) that anyone had died. It was just a space shuttle after all.
SIGH
Those were the days, right? The times when I could live life without realizing what consequences were.
And yes, Jimmy was me, but I’m no longer him. That nine year old has gone the way of the dinosaurs and the dodo bird. I miss the kid, but he’s an adult now and his world has changed, even if it probably looks awfully similar to anyone his parents’ age.
And yet…
NASA knew that it would be dangerous to launch on January 28, 1986. Engineer Roger Boisjoly had warned them ahead of time that the O-rings in the solid rocket boosters could be negatively effected by the temperatures that day. NASA knew it could cause an explosion. NASA decided to launch anyway because they were afraid of negative press. Everyone knew that teacher Christa McAuliffe was planning to give lessons from orbit. The public was excited. The only possible conclusion from this is that NASA killed seven astronauts in the name of public opinion and then ended up looking worse than it would have if it had just postponed the launch.
NASA was warned about damage to the Columbia and brought it home anyway. Granted, I’m not sure if a rescue attempt was even possible let alone feasible, but they did it and people died. There was no attempt made at an impromptu repair in the spirit of what happened with Apollo 13. There was nothing done.
I can’t judge NASA as harshly for the loss of Columbia, because I have no clue what the solution to the loss of protective tiles on one of the wings was. I do know, beyond a reasonable doubt, that it happened on the way to space and would not have been as simple as delaying a launch that had already happened. I just don’t understand why someone didn’t try something. This is literally rocket science, or at least spacecraft science. NASA employs some of the world’s most intelligent and educated people. There had to have been a way to at least attempt to mitigate the damage. There was no attempt made.
At the very least, NASA failed to even make an attempt to fix an engineering problem (and yes, they knew about the damage and decided to do nothing about it) that resulted in the deaths of the astronauts on that flight as well. I have no idea who it was that made the decision to do nothing, but that person needs to look themselves in the mirror and figure out where they went wrong, as does the organization that allowed them to make that decision. At the very least, someone there knew that those protective tiles were there to serve a purpose and something needed to change.
And, of course, there was Apollo 1. Three astronauts died when a fire erupted on the inside of the command capsule. NASA had, in that instance, been warned of the danger of a fire based on their use of flammable materials. They also had knowledge that they had intentionally used a pure oxygen atmosphere on the inside of the capsule itself. And when a spark occurred because of thin insulation on one of the wires (For the record, the Teflon coating was considered to be fire resistant, but it was too thin to stand up to wear and tear.) fire engulfed the cockpit.
It didn’t help that the door opened inward, making it harder for the astronauts to escape. Although I’ve always assumed, with no real evidence either way, that the door was designed to open inward as a safety measure. (Think about it this way. There was pressure on the inside of the capsule. There was no pressure on the outside of the capsule. The door would, therefore, be pushed outward, sealing it shut. A door that opened outward would have been far easier to open accidentally.) Much is made of this, but I’m not sure whether this was a dumb thing on NASA’s part in making the door harder to open, or simply a matter of planning for one danger instead of another.
I get the need for publicity in order to get dollars from Congress. People will lobby for what they like. I also know that killing astronauts is the wrong way to get positive coverage. The astronauts themselves come out looking like heroes, but not the organization the work for.
But maybe, just possibly, NASA has come to understand that lives are more important than publicity. Or maybe they realize that avoiding bad publicity leads to worse publicity in some cases. Either way, they seem to be willing to save lives where they can now. In 2025, two American astronauts, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, were stranded at the International Space Station when their Boeing Starliner capsule suffered multiple thruster failures and helium leaks. NASA kept the Williams and Wilmore at the ISS and returned the capsule sans crew. Both crew members are, to the best of my knowledge and belief, living and breathing at the moment of this writing.
To me, the point is this: Private industry is the way to go. Apollo and the shuttle program were both government funded and allowed to kill people. When a Boeing product was defective it was replaced. I can’t prove that there were considerations about liability involved due to the involvement of a private contractor, but I know how I’d bet. I’ve seen no evidence to contradict that theory either.
It seems to me that having a space company that is genuinely liable to the people who go into space is the smart thing. The federal government is a lot less sensitive to losses due to liability than a private company. Fedgov has a much bigger budget than any private business and openly supports a budget deficit of trillions of dollars. Private companies have to show a profit. That alone leaves them more vulnerable when they screw up. This is a good thing.
I was an AFROTC cadet when Challenger happened. We were in the middle of a command staff meeting when a junior cadet came busting into the room yelling that the shuttle had exploded. Staff meeting ended, somebody turned on the TV, and we watched the replay, over and over and over. We had a lot of cadets with pilots billets whose ultimate goal was astronautics. I've never before or since seen so many young men openly in tears as I did that day, but not one of them changed his mind about his dream. Likewise, the next time our sci-fi writing group met and one member asked how many of us still wanted to go into space, every one of us raised our hands.
Fast forward a few years. My husband, a NASA contractor, had just been transferred into the Risk Assessments group and we traveled to Florida for him to attend a training conference. They discussed Challenger, among other things. One evening he confided to me, "If things don't change, we're going to have another disaster." We were literally at the airport for the flight home when the news about Columbia blasted all over the airport TVs.
He, being the one who had to work on the aftermath, could give you more details than I can, but from what I understand there really wasn't anything they could do to save Columbia. The damage to the wing from the loose tile striking it happened during the launch, not before the launch like the O-ring situation, when it could've (should've) been delayed and dealt with. The shuttle had neither an ejection capsule nor means for astronauts to do an EVA to perform a repair. The damaged area was small but in a critical spot and it couldn't withstand the intense heat of reentry. I suspect the crew knew through most of their mission that the odds of surviving the landing were very slim if not nil.
When "political correctness" came to NASA, the situation got even worse. Jon hasn't worked there for several years now. I agree that private, commercial space ventures are the way to go.
I saw the Columbia disaster in real time. I was 7 years old in a classroom watching the launch. Our class was one of the lucky few that was going to get her lessons piped in. My friends had family working at NASA. My best friend's father took me to White Sands NASA offices during "take your daughter to work day". I was adopted temporarily for the event.
So it was a little bit different for me. I won't say I was more mature. I will say that my first thought was that I would never see those lessons because of the explosion. But that went quickly to the teacher and everyone else being dead.
Plus we got counseling in a day when few did: but not only because those 7 people died. But because another accident happened that nobody else even heard about that involved invisible fire. It was a hydrogen fire. It killed 36 people. There was no good way to detect a fire you can't see. The people who got out held brooms ahead of themselves so the broom burned so they didn't. Plus there were some areas that were completely out of oxygen due to fire and fire suppression. You couldn't see that. The fire suppression system locked doors and people couldn't get out. It was the stuff that nightmares are made of.
And those were relatives and friends of the kids in my class.
I bring all this up because I am nerd cool? No. But because they said things that shaped who I am.
And I heard why the O ring problem wasn't addressed. And I know why they couldn't just rewrite the schedule. It wasn't bad publicity necessarily. At least, the scientists and engineers didn't care about those things.
But NASA is a government organization, and it got its budget directly from Congress. And Congress said no. Political pointed heads directed the priorities. And the scientists and engineers could do what they were told, or lose a once in a lifetime opportunity. It was the only game in town back then.
But do you know what happened afterwards? They finally got the gumption to get up and leave. That's where private space came from: Virgin, SpaceX and Blue Origin. Without them we wouldn't have a space program today. I'm not sure it would have had the exceptional brain trust, if not for the outrage over those seven scientists... And the 36 who died because a politician or 50 wouldn't blink for the lives of their friends and family.