Columbia Accident Investigation Board

Foam had heat orbiters many times before without disaster, and the anomaly had become routine.

Sociologist Diane Vaughn had coined a phrase for this after Challenger, normalization of deviance, and it became central to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board's, CAIB's, findings on NASA's culture.

During re-entry, hot gas entered the breach.

It did not have to beat the heat shield.

I hope we get there.

And I hope that when we do, the engineers who make it happen remember the seven people who flew Columbia home.

Sources and further reading Columbia Accident Investigation Board, Report, Volume 1, August 2003.

NASA, Foam on Tile Impact Modeling for STS-107.

If that option is selected, there should be a thorough review of Shuttle recertification and overall Shuttle reliability to ensure that the risk associated with that extension would be acceptable.

The results of the recertification should be reviewed by an independent Committee with the purpose of ensuring that NASA has met the intent behind the relevant recommendation of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.

International Space Station In considering the future of the International Space Station, the Committee asked two basic questions.

What is the outlook between now and 2015? Should the ISS be extended beyond 2015? The Committee is concerned that the ISS and particularly its utilization may be at risk after Shuttle retirement.

Twelve years later, on February 1st, 2003, the nation did lose another shuttle.

Columbia, the first orbiter to reach space twenty-two years earlier, was destroyed during reentry with the loss of all seven members of its crew.

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board documented the physical cause of the accident, but also cited organizational and communications failures within NASA that allowed the critical damage to occur and go unaddressed.

The report went on to cite a lack over the past three decades of any national mandate providing NASA a compelling mission requiring human presence in space.

I imagine there were a lot of arguments within NASA and certainly from the government to cancel the shuttle altogether to use this as, you know, the time.

You look at the Columbia Accident Investigation Board and the Augustine Commission that came out of that and human spaceflight in the US and kind of through the Western Bloc scraped by by the skin of its teeth.

Wow.

And honestly, not the first time that that happened.

If that option is selected, there should be a thorough review of Shuttle recertification and overall Shuttle reliability to ensure that the risk associated with that extension would be acceptable.

The results of the recertification should be reviewed by an independent committee with the purpose of ensuring that NASA has met the intent behind the relevant recommendation of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.

International Space Station.

In considering the future of the International Space Station, the Committee asked two basic questions.

Twelve years later, on February 1st, 2003, the nation did lose another shuttle.

Columbia, the first orbiter to reach space 22 years earlier, was destroyed during re-entry with the loss of all seven members of its crew.

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board documented the physical cause of the accident, but also cited organizational and communications failures within NASA that allowed the critical damage to occur and go unaddressed.

The report went on to cite a lack over the past three decades of any national mandate providing NASA a compelling mission requiring human presence in space.

... it's the Colum- it's the acronym, that we love acronyms at NASA.

It's the acronym for the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.

So they created a report, and we shortened it into CAIB.

Okay.

The Rogers Commission found serious failures in the Challenger launch decision process, communication, and safety arrangements.

Seventeen years later, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board concluded that NASA's organizational culture had as much to do with Columbia as the foam itself.

That is where this episode starts getting useful.

Challenger did not begin on launch morning.

In other words, the anomaly sat within the known engineering experience base.

That sounds comforting.

The Columbia Board pointed out the absurdity underneath it.

The condition remained a violation of system requirements.