After the first American spacecraft disaster, a launchpad fire in 1967, Thomas O’Malley remembers arriving at Cape Canaveral, Fla., as a contract engineer called on to shake things up.
“I walked into the worst mess that I ever saw in my life,” he said.
Eugene Kranz, a retired flight director famous for orchestrating the Apollo 13 rescue in 1970, looks back on the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, in 1986, as a dark and harrowing experience at the worst of times.
“We were just blindsided by the problem that caused the explosion,” Kranz said. “And it happened during a transition in NASA, when people who built the agency were retiring and the next generation lacked the experience to fight its battles.”
John Logsdon, a space-policy specialist at George Washington University, thinks the stakes in the recovery from the most recent disaster, the disintegration of the shuttle Columbia in February 2003, may be higher than ever before. The completion of the international space station – and the prospects for the Bush administration’s ambitious plans for human flights back to the moon and eventually to Mars – may depend on the outcome of the first post-Columbia mission, set for launch today at 1:51 p.m. MDT
“The future is hanging in the balance to a much greater degree than in previous returns to flight after tragedies,” said Logsdon, who was a member of the independent board that investigated the loss of Columbia. “The difference now is we have a half-built space station, and it cannot be completed without the shuttle, and without the station we might not fly the shuttles again.”
It has been 2 1/2 years since Columbia broke apart over Texas on its return from orbit, killing seven astronauts. And this week the comeback burden weighs on another crew and spaceship, Discovery, and all their attending technicians, flight controllers and managers of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
There have been three other such comeback missions: after astronauts perished in the cockpit fire on the launching pad in 1967, after the crippled Apollo 13 limped home in a heroic rescue and after the Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff, killing all aboard. The shock of failure grounded operations for a sobering re-evaluation of means and goals.
In each case, circumstances varied, reflecting different perceptions of the place of spaceflight on the national agenda.
Now, shuttle contractors say their technicians have been working around the clock for months making the technical and managerial modifications required by the Columbia investigators. The spirit, they say, is upbeat but tempered by the knowledge that no spaceflight is routine and risk-free.
Apollo 7, in October 1968, followed the fatal fire.
Congressional investigations exposed design shortcomings in the spacecraft and poor workmanship. The vehicle had to be redesigned and rebuilt.
On the way to the moon in April 1970, Apollo 13 suffered an oxygen-tank explosion and had to be nursed back to Earth. A manufacturing flaw was discovered and fixed, and by the following January, Apollo 14 restored confidence in the spacecraft’s reliability.
The Challenger’s explosion in January 1986 was the most stunning disaster.
It occurred 73 seconds after liftoff, in full view of the crowds at the Kennedy Space Center and of millions who watched on television.
The accident led to months of self-doubt, redesign and drastic changes in the future uses of the shuttles. They had been sold by NASA as the workhorse vehicles for all purposes, scientific, commercial and military. But criticism of their reliability and cost-effectiveness forced the agency to begin phasing out their use on missions that could be achieved by expendable rockets.
NASA was dealt an embarrassing moment Tuesday when a window cover fell off the shuttle and damaged thermal tiles near the tail. But the space agency quickly fixed the problem and said it was still on track for launch.
The lightweight plastic cover on one of Discovery’s cockpit windows came loose while the spaceship was on the launchpad, falling more than 60 feet and striking a bulge in the fuselage, said Stephanie Stilson, the NASA manager in charge of Discovery’s launch preparations.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.