The echoes were there almost from the first moment. But as time went on, the striking and sometimes haunting similarities between the tragic endings of the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia only seemed stronger and sadder.
The sense of d茅j脿 vu struck me on the day of the accident, 1February, during NASA鈥檚 initial press conference following Columbia鈥檚 break-up high above the south-western US. That was when I first heard that a piece of debris 鈥� it later turned out to be foam insulation 鈥� had struck the shuttle during its ascent. Anyone who has watched the shuttle鈥檚 missions over the years knows how fragile and brittle its crucial heat-insulating tiles are. A strike during lift-off seemed just the kind of thing that might lead to a break-up during re-entry.
Yet NASA managers were dismissive, saying that the strike was almost certainly not the cause of the re-entry accident and that they remained confident in their analysis 鈥� which later turned out to be deeply flawed. That reflex denial of the obvious explanation struck a chord. It was just like the aftermath of the Challenger crash in January 1986, when NASA repeatedly insisted that although the launch had taken place in far colder weather than ever before, this was not relevant to the disaster. As we soon discovered, it was crucial. The low temperatures had caused the infamous O-rings to fail to seal the booster rockets, and this led to Challenger鈥檚 demise. In both cases, as we would later learn, engineers were deeply concerned about these anomalies, but their concerns were never really heard by their managers.
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Despite that initial sense of similarity, NASA succeeded for the first week or two after the Columbia crash in persuading the world how much it had changed post-Challenger 鈥� how much more open and forthcoming it now was with the facts. And this was a more transparent agency, at least in terms of releasing documents, holding press conferences and trying to answer questions. There was no obvious repeat of blunders such as the immediate firing of a press officer who was too honest in answering a reporter鈥檚 question. (Might the Challenger astronauts have remained alive until their crew capsule hit the water? Yes, they might.)
But the old NASA surfaced pretty quickly. It became clear from a growing catalogue of missed warning signs that the world鈥檚 most sophisticated space agency still had not learned the lessons that Richard Feynman and the other members of the Challenger commission had tried to inculcate. Managers were still treating serious anomalies as if they were understood and acceptable, simply because they had not yet caused a catastrophe. It was, as Feynman pointed out, rather like saying Russian roulette is safe just because you have survived the last round.
Former astronaut Sally Ride, who uniquely served on both the Challenger and Columbia investigation boards, wrote a whole chapter in the final report on Columbia describing the strong parallels between the two cases 鈥� and the paramount importance of taking heed this time. Aspects of NASA鈥檚 internal structures, or 鈥渃ulture鈥� as the Columbia board described it, that caused problems both times were excessively strict adherence to organisational roles and hierarchies, even when critical safety issues were being discussed. Engineers who had concerns about how Challenger鈥檚 O-rings would work in cold weather did not feel they could say so, just as engineers who were worried about the foam strike, and wanted pictures taken to assess the damage, were stifled in Columbia鈥檚 management meetings.
The problem is easy to point out, and its role in the loss of both astronaut crews is now clear. But working out how to keep channels of communication open within a huge bureaucracy is still a daunting task.
So daunting, in fact, that one of the greatest minds in modern science considered it a challenge worthy of a life鈥檚 effort. I spoke to Richard Feynman a year after the Challenger accident, in what would turn out to be his last press interview, to ask him what he thought had been learned from that investigation. Feynman told me he had become so fascinated by the problem of fostering open communication in a large organisation that if he were starting over, he might study management instead of physics. Even for a mind that handled concepts of quantum physics as easily as the rest of us order lunch, this was a thorny problem.
NASA鈥檚 progress in dealing with the specific technical issues raised in the Columbia report seems to be on track. But when it comes to fixing its culture, the agency has shown little sign of really addressing the issues.
This isn鈥檛 rocket science. Apparently it鈥檚 harder.