The Columbia Disaster

The space shuttle Columbia Disaster was a tragedy that could have been avoided, but occurred because of negligence by the engineers and NASA administration.

During the design of the space shuttles external fuel tank, one of the requirements was that the foam, which prevents icing, would not come off during launch. The foam shedding had been observed before, and did not alarm NASA Engineers at all. The foam struck a Reinforced Carbon Heat Shield panel on the left wing, and knocked it off. The next day during video review of the launch, the foam strike on the left wing was observed, but due to the low film quality, the extent of the damage could not be determined. While the Shuttle was in orbit, NASA’s Chief Thermal Protection System Engineer made a request for an astronaut to inspect the wing, but nobody ever responded. Other engineers requested that the Department of Defense image the shuttle in hopes of getting a better picture of the damage. NASA denied these requests, after they ran several simulations using damage simulating software. The results showed the possibility of damage, but they downplayed the results, claiming it exaggerates damage. As the shuttle reentered the atmosphere, it began to shed debris, and eventually broke apart and scattered debris across Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

One of the largest engineering oversights during this disaster was made by NASA management. After viewing the foam debris strike the left wing on video, they used damage prediction software to predict possible damage to the reinforced carbon-carbon shield, which alerted them of severe penetration of multiple tiles by the foam. NASA managers denied requests for astronaut inspection of the left wing from the Chief Thermal Protection System Engineer. Other NASA engineers made three separate requests for the Department of Defense to take satellite images of the shuttle while in orbit in order to get a clearer picture of the possible damages, despite these requests, NASA managers denied them, and stopped the Department of Defense from intervening.

Lessons learned from this incident included four main factors, the recency effect, conservatism, overconfidence, and selective perception. The recency effect consists of making decisions based off recent events. On previous flights, foam had been observed breaking off during liftoff, but those occasions never resulted in an accident. Therefore, NASA managers believed that this would not result in an accident either. We now know that this “recency effect” can cloud the real danger presented by the shedding of the foam. The second lesson was conservatism. It is when new information is either ignored or not given much attention. This was present when NASA managers downplayed results from the damage prediction software. The third lesson was overconfidence. NASA managers denied the need for satellite imagery of the shuttle because they were confident that there was no safety issue. The fourth lesson was a result of selective perception. The NASA management had shifted their view from an engineering focus to a management focus. They had the mindset of “better, faster, cheaper”, which forced responses to potential problems to be dominated by schedules and budgets rather than the principles of engineering and safety.

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