Analysis of the Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster
The purpose of this paper is to introduce and analyze the topic of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. Specifically it will contain an analysis of the accident and how it occurred. On the morning of January 16, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia took off from Cape Canaveral to undertake mission STS-107. On board were Commander Rick D. Husband, Pilot William C. McCool, Payload Specialist Michael P. Anderson, Mission Specialist Kalpana Chawla, Mission Specialist David M. Brown, Mission Specialist Laurel B. Clark, Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon, of Israel. They never made it back to earth.On February 1, 2003, in the early morning, Space Shuttle Columbia was making its final descent toward landing at Cape Canaveral when it disappeared off radar screens. Columbia blew up over Texas, and it took seven months of investigation to fully understand what happened to Columbia and her crew. When Columbia took off on January 16, the flight seemed normal at first. However, 57 seconds into the flight, the shuttle hit severe wind shear, which caused the shuttle to slip sideways a little bit in the wind, and put additional stress on one of the struts that holds the external fuel tank to the shuttle. This caused a large piece of foam from th
Still, space travel has largely been safe, and it seems that NASA will continue to promote safe space travel into the future. It cannot be removed, and so NASA has had to develop procedures to check the shuttle for damage and assessing that damage in space, before the shuttle lands. This comment hints at some of the same communicative rules potentially influencing the Challenger launch, indicating that implicit communicative rules functioning at the time of the 1986 Challenger disaster may continue to influence NASA decision makers today. " 5 NASA used the debris recovered to recreate the last moments of Columbia's flight to determine just what happened to the shuttle, and to make sure it does not happen again. It is "low density closed cell" foam, 6 and it covers most of the outer surface of the external tank. They note, "An initial review did not reveal any unusual events. After the event, it took years for NASA to study the problem, find a solution, and restart the Space Shuttle program. 2 NASA notes the last recording from the shuttle was the commander's voice. The mission continued normally throughout the scheduled sixteen days of the mission, until the shuttle began its descent back to earth. The cause of the Challenger disaster was an O-ring failure in the solid rocket booster that gave way and caused the shuttle to blow up only a few minutes into the launch. 8Thus, while NASA has developed plans that include space walks and photographs to assess the damage any future foam or other debris may have on the shuttle's exterior, it seems they still have trouble deciding when to implement safety repairs, and that could lead to more disasters like Columbia in the future. However, Space Shuttle Program managers decided not to have the photographs taken for some reason. " 3 In less than ten minutes, reports of the Columbia's breakup began to filter into the Mission Control facility in Houston, and photographs and accounts from eyewitnesses confirmed the shuttle had been lost. Of course, most people know that the loss of the Columbia was not the first Space Shuttle disaster.
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