Columbia Space Shuttle- Final Mission :: American History, NASA

Columbia Final MissionWayne Hale, Deputy Shuttle ManagerWroteLast year we dropped the torch through our complacency, our arrogance, self assurance, sheer craziness and through our continuing attempt to please everyone. Seven of our friends and colleagues paid the ultimate price for our failure. Yet the nation is giving us another chance..We must(prenominal) not FailMore then three years ago the Space Shuttle Columbia went down in flames, due to the damage caused just not limited to, a piece of insulating foam that broke off the external tank and struck the wings leading edge. The foam struck with sufficient pull back to create an opening in the wing which allowed hot plasma to enter during reentry. No one thought that foam could cause this much damage since zero like this had resulted from previous instances where the foam had come off. In the beginning NASA was faced with a tight budget given to them by the government. This budget was large enough to build a state of the art air craft but wasnt enough to develop an escape system that might of proving to be useful in this case. The culture of NASA was a factor that created this mistake, The mantra Prove to me that theres something wrong. The chain of command was not equal the small guys couldnt voice their opinions and annoyings because of the position they held in the organization. Another concern was that they miscalculated the risk of the foam creating any damage just because it never destroyed another shuttle. The facts were clear that the foam had the ability to create some damage, and this was apparent in many other space shuttle launches. Foam debris was classified as an in-family event- a problem within NASA experience base that was not considered a safety of flight issue. NASA even knew that foam debris tended to fall off the left bipod ramp and that ten percent of the fights recorded loss foam from this area. everyplace the years NASA decided to put their concerns of foam damage to the side and called it an acceptable thing to happen during common flight procedures instead of finding a style to prevent it. On its first day in orbit NASA engineers came to the conclusion that the foam debris that hit the left wing might have caused surd damage to the shuttle and could prevent it from a safe reentry.