Shuttle problems familiar

Houston

NASA engineers were well aware of the technical flaws that combined to doom the space shuttle Columbia, investigators said this week, but convinced themselves they posed no serious risk. Engineers had been trying for three years to come up with ways to keep heat shields on shuttle wings from wearing down or cracking in flight. NASA officials had also worried about foam insulation on fuel tanks, which often broke away and hit shuttles on liftoff. Investigators suspect the two problems together may have weakened Columbia’s wing, which burned up re-entering the atmosphere on Feb. 1. The same pattern—problems that were spotted but not fixed—was blamed for the loss of the shuttle Challenger in 1986, said former astronaut Sally Ride. “I’m hearing a little bit of an echo here.”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up