Shuttle warnings unheard

last updated 8 January 2015

Houston

Critics this week said NASA’s “can-do” atmosphere caused administrators to discount the possibility that the space shuttle Columbia was in danger. The space agency released e-mails between experts who speculated before the shuttle broke apart, killing seven astronauts, that the craft might have been fatally damaged by loose debris at launch. Top officials rejected gloomy assessments “like the plague,” one engineer said, and focused on a study concluding that the debris was just foam insulation. An engineer warned that the debris might have contained ice, striking like “a 500-pound safe hitting the wing at 365 mph.” That would have stripped off heat shields, making re-entry into the atmosphere catastrophic. In the e-mail exchange, one engineer said that scenario would result in the loss of the shuttle and the crew, “so we’ll skip it.”