Could the Crew of Columbia Have Been Rescued? 

The tragedy of the Shuttle program is 14 astronauts killed by the same thing - negligent management that refused to listen to engineers.

“We have absolutely zero concern about the foam strike” **holds 5 meetings in two weeks about it**

I remember being at a talk by Chris Hadfield a number of years back, and he was commenting that - in hindsight - the shuttle program was WAY more dangerous than anyone at the time fully understood. Frankly, it is amazing that we didn't have more disasters with the shuttle.

I was an engineer and worked for Lockheed Martin on the SEAT contract at JSC in the 90's. We designed and built a piece of equipment for controlled EVA called the Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue (SAFER). The Columbia had two or three these units on board at the time. These were lighter weight replacements for the MMU to facilitate EVA's. These would have been available for the astronauts to use on a tethered EVA to inspect the damage. I do not know why they declined to do so. We also built an inspection drone, it was round and looked like a soccer ball with two offset cameras, using the same technology as the SAFER that was flown and tested on a previous mission. However, it was not onboard on the ill-fated Columbia mission.

NASA Followed the standard management "Four Stage No Blame strategy", In stage one : Nothing is wrong. in stage two : Something May be wrong but we should do nothing untill we look at the situation carefully. In Stage Three : Something is wrong but there is nothing we can do at the moment. In Stage Four : Maybe we could have done something but it's too late now.

This was the first mission my daughter and I followed daily. She would go on the computer daily to watch the daily mission videos. We were both heartbroken when we saw it fall apart over our heads.

I followed the shuttle from the beginning and I'll never forget watching the Challenger launch with my grandma. She said "People feel too comfortable with this and one day they'll get a sad wakeup." We got it a few seconds later. She wasn't here for the next one but I was and I remembered.

"All sounds like too much effort, lets just not bother" - NASA

The thumbs up is not for the loss of the crew but for the excellent production of the subject. Thank you Paul for bringing this up in a professional and dignified way

3:07 "Normalisation of Deviance" is a term that I will add to my daily vocabulary usage from now on.

1:33 It is worth pointing out here that NASA had dodged a bullet with this before, namely on STS-27, the second flight of the Shuttle after the Challenger disaster. A piece of either foam or ice completely ripped off one of the insulating heat shield tiles and damaged 700 others. The only reason that one didn't result in the complete destruction of the Atlantis was because blind luck. That tile happened to be over the thick girder holding the L-band antenna in place, so the hot plasma of re-entry didn't damage the rest of the Atlantis' airframe. A few inches either way, it's the Columbia but in in 1988, and the Space Shuttle program ends right there.

I met the crew in September of 2002, while I was at NASA. God it hurts my heart to think of this.

Rick is the only Astro i have met,a good man. On a school tour in the 90's. Still looking for photo of me shaking his hand. RIP

Any loss of life is sad but seems a bit worse when there was a obvious problem that was ignored.

The crew were never given the opportunity to save themselves by attempting a repair and altering the angle of attack on reentry to protect that damaged section as much as possible. The definitive book to read about the event is "Comm Check" which is becoming harder to find these days.

Your voice with no background music is the best concept for these kind of videos. Awesome production as usual!

I remember waking up the morning Columbia was to come back, thinking to myself "Oh yeah! Columbia comes back today!! I need to see how things are going!"....Only to turn on my TV, and see the video of it breaking up. I started crying as soon as I saw the first bits of material breaking loose, I knew we had lost the crew. And to make it worse, I was living in Galveston, Texas at the time, so I was so much closer to the flight path of a shuttle mission than I had ever been before. And it is so hard to believe it has been nearly 20 years already, as it still feels fresh in my memory. To every man and woman that has been to space, continues going to space and is currently in space, I have the utmost respect in all of them. And knowing the risks, I wish I could join them because going to space has been, and always will be, my ultimate dream.

I was 15 and one Saturday morning I woke up much earlier than I usually would have. I had always taken a keen interest in space and the space shuttle in particular, but I wasn't very aware of the individual missions. After flipping channels on TV for a bit, somehow I settled on CNN, only a couple of minutes into Miles O'Brien's coverage. The shock and dismay I felt in that moment will never leave me.

Hey Paul, if you ever pen a novel it simply has to be called "Normalisation of Deviance". It'll pretty much write itself.

Lesson learned: Never leave your life in the hands of a committee.

Fascinating. Thank you for this analysis. My dad was an engineer on the test stands for the SSMEs at Stennis since before the first launch, so the Shuttle was always an important topic at our house and still an important to me to this day. I recall Dad talking about how the early engineers (many of them WW2 vets who grew up in a time of inventive tinkering to find out how to make impossible and unheard-of things work) tended to be more versatile in their thinking than the younger workers who were more highly educated and very capable but less open to trying things out, less apt to think outside of the box. This sometimes made a difference in how things were done and with what was considered possible. Indeed, as an example of this very thing: when Dad finally retired at age 70, he had to be called back to work because no one else could perform the creative style engineering he was so good at; it was a further 18 months before management could find two new engineers to replace him for that one job. There was a gap about 23 years' time between Apollo 13 and the Columbia explosion; during that period, there was a large turnover of NASA staff and the old guard was gone. Could they have made different decisions? Maybe; maybe not. But I've always remembered what Dad said and wondered whether a different type of inventive think could have saved the flight crew.

When it comes to saving everyone's life, doing a Eva, and looking about, for damage, it should have happened,

The most practical fix was reprogramming shuttle landing software to do initial descent at a yawed angle subjecting other wing tip to all the heat load so that stagnition heating doesn't build up on defected wing & be subjected to only skin friction heating which shuttle entire upper surface handles anyways without a heat shield....... Another option could be detaching heat shielding tiles from wing tips & apply on this critical wing base, as even if wing tips melt shuttle could still fly

I remember when I spend hours watching and reading stuff about this incident. My conclusion was: Typical manager behavior overriding engineers evaluations. Like it's happening a thousand times all over the world in all big corps. But this time, life were lost.

Knowing that crew didn't get a chance to perform a repair just unbelievable hurts

Watching the mission control film and the capcom calling “Columbia, Houston UHF comm check” multiple times. Can’t imagine how sick they all felt knowing Columbia was lost.

Because the crew had no way to inspect the TPS in orbit, Col. Anderson requested that he be allowed to take approx. 60 lbs of technical climbing gear on the flight. A second astronaut in the payload bay would have assisted with belaying. That would have allowed the entire exterior of the vehicle to be inspected. Anderson practiced with a partner at the gym and was prepared to demonstrate the technique. The request was denied. Management suspected he was trying to pull a scam to create space collectibles as some other well known astronauts had done previously. A timely damage assessment could have made a big difference. Not only could the crew have been saved, a scenario could have then been developed to make a temporary repair in orbit in order to recover the vehicle.

You have a crew of Engineers, fighter pilots and Ph.Ds and NASA thought they could not fix the issue.

It would've been totally badass if they really pulled off a rescue mission with the second shuttle

If there were men and women willing to try and willing to die, then they should have tried. It would have been their finest hour.

This is one of the most informative comment sections in all of RU-vid. Seriously ...

Long answer a difficult yes. Short answer Yes.

6:13 This has always been my personal "what if?" regarding STS107. While the paint layer wasn't intended to hold the foam in place, I've always wondered if it would have reduced the incidents of foam falling off.

"Normalization of deviance" seems to be the motto for the 21st century, honestly.

That man at the end. Thats the sort of brutal honesty that every body needs in life. Like wow, that hurts but i needed to hear that.

CAIB laid out the broad outline for how a rescue mission *could* have been attempted, but more detailed planning showed it would be far harder than Apollo 13. It would be the riskiest shuttle mission in history, with zero room for error. Yet I don't think it would have been hard to find four astronauts to volunteer, knowing the odds would be against their coming home.

The most lethal of any modern space launch system. 135 launches for 14 fatalities.

Oh we have "normalization of deviance" at my firm. We call it "being lazy."

Pioneering is always dangerous, whether it's land, sea, air or space. We are but infants struggling to learn to walk in comparison with our efforts at space exploration. All of the astronauts who have made the ultimate sacrifice have earned our greatest admiration. R.I.P. all of you from whatever nation you are from.

when you are too proud to ask for help... things like this happens or when you are too proud to recognize you HAVE a problem, and do nothing about it - so instead of trying to do everything they could, they just let Columbia burn

Yes. The Columbia and Challenger disasters could both have been avoided

The simple fact is that the loss of Apollo I, Challenger, and Columbia were all due to the same exact cause: Bad Management.

Many other times the Shuttle was on the edge of disaster, but mistakes were caught before they happened. Some by accident

Yes, *and* Nasa should've taken more precautions in crew safety from the beginning and they definitely should've been asking questions after sts 27's close call

If anyone could handle the delicate subject of this video, Paul Shillito has the right stuff for it. May the brave crew of STS-107 rest in peace.

It shows how NASA personnel valued their jobs higher than the safety of their crews. The shuttle was a costly and risky solution for a problem that didn’t exist.

Thank you for getting this rite. My Father was a Launch Director when the Challenger met its Faith Not by his fault but the Higher ups that basicly forced him to go for Launch despite the O rings not rated for the freezing temps that day, was about Money. He later retired and was not surprised at all about Columbia Tragedy .

Nothing is impossible if you go all out for it! ;). if they were able to come out of apollo 13, anything was possible! Too bad they didn't consider the problem enough.

I remember that day. My wife and I were watching the return on TV. When the news crew said that the Columbia was 30 seconds overdue on its landing time I looked at my wife and said "They are all dead". The time sequences in such events are projected down to the second. You just don't have a space shuttle that is "running a little late".

you can tell the ad is coming when these youtubers say the word "skills"

It’s worth tossing this out there as I memorized the entire rescue plan and the prior events sl here goes. The ground team suspected a foam strike and said they wanted to get it checked out by a good quality USAF spy sat 2 days into the mission. NASA’s female head administrator ( who had only just gotten her job but was allegedly part of the team that ok’d the challenger launch) denied the request stating “ nothing was wrong” only upon re-entry did they notice the problem when heat sensors in the damaged wing started to go offline. As Colombia started to hit denser atmosphere the RCS system disengaged and the regular flight controls tried to take over. At this point on IR photos more then half the damaged wing was melted away. Columbia went into a spin and broke up over Texas. This you know. The rescue plan had they ok’d the photo and seen the hole they would have realized a repair would be impossible and a rescue would have been the only way, there was no way anybody short of Macgyver could have saved that ship. With the abbreviated launch time NASA would have insisted on its most experienced people and they would not have hesitated to volunteer. The 4 people is right and Atlantis would have launched risking a foam strike too. Upon arrival the crew of Columbia would have had a bit of excess C02 but otherwise unharmed and they would transfer them over 2 at a time . The last thing to do would power Columbia back up, set the control to ground mode and connect up the 6 feet of coiled antenna to let the ground de orbit the stricken shuttle. Final result they loose a shuttle but save the crew and Atlantis and her crew are hailed as the biggest heroes since Apollo 13, Book Deals and movie rights are discussed, though those 7 who died did herald some useful changes. After Columbia all shuttles carried an ISS adapter and operated in an orbit where they could get to the ISS if need be. They also did the roll maneuver to inspect the thermal tile system. For shuttles operating away from the ISS they had gear to check their tiles themselves and another shuttle had to be on a nearby pad ready to go if there was trouble.

A family knows everything about the car they drive in , the mechanic knows even more .

This incident always disturbed me. I don't remember much of it, but back when the Challenger disaster occurred, I was a young child. They kept replaying the explosion and I don't know why, but I wouldn't stop watching the replays of it. I've also been interested in the stars and space exploration and seeing what happened to Columbia and how it could have been avoided has always bothered me. This was negligence to a deadly degree.

Thank you for the great videos! This was such an amazing crew. My heart breaks when I see the archive documentaries. Mike Massimino shares in his book Spaceman that his flight was given priority to the unfortunate STS107 and they took the slot previously allocated for the STS-107 crew. I can't imagine how horrible it must be to know that they escaped this fate by this change in the flight sequence

Thank you for this video. I'm of the idea that the crew could have been saved if NASA had decided to acknowledge the problem, and asked the DOD to take some pictures of the Shuttle underbelly. At that point, an enormous number of highly capable individuals would have developed a reasonably safe rescue plan, without necessarily sending a second Shuttle in a hurry. There was a famous demonstration / simulation during the subsequent inquest, where the engineers on the ground shot a piece of foam at supersonic speed (the same speed when the foam struck during ascent) into the thermal shield: many were surprised that ultra-light polystyrene foam was able to punch an hole in the thermal panel. But many other engineers on the ground didn't need any demonstration, they knew about E=1/2mv^2. And their word wasn't taken into consideration, much like more than a decade earlier, when they said that the Shuttle SRBs (the solid fuel boosters) couldn't operate below 53 °F - and one booster leaked during ascent, and made the liquid fuel tank explode. In both incidents, the voice of reason, based on some good calculations, wasn't listened. Deadly administrative stubbornness. Things have changed now, thankfully. Rocket travel is still dangerous, but there isn't anymore any form of contaminated thinking. Again, I appreciated your video a true lot, both for the details of the analysis and the quality of research. Many Thanks...

All NASA had to do was to paint the 1/3 of the external tank so that the foam would not fall off and hit the orbiter.

I worked as a lowly admin officer at Boscombe Down in the early 90’s. Rick Husband was the squadron’s USAF exchange pilot, working with the RAF. He was subsequently selected by NASA (on his second attempt I seem to recall) and went back to the USA to begin astronaut training. Several years later I was surprised to be invited by him to his first Space Shuttle launch (STS-96) where he would be the pilot for the mission. I put all my savings together and travelled out to Florida and watched the launch in 1999 as a personal friend of one of the astronauts. Me! An admin officer that filed sortie reports from test pilots! Over 20 years later I still see that launch as one of the most incredible experiences of my life. It was an awe-inspiring and emotional moment for me. I was invited again by Rick to the Columbia launch in 2003, but I chose not to go. 911 had happened by then and the rules surrounding the launch were very different. As well as money being an issue for me, I also didn’t think that the launch could live up to the experience of 1999 when I was just a few miles away across Banana Creek. I chose not to go. The Columbia disaster in 2003, in which 7 astronauts lost their lives, is etched in my memory. I have nothing but happy memories of Rick, he was a wonderful and charming, mild-mannered Texan gentleman who always had time for me. I’ll never forget him. ❤️

It would have been Nasa’s finest hour.

Always look forward to the CD vids such amazing quality!

“Normalization of deviance” would be an awesome title for my biography.

I remember seeing it live on television when it happened. The photos still give me chills.

NASA's management got so comfortable with success that when shit hit the wing, they just stuck their heads in the sand

You started out with an error in the background info that affects much of the rest of your video. The foam on the tank was not the issue. It was the aerodynamic foam ramp covering on the bipod that was shed. This foam served no purpose other than as an aero surface to smooth airflow past the bipod. It was not there for insulation. It was later determined that it was unnecessary even for that purpose and eliminated from future flights. It is unlikely that the foam ramp would be held on by the paint as it had to bear aerodynamic loads. The paint's purpose was to reduce thermal load from sunlight.

Saving a crew in a broken ship headed for the moon? Totally doable. Bring them home at all costs! Saving a crew in LEO with a damaged heat shield? Impossible Edit: To clarify, I'm not saying that there was a guarantee of success, but that NASA should have put forth a better effort to save the crew. I understand not wanting to risk Atlantis, but I think some effort to patch the heat shield should have been made.

Short answer: Technically? Yes. Realistically? No.

Rest In Peace. Must’ve been the worst last few moments I can think of

Former Shuttle Engineer here, brought on in 2004 to work the Return-to-Flight effort. In rudimentary terms, an improvised “Bodge-Job” type repair would’ve been the only feasible play, IMO. (if the crew had been adequately warned) I was brought-on to bolster manpower needed to support integration of the MANY changes, on a VERY truncated timetable. I was ultimately kept-on, not simply as a “Pinch-Hitter” - but because many organizations continually saw people leaving in Columbia’s wake. We’re talking extended or permanent medical leaves, often due to stress, emotional crises, and depression. There were suicides. At least one man I know of even *”fell”* from launchpad 39A. After the Columbia disaster, there was A LOT of uncertainty. Would Shuttles ever fly again? If they would, clearly not for much longer.... And NASA really showed no clear direction where, if anywhere, Human Spaceflight would continue. No transition. No “next.” Just the Shuttles’ end. For the highly skilled, dedicated workforce of around 15,000 people - it was like watching friends and family endure a gruesome, slow-mo car crash in a tunnel. At some point, soon, the end was coming - and there wasn’t much light at that tunnel’s end. Sorry to get so heavy. It was an amazing place to work. I’d always secretly pinch myself, visiting the pad with a stack-on. Things like walking under the “bell” of a main engine, looking-up into that almighty thrust chamber. Or standing at the base, just a few yards from an SRB - my eyes trained skywards, trying to gulp-in the machine’s enormity. I even have a photo of myself standing at the tippy-top, where the dubious little (and very see-thru) service bridge stretched over to the ET’s “Beanie-Cap.” Just to name a few memories. I was but a young pup, fresh-out of college. Virtually all of my colleagues were, at the youngest, older Gen-Xers. Most were Boomers. Some went all the way back to Project Gemini!!! All had done nothing else for a career, nor could they imagine doing anything else - anywhere else. Columbia was, in a way, the ultimate in foreshadowing.

When I see a new curiousdroid video in my subbox, I always get so excited!

Amazing how you produce a full series of well-researched, professionally made educative videos.

*Space Fact :* Attempting to view Pluto from Earth is like trying to see a walnut from 30 miles away !!

NASA did not think through the possibilities for rescuing the crew of Columbia. For one thing there was a Delta rocket being prepared for launch on January 29, 2003. The rocket was launch into a medium earth orbit which means changing the payload with materials and consumables that Columbia could’ve used would have been possible. It would have also bought them more time. Time could have been used to come up with a real patch for the wing and it would not have required ditching the shuttle.

I have always been of the opinion that all of the accomplishments of the space program were made by the sheer bravery and tenacity of the people who flew into the skies.

Thank you for your great videos! I was ten years old when I watched this happen on television. It was so shocking to see a space disaster in my lifetime, I hope it is the last.

I think they could have been rescued if the crew were given the chance to do a spacewalk to inspect the hull

Inspect, don't Expect NASA: Expect, no need to Inspect

Properly Good at Explaining Things for Kids and Adults. Awesome.

Thanks for answering the questions that has been bugging me for years..

I remember hearing on the radio that there was damage to the wing on take off and thinking to myself that I doubt it'll come back in one piece!

The white "paint" on the first 2 launches was intended to protect the ET insulation from UV rays over the more extended pad time expected on the early development flights.

My day definitely needed an amazing CuriousDroid video, thank you for that!

I'll never forget this as a kid in school in east Texas. We heard the explosion and had no idea what it was. My friends mother was an emt that found one of the crew members, they were propped up against a tree like he was just sitting there resting.

It's honestly a crime that Starship will not have an emergency escape system. I hope they introduce it.

To take on this subject must have taken a lot of research. Thank you. In hindsight it was like cycling without a puncture repair kit. They could've done with a tub of ceramic-based adhesive and some small, versatile tiles :'(

It's pretty sad to learn all these years later how ill-prepared NASA was with contingency plans for the space shuttle.

Fundamentally, the responsibility of the flight controllers, managers, and ground crew is; among other things is to do all they can possibly do to support the crew and make sure the crew in orbit makes it back safely. I think I speak for many when I say that in fact, not everything they could have done had been attempted. In that sense, the ground crew and flight controllers and managers had failed the crew of STS-107.

Wow...I remember that day like it was today. That Saturday will live with me forever.

So it was a managerial decision that caused all this. Like it was for the Boeing 737 Max. And lives were lost... Yet, no manager had to pay for their gross negligence and lack of respect for human life!

Small pieces of foam didnt begin breaking off until NASA stopped painting the outside of the external fuel tank. This tragedy was entirely preventable.

6:37 is absolutely terrifying.

Rest in Peace to these amazing Crew members !

I enjoy listening to Curious Droid. His patient and measured style helps make difficult topics easily understood.

This is missing a key version of a fix for Columbia. The Atlantis could have taken supplies up to columbia in it's shuttle bay, used it's arm to fix the Columbia, and both crews could have come home in their respective shuttles. The other option, is to send capsules up, place Columbia's crew in them, and then de-orbit.

If Gene kranz was in charge, I believe they would have a chance. RIP to the crew !!!

In theory it was possible to mount a daring rescue with huge risk and expense, but NASA knew the costs and risks and thus did everything they could to NOT find out about the damage to the orbiter on launch. There is a brutal logic to it, but seven of humanitys finest paid the ultimate price for it.

Saddest part is it was the same basic error that tanked Challenger. And that just would not change.

This scenario of a hypothetical rescue of the stricken USS Colombia needs a movie adaptation, and plenty of disco music.

Sometimes I hear people say "see? Look how dangerous it is! We get _nothing_ from spaceflight, and it kills people. We really should stop doing it." But I remember Columbia. I remember Challenger. I remember Apollo 1, and the cosmonauts that have been lost. And I remember also the pilot that died while testing Spaceship One. If we give up spaceflight, what we are saying is "you're sacrifice is meaningless." I mean that, not in the slightlest measure of hyperbole. It means that we consider spaceflight of little consequence. But I have hope, looking over the growth of spaceflight in recent years, and looking ahead to the 2020's that these men and women will not have died in vain. I hope that someday, an astronaut will stand on a plateau on Mars, looking over it's red landscape up into space, and remember those that died to get them there. The sacrifice of those astronauts that died, and the sacrifice of the hundreds of thousands of people who have devoted their lives to pushing spaceflight forward cannot be left to sit in the dust.

It's easy to point the finger in hindsight. But it was human error, and unfortunate and tragic loss. RIP .

Was recently reading William Langeweische’s essay on this. Such a litany of mis-communication and stratification of command within NASA, it seems.

I legitimately think the hypothetical rescue mission with the 2nd shuttle would make for an awesome movie if executed well