The Flawed Design That Led To The Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster | Spark 

RIP Rick Husband (1957-2003) William C. McCool (1961-2003) Michael P. Anderson (1959-2003) Kalpana Chawla (1962-2003) David M. Brown (1956-2003) Laurel Clark (1961-2003) and Ilan Ramon (1954-2003)

The biggest design flaw was having politicians and not engineers run NASA.

he said "mishap?" A mishap is when I spill my coffee. This is a tragic disaster sir.

The block that came off hit the leading edge of the wing and left a like 12" hole.. It couldn't have been worse. There was zero chance of survival unless they somehow got into another craft and used it to come back. The plasma from re-entry into the atmosphere is so hot it looks unreal.. it immediately went into that hole on the leading edge, which had aluminum ribbing that melts at 600*f the plasma was ~1,600*f it melted the wing from the inside.. realizing that must have been terrible for the crew. They had a solid 15 seconds knowing they were dead with no hope. That's just awful.

“Hey this thing doesn’t work.” “Then add a second one.” -NASA

The fact that there are people who are not watching this video because a clueless person lied and said that 95% of the video has nothing to do with the title shows how easily people can be brainwashed.

Finding the video tape of them all laughing and saying “you wouldn’t want to be outside right now” Is not only chilling to listen to but serendipitous find and the fact it still worked, phew.

When this one happened, I had just turned on the tv and chanced on the news, and they said the Shuttle Columbia was late in arriving at Kennedy Space Center. I recalled going to see the very first shuttle landing, and there was a science center at the base where a bunch of shuttle scientists and engineers were presenting information about the rocket and shuttle and systems. I saw them pull a tile out of an oven with my own eyes white hot and then hold it in their hands in front of me a minute late still glowing. One said that it was impossible for the shuttle to land late, (part of how it bled off energy), that if it was late then it was on the ground somewhere. That its flight path to land would be aloft for nearly as long as possible within seconds. So being 15 minutes late, based on what he said many years before, they were on the ground, we just didn't know where....yet. I couldn't stop watching until that came out, then eventually the fist video, then others came out of the tragedy. "Lock the doors." Never forgot that. They knew way before but didn't want to admit it for the longest time.

Having lived through the challenger consequence I find myself yet again looking at an occurrence easily preventable if NASA took safety and risk seriously. Complacency yet again cost the lives of 7 people. I welcomed the end of this program and am truly stunned that only 2 orbiters were lost.

"costly and difficult" Not a fkin excuse.

Challenger was not a design flaw. They knew the orings would freeze. Thats not a flaw its a limitation. A five year old could tell you what happens when things freeze. Challenger was due to lack of concern for those in the shuttle. Plain and simple.

I said to a friend that I thought the astronauts seem rather naive and trusting. She pointed out that most of them are from the military and are used to obeying orders without question. i.e. They're not going to argue with Mission Control.

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This happened 2 days before my 13th birthday. My science class watched this happen live, my whole class was silent

My heart goes out to all the shuttle crew a there loved ones and my RESPECT TO ALL THAT TAKE THAT RISK WITH AIRCRAFT TECHNOLOGY. ✌

I thought I knew everything but this video taught me a few things I didn’t know. Thanks.

After launching of Columbia engineers who studied images of foam that hit left wing of Shuttle already knew that chances of crew for safe return are about 50%. Nevertheless, no rescue operation was initiated because: 1) orbit of flight was " special " , because mission was half-military , it was impossible to reach ISS station for emergency docking from existing orbit, fuel was not enough for that. 2) crew was not equipped with suits for Space activities in violation of safety protocol and could not to go out to make assessment of damage and to make emergency repair on wing. 3) no other Shuttle available ready to start within 2 weeks for emergency rescue operation again in violation of safety protocol. Possibly, the only chance was to force ISS to change its orbit to make its rendezvous with Columbia possible but it would require international cooperation and sending cargo ships to change its orbit. That''s why it's need to have own space stations, not " International " , for more safety in Space.

There must be some chilling footage of the final moments they’ll never release to the public for obvious reasons.

A NASA Engineer was very concerned about the wing strike by a large piece of foam from the main fuel tank but a NASA manager halted the engineer's attempt at further exploration of the problem prior to return...

NASA was flying by the seat of their pants:(

Biggest problem with nasa is the fact that it exists. Other than that, it's fine

That bloody boot sole at 43:41 is unnerving...

An obvious problem with the Space Shuttle was that when launching the Shuttle was below part of the rocket boosters, etc. and stuff could, and often did, come off of them and strike the vehicle. If the Shuttle had been above the rest of the stack that would not have happened.

I was an Air Force Air Traffic Controller in the early 1980s. I arrived shortly before the second launch (STS-2 Columbia) of the Space Shuttle (a space vehicle system that was truly a worthless piece of crap btw). The airspace above and around the launch site included multiple restricted and warning areas that activated on launch days. The boundary of these areas closest to the launch pads ran down the center of the Indian River. Myself and several non-rated controllers (I had arrived about two weeks prior) grouped around a spare scope and started counting aircraft primary targets (reflected radar returns from the skin of the aircraft). Within an area of about 20 miles by 7 miles by 10,000 feet in altitude, we counted over 250 individual aircraft flying back and forth minutes before shuttle launch. Probably the densest accumulation of airborne aircraft ever. We marveled at the fact that nobody ran into somebody when a collective callout by passengers and pilots alike said, “There it goes!” Worked or saw launches #2 thru #22 before leaving that assignment - missing the Challenger disaster by a year. Hated that system from the start… it killed more astronauts than every other rocket system, by every country, in every decade since Yuri Gagarin onward. Anyway, never saw a launch from the air, just the beach at Cocoa Beach, jetty at the Port of Canaveral, on the Cape complex from 4-1/2 miles away, from my couch thru a window of my apartment and on a radar scope while working traffic. From 15 miles away, the radar return (the blip) on a launching shuttle was nearly two inches long, 1/4 inch thick and only lasted two sweeps of the radar before exceeding the radar’s maximum range by altitude, not distance. A Boeing 747 (typically largest radar return) was only 5/8” by 1/8” in size at the most.

A co worker had just came in and told me that the shuttle was 10 minutes late landing. Having followed the shuttle development and missions I replied right away that fire balls must have been seen over Texas.

At 19:00 they say that after the Challenger disaster, the shuttles had the means for crew to eject. That is not true. Ejection seats were present only for the early test flights, when there was a crew of two. No shuttles had ejection seats after they began normal operation.

complacency is what took the lives of both shuttle tragedies.. both of the issues were transparent to all but not heeded by any.

The biggest concern I have for Starship is the same issue with the shuttle. The heat shield tiles Starship uses are very similar, if simpler, and they break off at a concerning rate. Starship is going to have a fairly significant "hot" phase on reentry, too, as it bleeds off velocity, even more so if it's coming back from an interlunar or interplanetary orbit. It'll even probably have to survive multiple heating and cooling cycles as I imagine they might adopt the skipping reentry that Orion did. Thankfully, the first flights will be automated, so very little risk to human life.

If the people at NASA had just grown a spine and asked the military for access to satellites to take photos, this could have been avoided.

Seeing that wood pecker go to town on the ET like that. LOL Bruh

THE FACT THAT IT WAS 1St TIME AROUND THAT KALPANA RODE COLUMBIA SPACE SHUTTLE BACK I THINK 1993 or 97. Not knowing for the 2nd Time was the last time😢

IMO the biggest flaw design with the entire concept of the shuttles was the piggy-back method of getting them into space in the first place: Too many opportunities for damage.

Yes the odd are you'd have disasters more often but the fact is In 30 years and a 135 space shuttle missions on y 2 had catastrophic failures neither of those would have happened if a bunch of sanctimonious jackasses weren't making launch decisions.

God bless them all❤❤

How does this channel have so many subs, yet so few views on their videos?

Problems were identified back in the 70s - insulation Foam / O-Rings / Re-Entry Tiles / Incompetent Management ... The shuttle program just as Commander Lovell said about Apollo13 ... "was snakebit from the start" - critical engineering challenges that were never solved and Management Team Leaders ignoring their subject matter experts

Is this before they actually did the test that proved the foam could have put a huge hole in the wing?

12:39 Dunno about this car you sold us, guv.."

21:00 It is NOT a mystery as to why the Columbia shuttle broke apart as the voice over said! It was in fact proven to have been caused by the foam falling on the wing.

Classic butterfly effect but woodpeckers

NASA wanted to see how far they 'could push the operational envelope' in my opinion.

its crazy that they shot that thing up over a 100 times and the only 2 times they killed anybody....was when they KNEW the problem that would lead to it and chose to ignore it....thats whats CRAZY to me

They didn’t alert the crew.

The orbiter itself NEVER failed! The components surrounding it failed, causing the breakup of the 2 vehicles.

Cut the bloated military budget and direct the funds towards NASA.

I was watching this live, i will never forget it. It was like 9/11, it is just as clear as if it was yesterday.

Yes..of course it is

That’s really bothersome knowing they were all stuck in the cabin 💔

Just because something fails doesn't mean its flawed. No design is perfect. The failure comes from accepting deviations from normal. The foam was NEVER meant to fall off during launch. Foam was observed falling during launches, but since it caused no concern, the problem was never fixed and failure begin to be accepted as "normal'. Nothing is supposed to fall off of a 200 billion dollar machine, no matter how harmless it appears. the question was never asked, how much foam can fall before it jeopardizes a mission? The engineers should have went back and discussed solving the foam problem before it was accepted as "normal". This same deviation from normal is what doomed the challenger as well. launch is not supposed to have in cold weather, but they deviated from standard launch temperatures and people died.

It's a situation where the only way to discover this "flaw" was through unfortunate experience. This is one of the most advanced and controversial machines ever built. Before it's original test flight, engineers from subcontractors and nasa engineering teams saw the end of the Orbiter program.

Given that space exploration has provided new tech, new medicines, and new knowledge, we should be realizing that NOTHING is ever 100% safe, and those who choose risk ACCEPT the fact that it may not give them long lives. Its what seperates them from the ranks of the cold timid aouls who know neither victory or defeat. USAF SECURITY POLICE 1982-1997.

NASA SAID " SAFETY FIRST !!! "

Lol. She said,” NASA wanted the ultimate dream space vehicle but ended up with a jumble of fuel tanks and rockets with an airplane attached to it.” I couldn’t agree more. I can’t believe they couldn’t find a better way to get people into space. Let’s do better NASA.

Oh for... would you STOP titling your shuttle videos like this?! The shuttle did remarkably well, all things considered. And with Challenger, it wasn't the orbiter herself which failed but the boosters. With Columbia-well you find me one airplane that can stay together with a hole in her wing that causes melting from the inside!!!!!

it's simply too damn big

Man that Russian rocket took off like a bat out of hell. Looked twice as fast as ours. I'm assuming because at that time Russians didn't worry about landing the vessel so it weighed significantly less. I think I read they used to parachute outta the thing. Russians are tough. They had 2 cosmonauts stranded in Siberia for days after landing off course. Not on water but actual ground. Ballsy.

Miss hap, understatement of the century.

Design was not the significant factor behind the Challenger disaster. Political pressure caused NASA to operate Challenger outside its design specs, plain and simple.

Thank the good Lord that Gemini never had use their ejection seats…. Their cabin was pressurized with 100% oxygen. It would have been a prequel to the Apollo 1 accident.

Concorde flew, accident free for over 30 years, by BAirways, until they decided after one fatal accident to finish it's program, if only NASA had the same look towards the protection of human kind 😢

Yup, blame the politicians that you put into power. Typical.

FAILED DISIGN Was the PROBLEM:(

Those good souls should not have died up there. NASA handled it woefully. What happened to the Apollo 13 spirit? The NASA of 2003 were heartless corporate yes men and women. Those wonderful astronauts could have been rescued. Those responsible for not saving those lives live in shame and infamy.

Let the wrongful death lawsuits begin… no statute on murder… 😳

They got what they paid for:(

The EPA is at fault. They made the original foam insulation on the large external fuel tank 'illegal' , and the new foam wasn't as durable.

Looks like one minute it's Challenger, next it's Columbia, I turned off.

NASA: Need. Another. Seven. Astronauts. Don't believe the hype.

A piece of foam destroyed the ship.

The whole design was wrong. If the fuel storage is encorporated into this space place (shuttle) like the proposed Skylon for example It has been calculated that the vehicle does not have to return to earth screaming through the atmosphere because the speed is reduced at a much higher altitude.Boosters are not needed either when using the right propulsion system and not a system that has to carry so much o 2 when much of it can be atmospheric and cooled into a liquid during flight.

The shuttle program lasted 135 flights.

The SRBs could have been made by several companies in Florida as a single structure. It was a political decision that resulted in Morton Thiokol getting the contract to build them as multi component segments which were then transported and assembled. The whole thing stinks of corruption. The most dangerous part of the whole project, built in segments and transported nearly 2400 miles and the advice of the project engineers ignored even though the evidence was clear from prior launches. The lessons were all in place before they handed the Columbia crew a slow death sentence.

Turns out one of the girls dropped a tool on a EVA and damage the tiles.

It's absolutely disgusting that NASA chose to do nothing at all to try and secure the safety of the crew. Not even warn the crew so they could try re-entry at a different angle. Bottom line should be safety of the crew.

They were doing stuff that had never been done before. Shit happens...

There really wasn't any launch escape system in NASA rockets that would save the crew. In Mercury perhaps as I believe it was a one stage rocket with a capsule on top. For Gemini the astronauts could not eject, like the future four shuttle test flights because the ejection seats could not be used above 100,000 feet. And for the three stage Saturn V the launch escape tower was jettisoned after the first stage separated from the second/third stage combination. The second stage of the Saturn V had 5 J2 engines and should a problem develop during second stage flight, like an engine explosion there would have been no way for the Apollo capsule to be pulled away from the rocket. And that also pertains to the third stage with a single J2 engine. If a problem occurred on the third stage that could be an explosion, again since the launch escape tower was jettisoned after the FIRST stage the capsule would not have been pulled away from the rocket. So IMHO NASA never had an escape system for all stages of their rocket's flight. As for the Space Shuttle, as the video shows, to make the crew compartment jettison-able would be very complex and the weight of it would severely limit the weight of payloads it could carry. Lastly, BOTH shuttle accidents were 100% preventable. In 1977, four years before the shuttle's first flight, a NASA engineer wrote a report that the Solid Rocket Booster's "field joint" design was not acting in a manner that would keep a leak of SRB rocket exhaust from occurring. He recommended a redesign of the "field joint" but due to time (delays) and unavailable money the SRB joint design was not changed. After the second shuttle flight was when it was first discovered after recovering the boosters (as they parachuted in to the Atlantic) there was erosion and "blow by" of hot gases impinging on the primary and secondary o-rings. As launches in colder weather yielded more erosion and burning of parts of the SRB o-rings, the old Apollo NASA management would have stopped flying the shuttle and had the field joint redesigned but not 1980's NASA. As for the Columbia accident NASA was well aware that multi-layered hand applied foam covering the forward bipod strut's connection to the External Tank had been breaking free during launch. Two flights before the Columbia's final flight, a piece of that foam broke free and put a gouge in the 1/2 thick steel casing of the SRB. But this same area of foam had been a well known issue, yet again NASA did not stop flying the shuttle until the problem was fixed. Of course after the Challenger accident the SRB field joints were redesigned and heaters were put in the area of the field joints to keep the o-rings at 75 degrees F. As for Columbia the multilayered hand applied foam on the forward bipod strut (where the orbiter's nose is attached to the ET) was removed and again heaters were installed on the now exposed metal bolts that held the forward bipod strut to the ET to keep ice from forming there due to the extremely cold liquid propellants inside the ET. Even after Discovery was launched after these foam issues on the bipod strut was "fixed" NASA neglected to remove two other multi-layered hand applied foam called PAL ramps (proturberance air load) from the front right side of the ET supposedly protecting the 17 inch diameter LOX feed line and smaller feed lines and electrical wires running along side it down from the top of the ET to where it feeds the orbiter's LOX umbilical and inside it the liquid oxygen in to the rear orbiter compartment to feed the three main engines (SSME's). So after that first flight after the Columbia accident in July 2005, NASA again stopped flying the shuttle and removed both PAL ramps from the ET, which after all that, NASA found they weren't ever really needed to begin with. It took another year of delayed shuttle flights. So, both accidents occurred due to very well known issues in the design of the SRB field joint(s) and the multi-layered hand applied foam but due to pressure from Congress (funding) and to avoid long delays in the flight schedule, NASA management let two space shuttles launch despite the warning that cold temperatures would impede the functioning of the SRB o-rings to seal the 3 field joints on each SRB (Challenger) and removing the really unnecessary foam which was well known to break free of the ET and hit the shuttle's tiles, or in the case of Columbia, the RCC (Reinforced Carbon Carbon) panels on the leading edge of both wings (which was carbon cloth only 0.2 inches thick) which punched a 17" hole in the leading edge on the left wing of Columbia (RCC panel) number eight (of 22 panels on each wing). As quoted Christopher Kraft (first NASA Flight Director and then Director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas had stated in an oral interview that the shuttle was the safest spacecraft NASA had ever built. It was NOT the fallacy of the machine but the fallacy of the human brain playing Russian Roulette with the shuttle. And even with the two accidents the most complex part, the orbiter and its three main engines were NOT the cause of the PREVENTABLE accidents; just two rubber o-rings in a flawed designed SRB field joint and a piece of multi-layered hand applied insulating foam falling off the ET during many shuttle launches. Again, both very well known design flaws that NASA never bothered to fix until after two accidents and deaths of 14 highly educated and trained astronauts. Unlike Apollo 13's accident which was not a known issue until it happened, NASA could 100% have prevented both shuttle accidents had they acted appropriately.

100% of this video has absolutely everything to do with the title.

Those poor people 😪

More than a flawed design. Again, NASA top brass ignored the grunts when they spoke up saying something needed to be done prior to trying to land the damn thing!! Same thing with Challenger and Apollo 1 Top brass thought they knew better than their astronauts and engineers.

So... If NASA had put their foot down/the military had listened about the size (of the craft) and angle of reentry, reducing the time having to deal with the atmospheric heat from 12 to 4 minutes then possibly this never would have... Yeah...

And the astronauts did know before entry that foam hit the wing on liftoff and in fact a video by NASA was uploaded to the astronauts for them to review and none were “concerned”. This video is misleading.

The space noone can heard you yell

Linda ham Leroy cain and Ron dittlemore should be putting in jail

Like JFK once said (slightly different, but still tho): We didn't choose to go to space because it's easy or perfectly safe.

My cousin was in that shuttle? 😭

Don't worry folks, they all had life 🧬 insurance? 💵 💥💀

Couldn’t the astronauts, during an EVA prior to re-entry, have examined the site of the damage?

Such a hurry to blame Nixon or demean him. Fact is Congress has the power of the purse. NASA knew how to woo Congress. Nixon Administration ended summer of 1975. This nightmare was in 2003. Another fact: great pressure on federal government to expand social programs and decrease funding for "useless" Space exploration. "frosty, January day." NUTS Florida, actually most of North AMerica was experiencing one of the deepest colds we had had in decades.. It was actually the second vicious winter in a row. NOTHING 'frosty" about it. It was deep cold and below freezing weather a with windchills near 0* centigrade. And NASA knew they had a problem with DEEP cold. Totally unclear why ejection seats, parachutes and pressure suits were not a MUST. but the show suggests that in this case maybe this equipment would not have saved them. although sounds like it might have saved the Challenger crew. Sort of chuckled at the thought of woodpeckers and plastic owls.

The Challenger and Columbia crews gave their lives for the USA just as much as all of the American casualties of war did.

No it really wasn't a flaw design just flawed management

The biggest failure of NASA was not planning for the basic scenario of having a space shuttle disabled in space. Anything can happen in space. Who knows maybe a space rock could hit the shuttle or maybe there could be a fuel leak, it could be anything. NASA had no plan and no backup space shuttle ready to deal with such an event. The thing is, every shuttle mission after Columbia did indeed have a backup shuttle and crew ready. All those years of engineering and the tons of money that was spent, and yet NASA failed in the most basic of situations. Frankly, the whole thing and how it was handled is disgusting.

Congress cut many millions from the build budget and NASA still went through with the project……in 1970s.

There 3, Apollo 1

You couldn't pay me to go up in space in that kind of a death trap vehicle. Aside from the impractical and ridiculous amount of fuel required, getting up into space is the relatively easy part. It's the re-entry back into the Earth's atmosphere, while using the Earth's atmosphere as your primary means of slowing yourself down from an orbital speed of 17,000 miles per hour, that is the real problem. At this time in human history, we do not have an energy source that is practical enough to send large objects into space and back without requiring the Earth's atmosphere to slow its descent. We also don't have the means to create space vessels with artificial gravity, to prevent the destruction of the human body from the effects of long-term exposure to a zero gravity environment. In short, humans are going nowhere far as far as "space exploration" is concerned, unless it is purely by the use of robots.

I honestly don't think they were alive or at the very least they were not conscious when that explosion of that tank went off the the compression of that the vibration of that the impact of that that would that would totally destroy your brain it would be like hitting a brick wall in a thousand miles an hour so I don't think they were alive

NASA making poor decisions knowing the consequences then pulling the surprised pikachu face when said consequences happen

This happened because we didn’t have the original genius. Math is something are country lacks. The German genius got us the Bomb and space.

When STS-114 launched crew checked the tiles and have an extended robotic arm should an emergency occur they could move to the new shuttle and renter the earths atmosphere yet on STS-135 as it was the last mission of Space Shuttle there was no Space Shuttles available but should some damage occurred they would undock the shuttle manually from ISS and the 4 crew would return in the Russian Soyuz Spacecraft one by one which means only two crew members would launch from Baikonour each crew was fitted with a Sokol Suit for the Soyuz seats yet when the Russians launch they have safety first they have only had two disasters Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 11 but they learned from there mistakes and solve problems there has only been twice a launch abort has happened first in the 80s when Titov and Strekalov was gonna launch to Salyut and then in 2010s when Ovchinin and Hague was gonna launch to ISS but they got a different launch

NASA could have turned their worse disaster into their biggest success.. If only the crew had escape options like parachutes or ejection seats.. And a rescue mission could have been sent to save the other crew after the foam strike.. or they could have done a spacewalk to check for damage on the wing or viewed it through a telescope.. NASA did none of these things.. even though they knew the shuttle had been hit.. and then they talk about safety being their biggest priority

If we gave as much money to nasa as we give to other countries for wars then we would have been on mars already