 | | | | | | | | | | |  |  | | | | Space: NASA Pioneers Testify on Shuttle Columbia Tragedy">3. Space News | | | | | | | 
3. Space News | News submitted by: MIB
HOUSTON (AP) -- Space program pioneers told Columbia investigators Wednesday that shuttle wings were never designed to be struck by anything and they suggested NASA should have taken the potential problem much more seriously.
Neither the Challenger disaster in 1986 nor the Columbia tragedy in February "require Ph.Ds in physics to understand,'' said Robert Thompson, who headed the shuttle program during the 1970s and helped design the spacecraft. "In fact, they barely exceed high school physics to understand.''
"Erosion rates on an O-ring, when there should be no erosion, is an obvious thing,'' he said, referring to the Challenger accident.
He then turned to Columbia, which investigators believe may have been damaged by a piece of insulating foam during liftoff.
"Kinetic energy of a 2 1/2 or 3-pound hunk of foam when it's traveling 700 feet per second, that's high school physics, Thompson said.
It "appears to me that the agency needs to, number one, make damn sure of the procedures'' that bring reports of problems and corrective actions to the right people.
Thompson was among five retired NASA and contractor managers with expertise going all the way back to the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs who testified Wednesday before Columbia investigators during a public hearing.
They agreed the reinforced carbon-composite panels that line the leading edge of the shuttle wings were a technical challenge back in the 1970s and were never meant to withstand a blow of any sort.
"The whole intent was to not let it happen,'' Thompson said. He added that he would not know how to design the shuttle wing to take a big strike, like Columbia's left wing did 81 seconds after liftoff Jan. 16.
Milton Silveira, who also helped to design the shuttle, said not even the wings of airplanes are designed to sustain such strikes. Thompson agreed, noting that NASA would have had to abandon the shuttle project in order to provide such an impenetrable wing edge.
The Columbia Accident Investigation Board has yet to settle on a cause of the Columbia accident, but say the evidence is pointing to a deadly breach along the leading edge of the left wing, most likely a missing seal.
Under this scenario, the seal was struck by foam during liftoff and was jarred loose the next day in orbit. Two weeks later, the gap was expanded by the searing gases of atmospheric re-entry and led to the ship's destruction over Texas.
Thompson told reporters he was surprised that engineers concluded while Columbia was still in orbit that the piece of foam did not cause any severe damage and that the shuttle and its crew of seven would be safe coming home.
He said if it were up to him, he would have fixed the longtime problem of foam coming off the external fuel tank well before Columbia's doomed flight.
So why didn't NASA do that?
"You're asking me to crystal ball something,'' Thompson said. "I would venture this thought: You get used to a little bit of something happening,'' like foam shedding off the tank.
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sts107_caib_030423.html
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