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Columbia: Final Voyage
Books: Travel: Amarillo: Item 4
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Columbia: Final Voyageby Philip Chien
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Thorough and informative, but too deferential to NASA, July 20, 2006 Reviewer:Arthur P. Smith (Selden, New York USA) - Much has been written about the shuttle Columbia's fatal accident in February 2003. Newspapers were filled with articles from reporters who rarely before had covered space exploration; experienced space newsfolk followed the recovery effort and accident investigation like hawks for at least the next year. Few Americans are unaware of the event or the cause: external tank foam hitting a wing edge on launch, causing overheating and break-up on re-entry. The loss of another seven astronauts in this manner has been fodder for a blizzard of opinion pieces, both for and against further human space exploration. But all of this post-event activity is a perhaps understandable reaction to the bleak truth: almost nobody cared about STS-107 beforehand. One of the few who did was veteran space reporter Philip Chien. Chien had the unique perspective of following the STS-107 crew from the beginning, of being on the spot working for CNN the morning of the expected return, and being the first reporter to realize something had gone terribly wrong. This impressive book gives Chien's detailed account of the mission: the astronauts and their families, the wide array of science experiments and the scientists and students involved in them, and the NASA mission support people of all stripes. Even more detail is available on a website (sts107.info) and companion CD-ROM. The central question that the book treads cautiously around is whether the failure was avoidable or not. Chien asserts that nothing could have been done once the foam had hit the wing, and that was simply one of those random things that could have been expected to happen. One of every eleven shuttle flights had had a chunk of foam fall off the same place, and the others had just been lucky not to have been damaged by it. The fact that NASA hadn't responded to earlier foam loss with proper safety analysis and redesign, and the poor design in this regard from the start, were certainly valid criticisms from the accident report - but there had been 87 successful launches in between, and human beings do make mistakes. Nevertheless, there are a large number of strands gathered here that suggest NASA considered STS-107 a really low-priority mission, and as an organization was not focusing its best efforts on it, just as the rest of the nation was mostly blissfully ignorant. The mission was delayed a total of 18 times, and followed the higher-numbered STS-113 and several other shuttle flights assigned to space station (ISS) construction and Hubble refurbishing. Columbia, being the first operational shuttle, was heavier than the others and not suited to deliveries to the ISS with its high orbital inclination, so in this mission it was relegated to the role of orbiting laboratory, carrying out science experiments that in many cases would prepare for further research on the ISS when it was ready. The crew was quite inexperienced - among the seven astronauts, only three had flown before, and each of them only once. Rick Husband was the first shuttle commander since 1993 to be assigned to that position with only one prior flight; he did have a lot of ground experience. Kalpana Chawla (K.C.), on her previous mission, had been responsible for serious errors that caused a near-loss and zero science return for the shuttle-launched "Spartan" satellite. Mike Anderson, one of NASA's few African American astronauts, visited the ill-starred Mir station on his one previous shuttle flight. Thanks to the delays some of the scheduled science experiments had to be replaced by others; one constant was an Israeli experiment (MEIDEX) to coordinate space and ground measurements of dust storms, scheduled to fly with Israeli fighter pilot Ilan Ramon. But the ideal time for that was summer, not the winter launch that finally occurred. Ramon himself, while clearly enthusiastic and having received the most training for this specific mission, had little of the background in science normal for a payload specialist. The external tank was an older-model "light weight" tank, delivered to NASA in November 2000. The Columbia orbiter was the oldest of the shuttles; part of the schedule slip had involved additional repairs. It seems likely there was some institutional resentment within NASA about the STS-107 mission: both President Clinton, who offered a shuttle ride to Israel, and the US Congress, in specifically mandating a mission to explore the commercial potential of microgravity, had had their hand in forcing the mission on the agency. Were any of these factors a cause of the accident? Other than the external tank's age, surely not directly. But they do suggest NASA as an organization was not devoting its best efforts to the mission, and lead one to wonder whether perhaps, despite the protestations to the contrary, something could actually have been done. Chien makes a strong case that there was no option; the crew was even informed of the debate on the ground on the implications of the observed foam impact - and also of the conclusion that it would not cause trouble. Could a fully informed and more experienced crew, with a more alert NASA team on the ground, have noticed their predicament and found a way out? Chien's book delves deeply into the human experience of the crew: their backgrounds, their experiences in space, and the family and friends they left behind. Chien quotes extensively from the astronauts themselves - appropriately for the most part, though his reverence for his fallen friends seems to have limited his ability to edit, and the quotes get repetitious. And do we really need to know what each day's wake-up music was? The mission itself is described with one chapter per day, covering representative experiments for the day and the way the crew worked, interacted, resolved problems, and spent some of their free time. With a busy load of experiments requiring human tending and interaction needed with people on the ground, the crew split into two shifts to make maximum use of their time in space. Some of the experiments described do seem rather mundane; many ended up producing little science since samples were destroyed in the accident, so it's hard to know what use they might have been. However, several of the successful experiments are particularly fascinating. While the MEIDEX experiment saw few dust storms, it did make the first detailed calibrated images of the atmospheric electrical phenomena known as "sprites" and "elves". The "SOFBALL" experiment created free-floating "flame balls", a simple stable flame structure that can only be observed in microgravity. Working with scientists on the ground the Columbia astronauts found ideal ingredients for making the things, and in one instance had formed as many as nine flame balls at once. Given their longevity, the team decided they had to name each individual ball. Unfortunately due to a drift in the experiment chamber they didn't quite succeed in the goal of keeping one alive for an entire 90-minute circuit of the Earth. Chien's text is the most poignant describing his own experience of the accident and its follow-on. He had seen landings before, and knew what was supposed to happen. Before almost anyone else, when he heard that UHF communications was out as well as the overhead TDRS, he knew something really wrong had happened. He describes the accident from the perpsective of the public and the media, mission control, and the surprising number who were able to visually observe the reentry. He describes the recovery effort and the investigation; he was able to view the recovered pieces himself, and includes his own photos of damaged components. Chien also follows up on how the families are being taken care of, and a number of the many memorials that have followed. Those curious about NASA and congressional responsibility will likely not be satisfied by this book; while he does point out problems, and flaws, Chien seems too close to the agency to have a sufficiently skeptical perspective. But this is a thorough, detailed, and worthy effort, and anybody interested in the people and the science of Columbia's last mission would learn a lot from it.
Book Description
In ‘Columbia: Final Voyage’ aerospace writer Philip Chien, who has over 20 years’ experience covering the US space program, provides a unique insight into the crew members who lost their lives in the Columbia disaster. Chien interviewed all seven crew members several times and got to know them as individuals. He Reviews in detail their training, their scientific work and other activities during their successful 16-day flight, the background of the accident itself and a detailed first-hand account of what happened that fateful day in February 2003. The author provides a comprehensive and personal look at both the Columbia astronauts and the STS-107 mission, together with a behind-the-scenes account of other people involved in the mission and their personal reactions to the accident. Forward by Jonathan B. Clark, widower of Columbia astronaut Laurel Clark Introduction by Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin
About The Author
Philip Chien is a full-time space journalist. Over the last twenty years, he has covered over a hundred Shuttle launches. His reports have appeared on CNN, in Popular Science, Time and in the Jerusalem Post, among other venues.
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