With Starliner grounded in space, has NASA’s safety culture changed since Columbia?

My first real experience with space journalism came on the morning of February 1, 2003. A Houston Chronicle editor called me at home one Saturday morning and asked me to rush to Johnson Space Center to help cover the loss of the space shuttle. Colombia.

At the time, I did not realize that this tragedy would determine the course of the rest of my career, the course of thinking and writing about space flight. It would become the passion that would take over my professional life.

I’ve been thinking a lot naturally about Colombia In recent weeks, while the parallels between that space shuttle mission and Boeing’s first crewed Starliner flight are not exact, there are similarities. Most notably, after the shuttle launched, questions were raised about the safety of the spacecraft’s re-entry to Earth due to foam hitting the leading edge of the spacecraft’s wing.

Two decades later, there are still questions, both publicly and privately, about the viability of Starliner’s propulsion system after the mishaps that occurred during the spacecraft’s flight to the space station in June. NASA officials made the wrong decision during the flight. Colombia So, faced with another momentous decision now, is there any reason to believe they’ll make the right call while putting the lives of Starliner astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunny Williams at risk?

poor safety culture

To understand ColombiaWe have to go back to 1986 and the first space shuttle accident that involved ChallengerAfter the disastrous launch failure, the Rogers Commission investigated and determined the technical cause of the accident, and also concluded that the cause was due to a flawed safety culture.

The report led to radical changes in NASA’s culture, designed to allow lower-level engineers the freedom to voice their concerns about the safety of spacecraft and have their voices heard. For a while, this worked. By the time the report was released, however, it was unlikely that any of these changes would be accepted. ColombiaAs the spacecraft flew dozens of successful missions, NASA’s culture returned to Challenger-Like situations.

Since foam blows had been observed during previous shuttle missions without consequences, observations of foam loss from the external tank during ColombiaThe spacecraft’s launch was not a major cause for concern. There were a few dissenting voices who said the issue deserved further analysis. However, Linda Ham, the head of the mission management team overseeing the flight, blocked requests for images of the potentially damaged spacecraft from the U.S. Department of Defense’s space assets. The message from the top was clear: The shuttle was safe to return to Earth.

loss Colombia These investigations led to the formation of another investigative committee, known as the Columbia Accident Investigation Committee. One of its members was John Logsdon, a prominent space historian at George Washington University. “We noticed that there were changes that happened after the accident, Challenger “They left and didn’t continue,” Logsdon told me in an interview this weekend. “NASA is back to the way it was before Challenger“.”

Thus, antibodies within NASA culture have been essentially revitalized to reduce opposition.

Advantages for today’s decision makers

If history does not repeat itself exactly, history certainly echoes. Two decades later ColombiaThe Starliner is currently docked to the International Space Station. As with the foam strikes, the issues with the reaction control system engines aren’t unique to this flight; they were also observed during the previous test flight in 2022. So NASA engineers are once again trying to determine whether they can feel comfortable with a “known” problem and all its implications for a safe return to Earth.

NASA is the customer for this mission, not the operator. The space agency buys Boeing’s transportation services to the International Space Station for its astronauts. However, as the customer, NASA still has the final say. Boeing engineers will have their say, but the final decisions will be made by NASA engineers like Steve Stich, Ken Bowersox and Jim Frye. Ultimately, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson may have the final say.