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Professor Sheila Widnall.

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We are really lucky that she is able to come
and talk to us today.

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She has been here at MIT since 1964 as a professor
and then as provost, but she didn't serve

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very long as provost because she was assigned
to go to Washington by the President to be

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the Secretary of the Air Force, which she
did for almost five years, I guess.

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Four years.

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Then came back here.

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And she is now an institute professor which
basically means you can do anything you want,

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right, including come and talk to our class.

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In particular, Professor Widnall was on the
Columbia Accident Investigation Board.

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And that specifically is what she's going
to talk to us about today, along with just

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general comments about how this relates back
to systems engineering, the design, operation

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of the Shuttle, and basically anything else
that you would like to say because it is your

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time.

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So thanks for being with us, Sheila.

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OK.

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Well, thank you, Jeff.

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As I understand the schedule.

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It is two hours.

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And if I don't finish, we still take a break.

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And then we come back and finish, is that
right?

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Generally, the way we've run the classes is
that we encourage students to ask questions

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while you're talking.

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Absolutely.

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That will probably slow me down a little bit.

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Up to you.

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Anyway, two hours, we'll just take it as it
comes.

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OK.

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Well, I am going to focus on the Columbia
Accident Investigation.

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I must say, and I'm sure I will say many times
as I go through it, that it was an incredible

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experience to be a member of that board.

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02:00 I get chills up my back when I see that.

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The reason I show this is for two reasons.

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First of all, I mean it was, in fact, an incredible
event.

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I am sure that all of you can remember where
you were that morning when that happened.

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I also show it because of the expression on
the face of the principal mission controller,

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Leroy Cain, when he realized that the Shuttle
was lost.

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And if the Shuttle doesn't make it to Cape
Kennedy, more or less on schedule, there is

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no engine at that point, you've got a problem.

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And so he was in a windowless box in Houston.

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And so he had no kind of external, although
all the citizens of Texas knew what had happened,

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the guys in the windowless box did not.

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So it was really an incredible emotional experience
for all of NASA as an agency.

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But then what happens after that?

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Well, fortunately the Challenger Commission
had anticipated the need for a method to call

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an accident board into being if there should
be another Shuttle accident.

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And so there were individuals who were more
or less ex-officio by rank or title waiting

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to be called.

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So, the fact of the matter is, that on Saturday,
when this all happened, the Accident Investigation

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Board was pretty much called into being at
that point.

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Now, who were the Accident Investigation Board
at that point?

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Well, they were primarily government employees.

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Not so much NASA employees.

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That clearly would have been unacceptable.

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But they were military.

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Three Air Force generals, the head of Air
Force Safety, a general from Space Command

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and a general from Material Command who had
actually served as an executive staff to the

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Challenger Commission.

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That would be General Barry.

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So, they had some very good experience.

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The board was chaired by Admiral Hal Gehman
who had been the Vice Chief of Naval Operations.

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He had also been the Chairman of the Cole
Investigation.

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I don't remember how many of you remember
the Cole Investigation, but there was a big

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explosion.

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It is in the Middle East.

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I don't remember.

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Where was it?

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Yemen.

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It was probably Yemen killing 19 people.

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And there were other government employees.

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Somebody from the National Transportation
Safety Board.

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Jim Hallock who is across the street here
at the Department of Transportation, the head

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of NASA Ames and the head of Navy Safety,
Admiral Turcotte.

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It was a smaller board than it ultimately
ended up being.

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05:30 And I'm blanking on names because I
am at that sort of age, but we had a Nobel

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Prize physicist from Stanford.

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You have to have a Nobel Prize physicist on
a Shuttle investigation.

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Also, somebody who had been looking into issues
of policy and history with respect to the

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Shuttle Program.

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And I am not getting any of these names right
so I'm not even going to try.

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Pardon?

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The class has met John Logsdon.

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John Logsdon, right.

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Thank you, John Logsdon.

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Doug Osheroff was the Stanford physicist.

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He was kind of a kick because at the beginning
he was very media shy.

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He just wouldn't talk to the media, but then
he really got into it and he went way outside

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the box, which was kind of interesting to
see how that all happened.

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In any case, we were all pulled together and
we were chartered to uncover the facts, as

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well as the actual or probable cause of the
Shuttle mishap and recommend preventative

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and other appropriate actions to preclude
the recurrence of a similar mishap.

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Yes?

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Professor Widnall, before you and Sally Ride
came on there were no females?

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That's right, no women.

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[AUDIENCE QUESTION]

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I'm not sure.

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Maybe a little bit.

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But, actually, the day of the accident, of
course everybody was saying what happened?

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That's not what I was saying.

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I was saying I wonder who is going to be on
the board.

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I actually had a strong sense that I, in fact,
would be on the board.

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Think about it.

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Gene Covert had been on the Challenger.

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I think, like you have to have Nobel Prize
physicist from Stanford, you have to have

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an aeronautical engineer from MIT.

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I think the other thing was, as Secretary
of the Air Force, I was really in charge of

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accident investigation.

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All accident investigations reported to me.

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Well, you guys don't know a lot about accident
investigations in the military.

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But there are two accident investigations
in the military.

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One called a safety investigation, which is
privileged, and you take testimony and you

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seal it.

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And I will talk about that later because we
tried to replicate some of that on the Columbia

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investigation.

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You have that one and then you have the public
investigation which you take testimony, people

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can be court-martialed.

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There is an Accident Investigation procedure
that goes on in the Air Force, and I had really

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been in charge of that.

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In addition to be an aerodynamicist, which
is always good, I was the aerodynamicist on

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the commission, I was a faculty member at
MIT, I had been Secretary of the Air Force,

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I had been in charge of accidents.

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Also, I had spent my last five years really
being interested in space, safety and mission

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assurance in space.

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I mean all these things kind of came together.

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Sally Ride was obvious.

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She was an astronaut.

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And she had been a member of the Challenger
investigation board.

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She brought that historic knowledge.

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I don't think that was the primary thing,
but it is probably good to have a balanced

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group.
See, I actually did come on board pretty much
February 18th.

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That was when I came.

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I think that one of the early issues that
we faced was our relationship with NASA.

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I think at the very beginning NASA had this
image that we would work for them.

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That was one thing.

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And the second thing was that we would find
the widget that failed and then we would leave

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leaving them to carry on.

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Not with this group of people you don't do
that, and not in this situation.

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We very clearly and fairly early established
our independence.

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We removed a number of senior NASA people
from inline responsibility for the investigation

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like Ralph Rowe.

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Again, I'm blanking on these names, but the
people who had been in charge of the program.

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Of course, some of them quit even before we
got there.

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Linda Ham was right in the middle of things.

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And we just said look, we're not questioning
your integrity but you just cannot investigate

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yourself so we need to move you aside.

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Go back to your normal responsibilities and
bring in independent people who had not been

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so deeply involved.

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And they will be the primary interface between
the Accident Investigation Board and NASA

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because we really needed to use NASA.

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I basically had very strong interactions with
the NASA aerodynamics division.

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And you will see the reasons why as we proceed.

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But at the end of my interaction with them,
which occurred at the end of June, and they

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presented their 450 page report to me with
all the calculations and studies and things

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that they had done at my direction, I basically
looked to the group and said well, I think

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I could probably give 22 PhDs at this point
to this group.

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Because we had really pressed the envelope
in terms of improving the methodology that

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we used to analyze some of the details of
kind of what I'm going to talk about.

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But, in any case, the issue of independence
was extremely important.

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And I recall a lot of meetings with a lot
of banging on the table and yelling and screaming

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before we finally got this all straightened
out.

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Admiral Gehman was an incredible leader.

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He really just did such good work.

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He had a sense of where to press and where
to stay on pad and how to interact.

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He really was a marvelous chairman.

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Incidentally, he recently served on the BRAC
Commission so he is somebody who is deeply

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involved in public service.

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And I know, from my conversations with him,
that he is a person who refuses to serve on

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any board of directors that has anything to
do with the Department of Defense because

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he does not want to give the appearance of
a conflict of interest.

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And he is just a man of incredible integrity.

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Obviously, I am a big fan.

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In any case, we proceeded then to wrap our
group together and begin our interactions

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with NASA.

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12:30 And I will show that a couple of times.

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And this happened in about 81 seconds, two
seconds after launch.

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I don't remember the mach number, but I think
it was something like 2, 2.5, something like

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that.

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This is the video.

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And you see the piece coming off and smashing.

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And I will show it again.

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That video was pretty much available the weekend
of the launch.

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There was an understanding among senior program
managers that there could be a problem.

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Now, what did we know about it?

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Well, there were video cameras at the site.

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There was a video camera located here, a video
camera located here.

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A rather shallow angle to try to do any triangulation.

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But, obviously, you use what you have.

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And so, as a result of triangulated these
two video cameras, we were able to make an

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estimate.

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It's probably also worth mentioning that there
were other video cameras but they were out

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of order.

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Right.

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And I was going to talk about that with respect
to our recommendations.

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One of our recommendations was that working
video cameras were an absolute necessity for

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launch.

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In other words, you do not launch if you don't
have a reasonable set of video cameras.

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And, by the way, you don't launch at night
because then, obviously, the video cameras

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would not be any good.

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That was one of our recommendations, what
I would call a near term recommendation, return

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to flight recommendation.

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Yes?

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[AUDIENCE QUESTION]

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I don't know the answer to that.

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Maybe you know the answer to that.

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00:14:53,079 --> 00:14:58,899
It is very interesting because I have been
doing a lot of mission assurance and space

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accident stuff.

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You almost always have a picture of a space
accident mostly because they occur on launch.

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So, in the case of the Challenger, we had
excellent video.

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We could see the little hole in the Challenger.

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We could see the stuff coming out.

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In this case, we had reasonable video of potential
impact.

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You can launch with an 8000 foot ceiling.

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In which case we would not have seen the Challenger.

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Yeah, at that point.

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I don't think it's true now.

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And I don't know how they followed up on that,
but there is also a possibility of using aircraft

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if they cannot get the video.

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In any case, it turns out to be an important
issue.

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And we made recommendations.

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What we knew about the impact was we figured
-- Of course you guys all know exactly what

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this is.

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This is the left wing underside.

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This is where the curvature changes, and so
it was kind of right in here some place, what

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we refer to as panel seven, panel eight, panel
nine of the underside of the composite material

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that surrounds the leading edge.

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Now, I don't know if you guys have studied
that composite material.

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It is a truly marvelous material.

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And I may say a little bit more about it.

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So, we sort of knew where the impact had occurred.

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Obviously, we were hampered by the shallow
angle of the video but this was our best estimate.

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The velocity was estimated to be roughly 800
feet per second.

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And that was obtained from several different
methods.

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One was a computational fluid dynamics calculation
of how would the airstream accelerate a piece

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of foam of that particular shape weighing
two pounds and having it hit?

235
00:17:05,260 --> 00:17:07,720
And the other thing was from the video itself.

236
00:17:07,720 --> 00:17:12,659
We had pretty good correlation between the
estimates based on the video and the estimates

237
00:17:12,659 --> 00:17:17,799
based on calculations using computational
fluid dynamics, so we felt pretty comfortable

238
00:17:17,799 --> 00:17:24,799
about this velocity.

239
00:17:25,939 --> 00:17:28,999
What did we know?

240
00:17:28,999 --> 00:17:31,600
When I joined the board what did we know?

241
00:17:31,600 --> 00:17:33,299
What kind of data did we have?

242
00:17:33,299 --> 00:17:40,299
Well, this particular vehicle had some telemetry
of some sensors in the wing and in other places.

243
00:17:44,909 --> 00:17:49,749
At this point in the investigation, we had
not recovered the flight data recorder.

244
00:17:49,749 --> 00:17:53,809
The other thing that is interesting is that
this is the only vehicle with a flight data

245
00:17:53,809 --> 00:17:56,100
recorder.

246
00:17:56,100 --> 00:18:01,299
This is the vehicle that was considered to
be a research and development vehicle.

247
00:18:01,299 --> 00:18:03,470
All the other vehicles were operational.

248
00:18:03,470 --> 00:18:06,600
They did not equip them with flight data recorders.

249
00:18:06,600 --> 00:18:12,019
Now, I will get back to this point when I
talk about the criticisms that we had of the

250
00:18:12,019 --> 00:18:13,479
agency.

251
00:18:13,479 --> 00:18:20,479
But we took strong exception to the notion
that the Shuttle had be declared to be operational.

252
00:18:21,940 --> 00:18:26,739
And, therefore, there was no need to continue
to study it as a research and development

253
00:18:26,739 --> 00:18:27,190
vehicle.

254
00:18:27,190 --> 00:18:31,419
It was just like a piper cub or a 747.

255
00:18:31,419 --> 00:18:38,419
That takeoff was a routine event and was not,
in fact, a major event.

256
00:18:39,379 --> 00:18:46,379
And even in this system, if a sensor failed
in the flight data recorder it was not replaced.

257
00:18:47,710 --> 00:18:52,809
So what we had on the Columbia was a wasting
asset, but at least we had an asset.

258
00:18:52,809 --> 00:18:53,940
We had a flight data recorder.

259
00:18:53,940 --> 00:18:55,669
At this point we had not found it.

260
00:18:55,669 --> 00:18:57,340
Where were these sensors located?

261
00:18:57,340 --> 00:19:00,080
Well, there were a lot of sensors in the wheel
well.

262
00:19:00,080 --> 00:19:03,139
There were some temperature sensors in this
region of the leading edge.

263
00:19:03,139 --> 00:19:07,549
There were some temperature sensors back in
here and different places.

264
00:19:07,549 --> 00:19:13,779
Now, one thing that is significant about this
is that these temperature sensors were connected

265
00:19:13,779 --> 00:19:15,629
to two different boxes.

266
00:19:15,629 --> 00:19:22,629
Actually, it looks like three but what I'm
going to focus on are these wires.

267
00:19:23,570 --> 00:19:28,600
Some of the temperature sensors were connected
to wires that were basically in this region

268
00:19:28,600 --> 00:19:30,289
and running along the wheel well.

269
00:19:30,289 --> 00:19:37,289
19:30 That's one of the reasons why that was
important and kind of how we began to hypothesize

270
00:20:05,350 --> 00:20:06,729
what had gone wrong.

271
00:20:06,729 --> 00:20:11,289
Now, you see the time was sort of 8:44.

272
00:20:11,289 --> 00:20:13,720
That is Eastern Standard, I think.

273
00:20:13,720 --> 00:20:16,059
I was shopping, actually, at the time.

274
00:20:16,059 --> 00:20:23,059
Between 8:44 and 9:00 is when all of this
took place, so we're talking about 15 minutes

275
00:20:24,210 --> 00:20:26,229
of problems.

276
00:20:26,229 --> 00:20:29,739
At 8:44 everything was fine and at 9:00 the
vehicle had crashes.

277
00:20:29,739 --> 00:20:36,739
20:30 Why did these sensors fail first?

278
00:21:02,779 --> 00:21:09,779
It was because the wire that controls these
sensors is located here in this sort of critical

279
00:21:12,049 --> 00:21:15,149
area, so that was the wire cutting.

280
00:21:15,149 --> 00:21:15,399
Yes?

281
00:21:15,330 --> 00:21:21,570
You said the other orbiters don't have flight
data recorders.

282
00:21:21,570 --> 00:21:21,820
Right.

283
00:21:21,799 --> 00:21:24,649
[AUDIENCE QUESTION]

284
00:21:24,649 --> 00:21:26,080
Commercial, that's a whole different mindset.

285
00:21:26,080 --> 00:21:26,409
Yeah.

286
00:21:26,409 --> 00:21:33,409
I mean those carry people and

287
00:21:39,960 --> 00:21:46,960
it

288
00:21:58,979 --> 00:22:01,330
is an FAA regulation.

289
00:22:01,330 --> 00:22:05,759
21:30 That the wires were being cut.

290
00:22:05,759 --> 00:22:12,759
And so we could follow the failure of these
sensors right up to the point when the vehicle,

291
00:22:16,529 --> 00:22:19,499
we had loss of signal which was at about 8:59.

292
00:22:19,499 --> 00:22:26,249
This whole thing happened fairly rapidly,
of course, and this was the trajectory of

293
00:22:26,249 --> 00:22:26,950
the vehicle.

294
00:22:26,950 --> 00:22:33,419
I will show another picture, but the whole
problem sort of started off Hawaii and then

295
00:22:33,419 --> 00:22:38,989
the vehicle began to break up here in Texas.

296
00:22:38,989 --> 00:22:42,379
This was kind of what we knew on roughly February
18th.

297
00:22:42,379 --> 00:22:46,309
In fact, that's all we knew really.

298
00:22:46,309 --> 00:22:51,960
I mean the temperature increases were not
particularly dramatic, you know, 50 degrees,

299
00:22:51,960 --> 00:22:53,039
30 degrees.

300
00:22:53,039 --> 00:22:55,599
That's not really interesting.

301
00:22:55,599 --> 00:22:58,099
What was interesting is the wires were cut.

302
00:22:58,099 --> 00:23:01,820
That was more interesting.

303
00:23:01,820 --> 00:23:04,340
OK.

304
00:23:04,340 --> 00:23:09,599
We began to look for the debris.

305
00:23:09,599 --> 00:23:16,599
We had people essentially marching over the
State of Texas about that far apart.

306
00:23:16,669 --> 00:23:23,669
It was an extremely expensive thing, but we
recovered about 40% of the material that came

307
00:23:24,570 --> 00:23:25,220
from Columbia.

308
00:23:25,220 --> 00:23:29,519
And, of course, it is all these little pieces
of stuff that fell on the ground.

309
00:23:29,519 --> 00:23:32,289
Fortunately, it fell in a fairly rural area.

310
00:23:32,289 --> 00:23:33,229
Nobody was hurt.

311
00:23:33,229 --> 00:23:38,489
I don't think there was any damage to structures
or anything like that.

312
00:23:38,489 --> 00:23:41,460
And we were able to recover a great deal of
it.

313
00:23:41,460 --> 00:23:47,119
A lot of it, because I actually looked at
the weather radar, was very small particles

314
00:23:47,119 --> 00:23:49,359
that actually floated into the Gulf of Mexico.

315
00:23:49,359 --> 00:23:52,749
I mean you could see it on the weather radar,
the NEXRAD system.

316
00:23:52,749 --> 00:23:54,289
You guys all know what the weather radar is.

317
00:23:54,289 --> 00:23:59,149
But you could see the particles streaming
into the Gulf of Mexico.

318
00:23:59,149 --> 00:24:04,139
I think a lot of it was just sort of vaporized.

319
00:24:04,139 --> 00:24:09,849
And there is a footprint of the debris.

320
00:24:09,849 --> 00:24:14,229
And we did a lot of searching in that area.

321
00:24:14,229 --> 00:24:15,700
We tried to search upstream.

322
00:24:15,700 --> 00:24:21,440
We were really trying to find the earliest
pieces of debris, but these fell down onesies

323
00:24:21,440 --> 00:24:25,769
and twosies in really strange places like
in mountains in Utah and stuff like that.

324
00:24:25,769 --> 00:24:30,279
So we were never really successful, although
some of these had been tracked on radar by

325
00:24:30,279 --> 00:24:32,989
the FAA.

326
00:24:32,989 --> 00:24:38,279
And there is the debris collection, a hanger
down at Kennedy.

327
00:24:38,279 --> 00:24:42,460
This is pretty standard stuff for a commercial
aircraft, I think you all know that.

328
00:24:42,460 --> 00:24:49,460
When you have an accident, what you try to
do is recover the debris and reconstruct the

329
00:24:49,729 --> 00:24:51,070
vehicle.

330
00:24:51,070 --> 00:24:53,450
This debris was particularly interesting.

331
00:24:53,450 --> 00:25:00,009
And I don't know if I have a graph later,
but let me talk a little bit about the temperatures

332
00:25:00,009 --> 00:25:02,029
involved.

333
00:25:02,029 --> 00:25:07,940
We're talking about reentry of a damaged vehicle
at mach 25.

334
00:25:07,940 --> 00:25:13,229
Now, of course, that is the course that I
tried to get out of when I was a graduate

335
00:25:13,229 --> 00:25:20,229
student, was that high temperature stuff where
the gas begins to ionize and dissociate and,

336
00:25:20,539 --> 00:25:23,340
you know, all that enthalpy stuff.

337
00:25:23,340 --> 00:25:27,359
I really tried to avoid that, so I got paid
back.

338
00:25:27,359 --> 00:25:30,820
Anyway, that is the subject of high-speed
gas dynamics.

339
00:25:30,820 --> 00:25:32,769
And so I had to take a refresher course.

340
00:25:32,769 --> 00:25:36,559
And Judd Barren, one of our faculty members,
was extremely helpful.

341
00:25:36,559 --> 00:25:38,969
I used to go over to his house on Saturdays
and he would give me references.

342
00:25:38,969 --> 00:25:45,969
But, roughly speaking, if the gas didn't dissociate,
the temperatures on reentry at the leading

343
00:25:47,129 --> 00:25:52,710
edge of this vehicle would give off 50,000
degrees Fahrenheit, which is really pretty

344
00:25:52,710 --> 00:25:54,210
hot.

345
00:25:54,210 --> 00:25:59,830
The fact that the gas does dissociate -- Ionization
at this mach number is not that important.

346
00:25:59,830 --> 00:26:04,210
It interferes with the radio signals but does
not, in fact, absorb a lot of energy.

347
00:26:04,210 --> 00:26:10,469
The gas is slightly ionized 1%, something
like that, 2%, but not enough to be a big

348
00:26:10,469 --> 00:26:11,919
energy issue.

349
00:26:11,919 --> 00:26:17,659
But the dissociation of oxygen, dissociation
of nitrogen is an extremely important phenomenon.

350
00:26:17,659 --> 00:26:22,799
And, because of that, the gas temperature
is roughly 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit which

351
00:26:22,799 --> 00:26:25,440
is a lot better than 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

352
00:26:25,440 --> 00:26:26,570
So that makes a big difference.

353
00:26:26,570 --> 00:26:31,710
Let's talk about the leading edge material.

354
00:26:31,710 --> 00:26:36,129
The leading edge material is, in fact, an
incredible material.

355
00:26:36,129 --> 00:26:39,070
It is a carbon-carbon composite material.

356
00:26:39,070 --> 00:26:46,070
It is about a quarter of an inch thick and
it can withstand a temperature of 3200 degrees

357
00:26:46,429 --> 00:26:47,499
Fahrenheit.

358
00:26:47,499 --> 00:26:54,139
And the Shuttle was conceived in, what are
we talking about here, '70?

359
00:26:54,139 --> 00:26:58,649
Yeah, '69, '70.

360
00:26:58,649 --> 00:27:00,919
We don't have much better materials today.

361
00:27:00,919 --> 00:27:07,239
We might be able to go to 3400 degrees Fahrenheit
instead of 3200 degrees Fahrenheit, so we've

362
00:27:07,239 --> 00:27:10,539
made some progress, but this is a marvelous
material.

363
00:27:10,539 --> 00:27:16,190
Now, how in the world, with the gas temperature
of 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, can you use

364
00:27:16,190 --> 00:27:19,149
a material of 3200 degrees Fahrenheit?

365
00:27:19,149 --> 00:27:23,009
Well, that's the other part that I tried to
avoid as a graduate student.

366
00:27:23,009 --> 00:27:24,629
It is called radiation.

367
00:27:24,629 --> 00:27:25,879
And what is it?

368
00:27:25,879 --> 00:27:32,200
The Stefen-Boltzmann Law of Radiation, T to
the fourth.

369
00:27:32,200 --> 00:27:35,519
And you could write it down on the back of
an envelope and you can calculate it.

370
00:27:35,519 --> 00:27:42,519
And it turns out that the gas coming in does
heat the leading edge up, but then the leading

371
00:27:42,589 --> 00:27:47,299
edge radiates out the right amount of energy
to basically have an equilibrium temperature

372
00:27:47,299 --> 00:27:52,119
of the order of magnitude of, say, 2800 degrees
or maybe 3000 degrees.

373
00:27:52,119 --> 00:27:59,119
It is comfortable below its maximum temperature,
but this is obviously a very dangerous situation.

374
00:28:04,719 --> 00:28:10,619
In the early days of the Shuttle Program they
made some tests of this material, its ability

375
00:28:10,619 --> 00:28:14,149
to withstand impact.

376
00:28:14,149 --> 00:28:19,669
They shot BBs at it and made quarter inch
holes in it.

377
00:28:19,669 --> 00:28:21,710
And then I'm a little fuzzy on this part.

378
00:28:21,710 --> 00:28:27,179
They may have tested those quarter inch holes
in an arc jet to see would they ablate, how

379
00:28:27,179 --> 00:28:31,409
would they behave and would they grow?

380
00:28:31,409 --> 00:28:36,249
And I think at that point they felt comfortable
that they could withstand the impact of a

381
00:28:36,249 --> 00:28:41,549
BB and not be destroyed.

382
00:28:41,549 --> 00:28:43,029
So that is an important set of issues.

383
00:28:43,029 --> 00:28:49,759
I guess the other thing I want to point out
is if you have a good solid continuous edge

384
00:28:49,759 --> 00:28:54,039
you can support a temperature of 3200 degrees
because of radiation.

385
00:28:54,039 --> 00:28:59,639
But if you get a hole in that leading edge
then the gas that goes into the cavity behind

386
00:28:59,639 --> 00:29:02,399
the leading edge is your old friend 10,000
degrees.

387
00:29:02,399 --> 00:29:09,399
But there is no radiation balance to bring
you back down to 3200 degrees so you have

388
00:29:09,509 --> 00:29:16,509
a 7000 to 10,000 degree arc jet coming through
any major size hole in the leading edge of

389
00:29:17,989 --> 00:29:18,809
the shuttle.

390
00:29:18,809 --> 00:29:20,669
And that is, of course, exactly what happened.

391
00:29:20,669 --> 00:29:25,419
And, to remind people, 10,000 degrees is the
surface temperature of the sun.

392
00:29:25,419 --> 00:29:26,399
Oh, it's very hot.

393
00:29:26,399 --> 00:29:27,479
Yes.

394
00:29:27,479 --> 00:29:31,879
There is no material that will withstand this.

395
00:29:31,879 --> 00:29:38,499
And this happens routinely in shuttle operations
is that the shuttle reenters at mach 25 and

396
00:29:38,499 --> 00:29:41,589
the temperatures of the gas surrounding the
shuttle are about 10,000 degrees.

397
00:29:41,589 --> 00:29:48,589
And we've successfully gone through how many
shuttle flights in total?

398
00:29:49,259 --> 00:29:53,509
114.

399
00:29:53,509 --> 00:29:56,409
It's a sporty course.

400
00:29:56,409 --> 00:30:03,179
Now, I want to talk about something else we
knew before we found the flight data recorder.

401
00:30:03,179 --> 00:30:08,460
And this was of great interest to me for lots
of different reasons, but one of the things

402
00:30:08,460 --> 00:30:15,460
we were able to do is infer the aerodynamics
of the damaged vehicle by looking at what

403
00:30:16,440 --> 00:30:22,460
the Flight Control System had to do in order
to keep the Shuttle perfectly on its pre-assigned

404
00:30:22,460 --> 00:30:24,639
flight path.

405
00:30:24,639 --> 00:30:31,639
In other words, until very late in the flight
the Shuttle was doing exactly what it was

406
00:30:31,979 --> 00:30:32,789
programmed to do.

407
00:30:32,789 --> 00:30:38,719
But it was working a lot harder and in very
off nominal ways.

408
00:30:38,719 --> 00:30:42,889
And we had to back this out.

409
00:30:42,889 --> 00:30:47,029
Now, this is almost like a zero over zero
calculation so it's a little sensitive, a

410
00:30:47,029 --> 00:30:50,229
little hard to do, but this was something
the aerodynamics group did.

411
00:30:50,229 --> 00:30:52,200
And I worked really closely with these guys.

412
00:30:52,200 --> 00:30:54,499
I have great admiration for them.

413
00:30:54,499 --> 00:31:01,399
They were able to back out the off nominal
roll moments and the off nominal yaw moments

414
00:31:01,399 --> 00:31:04,339
of the Shuttle during this final reentry.

415
00:31:04,339 --> 00:31:11,339
And I made this little schematic of kind of
where were they when some of these things

416
00:31:11,450 --> 00:31:18,450
happened in terms of the Coast of California
and their flight over New Mexico and down

417
00:31:19,299 --> 00:31:21,209
to loss of control over Texas.

418
00:31:21,209 --> 00:31:28,209
Before I do that, let me just add to my previous
remark that you almost always have a picture

419
00:31:28,809 --> 00:31:30,969
of a space accident.

420
00:31:30,969 --> 00:31:35,179
Now, normally that's because space accidents
occur on launch.

421
00:31:35,179 --> 00:31:40,149
This is a remarkable photo of a space accident.

422
00:31:40,149 --> 00:31:47,149
This photo was taken by modestly my guys at
Kirtland Air Force Base.

423
00:31:47,209 --> 00:31:50,879
And basically they had been working with optics.

424
00:31:50,879 --> 00:31:52,249
That is basically their business.

425
00:31:52,249 --> 00:31:59,249
And so Saturday morning IBM personal computer,
fooling around with some little telescope

426
00:31:59,739 --> 00:32:02,589
that they had been developing for tracking
things.

427
00:32:02,589 --> 00:32:09,589
32:00 Yeah, this is interesting.

428
00:32:31,649 --> 00:32:38,649
This is a bulge at the leading edge showing
some distortion of the shock shape due to

429
00:32:40,330 --> 00:32:41,859
vehicle damage.

430
00:32:41,859 --> 00:32:46,979
And I obviously consider this photo to be
extremely probative.

431
00:32:46,979 --> 00:32:53,979
And also there is a small amount of debris
that has got some optical signature to it

432
00:32:54,690 --> 00:33:01,690
that is sort of streaming out of that general
area indicating -- I mean there are all sorts

433
00:33:02,209 --> 00:33:05,889
of things going on in this vehicle, but one
of the things that was going on was the melting

434
00:33:05,889 --> 00:33:11,429
of aluminum, the vaporization of aluminum
and the combustion of aluminum because aluminum

435
00:33:11,429 --> 00:33:13,009
will burn.

436
00:33:13,009 --> 00:33:17,309
I don't know how many of you know it but aluminum
is something you add to rocket engines in

437
00:33:17,309 --> 00:33:19,309
order to get higher temperatures.

438
00:33:19,309 --> 00:33:21,269
It burns when it gets hot enough.

439
00:33:21,269 --> 00:33:23,309
It can be a very dangerous material.

440
00:33:23,309 --> 00:33:28,669
In any case, we suspect there was a lot of
aluminum combustion going on while this thing

441
00:33:28,669 --> 00:33:29,089
was happening.

442
00:33:29,089 --> 00:33:33,339
Had there been, for reference, any similar
photographs?

443
00:33:33,339 --> 00:33:33,879
No.

444
00:33:33,879 --> 00:33:37,599
So we didn't have a nominal baseline.

445
00:33:37,599 --> 00:33:39,099
No, as far as I know.

446
00:33:39,099 --> 00:33:41,169
I actually don't know the answer to that question.

447
00:33:41,169 --> 00:33:48,169
I know, because I know the guys who took the
photo and I know their boss, that they were

448
00:33:48,570 --> 00:33:52,639
doing it for a very specific reason that had
nothing to do with anything they had done

449
00:33:52,639 --> 00:33:53,369
in the past.

450
00:33:53,369 --> 00:33:57,909
They were trying to develop a little telescope
to track things because that's what they do

451
00:33:57,909 --> 00:34:01,479
at Kirtland, is they work with optics.

452
00:34:01,479 --> 00:34:04,299
But I don't know whether anybody has tried
to do it.

453
00:34:04,299 --> 00:34:10,899
I suspect their level of precision is a little
greater than the average citizen trying to

454
00:34:10,899 --> 00:34:14,820
take a picture of the Shuttle coming in.

455
00:34:14,820 --> 00:34:17,030
But this was not a really high powered telescope.

456
00:34:17,030 --> 00:34:19,320
I mean they had some really high powered telescope
at Kirtland.

457
00:34:19,320 --> 00:34:22,418
This was just a small one.

458
00:34:22,418 --> 00:34:26,829
Anyway, I don't know the answer to that.

459
00:34:26,829 --> 00:34:32,909
Well, I think what we're looking at here is
the glowing of this 10,000 degree envelope

460
00:34:32,909 --> 00:34:34,129
that surrounds the Shuttle.

461
00:34:34,129 --> 00:34:40,819
That is what we're looking at, is we're looking
at the radiation, basically, from the gas

462
00:34:40,819 --> 00:34:41,760
surrounding the Shuttle.

463
00:34:41,760 --> 00:34:43,839
It was normal.

464
00:34:43,839 --> 00:34:50,839
But, of course, this was 8:50 in the morning
Boston time.

465
00:34:53,069 --> 00:34:57,519
This is February so it probably was dark in
New Mexico.

466
00:34:57,519 --> 00:35:02,500
That is kind of the picture that we go, which
I think is really neat.

467
00:35:02,500 --> 00:35:08,670
This is the trajectory, but this is the backing
out of the off nominal moments.

468
00:35:08,670 --> 00:35:13,079
Now, let me talk about the yaw moments just
to give you a feeling for what does all this

469
00:35:13,079 --> 00:35:15,299
mean.

470
00:35:15,299 --> 00:35:22,299
I contend that off nominal aerodynamic forces
are an indication of external damage to the

471
00:35:22,589 --> 00:35:22,839
vehicle.
That is basically what it is.

472
00:35:25,250 --> 00:35:31,160
The vehicle was flying because its reaction
jets were moving and doing all sorts of things.

473
00:35:31,160 --> 00:35:36,760
The aerodynamic surfaces were virtually useless
at these dynamic pressures.

474
00:35:36,760 --> 00:35:41,950
This was a reaction jet controlled vehicle,
but we knew how much force the reaction jets

475
00:35:41,950 --> 00:35:45,630
were putting out so we could do the vehicle
aerodynamics.

476
00:35:45,630 --> 00:35:47,500
Let me talk about the yaw moment.

477
00:35:47,500 --> 00:35:53,869
What we have here is that as the accident
began the yaw moment became negative, kind

478
00:35:53,869 --> 00:35:57,720
of flattened out for a little while and then
became very strongly negative.

479
00:35:57,720 --> 00:35:58,500
What is yaw moment?

480
00:35:58,500 --> 00:36:02,910
Yaw moment is the force turning the vehicle
this way.

481
00:36:02,910 --> 00:36:08,869
If I have a damaged left wing, what is my
yaw moment going to be and why?

482
00:36:08,869 --> 00:36:14,390
Well, I'm going to have increased drag on
this wing because I've got a big chunk out

483
00:36:14,390 --> 00:36:20,130
of the leading edge, I've got a disturbed
shock, I've got all sorts of stagnation pressure

484
00:36:20,130 --> 00:36:25,069
in this region where in normal circumstances
it would be smoothly flowing.

485
00:36:25,069 --> 00:36:29,279
I've got increased drag on this wing, and
so that's going to drive me this way which

486
00:36:29,279 --> 00:36:30,319
is exactly what you see.

487
00:36:30,319 --> 00:36:32,839
That is off nominal yaw moment.

488
00:36:32,839 --> 00:36:39,230
Roll moment is a little stranger.

489
00:36:39,230 --> 00:36:46,230
Basically, as the drag increases, and you
probably lose lift so your roll moment begins

490
00:36:46,710 --> 00:36:51,760
to go like that, you have decreasing roll
moment.

491
00:36:51,760 --> 00:36:58,760
This was a bit of a mystery because basically
what it said is you lose roll moment, but

492
00:37:01,450 --> 00:37:05,420
then all of a sudden your roll moment increases.

493
00:37:05,420 --> 00:37:09,130
That is a problem that only an aeroelastician
could solve.

494
00:37:09,130 --> 00:37:12,640
I happened to be an aeroelastician.

495
00:37:12,640 --> 00:37:15,349
Do you know what I'm talking about?

496
00:37:15,349 --> 00:37:22,349
If you stick your hand out of the car window
and you turn it slightly what happens?

497
00:37:24,000 --> 00:37:24,960
It goes up.

498
00:37:24,960 --> 00:37:27,250
And it may also turn some more.

499
00:37:27,250 --> 00:37:34,250
In other words, if you lose the leading edge
spar of a wing, you lose its resistance to

500
00:37:35,819 --> 00:37:38,150
torsion.

501
00:37:38,150 --> 00:37:44,799
Now, we don't have all the data we need to
prove that that's what was going on.

502
00:37:44,799 --> 00:37:51,329
But I believe a strong hypothesis that we
lost the strength in the leading edge spar

503
00:37:51,329 --> 00:37:55,319
and the leading edge spar tipped up.

504
00:37:55,319 --> 00:37:58,789
And obviously the lift would increase because
the angle-of-attack was increasing.

505
00:37:58,789 --> 00:38:03,369
But this was a very, very puzzling and very
interesting phenomenon.

506
00:38:03,369 --> 00:38:08,579
But, in any case, what happened is that both
the roll moments and the yaw moments got too

507
00:38:08,579 --> 00:38:15,069
strong for the control system of the vehicle
which, again, was just the reaction control

508
00:38:15,069 --> 00:38:19,019
jets that are on the area around the vertical
tail.

509
00:38:19,019 --> 00:38:25,160
Then, ultimately, the thing went into a spin,
lost control and then, of course, the vehicle

510
00:38:25,160 --> 00:38:28,730
was lost, began to break apart.

511
00:38:28,730 --> 00:38:31,670
This was a very interesting set of data.

512
00:38:31,670 --> 00:38:37,029
And, as I say, when we started, this was pretty
much all we had.

513
00:38:37,029 --> 00:38:41,769
There was a pivotal moment, and it occurred
sort of at the end of March, about March 27th.

514
00:38:41,769 --> 00:38:45,160
Remember, the accident occurred February 1st.

515
00:38:45,160 --> 00:38:46,599
We found the flight data recorder.

516
00:38:46,599 --> 00:38:53,579
And we found it by these guys walking across
the field looking for stuff.

517
00:38:53,579 --> 00:38:56,190
And the flight data recorder was found.

518
00:38:56,190 --> 00:39:03,190
And it was in pretty good condition considering
it had done a reentry at mach 25.

519
00:39:05,200 --> 00:39:08,710
We were able to recover the data from the
flight data recorder.

520
00:39:08,710 --> 00:39:10,670
I think we pretty much got it all.

521
00:39:10,670 --> 00:39:17,390
At that point we had hundreds and hundreds
of data points.

522
00:39:17,390 --> 00:39:24,390
And I would say, at this point, NASA's attitude
changed.

523
00:39:25,089 --> 00:39:31,589
I think up until this point there had been
a certain level of denial about the accident,

524
00:39:31,589 --> 00:39:33,980
about what caused it.

525
00:39:33,980 --> 00:39:36,109
Maybe it was a micro meteorite.

526
00:39:36,109 --> 00:39:42,049
Maybe it was some unexplained system failure.

527
00:39:42,049 --> 00:39:48,109
They were not really sure that we were pursuing
the right road until the flight data recorder

528
00:39:48,109 --> 00:39:49,299
was found.

529
00:39:49,299 --> 00:39:51,039
And I think maybe that's to NASA's credit.

530
00:39:51,039 --> 00:39:53,420
NASA is data driven.

531
00:39:53,420 --> 00:39:57,400
And when they began to see the data and they
began to see how well the data correlated

532
00:39:57,400 --> 00:40:03,650
with the hypothesis and the models then they
hopped right onboard and did a tremendous

533
00:40:03,650 --> 00:40:10,650
amount of work to try to help us unscramble
all of this and come to a hypothesis.

534
00:40:11,920 --> 00:40:13,519
What kind of data did we have?

535
00:40:13,519 --> 00:40:19,130
Well, this is a picture of the leading edge
spar, this big thing here.

536
00:40:19,130 --> 00:40:26,130
And this is a picture of the hypothesis sort
of about a piece of foam taking out a fairly

537
00:40:27,259 --> 00:40:34,259
large piece of this carbon-carbon fiber and
allowing hot gas to enter into the region

538
00:40:35,369 --> 00:40:37,650
behind the leading edge.

539
00:40:37,650 --> 00:40:41,460
This leading edge region is, as you can see
by the picture, sort of hollow.

540
00:40:41,460 --> 00:40:42,920
There isn't anything back there.

541
00:40:42,920 --> 00:40:49,920
There is a layer of insulation covering this,
but that is because of the radiation.

542
00:40:50,019 --> 00:40:54,519
In other words, because this, in fact, is
3200 degrees.

543
00:40:54,519 --> 00:40:56,039
It radiates in both directions.

544
00:40:56,039 --> 00:40:59,970
And so there is a layer of insulation here
to protect against radiation.

545
00:40:59,970 --> 00:41:05,240
But that insulation will not protect against
the equivalent of an arc jet.

546
00:41:05,240 --> 00:41:10,930
That is just, again, burrowing and blasting
it.

547
00:41:10,930 --> 00:41:17,930
It was fairly quickly that this gas just blew
a hole through the leading edge spar.

548
00:41:22,690 --> 00:41:24,339
How did we know that?

549
00:41:24,339 --> 00:41:25,480
Well, it's kind of interesting.

550
00:41:25,480 --> 00:41:26,730
Let's look at one of these.

551
00:41:26,730 --> 00:41:30,490
We had all these wires back here.

552
00:41:30,490 --> 00:41:32,400
And we had these temperature sensors.

553
00:41:32,400 --> 00:41:33,869
Let's just pick one temperature sensor.

554
00:41:33,869 --> 00:41:36,480
I didn't even know where it was located, but
it was not located in this region.

555
00:41:36,480 --> 00:41:39,940
It was located back someplace else.

556
00:41:39,940 --> 00:41:45,359
So we looked at the temperature sensor and
compared it with earlier flights where the

557
00:41:45,359 --> 00:41:49,259
earlier flights would show this behavior and
this temperature sensor kind of did this.

558
00:41:49,259 --> 00:41:55,150
It began to go up and then all of a sudden
we lost it.

559
00:41:55,150 --> 00:41:55,500
What happened?

560
00:41:55,500 --> 00:42:02,500
42:00 The
picture begins to emerge of wire bundles being
cut, of gas entering here, of this wire bundle

561
00:43:03,369 --> 00:43:10,029
being cut to the sensor of this, in fact,
entire region beginning to sort of fill up

562
00:43:10,029 --> 00:43:17,029
with extremely hot gas, 7000 degrees roughly,
eventually entering the wheel well, although,

563
00:43:17,519 --> 00:43:20,230
that was later in the flight.

564
00:43:20,230 --> 00:43:26,190
We did have some indication of the gas in
the wheel well because of the temperatures

565
00:43:26,190 --> 00:43:30,940
and the loss of sensors.

566
00:43:30,940 --> 00:43:37,940
Because of this the focus turned to the question
of this what we call RCC, which is this composite

567
00:43:38,660 --> 00:43:41,140
material that surrounds the leading edge.

568
00:43:41,140 --> 00:43:43,039
And where did we find it?

569
00:43:43,039 --> 00:43:44,269
And we found a lot of it.

570
00:43:44,269 --> 00:43:49,190
I mean we found it all along in Texas.

571
00:43:49,190 --> 00:43:54,799
The other thing we were able to look at, with
respect to the RCC, is its pattern of erosion.

572
00:43:54,799 --> 00:43:59,809
I mean this RCC was kind of flopping out in
the breeze here at roughly 7000 to 10,000

573
00:43:59,809 --> 00:44:01,019
degrees.

574
00:44:01,019 --> 00:44:05,950
And so it was a material that was being effectively
subject to an arc jet.

575
00:44:05,950 --> 00:44:09,440
And, if you took a material like that and
stuck it in an arc jet, it probably would

576
00:44:09,440 --> 00:44:16,440
ablate and it would maybe sharpen up and you'd
have maybe little pointy edges where it had

577
00:44:16,829 --> 00:44:18,579
ablated.

578
00:44:18,579 --> 00:44:21,769
And so we looked at the part that was particularly
eroded.

579
00:44:21,769 --> 00:44:23,210
And that would be the yellow stuff.

580
00:44:23,210 --> 00:44:30,210
And we found that upstream of the stuff that
was more put together, the rest of the RCC

581
00:44:33,220 --> 00:44:33,849
from the wing.

582
00:44:33,849 --> 00:44:39,430
And, from the right wing, we found the right
wing downstream of the left wing which means

583
00:44:39,430 --> 00:44:42,089
that the left wing came off first.

584
00:44:42,089 --> 00:44:49,089
Now, the image that emerges from this is hole
in the leading edge, material coming off,

585
00:44:50,200 --> 00:44:56,960
but gas flow going down this what some people
called the "chunnel." I never liked that term,

586
00:44:56,960 --> 00:45:00,980
but it's a big open cavity.

587
00:45:00,980 --> 00:45:06,299
Gas flowing down this open cavity and simply
destroying all the fittings that held the

588
00:45:06,299 --> 00:45:07,690
RCC onto the wing.

589
00:45:07,690 --> 00:45:10,990
I mean the screws and the brackets and all
of that.

590
00:45:10,990 --> 00:45:13,890
And, again, gas is coming in.

591
00:45:13,890 --> 00:45:15,920
And the wing just unzips.

592
00:45:15,920 --> 00:45:18,559
All this stuff just kind of unzips and falls
off.

593
00:45:18,559 --> 00:45:23,309
And, of course, that is where we find it,
just lying on the ground.

594
00:45:23,309 --> 00:45:28,339
It all unzipped and fell off.

595
00:45:28,339 --> 00:45:29,480
What did we actually find?

596
00:45:29,480 --> 00:45:36,480
45:30 What we had to do, however, is to construct
analysis using a whole lot of different disciplines.

597
00:46:14,069 --> 00:46:21,069
And we had to be able to analyze, according
to the rules of that discipline, and line

598
00:46:21,309 --> 00:46:24,049
them all up for consistency.

599
00:46:24,049 --> 00:46:31,049
And I would say that we never found a theoretical
or experimental result that was in conflict

600
00:46:32,299 --> 00:46:34,839
with our basic hypothesis.

601
00:46:34,839 --> 00:46:37,440
And that everything sort of lined up.

602
00:46:37,440 --> 00:46:44,440
I was more or less in charge of the aerodynamic
analysis, as well as my favorite subject thermodynamic

603
00:46:45,930 --> 00:46:46,759
analysis.

604
00:46:46,759 --> 00:46:51,799
I never liked that part either, but the whole
question of heat transfer and how fast these

605
00:46:51,799 --> 00:46:54,900
materials would melt, I was pretty much involved
in that.

606
00:46:54,900 --> 00:47:01,099
I may have another picture later, but let
me just show you some pictures that we had.

607
00:47:01,099 --> 00:47:04,099
There is a hypersonic wind tunnel down at
Langley.

608
00:47:04,099 --> 00:47:07,539
And we did a lot of tests in that wind tunnel.

609
00:47:07,539 --> 00:47:11,890
One of the things we did was we had a score
of wind tunnel models.

610
00:47:11,890 --> 00:47:14,599
They were about this big.

611
00:47:14,599 --> 00:47:17,250
But we took chunks out of their leading edge.

612
00:47:17,250 --> 00:47:19,450
We have our wind tunnel model which was the
nominal shuttle.

613
00:47:19,450 --> 00:47:23,849
And then we'd have a nominal shuttle with
panel six missing and then a nominal shuttle

614
00:47:23,849 --> 00:47:27,920
with panel seven missing and a nominal shuttle
with panel eight missing.

615
00:47:27,920 --> 00:47:34,920
47:30 And then you see the green.

616
00:48:01,549 --> 00:48:03,660
That is probably a little intermediate temperature.

617
00:48:03,660 --> 00:48:05,170
And then you see the blue.

618
00:48:05,170 --> 00:48:06,420
That is probably lower.

619
00:48:06,420 --> 00:48:11,349
But, if you look at this, being an aerodynamicist,
I can tell you where that vehicle gets hot.

620
00:48:11,349 --> 00:48:15,240
It gets hot near stagnation points and near
leading edges.

621
00:48:15,240 --> 00:48:18,559
And especially at the stagnation point on
the vehicle.

622
00:48:18,559 --> 00:48:22,910
You can put a wind tunnel model like that
in a hypersonic tunnel painted with this special

623
00:48:22,910 --> 00:48:26,589
paint, and you can take pictures of it and
you can get that temperature distribution.

624
00:48:26,589 --> 00:48:32,920
Here is my little figure of aerodynamic forces.

625
00:48:32,920 --> 00:48:39,339
We had all sorts of data from both the flight
data recorder and the telemetry that gave

626
00:48:39,339 --> 00:48:42,170
us a pretty good indication of the timeline.

627
00:48:42,170 --> 00:48:46,640
If any of you ever want to come into my office,
I have this enormous poster.

628
00:48:46,640 --> 00:48:53,640
It's like ten feet long which basically shows
the timeline of the Shuttle reentry with all

629
00:48:54,099 --> 00:49:00,559
kinds of the individual data bits, the temperature
distributions and all the things that kind

630
00:49:00,559 --> 00:49:02,589
of we could fit on this enormous poster.

631
00:49:02,589 --> 00:49:05,369
That is kind of what we were trying to do.

632
00:49:05,369 --> 00:49:06,829
We looked at the debris.

633
00:49:06,829 --> 00:49:09,890
We looked at forensic analysis of the debris.

634
00:49:09,890 --> 00:49:10,910
Where was it ablated?

635
00:49:10,910 --> 00:49:13,749
What was its chemical composition?

636
00:49:13,749 --> 00:49:16,499
Did we see melted Incanol?

637
00:49:16,499 --> 00:49:21,049
I mean we saw all these things and were able
to figure it out.

638
00:49:21,049 --> 00:49:24,359
Well, we knew what temperature Incanol melts
at so, therefore, the temperature on this

639
00:49:24,359 --> 00:49:28,529
particular piece was, I don't know what the
temperature of Incanol is, but let me say

640
00:49:28,529 --> 00:49:29,789
1200 degrees.

641
00:49:29,789 --> 00:49:36,789
It would be that kind of
material.

642
00:49:44,619 --> 00:49:51,619
49:30 And you don't replace this material.

643
00:50:00,029 --> 00:50:03,460
This material is the same material that was
used on the original shuttles.

644
00:50:03,460 --> 00:50:09,049
Every time it flies it loses a little bit
of stuff through vaporization.

645
00:50:09,049 --> 00:50:15,019
And so then they kind of tried to paint it
again, but I think our hypothesis is it just

646
00:50:15,019 --> 00:50:19,240
gets weaker and weaker as it is being used.

647
00:50:19,240 --> 00:50:22,009
And the problem is it is hardly being made
anymore.

648
00:50:22,009 --> 00:50:25,259
It is material that was all made at the beginning
of the program.

649
00:50:25,259 --> 00:50:26,740
It is not being made anymore.

650
00:50:26,740 --> 00:50:28,029
It is very expensive.

651
00:50:28,029 --> 00:50:34,319
It is not a material that is easy to get.

652
00:50:34,319 --> 00:50:37,579
And, in fact, that became an issue for us
because one of the things I will show is we

653
00:50:37,579 --> 00:50:43,049
wanted to do a full scale mockup of the leading
edge and we wanted to test it with a piece

654
00:50:43,049 --> 00:50:45,259
of foam going 800 feet per second.

655
00:50:45,259 --> 00:50:46,480
Now, why would we want to do that?

656
00:50:46,480 --> 00:50:50,930
Well, that is exactly the test conditions
that we wanted to simulate.

657
00:50:50,930 --> 00:50:57,930
Well, that is not only expensive but this
material just doesn't exist.

658
00:50:58,170 --> 00:50:59,710
I don't remember where we got the material.

659
00:50:59,710 --> 00:51:02,740
We probably took it off of Endeavor or something
like that.

660
00:51:02,740 --> 00:51:09,740
But, I mean, this was a big deal that we should
run this test because the material is very

661
00:51:10,150 --> 00:51:11,390
precious.

662
00:51:11,390 --> 00:51:15,269
But, anyway, we banged on the table and said
that we were going to do this and that they

663
00:51:15,269 --> 00:51:16,809
had to support us.

664
00:51:16,809 --> 00:51:18,180
We did the wind tunnel test.

665
00:51:18,180 --> 00:51:25,180
I have a question about that test.

666
00:51:27,589 --> 00:51:28,480
Yes?

667
00:51:28,480 --> 00:51:35,480
My reaction, as an outsider, when they published
the pictures of the holes on that test was

668
00:51:50,650 --> 00:51:52,839
wow.

669
00:51:52,839 --> 00:51:55,029
Wow.

670
00:51:55,029 --> 00:51:57,999
That was my reaction, too.

671
00:51:57,999 --> 00:52:00,779
Yeah, my reaction was wow.

672
00:52:00,779 --> 00:52:07,779
51:30 Anyway, we did the tests and we studied
timelines, we conducted arc jet tests, we

673
00:52:07,880 --> 00:52:12,190
did forensic analysis of debris, both chemical
and sort of physical.

674
00:52:12,190 --> 00:52:15,499
We did a lot of different in-depth analysis.

675
00:52:15,499 --> 00:52:22,499
The test itself, in addition to being expensive
and working with material that was really

676
00:52:23,460 --> 00:52:28,970
hard to pull together enough of this material
to run the test was also emotional.

677
00:52:28,970 --> 00:52:35,970
It was also an emotional event for the people
involved.

678
00:52:37,119 --> 00:52:44,119
And just very late in the game NASA said we
are prepared to accept that the foam put a

679
00:52:45,779 --> 00:52:49,619
hole in the leading edge so don't run the
test.

680
00:52:49,619 --> 00:52:56,039
And we said well, you may be prepared to accept
his but somewhere down in your organization

681
00:52:56,039 --> 00:53:01,140
is someone who doesn't believe that, and this
test is for him.

682
00:53:01,140 --> 00:53:02,170
I actually met that guy.

683
00:53:02,170 --> 00:53:05,640
I mean there are people in NASA who do not
believe this.

684
00:53:05,640 --> 00:53:12,640
So maybe what makes sense is let me show the
movies and then we will have our break.

685
00:53:14,180 --> 00:53:20,690
Here is the wow.

686
00:53:20,690 --> 00:53:24,519
Can I hear it from the class?

687
00:53:24,519 --> 00:53:24,900
Wow.

688
00:53:24,900 --> 00:53:26,049
And this really was.

689
00:53:26,049 --> 00:53:29,829
I mean the guy who developed this material,
and, as I say, I have great respect for that

690
00:53:29,829 --> 00:53:30,410
material.

691
00:53:30,410 --> 00:53:37,410
53:30 Let me go inside.

692
00:54:08,299 --> 00:54:10,049
This is inside.

693
00:54:10,049 --> 00:54:11,240
They had a camera mounted inside.

694
00:54:11,240 --> 00:54:18,240
That is kind of gee whiz thing because you
can see the deformation before it breaks.

695
00:54:25,799 --> 00:54:27,329
Was this done in the wind tunnel?

696
00:54:27,329 --> 00:54:31,089
No, this was a full scale mockup that was
done at Southwest Research Institute.

697
00:54:31,089 --> 00:54:34,019
We had a big mockup of the vehicle.

698
00:54:34,019 --> 00:54:35,200
It was done outside.

699
00:54:35,200 --> 00:54:38,049
Southwest Research has been involved in the
Shuttle Program for quite a while.

700
00:54:38,049 --> 00:54:45,049
They have a foam gun that they have used to
shoot foam primarily at the underbody tiles.

701
00:54:46,240 --> 00:54:49,989
The concern has always been on the strength
of the tiles.

702
00:54:49,989 --> 00:54:51,130
Do you guys know what the tiles are?

703
00:54:51,130 --> 00:54:54,559
The sort of foam stuff that is underneath
the vehicle.

704
00:54:54,559 --> 00:54:56,150
They have done a lot of tests on foam.

705
00:54:56,150 --> 00:54:59,849
Not big pieces of foam but sort of small pieces
of foam.

706
00:54:59,849 --> 00:55:05,670
Never tested the leading edge because it is
damn expensive to test this leading edge material.

707
00:55:05,670 --> 00:55:12,670
And the only tests I am aware of were these
BBs that were shot.

708
00:55:12,700 --> 00:55:19,700
This was really the first time this test was
done.

709
00:55:26,210 --> 00:55:29,299
Now, let me make a profound comment about
space systems.

710
00:55:29,299 --> 00:55:36,299
There is a fundamental principle in the development
of space systems, test-as-you-fly.

711
00:55:36,849 --> 00:55:38,809
You all know that.

712
00:55:38,809 --> 00:55:41,539
I hope you all know that.

713
00:55:41,539 --> 00:55:46,579
This test should have been done at the beginning
of the Shuttle Program.

714
00:55:46,579 --> 00:55:50,269
It was not done.

715
00:55:50,269 --> 00:55:53,900
And the reason it wasn't done is because there
was a requirement in the Shuttle Program that

716
00:55:53,900 --> 00:55:57,950
foam shouldn't come off the orbiter or off,
whatever that thing is, the tank.

717
00:55:57,950 --> 00:56:04,549
It was a requirement that foam shouldn't come
off the tank so, therefore, why do the test

718
00:56:04,549 --> 00:56:07,380
if it's a requirement that foam not come off?

719
00:56:07,380 --> 00:56:11,029
Well, the fact of the matter is foam has come
off on every single shuttle flight, as far

720
00:56:11,029 --> 00:56:13,140
as we know.

721
00:56:13,140 --> 00:56:17,999
So this was a violation of the test-as-you-fly
principle.

722
00:56:17,999 --> 00:56:22,950
That is, I would say, the number one principle
in the development of space systems is test-as-you-fly.

723
00:56:22,950 --> 00:56:24,930
It is the most important thing.

724
00:56:24,930 --> 00:56:27,059
Anyway, we can take our break now.

725
00:56:27,059 --> 00:56:33,930
And remember JR Thompson's remarks about testing
to failure, which they did on the main engine,

726
00:56:33,930 --> 00:56:39,009
didn't do on the SRBs, and they clearly didn't
do here.

727
00:56:39,009 --> 00:56:46,009
OK, a quick two minute, you know the drill.

728
00:57:30,309 --> 00:57:34,420
What you see is sort of an aluminum frame.

729
00:57:34,420 --> 00:57:37,089
I mean what you have here is really what would
be called a full scale mockup.

730
00:57:37,089 --> 00:57:44,089
It is an aluminum frame that holds the tile
in the right position.

731
00:57:46,079 --> 00:57:50,559
And I suppose holds it with fittings of the
right strength.

732
00:57:50,559 --> 00:57:54,509
In other words, what you're trying to do is
replicate with what would be called a full

733
00:57:54,509 --> 00:57:59,980
scale mockup the structural conditions of
the leading edge.

734
00:57:59,980 --> 00:58:05,160
You would have fittings holding the panels
and then you would have it angled properly

735
00:58:05,160 --> 00:58:11,509
to the foam gun, which is over here some place,
and then you fire the foam at 800 feet per

736
00:58:11,509 --> 00:58:11,950
second.

737
00:58:11,950 --> 00:58:13,730
So that's basically the test.

738
00:58:13,730 --> 00:58:15,450
And, as I say, it was done outdoors.

739
00:58:15,450 --> 00:58:18,160
It was quite spectacular.

740
00:58:18,160 --> 00:58:22,309
A big audience, you know, there was the media
and NASA.

741
00:58:22,309 --> 00:58:23,430
A big audience.

742
00:58:23,430 --> 00:58:30,430
It was quite an event.

743
00:58:35,049 --> 00:58:42,049
As a result of this, the committee felt pretty
confident that we had identified the technical

744
00:58:42,769 --> 00:58:44,239
cause of the accident.

745
00:58:44,239 --> 00:58:50,960
When we started this, we didn't know how sure
we would be so we had all these words like

746
00:58:50,960 --> 00:58:56,059
probably, more likely than not, conceivably.

747
00:58:56,059 --> 00:59:03,059
Because we needed to think about describing
our certainty whether we knew, in fact, what

748
00:59:04,499 --> 00:59:05,150
had happened.

749
00:59:05,150 --> 00:59:12,109
But by the time we finished all of this, because
everything had lined up so well, we felt pretty

750
00:59:12,109 --> 00:59:14,509
confident that we knew, in fact, what had
happened.

751
00:59:14,509 --> 00:59:19,029
And so we all sat down around the table and
argued about these words.

752
00:59:19,029 --> 00:59:20,730
This was a committee consensus.

753
00:59:20,730 --> 00:59:22,809
We voted on every word.

754
00:59:22,809 --> 00:59:23,690
Well, not every word.

755
00:59:23,690 --> 00:59:24,710
Some of the words are obvious.

756
00:59:24,710 --> 00:59:31,710
But we basically came to consensus on every
single important word in this statement of

757
00:59:37,849 --> 00:59:38,730
technical cause.

758
00:59:38,730 --> 00:59:43,710
I will just sort of let you read it because
it took us a long time to write.

759
00:59:43,710 --> 00:59:48,329
I should mention that one of the things.

760
00:59:48,329 --> 00:59:53,210
And I think this was from the flight data
recorder.

761
00:59:53,210 --> 00:59:57,549
I really have not given you as much data about
the flight data recorder.

762
00:59:57,549 --> 01:00:03,230
But one of the things we had from the flight
data recorder is an indication of conditions

763
01:00:03,230 --> 01:00:08,940
on assent relative to earlier flights.

764
01:00:08,940 --> 01:00:13,480
And if you look at the conditions on assent,
you can make a pretty good case that there

765
01:00:13,480 --> 01:00:19,049
was a hole in the leading edge on assent after
the foam had hit.

766
01:00:19,049 --> 01:00:24,839
Because you see increased temperatures on
the sensor right behind that region of the

767
01:00:24,839 --> 01:00:25,839
leading edge.

768
01:00:25,839 --> 01:00:31,739
And so you can make a pretty good case that
the hole was there on assent after mach 2.5

769
01:00:31,739 --> 01:00:33,849
or whatever the mach number was.

770
01:00:33,849 --> 01:00:35,400
But that was data from the data recorder?

771
01:00:35,400 --> 01:00:38,180
I believe it was from the flight data recorder.

772
01:00:38,180 --> 01:00:38,880
They didn't get that on telemetry?

773
01:00:38,880 --> 01:00:40,779
They did not have that from telemetry.

774
01:00:40,779 --> 01:00:45,829
I'm pretty sure about that but I'm not absolutely
sure.

775
01:00:45,829 --> 01:00:46,079
Yes?

776
01:00:46,019 --> 01:00:49,299
[AUDIENCE QUESTION]

777
01:00:49,299 --> 01:00:52,940
Oh, they knew that weekend.

778
01:00:52,940 --> 01:00:57,880
Oh, in fact, I'm going to talk about that
because that's part of the organizational

779
01:00:57,880 --> 01:01:00,579
and cultural issues.

780
01:01:00,579 --> 01:01:07,579
Finishing the technical cause, this was our
final statement about the cause of the accident.

781
01:01:07,589 --> 01:01:08,789
But we didn't stop there.

782
01:01:08,789 --> 01:01:11,759
Not this group of people.

783
01:01:11,759 --> 01:01:12,009
Yes?
I was going to ask how soon did you arrive
at the hypothesis that the hole led to the

784
01:01:23,509 --> 01:01:25,329
gases that led to the [OVERLAPPING VOICES]?

785
01:01:25,329 --> 01:01:26,259
I think pretty quickly?

786
01:01:26,259 --> 01:01:28,960
Yeah, I would say it was pretty quickly.

787
01:01:28,960 --> 01:01:32,079
Now, there was a little pushback from NASA
on that.

788
01:01:32,079 --> 01:01:38,859
But I described my appearance on February
18th on the board and the fact that we had

789
01:01:38,859 --> 01:01:45,859
the wire cutting sensor information, that
we had the video of the foam hitting the Shuttle

790
01:01:46,440 --> 01:01:47,319
and exploding.

791
01:01:47,319 --> 01:01:49,589
In other words, there was a shattering of
the foam.

792
01:01:49,589 --> 01:01:56,220
And we had the aerodynamic forces which indicated
damage to the vehicle which were consistent

793
01:01:56,220 --> 01:01:57,819
with the wing leading edge.

794
01:01:57,819 --> 01:02:04,819
We have a picture from Kirtland of some bulging
around the wing leading edge.

795
01:02:06,849 --> 01:02:12,410
I would think by sort of the third week in
February that's where we were headed.

796
01:02:12,410 --> 01:02:14,450
Now, you don't want to get blindsided.

797
01:02:14,450 --> 01:02:21,450
Sure, we don't want to get blindsided.

798
01:02:24,538 --> 01:02:27,799
We got lots of inputs from the public, as
well as from the scientific community.

799
01:02:27,799 --> 01:02:31,720
And there was an input we felt we had to take
seriously.

800
01:02:31,720 --> 01:02:33,089
And I can sort of say what it was.

801
01:02:33,089 --> 01:02:40,089
We got an input from sort of solar physicists
who said that on that day there was a violent

802
01:02:41,729 --> 01:02:48,729
sun episode that would have sent a shower
of solar radiation to the earth on that particular

803
01:02:50,440 --> 01:02:50,989
day.

804
01:02:50,989 --> 01:02:56,670
And that it was possible that this could have
created some kind of shockwave in the vicinity

805
01:02:56,670 --> 01:02:59,779
of the Shuttle and done some damage.

806
01:02:59,779 --> 01:03:01,869
I mean it was a credible hypothesis.

807
01:03:01,869 --> 01:03:05,288
I called the Air Force.

808
01:03:05,288 --> 01:03:12,288
Out at Hanscom we have these guys who do basically
radiation physics, radiation weather, space

809
01:03:13,089 --> 01:03:13,869
weather.

810
01:03:13,869 --> 01:03:20,869
And Jim Hallock from DOT kind of shepherded
that part of the project, but Jim is a physicist.

811
01:03:21,660 --> 01:03:24,609
He has a PhD from MIT and works at the Department
of Transportation.

812
01:03:24,609 --> 01:03:27,819
And so the two of us go together and said
we have to take this seriously.

813
01:03:27,819 --> 01:03:32,369
We have to put an expert team together and
completely examine this hypothesis.

814
01:03:32,369 --> 01:03:34,788
So we did that.

815
01:03:34,788 --> 01:03:40,479
And we had data from all over the world of
this radiation coming in, and so it was very

816
01:03:40,479 --> 01:03:41,109
exhaustive.

817
01:03:41,109 --> 01:03:48,109
It turned out that this radiation didn't reach
the earth until 3:00 PM on that day, but we

818
01:03:49,130 --> 01:03:49,920
took it seriously.

819
01:03:49,920 --> 01:03:54,309
I think that was probably one of the most
credible things.

820
01:03:54,309 --> 01:03:59,190
We obviously got a lot of junk stuff that
it was an Israeli plot or something like that.

821
01:03:59,190 --> 01:04:04,960
I cannot even remember those things.

822
01:04:04,960 --> 01:04:11,549
And then I think there was always this suggestion
that it was just a micro meteorite, but I

823
01:04:11,549 --> 01:04:18,380
think because of the magnitude of the damage
and the fact that, I think this is general

824
01:04:18,380 --> 01:04:20,849
knowledge, the Air Force watches space junk.

825
01:04:20,849 --> 01:04:24,930
They have a catalog of everything that is
lying up there, and there wasn't really a

826
01:04:24,930 --> 01:04:30,769
piece up there large enough to do that kind
of damage so that was eliminated.

827
01:04:30,769 --> 01:04:34,559
There were a number of hypotheses.

828
01:04:34,559 --> 01:04:39,519
But, again, when we did the data, we didn't
go in with a hypothesis.

829
01:04:39,519 --> 01:04:45,150
We went in to see what the data told us.

830
01:04:45,150 --> 01:04:49,479
That was a bit of independence with respect
to the data and the analysis.

831
01:04:49,479 --> 01:04:49,729
Yes?

832
01:04:49,630 --> 01:04:56,630
[AUDIENCE QUESTION]

833
01:05:02,890 --> 01:05:09,890
No, it
is melting.

834
01:05:21,029 --> 01:05:27,450
No,
the temperatures.

835
01:05:27,450 --> 01:05:30,630
See, it's aluminum.

836
01:05:30,630 --> 01:05:32,749
[AUDIENCE QUESTION]

837
01:05:32,749 --> 01:05:33,819
Eventually.

838
01:05:33,819 --> 01:05:36,160
Well, I think heat was the main culprit.

839
01:05:36,160 --> 01:05:43,160
The dynamic pressures, and I am sorry I didn't
bring the graph, in this regime were not that

840
01:05:46,210 --> 01:05:46,589
large.

841
01:05:46,589 --> 01:05:51,999
I am thinking they were less than 100 pounds
per square foot because you're really up at

842
01:05:51,999 --> 01:05:53,279
very high altitude.

843
01:05:53,279 --> 01:05:57,220
And, even though you're going very fast, the
dynamic pressures are not that high.

844
01:05:57,220 --> 01:05:59,670
I actually have a graph of dynamic pressures.

845
01:05:59,670 --> 01:06:06,079
In fact, come into my office and you will
see the dynamic pressure as a function.

846
01:06:06,079 --> 01:06:10,400
I would think the way to think about it is
that the important parts melted.

847
01:06:10,400 --> 01:06:15,769
See, we know from observations, and I didn't
show all of these, but people were recording,

848
01:06:15,769 --> 01:06:20,788
I don't remember what we called them, but
big pieces of the Shuttle were coming off.

849
01:06:20,788 --> 01:06:25,200
You saw the video with all these pieces flying
in, but we have pieces coming off as early

850
01:06:25,200 --> 01:06:27,910
as California.

851
01:06:27,910 --> 01:06:32,079
And I think we hypothesized at one point that
the upper wing came off.

852
01:06:32,079 --> 01:06:36,349
In other words, the upper surface of the wing
just lifted off.

853
01:06:36,349 --> 01:06:40,729
And the reason it did is not so much from
pressure is that all this gas is in there.

854
01:06:40,729 --> 01:06:46,130
Aluminum melts at 700 degrees Fahrenheit or
some ridiculously low number.

855
01:06:46,130 --> 01:06:53,130
We're talking 7000 degrees Fahrenheit so we're
talking about destruction primarily by arc

856
01:06:53,930 --> 01:06:54,180
jet.
You have to think of the atmosphere as a big
arc jet.

857
01:06:57,109 --> 01:07:04,109
And eventually the vehicle became uncontrollable,
unflyable because the aerodynamics were so

858
01:07:04,309 --> 01:07:07,059
off nominal and the vehicle couldn't be controlled.

859
01:07:07,059 --> 01:07:13,099
But, again, I think the dynamic pressures
didn't get larger than 200 pounds per square

860
01:07:13,099 --> 01:07:13,349
foot.

861
01:07:13,249 --> 01:07:14,720
I don't think.

862
01:07:14,720 --> 01:07:16,950
Which is about what I am doing right here.

863
01:07:16,950 --> 01:07:21,529
That is about 200 pounds per square foot.

864
01:07:21,529 --> 01:07:22,269
Yes?

865
01:07:22,269 --> 01:07:25,009
What happened to the crew?

866
01:07:25,009 --> 01:07:25,609
[AUDIENCE QUESTION]

867
01:07:25,609 --> 01:07:27,420
I probably don't want to talk about that.

868
01:07:27,420 --> 01:07:31,799
We have some information.

869
01:07:31,799 --> 01:07:35,950
Well, let me say what I can say.

870
01:07:35,950 --> 01:07:42,950
The vehicle itself stayed intact through a
large part of the reentry and got into what

871
01:07:44,450 --> 01:07:51,359
would be called the fighter pilot's regime,
you know, 50,000 feet.

872
01:07:51,359 --> 01:07:56,489
The actual cause of the death of the crew
was what any fighter pilot would experience

873
01:07:56,489 --> 01:07:59,269
if he lost his vehicle at 50,000 feet.

874
01:07:59,269 --> 01:08:00,339
It's blunt force trauma.

875
01:08:00,339 --> 01:08:02,089
That is what it was.

876
01:08:02,089 --> 01:08:08,920
And we found a lot of the cockpit.

877
01:08:08,920 --> 01:08:10,069
Reentry is really interesting.

878
01:08:10,069 --> 01:08:11,410
There is something called ballistic coefficient.

879
01:08:11,410 --> 01:08:13,269
Do you know about ballistic coefficient?

880
01:08:13,269 --> 01:08:17,520
We found briefcases, pillows.

881
01:08:17,520 --> 01:08:24,520
Ballistic coefficient, people talk about it
in two different ways, and one is the reciprocal

882
01:08:26,799 --> 01:08:27,259
of the other.

883
01:08:27,259 --> 01:08:28,540
I always get confused about that.

884
01:08:28,540 --> 01:08:35,540
But if you have a low ballistic coefficient
and you drop a pillow at mach 25 at 400,000

885
01:08:36,210 --> 01:08:41,750
feet, it would probably make it to the earth
because it will slow down and then it will

886
01:08:41,750 --> 01:08:45,250
just gradually float down to earth.

887
01:08:45,250 --> 01:08:52,210
We found a lot of the crew compartment, a
lot of pillows, chairs, all the stuff that

888
01:08:52,210 --> 01:08:59,170
was really light just reentered without burning
up because of ballistic coefficient.

889
01:08:59,170 --> 01:08:59,859
There was a lot there.

890
01:08:59,859 --> 01:09:06,859
69:00 And

891
01:09:36,690 --> 01:09:41,790
so that gets into some of your questions having
to do with when did they know.

892
01:09:41,790 --> 01:09:45,809
And, of course, the big why question.

893
01:09:45,809 --> 01:09:46,920
Let me go to that.

894
01:09:46,920 --> 01:09:51,359
Now I'm going to go off into the second part
of our investigation.

895
01:09:51,359 --> 01:09:58,359
And we consider this to be as important, if
not more important than our technical investigation.

896
01:09:58,849 --> 01:10:05,719
We talked a little bit about the history of
the Shuttle Program.

897
01:10:05,719 --> 01:10:12,719
And I am sure that is something that you have
been through in terms of the budgets, the

898
01:10:13,040 --> 01:10:20,040
margins, what we believe is a mischaracterization
of the vehicle as a mature operational system.

899
01:10:23,840 --> 01:10:29,510
And we think that there is a story here to
be told, and so we looked into this.

900
01:10:29,510 --> 01:10:35,500
Now, I have to say that I was not as much
a part of this as some other members because

901
01:10:35,500 --> 01:10:37,480
I was busy on the aerodynamics part of it.

902
01:10:37,480 --> 01:10:44,480
But you had John Logsdon, we had quite a number
of the Air Force people, and Admiral Gehman

903
01:10:45,010 --> 01:10:49,780
were more deeply involved in pulling together
the sort of history of how this happened,

904
01:10:49,780 --> 01:10:51,969
the cultural issues.

905
01:10:51,969 --> 01:10:57,420
I am sort of reporting on behalf of my fellow
board members what our conclusions were and

906
01:10:57,420 --> 01:11:02,199
the data that we gathered together to put
this together.

907
01:11:02,199 --> 01:11:06,530
The things that were pointed out are that
there was this fundamental uncertainty in

908
01:11:06,530 --> 01:11:13,500
the Shuttle Program and that led to a sort
of fluctuating attitude towards investing

909
01:11:13,500 --> 01:11:16,330
in upgrades and infrastructure.

910
01:11:16,330 --> 01:11:20,219
The nation didn't really know where it was
going.

911
01:11:20,219 --> 01:11:21,830
And I hope you won't take offense at this.

912
01:11:21,830 --> 01:11:22,909
I worked for NASA.

913
01:11:22,909 --> 01:11:23,719
You worked for NASA.

914
01:11:23,719 --> 01:11:29,159
We found them to be an extremely insular organization.

915
01:11:29,159 --> 01:11:31,580
And I think, actually, they still are.

916
01:11:31,580 --> 01:11:33,770
They don't take advice from the outside.

917
01:11:33,770 --> 01:11:40,250
And I will be prepared to admit that they
are the only organization that does human

918
01:11:40,250 --> 01:11:45,119
spaceflight, at least in our nation, but they
are not the only organization that handles

919
01:11:45,119 --> 01:11:47,050
risky technologies.

920
01:11:47,050 --> 01:11:51,330
And they have a lot to learn from other organizations.

921
01:11:51,330 --> 01:11:58,300
And they have not been a part of that conversation
with the type of people like the nuclear navy

922
01:11:58,300 --> 01:12:02,349
and some of the commercial industries that
use extremely risky technologies.

923
01:12:02,349 --> 01:12:05,020
They have not been a part of that dialogue.

924
01:12:05,020 --> 01:12:10,020
And that is where we have criticized them.

925
01:12:10,020 --> 01:12:11,040
As I say, they are insular.

926
01:12:11,040 --> 01:12:15,960
They think that they cannot learn anything
from anybody else.

927
01:12:15,960 --> 01:12:22,290
That they know how to do all these things
and that they don't need to accept any external

928
01:12:22,290 --> 01:12:22,849
suggestions.

929
01:12:22,849 --> 01:12:29,849
That is a very dangerous line of reasoning
for an organization, really, no matter how

930
01:12:30,270 --> 01:12:33,230
good you are.

931
01:12:33,230 --> 01:12:39,849
So we felt that the people at NASA, that leadership
clearly believed these things and the people

932
01:12:39,849 --> 01:12:44,010
in the engineering workforce were under tremendous
pressure to go along, in some sense, with

933
01:12:44,010 --> 01:12:47,540
these basic attitudes.

934
01:12:47,540 --> 01:12:54,540
And we saw that in our investigation of kind
of the what went on during the flight.

935
01:12:54,929 --> 01:12:59,239
I mentioned before that there is this history
of foam.

936
01:12:59,239 --> 01:13:00,690
And let me introduce the word anomaly.

937
01:13:00,690 --> 01:13:03,929
Have you talked about anomaly?

938
01:13:03,929 --> 01:13:04,480
Not directly.

939
01:13:04,480 --> 01:13:04,770
OK.

940
01:13:04,770 --> 01:13:11,770
Anomaly is one of the most important words
in space systems.

941
01:13:12,360 --> 01:13:16,820
Anomaly means that something happened that
shouldn't happen.

942
01:13:16,820 --> 01:13:23,820
Anomaly should bring your organization to
a standstill while you figure out what happened

943
01:13:24,000 --> 01:13:25,000
and why it happened.

944
01:13:25,000 --> 01:13:27,790
Anomaly is a violation of requirements.

945
01:13:27,790 --> 01:13:32,429
Sometimes I think it's a euphemism for failure.

946
01:13:32,429 --> 01:13:32,679
Well, yeah.

947
01:13:32,650 --> 01:13:35,469
Hopefully you catch it before failure.

948
01:13:35,469 --> 01:13:42,020
Anomaly is a clue that something may even
worse happen down the road.

949
01:13:42,020 --> 01:13:47,460
It is something to be taken extremely seriously.

950
01:13:47,460 --> 01:13:49,880
Foam shedding off the tank was an anomaly.

951
01:13:49,880 --> 01:13:54,989
It didn't destroy the vehicle but it is a
violation of requirements.

952
01:13:54,989 --> 01:14:01,080
And, in the early days, it was really put
on a list of problems to be worked.

953
01:14:01,080 --> 01:14:06,900
I mean NASA didn't completely ignore it, but
they put it on a list of the other 5000 problems

954
01:14:06,900 --> 01:14:10,179
that needed to be worked.

955
01:14:10,179 --> 01:14:17,179
And they just kept flying until foam shedding
really became a normal expectation that all

956
01:14:21,030 --> 01:14:26,719
the flights would have foam shedding and that
nothing serious would ever happen.

957
01:14:26,719 --> 01:14:30,690
It was treated as a maintenance turnaround
problem, you know, when the vehicle gets back

958
01:14:30,690 --> 01:14:31,540
we can fix it.

959
01:14:31,540 --> 01:14:32,949
And that was true in this case, too.

960
01:14:32,949 --> 01:14:38,030
They said something like well, if foam hits
the Shuttle, we'll fix it when it gets back.

961
01:14:38,030 --> 01:14:40,230
I mean that was the stance.

962
01:14:40,230 --> 01:14:47,230
Now, I think what's interesting about this,
if you think about this, is that the anomaly

963
01:14:48,630 --> 01:14:53,949
of foam shedding without hurting the Shuttle
was treated as if it were a planned engineering

964
01:14:53,949 --> 01:14:56,320
test.

965
01:14:56,320 --> 01:15:03,320
In other words, it was a test that was planned
to see if foam could hurt the Shuttle.

966
01:15:03,369 --> 01:15:08,159
And the fact that foam didn't hurt the Shuttle
was treated as confirmation that foam couldn't

967
01:15:08,159 --> 01:15:10,730
hurt the Shuttle.

968
01:15:10,730 --> 01:15:12,210
Now, I think that's kind of a fundamental.

969
01:15:12,210 --> 01:15:15,630
I like that particular phrase.

970
01:15:15,630 --> 01:15:18,510
There was enormous schedule pressure on NASA.

971
01:15:18,510 --> 01:15:25,510
They had already slipped a couple of times
because of other what I would call strong

972
01:15:26,770 --> 01:15:27,020
signals.

973
01:15:26,860 --> 01:15:28,760
We use the word strong signals.

974
01:15:28,760 --> 01:15:35,760
When something really dramatic is identified
NASA shuts down.

975
01:15:36,070 --> 01:15:37,760
And I don't remember the issues.

976
01:15:37,760 --> 01:15:43,199
There was something about a connector that
didn't seem to work properly and it just grounded

977
01:15:43,199 --> 01:15:45,369
the Shuttle fleet for three months or something.

978
01:15:45,369 --> 01:15:49,880
And there was some other problem that was
a strong signal and they simply shut it down.

979
01:15:49,880 --> 01:15:52,330
The foam we put in the category of a weak
signal.

980
01:15:52,330 --> 01:15:59,159
It is something that while you're fighting
all the strong signals it is hard to justify

981
01:15:59,159 --> 01:16:02,150
shutting the organization down for what you
perceive as a weak signal.

982
01:16:02,150 --> 01:16:07,230
So they had used up almost all of their margin
to complete the Space Station.

983
01:16:07,230 --> 01:16:08,800
And they were under tremendous pressure.

984
01:16:08,800 --> 01:16:14,909
Sean O'Keefe was obviously sent to NASA to
put the house in order, put the schedule and

985
01:16:14,909 --> 01:16:20,570
the budget in shape and get this Space Station
finished by February 19th.

986
01:16:20,570 --> 01:16:22,199
Ooh, we've already passed that one.

987
01:16:22,199 --> 01:16:29,199
We will talk a little bit about what happened
on the ground while the vehicle was in the

988
01:16:31,469 --> 01:16:32,920
air.

989
01:16:32,920 --> 01:16:37,630
I mentioned before that in the military we
do two investigations.

990
01:16:37,630 --> 01:16:43,989
We do a safety investigation where the testimony
is privileged and we do an investigation which

991
01:16:43,989 --> 01:16:44,440
is public.

992
01:16:44,440 --> 01:16:48,469
And our group was kind of doing both.

993
01:16:48,469 --> 01:16:51,050
In other words, we were obviously doing a
public investigation.

994
01:16:51,050 --> 01:16:54,340
We had press conferences every week and the
media would come and we'd share everything

995
01:16:54,340 --> 01:16:55,679
with them.

996
01:16:55,679 --> 01:17:02,550
But, because we did have so many military
people who understood the importance of accident

997
01:17:02,550 --> 01:17:09,550
investigation, we also had, I don't know,
an annex, I guess you'd call it, a way to

998
01:17:10,030 --> 01:17:11,739
take testimony and keep it privileged.

999
01:17:11,739 --> 01:17:12,489
And we did that.

1000
01:17:12,489 --> 01:17:15,050
We took testimony from individual people at
NASA.

1001
01:17:15,050 --> 01:17:16,469
It was privileged testimony.

1002
01:17:16,469 --> 01:17:23,199
And they felt free to share with us their
participation and what happened and who said

1003
01:17:23,199 --> 01:17:25,090
what when and all of that.

1004
01:17:25,090 --> 01:17:27,739
And we had the damnedest trouble keeping this
from Congress.

1005
01:17:27,739 --> 01:17:29,150
I mean it really was.

1006
01:17:29,150 --> 01:17:32,760
And anything that's written down is accessible
to Congress, at least that's the way they

1007
01:17:32,760 --> 01:17:38,360
look at it, but we really held very firm and
we would not allow this privileged testimony

1008
01:17:38,360 --> 01:17:41,770
to be accessed.

1009
01:17:41,770 --> 01:17:47,830
And I think the compromise we made was that
a staffer could come over to where we were

1010
01:17:47,830 --> 01:17:50,900
located, he could read the testimony and take
no notes.

1011
01:17:50,900 --> 01:17:56,580
Well, they soon tired of that so the fact
of the matter is they didn't come.

1012
01:17:56,580 --> 01:18:02,360
But we had a lot of privileged testimony that
allowed us to put this picture together with

1013
01:18:02,360 --> 01:18:08,989
employees not being too concerned about the
implications of sharing with us.

1014
01:18:08,989 --> 01:18:14,360
So, the weekend that the flight went up, NASA
knew that there was a potential problem.

1015
01:18:14,360 --> 01:18:18,659
And they put in place something called the
"debris assessment team" which is supposed

1016
01:18:18,659 --> 01:18:25,659
to look at all the data that they had and
decide whether or not there was a problem.

1017
01:18:26,530 --> 01:18:32,099
Now, I've chaired a lot of committees, not
only here at MIT but other places.

1018
01:18:32,099 --> 01:18:36,880
And I understand how important it is for a
committee to have a clear charter and a clear

1019
01:18:36,880 --> 01:18:43,750
line of reporting and to have a certain level
of independence from their home organization.

1020
01:18:43,750 --> 01:18:47,909
For example, if I were chairing a committee
here at MIT on an important research issue

1021
01:18:47,909 --> 01:18:52,150
or important policy issue and members of my
committee were getting pressure from their

1022
01:18:52,150 --> 01:18:54,980
department heads, I would blow the whistle.

1023
01:18:54,980 --> 01:18:58,420
I would say that is not the way a committee
works.

1024
01:18:58,420 --> 01:18:59,630
A committee has a charter.

1025
01:18:59,630 --> 01:19:00,949
It has independence.

1026
01:19:00,949 --> 01:19:07,239
It is not subject to outside influence from
the people to whom these people report in

1027
01:19:07,239 --> 01:19:09,030
their normal way of life.

1028
01:19:09,030 --> 01:19:12,610
So, with respect to the debris assessment
team, I would make two comments.

1029
01:19:12,610 --> 01:19:14,690
First of all, they had a very unclear charter.

1030
01:19:14,690 --> 01:19:18,139
It wasn't clear kind of who they reported
to or what their authority was.

1031
01:19:18,139 --> 01:19:24,290
And they, as individuals, were getting pressure
from their home organization, both NASA and

1032
01:19:24,290 --> 01:19:29,760
the companies, the USA, Lockheed, Boeing,
because those guys were getting pressure from

1033
01:19:29,760 --> 01:19:30,849
NASA.

1034
01:19:30,849 --> 01:19:35,020
It was just an enormous amount of pressure
being applied to various people in what I

1035
01:19:35,020 --> 01:19:37,619
considered to be a totally inappropriate way.

1036
01:19:37,619 --> 01:19:40,780
In any case, this team, I admire them.

1037
01:19:40,780 --> 01:19:42,929
I mean I think they were doing a good job.

1038
01:19:42,929 --> 01:19:49,929
They wanted to get on-orbit pictures to see
whether or not using national assets we could

1039
01:19:52,780 --> 01:19:56,800
take pictures of the Shuttle.

1040
01:19:56,800 --> 01:19:59,580
And so, who do you contact when you want something
like that?

1041
01:19:59,580 --> 01:20:01,590
You talk to the Air Force.

1042
01:20:01,590 --> 01:20:08,260
And the Air Force is, of course, like a great
collie dog just waiting to show what they

1043
01:20:08,260 --> 01:20:09,219
can do.

1044
01:20:09,219 --> 01:20:09,469
You know?

1045
01:20:09,449 --> 01:20:13,550
I mean oh, great, we've got this wonderful
opportunity to take these pictures.

1046
01:20:13,550 --> 01:20:14,469
It's really going to be fun.

1047
01:20:14,469 --> 01:20:16,340
We're going to show what we can do.

1048
01:20:16,340 --> 01:20:23,340
They are very enthusiastic about responding
to that kind of request, but NASA didn't want

1049
01:20:23,889 --> 01:20:24,809
the pictures.

1050
01:20:24,809 --> 01:20:27,280
I mean the senior managers of NASA didn't
want the pictures.

1051
01:20:27,280 --> 01:20:29,829
The debris assessment team did want the pictures.

1052
01:20:29,829 --> 01:20:34,500
And they tried to make these requests of different
parts of the organization.

1053
01:20:34,500 --> 01:20:41,500
And every time they would make a request it
would get slapped down by senior managers.

1054
01:20:41,730 --> 01:20:43,130
Well, I guess we have it.

1055
01:20:43,130 --> 01:20:47,869
This is a highly classified area, but let
me just say there were eight separate opportunities

1056
01:20:47,869 --> 01:20:52,320
where we could have gotten some significant
information about the state of the Shuttle

1057
01:20:52,320 --> 01:20:57,880
and we didn't do it.

1058
01:20:57,880 --> 01:21:04,880
We didn't do it because every time there was
a flurry of activity around there NASA said

1059
01:21:06,219 --> 01:21:06,920
they didn't need it.

1060
01:21:06,920 --> 01:21:08,619
They'd fix the Shuttle when it got back.

1061
01:21:08,619 --> 01:21:15,090
If the damage had been discovered what do
you think would have been done?

1062
01:21:15,090 --> 01:21:16,510
Well, I can talk to that issue.

1063
01:21:16,510 --> 01:21:18,349
I mean this is as good a time as any.

1064
01:21:18,349 --> 01:21:25,340
We actually asked NASA to do some studies
about what could have been done.

1065
01:21:25,340 --> 01:21:32,340
This is a nation that will save a whale that
is trapped in the Arctic or Baby Jessica in

1066
01:21:32,840 --> 01:21:33,400
the well.

1067
01:21:33,400 --> 01:21:37,929
I mean if we find that there is a crisis we
will mobilize.

1068
01:21:37,929 --> 01:21:39,630
There is no question about it.

1069
01:21:39,630 --> 01:21:43,610
It would be a very chancy situation.

1070
01:21:43,610 --> 01:21:46,300
We know the vehicle is destroyed.

1071
01:21:46,300 --> 01:21:47,219
The vehicle is lost.

1072
01:21:47,219 --> 01:21:51,929
There is no question about that the vehicle
cannot reenter safely with the people.

1073
01:21:51,929 --> 01:21:55,840
So what was the best option?

1074
01:21:55,840 --> 01:22:01,199
I mean we looked at the possibility of stuffing
the hole with things, you know, old sleeping

1075
01:22:01,199 --> 01:22:02,989
bags and suitcases and stuff.

1076
01:22:02,989 --> 01:22:08,219
There wasn't anything onboard that could have
withstood the temperatures.

1077
01:22:08,219 --> 01:22:11,610
And, of course, one of our recommendations
was that there should be some capability for

1078
01:22:11,610 --> 01:22:12,719
in-flight repair.

1079
01:22:12,719 --> 01:22:15,469
That has been a big issue.

1080
01:22:15,469 --> 01:22:22,469
But the only other thing you could do is to
sort of go into life support mode.

1081
01:22:27,760 --> 01:22:28,530
Stop doing the science.

1082
01:22:28,530 --> 01:22:34,139
Jettison the module, I guess, which would
make the vehicle lighter and then maybe the

1083
01:22:34,139 --> 01:22:35,520
reentry would be a little more successful.

1084
01:22:35,520 --> 01:22:37,309
Conserve electricity.

1085
01:22:37,309 --> 01:22:37,800
Conserve water.

1086
01:22:37,800 --> 01:22:39,690
Conserve food.

1087
01:22:39,690 --> 01:22:44,420
Try to stay in orbit for an additional, I
don't remember the number, 15, 16 days, something

1088
01:22:44,420 --> 01:22:47,670
like that so that you could send up a second
shuttle.

1089
01:22:47,670 --> 01:22:50,510
I think it was Atlantis.

1090
01:22:50,510 --> 01:22:52,849
They could get Atlantis ready and send it
up.

1091
01:22:52,849 --> 01:22:59,849
It was sort of by chance, but it just happened
that in this mission they did have the possibility

1092
01:22:59,969 --> 01:23:01,449
of doing a rescue.

1093
01:23:01,449 --> 01:23:02,389
Right.

1094
01:23:02,389 --> 01:23:09,389
It's a gutsy move, but I have a feeling that
if we actually had that information that we

1095
01:23:09,710 --> 01:23:10,860
could have put that together.

1096
01:23:10,860 --> 01:23:17,119
It is interesting that when you read some
of the stuff that is being talked about, like

1097
01:23:17,119 --> 01:23:23,059
the Hubble and things like that, we did not
recommend that a second shuttle be standing

1098
01:23:23,059 --> 01:23:24,099
by.

1099
01:23:24,099 --> 01:23:29,369
But that seems to have been internalized at
NASA as a potential safety measure.

1100
01:23:29,369 --> 01:23:34,780
That they will always want to have a second
shuttle standing by if they send the shuttle

1101
01:23:34,780 --> 01:23:35,030
up.

1102
01:23:35,000 --> 01:23:39,389
The problem with that is it's a bit of a "going
out of business" strategy because there aren't

1103
01:23:39,389 --> 01:23:41,449
that many left.

1104
01:23:41,449 --> 01:23:41,699
Yes?

1105
01:23:41,639 --> 01:23:45,429
[AUDIENCE QUESTION]

1106
01:23:45,429 --> 01:23:46,920
We never looked at that option.

1107
01:23:46,920 --> 01:23:48,090
We simply didn't.

1108
01:23:48,090 --> 01:23:53,170
This particular vehicle was not in an orbit
that could have reached the Space Station.

1109
01:23:53,170 --> 01:23:58,880
And that is another big issue, is whether
you want to have the Space Station available

1110
01:23:58,880 --> 01:24:02,639
for a safe house if you have an accident.

1111
01:24:02,639 --> 01:24:06,110
In this particular case, this vehicle could
not have reached the Space Station.

1112
01:24:06,110 --> 01:24:11,760
Soyuz could not have reached this because
Soyuz launches from 51 degrees.

1113
01:24:11,760 --> 01:24:13,610
This was in 28 degrees.

1114
01:24:13,610 --> 01:24:19,130
Also remember there were seven people aboard
so you would have needed three Soyuzs.

1115
01:24:19,130 --> 01:24:20,889
The Russians just don't have them available.

1116
01:24:20,889 --> 01:24:24,070
It was either Atlantis or nothing.

1117
01:24:24,070 --> 01:24:26,250
Larry, you had a question.

1118
01:24:26,250 --> 01:24:27,510
Yeah, going back to the on-orbit photo.

1119
01:24:27,510 --> 01:24:32,570
It was alleged at the time that the NASA management
thought that the quality of the photos was

1120
01:24:32,570 --> 01:24:35,369
what it had been several years earlier and,
therefore, would not have helped them.

1121
01:24:35,369 --> 01:24:40,090
Let me speak to that because I was going to
mention that.

1122
01:24:40,090 --> 01:24:45,679
In the early days of the Shuttle Program there
was, in fact, a good interaction between NASA

1123
01:24:45,679 --> 01:24:49,550
and the national security apparatus that does
this sort of work.

1124
01:24:49,550 --> 01:24:56,550
And people at NASA were cleared, to an appropriate
level, to have this interaction.

1125
01:24:59,050 --> 01:25:00,610
That has atrophied.

1126
01:25:00,610 --> 01:25:06,780
The current people at NASA basically have
no experience with that world, are not cleared

1127
01:25:06,780 --> 01:25:12,960
to an appropriate level, have just not had
an interaction and see it as a bigger deal

1128
01:25:12,960 --> 01:25:14,090
than it really is.

1129
01:25:14,090 --> 01:25:16,030
It is not a big deal.

1130
01:25:16,030 --> 01:25:20,489
We do it all the time with my collie dog friend.

1131
01:25:20,489 --> 01:25:24,110
I mean it's just not a big deal.

1132
01:25:24,110 --> 01:25:28,550
So our recommendation was that there should
be a better interaction between NASA and the

1133
01:25:28,550 --> 01:25:30,260
national security apparatus.

1134
01:25:30,260 --> 01:25:35,380
And that the senior people at NASA should
be cleared to an appropriate level to have

1135
01:25:35,380 --> 01:25:36,110
that interaction.

1136
01:25:36,110 --> 01:25:42,400
And that this should be, in fact, routine
that you always take pictures when the shuttle

1137
01:25:42,400 --> 01:25:43,630
is in orbit.

1138
01:25:43,630 --> 01:25:46,530
And so I think that was basically one of our
recommendations.

1139
01:25:46,530 --> 01:25:53,530
In any case, we were not pleased with the
decision or the failure to take photos onboard.

1140
01:26:00,050 --> 01:26:07,050
86:00 It was called the "crater model".

1141
01:26:30,800 --> 01:26:37,800
Its fundamental purpose was to figure out
whether foam would hurt the tiles.

1142
01:26:39,420 --> 01:26:43,940
It was developed as a result of the experiments
done at Southwest Research Institute of shooting

1143
01:26:43,940 --> 01:26:47,309
small pieces of foam at the tiles.

1144
01:26:47,309 --> 01:26:52,040
Not the leading edge but the tiles.

1145
01:26:52,040 --> 01:26:58,579
And it was sort of all things kind of rolling
together.

1146
01:26:58,579 --> 01:27:03,429
The people who developed this model were in
Huntington Beach, California when they transferred

1147
01:27:03,429 --> 01:27:06,960
the operation to the Cape or to Houston, I
don't remember.

1148
01:27:06,960 --> 01:27:11,260
The senior people in that group refused to
move so they turned the tool over to junior

1149
01:27:11,260 --> 01:27:12,429
people.

1150
01:27:12,429 --> 01:27:18,530
There was a loss of corporate memory, a loss
of understanding, and so it just got worse

1151
01:27:18,530 --> 01:27:19,400
and worse and worse.

1152
01:27:19,400 --> 01:27:23,389
And so finally the people who were applying
these tools were not the same people who were

1153
01:27:23,389 --> 01:27:28,230
in the development of the tool and really
lacked understanding of what this tool was

1154
01:27:28,230 --> 01:27:32,199
all about.

1155
01:27:32,199 --> 01:27:36,770
The tool predicted that you had a serious
problem.

1156
01:27:36,770 --> 01:27:41,630
But they said, oh, well, the tool always over-predicts.

1157
01:27:41,630 --> 01:27:44,179
They ignored it and said there was no problem.

1158
01:27:44,179 --> 01:27:51,179
I mean it was just cascading of kind of bad
things happening.

1159
01:27:51,389 --> 01:27:54,679
We talked a little bit about the organization
of NASA.

1160
01:27:54,679 --> 01:27:58,280
And I don't know whether you talked to Aaron,
but this would be a good question to ask Aaron

1161
01:27:58,280 --> 01:27:58,650
Cohen.

1162
01:27:58,650 --> 01:28:02,420
I am setting him up here.

1163
01:28:02,420 --> 01:28:05,489
About an independent safety organization at
NASA.

1164
01:28:05,489 --> 01:28:05,739
Yes?

1165
01:28:05,679 --> 01:28:10,389
[AUDIENCE QUESTION]

1166
01:28:10,389 --> 01:28:17,389
As far as we can tell nothing until about
one or two minutes before.

1167
01:28:18,199 --> 01:28:25,199
Actually, Mission Control had arranged for
a press conference with the crew in orbit.

1168
01:28:27,159 --> 01:28:27,590
Right.

1169
01:28:27,590 --> 01:28:28,659
Are you going to mention that?

1170
01:28:28,659 --> 01:28:28,949
I will talk about that.

1171
01:28:28,949 --> 01:28:34,909
Because the crew new that some foam had come
off, but they were told that it was no problem.

1172
01:28:34,909 --> 01:28:36,880
Yeah, but that's different than the crew knowing.

1173
01:28:36,880 --> 01:28:37,739
Right.

1174
01:28:37,739 --> 01:28:39,429
No, I think that is true.

1175
01:28:39,429 --> 01:28:45,020
That the crew was notified that there had
been an incident on liftoff but there was

1176
01:28:45,020 --> 01:28:45,809
no problem.

1177
01:28:45,809 --> 01:28:49,730
And the only reason they told them was because
somebody from the press might ask them.

1178
01:28:49,730 --> 01:28:50,030
Yeah.

1179
01:28:50,030 --> 01:28:54,270
And I have had media training so I know exactly
what they were thinking about.

1180
01:28:54,270 --> 01:28:59,929
The Shuttle lands, the astronauts get out,
the microphone gets into the mouth and they

1181
01:28:59,929 --> 01:29:02,119
say do you know?

1182
01:29:02,119 --> 01:29:06,650
And the astronauts would say of course, we
knew, and we understood it was no problem.

1183
01:29:06,650 --> 01:29:13,650
I mean it was a pre-media sort of skull session
for the astronauts, as opposed to a more responsible

1184
01:29:15,340 --> 01:29:16,409
concern.

1185
01:29:16,409 --> 01:29:21,559
What we do know about the astronauts is we
have the voice recording and stuff, and I

1186
01:29:21,559 --> 01:29:26,219
think there was something from Mission Control
to the astronauts saying we see a temperature

1187
01:29:26,219 --> 01:29:27,929
anomaly in your wheel well.

1188
01:29:27,929 --> 01:29:32,159
The temperature was 50 degrees higher than
would have normally been.

1189
01:29:32,159 --> 01:29:37,690
And this was literally just like I don't think
any more than five minutes before the vehicle

1190
01:29:37,690 --> 01:29:38,290
lost control.

1191
01:29:38,290 --> 01:29:39,630
Maybe even less than that.

1192
01:29:39,630 --> 01:29:44,219
I mean it's all in the timeline.

1193
01:29:44,219 --> 01:29:45,909
And that is probably all I want to say about
it.

1194
01:29:45,909 --> 01:29:50,559
I think the evidence we have seems to indicate
that the astronauts knew.

1195
01:29:50,559 --> 01:29:55,270
Obviously, when the vehicle went out of control
they knew there was a problem, when it began

1196
01:29:55,270 --> 01:29:56,889
spinning and stuff like that.

1197
01:29:56,889 --> 01:30:00,389
But, as far as we know, there was no indication
prior to that.

1198
01:30:00,389 --> 01:30:01,929
Everything else was sort of nominal.

1199
01:30:01,929 --> 01:30:02,179
Yes?

1200
01:30:02,110 --> 01:30:09,110
After both shuttle accidents, you have investigation
boards, but what happened after Apollo 1,

1201
01:30:10,969 --> 01:30:12,239
for example?

1202
01:30:12,239 --> 01:30:13,510
[AUDIENCE QUESTION]

1203
01:30:13,510 --> 01:30:14,909
I don't know the answer to that.

1204
01:30:14,909 --> 01:30:18,829
Well, actually, that's what Aaron did talk
about, safety organization with respect to

1205
01:30:18,829 --> 01:30:24,860
that and Apollo 13 and the fact that when
it was set up, they did start out with a very

1206
01:30:24,860 --> 01:30:29,070
strong independent safety organization which
did not exist before Apollo 1.

1207
01:30:29,070 --> 01:30:36,070
90:30 Now, why did we say that?

1208
01:31:01,139 --> 01:31:05,820
Well, you're all engineers.

1209
01:31:05,820 --> 01:31:10,389
The idea behind an independent safety organization
is that you should have engineers fighting.

1210
01:31:10,389 --> 01:31:14,750
How do engineers fight, in an ideal world?

1211
01:31:14,750 --> 01:31:21,340
They fight with data and analysis and hypothesis
and testing.

1212
01:31:21,340 --> 01:31:27,380
In other words, if the program wants to waive
a requirement, change a requirement then they

1213
01:31:27,380 --> 01:31:30,440
have to present a case.

1214
01:31:30,440 --> 01:31:36,510
And if the safety organization feels that
there is crossing the line then they present

1215
01:31:36,510 --> 01:31:36,989
a case.

1216
01:31:36,989 --> 01:31:43,619
And the two organizations basically try to
bring together the best analytical and experimental

1217
01:31:43,619 --> 01:31:47,599
framework they can in order to determine what
should be done.

1218
01:31:47,599 --> 01:31:50,250
And so that's the notion of an independent
safety organization.

1219
01:31:50,250 --> 01:31:55,590
I guess the thing that I was somewhat gratified
by, we will see how it all works out, is that

1220
01:31:55,590 --> 01:32:00,639
we recommended, as a return to flight thing,
that NASA present a plan for an independent

1221
01:32:00,639 --> 01:32:06,750
safety organization with the idea that in
the midterm they would actually begin such

1222
01:32:06,750 --> 01:32:07,559
an organization.

1223
01:32:07,559 --> 01:32:14,559
Sean O'Keefe took the bit in his teeth, I
guess is the way to say it, and he moved out

1224
01:32:16,909 --> 01:32:21,440
much more strongly on that than I would have
anticipated.

1225
01:32:21,440 --> 01:32:24,360
We met with him last December.

1226
01:32:24,360 --> 01:32:25,530
I guess it was December.

1227
01:32:25,530 --> 01:32:27,050
These years go by very quickly.

1228
01:32:27,050 --> 01:32:34,050
But he had actually put in place a structure,
to get ready for the flight, that had outside

1229
01:32:37,710 --> 01:32:44,710
experts from within NASA to sort of come together
as an independent safety board to look at

1230
01:32:45,679 --> 01:32:46,880
anomaly resolution.

1231
01:32:46,880 --> 01:32:49,130
I guess they didn't do too good on the foam.

1232
01:32:49,130 --> 01:32:55,590
But, in any case, as far as the structure
goes, it was a stronger safety structure than

1233
01:32:55,590 --> 01:32:57,800
had existed before.

1234
01:32:57,800 --> 01:33:01,800
That was something that we recommended.

1235
01:33:01,800 --> 01:33:08,210
It was very important that there be an independence
in the safety organization and that this is,

1236
01:33:08,210 --> 01:33:13,420
in fact, a characteristic of an organization
that effectively manages high-risk.

1237
01:33:13,420 --> 01:33:19,420
And we would claim that there are several
such organizations in our country.

1238
01:33:19,420 --> 01:33:24,659
And there is a lot to be learned and a lot
to be shared.

1239
01:33:24,659 --> 01:33:31,540
We also looked at the comparisons between
this accident and the Challenger accident.

1240
01:33:31,540 --> 01:33:38,030
And, in fact, found more similarity than you
might have expected given that Challenger

1241
01:33:38,030 --> 01:33:45,030
occurred on liftoff and this occurred, well,
in reentry, but did occur on liftoff.

1242
01:33:45,969 --> 01:33:52,710
In terms of the role of engineers and technical
managers, this notion of normalizing deviance.

1243
01:33:52,710 --> 01:33:54,300
Deviance is an anomaly.

1244
01:33:54,300 --> 01:33:59,290
It is a departure from the requirements.

1245
01:33:59,290 --> 01:34:02,909
And, if you normalize it, it means you accept
it.

1246
01:34:02,909 --> 01:34:09,909
You accept it and, in fact, you try to profit
from it by saying that it's proven that there

1247
01:34:10,429 --> 01:34:12,309
is no danger.

1248
01:34:12,309 --> 01:34:17,030
So this phrase normalization of deviance is
an important sort of technical phrase that

1249
01:34:17,030 --> 01:34:20,770
our group used.

1250
01:34:20,770 --> 01:34:27,770
We had with us, actually, a faculty member
from Boston College who had written a book

1251
01:34:28,820 --> 01:34:30,730
on the Challenger investigation.

1252
01:34:30,730 --> 01:34:37,010
She is a social scientist, and she worked
very closely with us to try to put, what I

1253
01:34:37,010 --> 01:34:40,219
would call, the social science and organizational
effects together.

1254
01:34:40,219 --> 01:34:41,270
That is Diane Vaughn.

1255
01:34:41,270 --> 01:34:43,110
You might bring her over some time.

1256
01:34:43,110 --> 01:34:46,449
She is a fascinating speaker.

1257
01:34:46,449 --> 01:34:53,449
But the thing that was interesting about Diane,
not only was she a great colleague, she published

1258
01:34:54,590 --> 01:34:58,960
her first book on the Challenger accident,
is there's an in-depth analysis of the cultural

1259
01:34:58,960 --> 01:35:03,110
flaws in the organization that led to the
Challenger accident.

1260
01:35:03,110 --> 01:35:03,989
She published this book.

1261
01:35:03,989 --> 01:35:09,540
And she said well, you know, I got a lot of
reaction from the book.

1262
01:35:09,540 --> 01:35:16,540
She said the Navy called, my old boyfriend
called, the various industries called to have

1263
01:35:17,579 --> 01:35:20,469
her come and talk about safety culture.

1264
01:35:20,469 --> 01:35:23,070
NASA never called.

1265
01:35:23,070 --> 01:35:30,070
NASA never indicated any interest in her analysis
of the cultural flaws within the organization

1266
01:35:30,880 --> 01:35:37,880
that led to the Challenger accident, which
I think is another indication of the insularity.

1267
01:35:38,219 --> 01:35:45,219
That was, I think, an important input to our
look at the organizational issues.

1268
01:35:48,150 --> 01:35:54,989
We got together as a result of all of this.

1269
01:35:54,989 --> 01:36:00,889
And, as I said, I wasn't deeply involved in,
say, some of the privileged interviews having

1270
01:36:00,889 --> 01:36:02,710
to do with the individuals.

1271
01:36:02,710 --> 01:36:09,710
But certainly as a board, we came to this
organizational cause which we considered to

1272
01:36:09,800 --> 01:36:15,520
be as important as the technical cause.

1273
01:36:15,520 --> 01:36:20,099
And the various words rooted in the Space
Shuttle Program.

1274
01:36:20,099 --> 01:36:21,579
History and culture.

1275
01:36:21,579 --> 01:36:25,760
Original compromises that were required to
gain approval.

1276
01:36:25,760 --> 01:36:27,829
The years of resource constraints.

1277
01:36:27,829 --> 01:36:29,219
The fluctuating priorities.

1278
01:36:29,219 --> 01:36:31,119
The scheduled pressures.

1279
01:36:31,119 --> 01:36:35,349
This mischaracterization of the Shuttle as
operational rather than developmental.

1280
01:36:35,349 --> 01:36:40,099
Lack of agreed national vision for human space
flight.

1281
01:36:40,099 --> 01:36:44,219
The cultural traits and organizational practices
that were detrimental to safety that we're

1282
01:36:44,219 --> 01:36:51,219
allowed to develop including reliance on past
success as a substitute for sound engineering

1283
01:36:51,760 --> 01:36:58,489
practices such as testing to understand why
systems were not performing in accordance

1284
01:36:58,489 --> 01:37:00,389
with requirements.

1285
01:37:00,389 --> 01:37:06,309
Organizational barriers that prevented effective
communication of safety information and stifled

1286
01:37:06,309 --> 01:37:08,349
professional differences of opinion.

1287
01:37:08,349 --> 01:37:13,270
Lack of integrated management across program
elements and the evolution of an informal

1288
01:37:13,270 --> 01:37:19,300
chain of command and decision-making process
that operated outside the organization rules.

1289
01:37:19,300 --> 01:37:22,790
A bit of an old-boy network in some sense.

1290
01:37:22,790 --> 01:37:29,790
And we should mention the lack of an agreed
national vision for human space flight has

1291
01:37:31,320 --> 01:37:36,199
been the jumping off point for everything
that has happened since with the new vision,

1292
01:37:36,199 --> 01:37:41,230
which is presumably going to determine what
we do in the next ten years, so I think it

1293
01:37:41,230 --> 01:37:44,619
is great that all of you called attention
to that.

1294
01:37:44,619 --> 01:37:47,840
Let me talk about our recommendations.

1295
01:37:47,840 --> 01:37:51,170
We made recommendations in basically three
piles.

1296
01:37:51,170 --> 01:37:55,889
One of them are the near term recommendations
which are the return to flight recommendations.

1297
01:37:55,889 --> 01:37:59,510
And these were monitored by a committee of
28 people.

1298
01:37:59,510 --> 01:38:02,400
It was enormous.

1299
01:38:02,400 --> 01:38:06,849
In any case, we asked them to present a plan
for an independent safety organization.

1300
01:38:06,849 --> 01:38:09,329
I think they went a little further.

1301
01:38:09,329 --> 01:38:15,829
We asked that they develop a method to do
onboard repair.

1302
01:38:15,829 --> 01:38:18,969
Now, there was a big discussion about onboard
repair.

1303
01:38:18,969 --> 01:38:24,530
It is very clear that it is much easier to
do onboard repair for all sorts of different

1304
01:38:24,530 --> 01:38:31,440
reasons, including crew safety if you are
going to the Space Station.

1305
01:38:31,440 --> 01:38:36,270
Because then you've got a safe house and all
sorts of supplies.

1306
01:38:36,270 --> 01:38:38,260
It is like your recreation room.

1307
01:38:38,260 --> 01:38:43,860
If you're not going to the Space Station,
it is considerably more dangerous, and that

1308
01:38:43,860 --> 01:38:46,559
is the fundamental issue with respect to a
Hubble mission.

1309
01:38:46,559 --> 01:38:49,480
Because a Hubble mission is incompatible with
going to the Space Station.

1310
01:38:49,480 --> 01:38:54,790
If you take this recommendation seriously,
you either have to develop an autonomous onboard

1311
01:38:54,790 --> 01:38:58,800
repair, which is much more difficult than
a Space Station onboard repair, or you cannot

1312
01:38:58,800 --> 01:39:00,380
have any Hubble mission.

1313
01:39:00,380 --> 01:39:07,380
So, this is a bit of turmoil in the political
issues surrounding missions.

1314
01:39:09,719 --> 01:39:15,040
The other impacts, as I mentioned, not our
recommendation, but this notion of having

1315
01:39:15,040 --> 01:39:18,409
a second shuttle standing by seems to have
been internalized.

1316
01:39:18,409 --> 01:39:19,969
There were a number of other recommendations.

1317
01:39:19,969 --> 01:39:21,250
Our report is on the Web.

1318
01:39:21,250 --> 01:39:23,429
I mean more video cameras.

1319
01:39:23,429 --> 01:39:29,400
More onboard video that gets telemetered to
the ground during the flight so you don't

1320
01:39:29,400 --> 01:39:33,880
have to wait until the vehicle gets back to
see the video.

1321
01:39:33,880 --> 01:39:36,500
External video cameras launched during day.

1322
01:39:36,500 --> 01:39:38,750
Keep your sensors up to date.

1323
01:39:38,750 --> 01:39:44,550
I mean there was just a whole lot of I think
25 recommendations of a return to flight.

1324
01:39:44,550 --> 01:39:48,900
And the Return to Flight Committee was in
charge of monitoring all of those.

1325
01:39:48,900 --> 01:39:50,960
And they have recently issued a report.

1326
01:39:50,960 --> 01:39:56,559
Incidentally, I got a copy of the Return to
Flight report and donated it to the AeroLibrary.

1327
01:39:56,559 --> 01:39:58,829
It should be in the AeroLibrary.

1328
01:39:58,829 --> 01:40:03,690
And there was a very interesting minority
report that was submitted by like about five

1329
01:40:03,690 --> 01:40:10,690
people which was just damming with respect
to their observations about how NASA works

1330
01:40:12,860 --> 01:40:16,290
the safety issues.

1331
01:40:16,290 --> 01:40:20,469
Take it as the opinion of these five people
who were on the Return to Flight Committee.

1332
01:40:20,469 --> 01:40:23,540
It makes good reading.

1333
01:40:23,540 --> 01:40:24,750
But that is all in the AeroLibrary.

1334
01:40:24,750 --> 01:40:31,750
Our midterm recommendations.

1335
01:40:34,199 --> 01:40:38,429
In some sense, we made these recommendations
assuming the Shuttle Program would continue.

1336
01:40:38,429 --> 01:40:43,570
And I think we had this recommendation for
an independent safety organization.

1337
01:40:43,570 --> 01:40:50,570
And what I thought was one of our most important
recommendations was that if you intend to

1338
01:40:52,800 --> 01:40:55,860
fly the Shuttle past 2010, you should recertify
it.

1339
01:40:55,860 --> 01:41:02,860
Now, certification is a very technical process
where you have to go through every piece of

1340
01:41:03,010 --> 01:41:08,179
equipment and, in some sense, revalidate that
it will satisfy the requirements.

1341
01:41:08,179 --> 01:41:15,179
101:05 What better project for the Shuttle
Program Office and the Independent Safety

1342
01:41:37,150 --> 01:41:39,510
Organization than to recertify the Shuttle?

1343
01:41:39,510 --> 01:41:42,480
At least that was my vision.

1344
01:41:42,480 --> 01:41:48,139
That would really be an extremely useful thing
to do, to work together, to recertify the

1345
01:41:48,139 --> 01:41:48,389
Shuttle.

1346
01:41:48,219 --> 01:41:54,809
Now, unfortunately, evidently the Shuttle
is not going to operate past 2010 so we will

1347
01:41:54,809 --> 01:41:55,090
see.

1348
01:41:55,090 --> 01:41:56,610
I mean they won't recertify it.

1349
01:41:56,610 --> 01:42:01,290
Now, I think what's going to happen is they're
going to get up to 2009 and are going to say

1350
01:42:01,290 --> 01:42:04,849
oh, my gosh, we don't have any way to get
to space.

1351
01:42:04,849 --> 01:42:11,849
There is going to be enormous pressure to
keep the Shuttle operating past 2010.

1352
01:42:12,449 --> 01:42:16,369
And, of course, they will be late to need
in terms of recertifying.

1353
01:42:16,369 --> 01:42:20,599
It is going to be a bit of a jump-all at that
point.

1354
01:42:20,599 --> 01:42:23,280
It should be very interesting to watch.

1355
01:42:23,280 --> 01:42:28,869
Now, the long-term recommendation, of course,
we made was that we need an agreed upon vision

1356
01:42:28,869 --> 01:42:31,250
for further manned space flight.

1357
01:42:31,250 --> 01:42:37,989
And so, from my point of view, we skip the
midterm and we went immediately to the long-term

1358
01:42:37,989 --> 01:42:42,489
because with the President's new program that
we have basically set this vision.

1359
01:42:42,489 --> 01:42:47,380
And, unfortunately, we have skipped some of
the intermediate steps that would have strengthened

1360
01:42:47,380 --> 01:42:52,869
NASA as an organization and its ability to
carry out a new mission.

1361
01:42:52,869 --> 01:42:59,869
I stand back watching, as all of this develops,
having had this incredible background of being

1362
01:43:00,469 --> 01:43:02,329
a member of this Accident Investigation Board.

1363
01:43:02,329 --> 01:43:06,510
It looks like I landed the plane right on
time.

1364
01:43:06,510 --> 01:43:06,760
Yes.

1365
01:43:06,679 --> 01:43:12,429
Incidentally, I brought this Halloween candy.

1366
01:43:12,429 --> 01:43:18,290
And I would really appreciate it if you guys
would come and take it because it's not something

1367
01:43:18,290 --> 01:43:20,139
that my husband and I need.

1368
01:43:20,139 --> 01:43:24,829
And if it doesn't get eaten, would somebody
please take it down and put it with the graduate

1369
01:43:24,829 --> 01:43:25,329
students downstairs?

1370
01:43:25,329 --> 01:43:25,579
Good.

1371
01:43:25,579 --> 01:43:26,840
Anyway, you had a question.

1372
01:43:26,840 --> 01:43:29,550
I am wondering if you think there might have
been any effect on that if it was explicitly

1373
01:43:29,550 --> 01:43:35,449
stated that this is why we want the recertification
to happen.

1374
01:43:35,449 --> 01:43:35,809
I don't know.

1375
01:43:35,809 --> 01:43:42,119
You know, it is hard to micromanage a big
organization.

1376
01:43:42,119 --> 01:43:46,260
I personally was disappointed because I believed
very strongly in this.

1377
01:43:46,260 --> 01:43:52,800
And I felt that it would be a way to bring
the organization together around this set

1378
01:43:52,800 --> 01:43:53,800
of ideas.

1379
01:43:53,800 --> 01:43:55,099
So, that won't happen.

1380
01:43:55,099 --> 01:44:02,099
And we will see how they work with this "independent
safety board" that they have put in place.

1381
01:44:02,889 --> 01:44:05,760
All of what we're doing is self-education.

1382
01:44:05,760 --> 01:44:08,010
It is organizational education.

1383
01:44:08,010 --> 01:44:08,900
It is self-education.

1384
01:44:08,900 --> 01:44:10,010
It is process education.

1385
01:44:10,010 --> 01:44:13,969
So, we will see how they will bring all that
together.

1386
01:44:13,969 --> 01:44:18,670
The reason I asked that was because actually,
in terms of reading this recommendation, I

1387
01:44:18,670 --> 01:44:20,050
read it a little differently.

1388
01:44:20,050 --> 01:44:27,010
I thought it was kind of a push to move past
the Shuttle to say that recertification is

1389
01:44:27,010 --> 01:44:30,300
going to be too complicated.

1390
01:44:30,300 --> 01:44:32,960
Well, there might have been a little bit of
that.

1391
01:44:32,960 --> 01:44:39,960
I mean it really was up to NASA to decide
whether a process that was so resource-intensive

1392
01:44:41,230 --> 01:44:45,650
was worth doing, I mean given the fact that
the Shuttle is in the sort of sunset of its

1393
01:44:45,650 --> 01:44:47,550
career.

1394
01:44:47,550 --> 01:44:53,730
I guess I felt that we should leave that to
them but that they could not continue to operate

1395
01:44:53,730 --> 01:44:54,790
the way they were operating.

1396
01:44:54,790 --> 01:44:56,550
I think that was really the message.

1397
01:44:56,550 --> 01:44:57,579
They had to make a decision.

1398
01:44:57,579 --> 01:45:04,579
Sheila, the board's recommendation of the
number of 2010 has had enormous impact.

1399
01:45:05,349 --> 01:45:06,040
I know.

1400
01:45:06,040 --> 01:45:08,840
Of course it has.

1401
01:45:08,840 --> 01:45:13,719
Very negative from my point of view.

1402
01:45:13,719 --> 01:45:17,090
Say something about how you picked that number
and how flexible it is?

1403
01:45:17,090 --> 01:45:21,619
Well, recall we did this in 2004.

1404
01:45:21,619 --> 01:45:27,130
We wanted to give NASA enough time to get
back to flying.

1405
01:45:27,130 --> 01:45:33,199
And, of course, the whole definition of what
recertification means is a bit unclear.

1406
01:45:33,199 --> 01:45:36,880
In other words, I would think that NASA could
have gone in.

1407
01:45:36,880 --> 01:45:43,250
I think what we saw was we needed to get a
couple of flights under our belt, but we needed

1408
01:45:43,250 --> 01:45:43,980
to go back.

1409
01:45:43,980 --> 01:45:48,130
I think what we meant by recertification is
a relook at the whole mission.

1410
01:45:48,130 --> 01:45:48,869
What is that thing called?

1411
01:45:48,869 --> 01:45:51,869
Mission rules?

1412
01:45:51,869 --> 01:45:52,670
No, not mission rules.

1413
01:45:52,670 --> 01:45:54,940
When they get together and decide whether
they are going to fly.

1414
01:45:54,940 --> 01:45:58,070
Mission readiness review.

1415
01:45:58,070 --> 01:45:59,099
Flight readiness review.

1416
01:45:59,099 --> 01:46:05,309
We felt that the flight readiness review was
broken and that part of the reason it was

1417
01:46:05,309 --> 01:46:11,900
broken is that there were too many requirements
that were silly like the Shuttle had only

1418
01:46:11,900 --> 01:46:16,739
two wings instead of four because you'd need
redundancy.

1419
01:46:16,739 --> 01:46:20,030
Wings are important, and if you really thought
they were important you would have four instead

1420
01:46:20,030 --> 01:46:20,659
of two.

1421
01:46:20,659 --> 01:46:24,190
And every time they did a flight readiness
review you would have to go through these,

1422
01:46:24,190 --> 01:46:27,000
what I would call silly requirements.

1423
01:46:27,000 --> 01:46:33,849
One issue about recertification was to try
to narrow down to what were the key systems

1424
01:46:33,849 --> 01:46:40,210
that needed reexamination in the light of
technology and what we know about the Shuttle?

1425
01:46:40,210 --> 01:46:44,260
That, in and of itself, would have been a
very useful process that would have helped

1426
01:46:44,260 --> 01:46:44,739
this.

1427
01:46:44,739 --> 01:46:50,460
And so, I think what we saw is that there
is a set of processes that need to be carried

1428
01:46:50,460 --> 01:46:56,050
out after a couple of successful flights that
would really position the organization to

1429
01:46:56,050 --> 01:46:56,750
do its job.

1430
01:46:56,750 --> 01:47:01,020
107:00 They wasted a lot of time.

1431
01:47:01,020 --> 01:47:08,020
But suppose someone had come back to you,
or members of the board and said well, life

1432
01:47:21,710 --> 01:47:28,710
would be easier for us if we called it 2013?

1433
01:47:41,429 --> 01:47:45,380
Well, I would think if you're going to do
that, that NASA should come forward with a

1434
01:47:45,380 --> 01:47:52,380
plan at the minimum of how they're going to
operate the Shuttle safely through 2013.

1435
01:47:53,219 --> 01:47:56,030
They have not even thought about doing that.

1436
01:47:56,030 --> 01:48:00,290
They are carrying on with "business as usual".

1437
01:48:00,290 --> 01:48:01,300
Flight, flight, flight.

1438
01:48:01,300 --> 01:48:06,300
And they are not thinking about this more
fundamental issue which would, I think, be

1439
01:48:06,300 --> 01:48:11,710
very useful for them as an organization of
what are the critical issues if we wanted

1440
01:48:11,710 --> 01:48:14,900
to operate the Shuttle to 2013?

1441
01:48:14,900 --> 01:48:18,909
They just kind of got off the hook by saying
2010, we can do that.

1442
01:48:18,909 --> 01:48:20,219
You know, pretty shallow.

1443
01:48:20,219 --> 01:48:20,570
Yes?

1444
01:48:20,570 --> 01:48:24,770
And this is going to have to be the last question,
unfortunately.

1445
01:48:24,770 --> 01:48:29,790
Anyway, you're all invited to my office to
see my big poster on the flight.

1446
01:48:29,790 --> 01:48:36,790
Your recommendation for not flying unless
you have a safe house in orbit.

1447
01:48:38,469 --> 01:48:40,300
No, we didn't recommend that.

1448
01:48:40,300 --> 01:48:41,349
Oh, safe house in orbit.

1449
01:48:41,349 --> 01:48:41,599
OK.

1450
01:48:41,559 --> 01:48:48,559
If you would have said that at the beginning
of the Shuttle Program, that would have cut

1451
01:48:49,489 --> 01:48:50,900
out dozens of flights.

1452
01:48:50,900 --> 01:48:51,250
Sure.

1453
01:48:51,250 --> 01:48:58,250
But, you see, at the beginning of the program,
NASA was committed to a system that met its

1454
01:49:01,770 --> 01:49:04,750
requirements.

1455
01:49:04,750 --> 01:49:09,960
Once they backed off of a system that met
it requirements, they left itself open to

1456
01:49:09,960 --> 01:49:12,770
operating a risky system.

1457
01:49:12,770 --> 01:49:18,030
And so then you come in, after having two
accidents, and say OK, how can we operate

1458
01:49:18,030 --> 01:49:19,780
this system safety?

1459
01:49:19,780 --> 01:49:24,989
You've already demonstrated that you're willing
to back off on requirements so how can we

1460
01:49:24,989 --> 01:49:31,989
identify what some key issues are so that
you get back to operating safely?

1461
01:49:35,989 --> 01:49:40,809
What we fundamentally recommended was that
you should develop onboard repair capability.

1462
01:49:40,809 --> 01:49:42,090
And that's really all we said.

1463
01:49:42,090 --> 01:49:49,090
And we sort of left open how they would do
that.

1464
01:49:49,969 --> 01:49:56,389
And so they investigated a lot of things and
decided that it would be a heck of a lot easier

1465
01:49:56,389 --> 01:49:59,070
if they could use the Space Station for a
repair.

1466
01:49:59,070 --> 01:50:03,469
And so they themselves said OK, Space Station
only.

1467
01:50:03,469 --> 01:50:05,340
That really was not our recommendation.

1468
01:50:05,340 --> 01:50:09,559
Although, we understood that it would be a
lot easier to do Space Station repair.

1469
01:50:09,559 --> 01:50:10,039
OK.

1470
01:50:10,039 --> 01:50:11,980
Thank you very much.

1471
01:50:11,980 --> 01:50:12,460
[APPLAUSE]