Aug. 27, 2003 - 19:41 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Falls On All

Headline in our paper this morning "All of NASA found guilty in disaster"

It boiled down to the fact that it was a chunk of insulating foam that fell from the fuel tank that blew a hole in the spacecraft's wing which led to that fiery streak across our sky on February 1, 2003.

The report from the Columbia Accident Investigation Board is 248 pages long. Mentioned in our paper The Rocky Mountain News, "The report describes a space agency that had deluded itself over time into downplaying the risks of space flight, with missed communications, complacency and missteps that added up to disaster."

It seems another case of the gods above ignoring the words of those below, "The report makes clear that engineers within NASA had a strong sense that Columbia might have been mortally wounded during liftoff and that they took appropriate steps, making three (THREE) requests for outside assistance to get photos of the shuttle to assess the damage." Further into the article, "A high-risk rescue mission might have been mounted, the board said, if management had recognized the severity of the problem and acted quickly. But instead, it countermanded the engineer's moves."

The final paragraph in the article has this to say, "But the Columbia Accident Investigation Board went beyond the search for physical causes of the accident or simple mistakes by individuals. It looked to factors such as schedule pressures, years of tread-water budgets for the space agency, shifting national priorities and the need to build and maintain the International Space Station. Logsdon, the board's policy expert, said that in order to keep other NASA programs, the shuttle's budget and workforce was cut 40 percent in the 1990's, leaving too little margin for a robust operating system, in our judgment. 'It was operating too close to too many margins,' he said."

Information on this entry is from an article by John Schwartz and Matthew L. Wald of The New York Times today August 27, 2003

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So, room for opinion, sure I got plenty of them. I think most of us in the workplace have seen the utter disregard for the thoughts, ideas, opinions and suggestions mnade by the lowly to the upper echelon. And some of us have also seen the careless attitude of those who put people working around dangerous situations into deathly situations. I have worked in a place or two that were on "treadwater budgets," though not dependent on Congress for financing and weird and strange things are done and happen because of it.

Our Congress shorted NASA the needed funds to do things right too. And some of us average Joe's through our complaining of the money spent on space have our share of guilt also, I think.

Myself, I think our future is in space and the more we can learn the further we can advance in making a place for mankind on into the future. At the rate we are fouling our planet I think we will need somewhere to go in the future, pray God it is not in the too near future.

And thinking about it wouldn't it have been easy for the brass to listen to the engineers and sent word to the Space Station to have someone do a space walk, inspect the wing and even take pictures, all to be relayed to the ground.

Point not the finger at the next man, the blame Falls On All . . . . . . . . . .

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