On this day in 2003, the space shuttle Columbia broke apart over Texas, killing commander Rick Husband, pilot Willie McCool, and mission specialists Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, Michael Anderson, David Brown and Ilan Ramon. The subsequent investigation found that, during the launch, some insulating foam had broken off from the large rocket booster which Columbia was attached to, causing significant damage to the ceramic tiles used to shield the shuttle from extreme heat during reentry to the earth’s atmosphere.
Tiles had been damaged during other shuttle flights, but by whatever stroke of luck, not enough of them for the heat to destroy the spacecraft. Despite the Challenger disaster in 1986, NASA had, for years, presented the public with the picture of a relatively safe and reliable machine which could easily head into orbit on a busy schedule of satellite deployments, scientific research, etc. (“Shuttle” being the operative term)
The reality was much different, with each mission actually being carried out in extremely dangerous machines that, on a good day, made the 737 Max seem like a real gem in comparison. Add to this the ozone layer damage with every launch, and the shuttle program doesn’t come out looking quite as good as the PR folks told us. Space travel is inherently dangerous, but the shuttles lacked even the basic crew escape systems their predecessors had. I hope future astronauts have something better to fly in.
Peter Stokes 