Bob Lowry, 334/844-9999

AU SPACE HISTORIAN'S JOURNAL ON COLUMBIA ACCIDENT

(Editor's Note: James R. Hansen, professor of history at Auburn University, is working on the first authorized biography of astronaut Neil A. Armstrong. This week he is conducting research and oral history interviews in and around the Johnson Space Center in Houston. While there, he is keeping a journal of his thoughts and observations pertaining to the Columbia tragedy specifically and to the American space program in general. He has agreed to share his journal, and this is Part II. Hansen has been writing about aerospace history for the past 22 years. His Armstrong biography is scheduled to appear in late 2004.)

* Newspaper editors: Please note this material may be suitable for an op-ed page.

Monday, Feb. 3

6:45 a.m.: Just out of the shower, drying off in front of the TV. My old friend Professor Alex Roland of Duke University is on one of the morning shows saying that the Shuttle fleet should be grounded. Alex was a NASA historian back in 1981, and he was responsible for my getting involved in the NASA history program in the first place. But our perspectives can be quite different. He criticized the shuttle program back in 1985 even before the Challenger accident, and his concerns are now again receiving attention. He's saying that NASA should recall its three astronauts still aboard the International Space Station, begin redesigning it as an unmanned space platform and "just visit it periodically." That would certainly force us to make a fresh start of things, but I don't think there is any chance thatıs going to happen. We'll resume Shuttle flights as soon as possible. But in the meantime, we better start thinking about a new type of vehicle to get us into orbit; he's right about that. Coincidentally, Alex is going to be visiting Auburn this week to talk about his new book on DARPA (Defense Advance Research Projects Agency). No question now that he's going to field more questions about NASA. I wish I could be there.

7:15 a.m.: Coffee and a croissant in the breakfast nook of my motel. The top story in the morning newspapers focuses on missing tiles near the left wing as what might have led to the disaster. When the Shuttle technology was being conceptualized back in the 1970s, it was the vehicle's extraordinary thermal protection system that always scared the engineers. Lose a couple tiles in the wrong place and at the wrong time and a big section of the entire system might literally unzip. I wonder if that fear was finally realized. When I first saw the video of the vehicle breaking up, I felt it had to have started with some sort of "unzipping" of the tiles. Maybe damage to tiles from the launch made it happen, maybe not.

7:45 a.m.: Heading west on NASA Road One. Texas has to fly more state flags than any other state in the Union! Many of them are on their own poles, but all since Saturday have been at half-staff.

8:05 a.m.: Opening up the briefcase and starting work at the Johnson Space Center historical archives located on the campus of the University of Houston at Clear Lake. Work is a good, healthy thing. St. Benedict back in the early Middle Ages said "to labor is to pray." I'll bet a lot of NASA employees, after a long and tragic weekend, feel better to be back on the job.

9:30 a.m.: Standing at the photocopier ("is sure tough on a 50-year-old back") in the UHCL archives. For the lunatics who don't believe that we actually walked on the Moon back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, they should spend some time in a NASA records repository. (I'd like to have a nickel for every government document I've xeroxed over the past 20 years.) Maybe I should ask Ms. Kelley, the archivist, if I could see the secret files about the TV studio setup out in the Nevada desert where the whole lunar business was faked.

11 a.m.: In front of a TV in a student lounge during a coffee break. My cell phone rings. It's Milt Windler, who I'll be interviewing tomorrow morning. Milt ran the fourth shift of flight controllers -- the Maroon Team -- during the Apollo 11 mission. Neil Armstrong recommended that I talk to him for the biography. Milt warns me that I may run into a lot of traffic on my way to his house tomorrow. With President Bush coming in and over 10,000 people expected to attend the memorial service at JSC, several streets will be blocked off and traffic rerouted. Milt gives directions that he thinks will let me avoid it all. How thoughtful is that!

12:30 p.m.: On the road back to the archives after a quick working lunch at the office of the contractors (Veridian Company) who administer the JSC Oral History Project. A local talk radio jock points out that the current NASA budget is significantly less than 1 percent of the federal budget and that Americans spend much more annually on potato chips than they do on space exploration. During the Apollo period, I recall, the NASA budget topped off at 4.5 percent of the federal budget. I guess that would take care of all our hot dogs, buns, baked beans, and soda pop. Well, maybe not the soda pop.

3 p.m.: Yes, back at the photocopier. Ms. Kelley, the archivist, has her radio on in her office. She comes out and tells me that an astronomer in California saw material being shed from the Columbia even that far west. If thatıs true, that's significant. (Later, on the evening news, I hear that the remains of a Shuttle tile have been found in the area of Fort Worth, which is quite far upstream of the main debris field.)

3:05 p.m.: Back at my worktable in the archives, sorting through Apollo reports. Seeing a reference to Neil Armstrong's days as a pilot of the X-15 rocket plane, I remember the highest altitude Neil got to in the X-15 was around 207,000 feet. That's almost exactly the same altitude at which Mission Control lost contact with Columbia. I wonder how many people know that a number of X-15 pilots back in the 1960s flew high enough to qualify as astronauts?

5:30 p.m.: On the way back to the hotel. On the radio, I hear JSC's deputy director Bonnie Dunbar say that out of NASA's $15 billion budget, roughly $1 billion goes to universities through contracts. That's pretty impressive. I didn't know it was that much.

7 p.m.: Checking email on my laptop in my motel room. Someone I don't know from Auburn has sent a message asking me why NASA couldn't have repaired damaged tiles if they knew there had been damage from the time of the launch. I haven't had time to watch all the TV coverage, but I can't believe this question hasn't been answered. For one, Columbia, this time up, wasn't equipped with spacewalk capabilities (maybe a Shuttle should always be so equipped?) But even on missions where astronauts go outside the orbiter, they can't reach the Shuttle's underside or the rear of its wings, where Columbia may have lost its tiles. And even if astronauts on EVA could have reached the areas, the Shuttle doesn't carry replacement parts because the tiles vary widely in size and shape. It's like a big jigsaw puzzle. You'd have to carry a spare for every one of thousands of pieces.

11:10 p.m.: My life with the laptop and TV. There he is again! Now Dr. Alex Roland is on ABC's Nightline‹and he's mixing it up with Dr. Mae Jemison, the first African-American astronaut, who, by the way, herself visited Auburn a few weeks ago. On the morning show, Roland said, "If -- and it's a big if -- because we donıt know what happened -- it was caused by a systemic problem in the program, then I think NASA has a lot to answer for, reliving the almost identical circumstances of the Challenger accident." Over the course of 16 hours, from morning to evening, Roland has somehow become more definite. Now he declares it was a systemic problem caused by NASA being overstressed and underfunded, trying to do too much with the money available. Jemison does her best to counter and defend the value of human spaceflight over robotic missions: "Do we want to send a robot to enjoy our Hawaiian vacation? No, there are things that we must experience ourselves or that take the combination of the human brain and the human touch to do right." Alex gives no ground. In his view NASA from its conception has sold its existence on the appeal of humans in space, but "we don't need astronauts in space tending to experiments that don't amount to much." The TV host makes that the last word, which leaves Jemison with her mouth open. Too bad the debate lasted only 3-4 minutes. This one could have gotten really good.

11:50 p.m.: Time for bed. One of President Reagan's greatest moments was his comforting presence at the Challenger memorial service in Houston 16 years ago. Bush is a lot like Reagan, but it will be hard for him to do as well as Reagan did. Of course, no one played a better Grover Cleveland Alexander, either.

To be continued . . .

Click here to return to Part I.

feb03:columbia1

CONTACT: Hansen (hansejr@auburn.edu)