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"ron, let me just remind you, ok? we had a clear understanding that we are not gonna eliminate anything until the data has come in to definitively eliminate it." -to bring that out and dismiss it, you know, pre-emptively, i think speaks volumes. at the very least they had to acknowledge it. but it was acknowledging their own mistakes and that's hard to do. ♪ -each week there was a new trailer load of debris showed up, came right in this hangar through those doors, and it would be catalogued and then put out on the floor. i want to know what the debris is telling us, i want to know what the aerodynamics are telling us, and i want to know what the sensors are telling us. you follow the debris, what's it telling you? ♪
those protect the vehicle from the highest level of heat, those 3,000 degree temperatures, so that you don't get metal melting. but we had never had any experience in breaking a panel. -what was starting to join up was you've got video analysis that says the strike on the orbiter created a hole in the wing. and you can see that there had been some sort of penetration against the rcc panel. hot gas had entered in, the shuttle had lost aerodynamic control and crashed. but i think the challenge for a lot of folks at nasa was believing that foam had done that. they would say foam can't break reinforced carbon-carbon.
before we schedule the next launch." -in other words, again, they were thinking it was more of a turnaround issue. and so, it wasn't preventing shuttle flights from going forward. -the pressure on the management team to stay on schedule and the concept of, "it's just foam" is leading the charge through all of this. -so, it wasn't like they weren't talking about issues at all, but there certainly was a big focus on the -- on the schedule. -here's an e-mail, it's tuesday january 21st, this was sent six days into the columbia mission. this is a private exchange between linda ham and ron dittemore, two of the top managers in the program. "the rationale for flight for the sts-112 loss of foam
-there's that issue of the falling foam during the launch of space shuttle columbia. -very early on nasa told us that they knew about a foam -- a debris event. but we didn't even know enough about the shuttle to understand that there was foam on the tanks. the press wants to know what happened and it's like, "yep, so do we." -it's a mammoth job for those taking part in a mammoth task. -covering many hundreds of square miles. -it's the largest recovery effort that has ever been attempted in this country. -as an investigator, i wanted as ironclad a case as we could possibly have for the sequence of events leading to the cause of the crash of space shuttle columbia. but if we were going to do that, we needed to collect all the debris and reconstruct the shuttle. -1,200 sites have been identified.
hey, we see foam loss all the time. and it never did any damage to the vehicle. we don't have to worry about it, it's only foam." two missions before columbia it happened on sts-112 atlantis. a significant strike hit the skirt of the solid rocket booster and actually put a dent in it. -prior till the launch of columbia, and a couple of the meetings, the topic of foam coming off 112 came up. there's probably, erm... 15 to 20 people around the table and then there's a lot of other people at nasa in the room. we talked about starting to look into this a little bit more because we've seen it come off on, you know, more than one flight now. we should understand if there's a way to prevent it.
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-late october of 2002, after sts-112 atlantis, i went to a meeting about that flight. i had put together a report about the foam loss and the damage to the solid rocket booster. and i presented the case that said, "that amount of foam, that mass, in one chunk coming off shuttle atlantis -- this was the vehicle telling us something is wrong, here's your warning." at risk of being insubordinate, i said to the heads of the shuttle program sitting around the centre table, i was adamant at that meeting, "either fix the problem or don't fly an external tank on the next launch, which is impossible." from that meeting, i never heard any discussion of "let's get a better understanding of this
-ok. foam will break reinforced carbon-carbon. -i mean, there was no doubt at that point, right? case closed. there's no denying it. you know, there was there was foam falling from day one. they should have had that test on day two. -this was a known failure. but i think the failure to imagine being wrong, the failure to imagine the consequences of failure were catastrophic. and i think it's this whole notion of the failure to imagine failure. -nasa's trying to move forward after tuesday's blistering report, blaming it for failing to prevent the shuttle columbia tragedy. -nasa stands accused of complacency of a flawed safety culture
there's got to be another reason. -well, how can he say that? where is he getting that from? what a big denial. -to be certain it was foam is nonsense, right? but to be certain it wasn't foam is equally nonsense. right? and that's what they were saying. "it's not foam." well, how do you know? -i know from the accident investigation team's perspective, no one was gonna go public and say, "we know what didn't happen." -you get that shot right there? that's a nasa official. he's holding a piece of foam, which he is now saying could not have had enough impact 'cause it's too light to have damaged those tiles that we've been talking about. -i knew ron. i had respect for ron. ron was linda ham's boss and a good manager. but what's always the first step in grief? denial. -i called ron and i said,
and if somebody says, "hey, let's get better data to make a decision," why is getting better data a-a problem? but, i mean, i was in mission control. i was a nasa employee. i knew about the foam strike. when there's blame that's laid out, i am right up there saying i knew. and i -- and i wish i could've done something differently. but i-i can't undo that. and it -- you can just make it better for those that follow. -i feel ashamed. so, who's guilty? i'm not just gonna say the program managers are. we're all guilty. if you don't speak up for your own system and you're the victims of this environment, we're guilty, too. -during the mission, i could have easily done a story saying, "this thing happened.