Ron Dittemore News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

from space shuttle columbia as columbia continues to orbit the earth at an altitude of about 150 statute miles. columbia, houston, laurel, you're loud and clear on air to ground one. -the second day, i drive in to work kind of euphoric because another launch, another successful launch. you know, the flight director's office and the mission control center in houston is working with them. they're -- everything's good. i walked into the analysis lab to start reviewing film from the launch. we started the film at the beginning. [ rockets roaring ] we're watching this liftoff. you see the...

-for the second time in nasa's history, a space shuttle has been lost along with its entire crew. once again, we are asking ourselves, how could this have happened? -do you have any idea how big that piece of foam was that came off? -we'd heard some reports that during launch there had been some concerns that some debris hit the wing. is that true and is that any cause of concern and that could have caused today's problems? -it is true. it was judged that, erm , that event did not represent a safety concern. -this happened under my watch, but i didn't have the answers. in every publi...

One would have to interrupt the mission to get the right lighting, to make sure you're over, the right satellite is in position. and then now you have an army of people on the ground. we have to reorient the shuttle for the proper exposure angles and all that. and to do that means they may have to terminate their science experiments. in a program manager's mind, that's responsible for getting shuttles up there on schedule, if you interrupt the science mission, you have the ire of all the people and the science objectives were now ruined. and that looks badly on nasa. -a little bit later in the...

The chairman of the meeting was linda ham. -she basically ran this mission. -if there were going to be any changes, she headed up this team that would have to approve any changes. -she was effectively the deputy to ron dittemore, the program manager in those days. linda has excellent judgment, can grasp complicated problems very quickly. she was the first woman to be certified as a flight director. linda was recalling sts-112, a flight two flights before.

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, "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 elimin...