Jed, There were definitely bad management decisions made in both disasters based upon technical information available.
To label NASA as a dysfunctinal corporate culture seems a stretch since they are a bureaucratic goverment agency in which both cases managers failed to move on actionable data. On Sunday, May 27, 2012, Jed Rothwell wrote: > Here is another interesting article in Slate's series, on the Columbia > disaster: > > http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2003/11/langewiesche.htm > > This is about the dysfunctional corporate culture in NASA. > > When Columbia was in orbit, some people thought it might be damaged by the > falling insulation. Some said that even if it was damaged, nothing could be > done about it. Here is something I did not know: > > [NASA administrator] Linda Ham was wrong. Had the hole in the leading edge > been seen, actions could have been taken to try to save the astronauts' > lives. The first would have been simply to buy some time. Assuming a > starting point on the fifth day of the flight, NASA engineers subsequently > calculated that by requiring the crew to rest and sleep, the mission could > have been extended to a full month, to February 15. During that time the > Atlantis, which was already being prepared for a scheduled March 1 launch, > could have been processed more quickly by ground crews working around the > clock, and made ready to go by February 10. If all had proceeded perfectly, > there would have been a five-day window in which to blast off, join up with > the Columbia, and transfer the stranded astronauts one by one to safety, by > means of tethered spacewalks. Such a rescue would not have been easy, and > it would have involved the possibility of another fatal foam strike and the > loss of two shuttles instead of one; but in the risk-versus-risk world of > space flight, veterans like Mike Bloomfield would immediately have > volunteered, and NASA would have bet the farm. > > The fallback would have been a desperate measure—a jury-rigged repair > performed by the Columbia astronauts themselves. It would have required two > spacewalkers to fill the hole with a combination of heavy tools and metal > scraps scavenged from the crew compartment, and to supplement that mass > with an ice bag shaped to the wing's leading edge. In theory, if much of > the payload had been jettisoned, and luck was with the crew, such a repair > might perhaps have endured a modified re-entry and allowed the astronauts > to bail out at the standard 30,000 feet. The engineers who came up with > this plan realized that in reality it would have been extremely dangerous, > and might well have led to a high-speed burn-through and the loss of the > crew. But anything would have been better than attempting a normal re-entry > as it was actually flown. > > > - Jed > >
