The Challenge of the Columbia

The tragic destruction of the Colombia is unlikely to lead to a long halt in America's manned space program. Commitments from NASA and the White House have already all but guaranteed the program's future. Despite the answer having already been decided by those who in power, it is worth asking at this point whether we should continue with manned space flight, whether it is worth the cost - both in financial and human terms - and if manned space travel is to continue, on what basis.

Let me start by stating that not only will America's manned space program not be halted, but even should this happen it will only be temporary. Man's fascination with the skies is not diminishing, as the continuing fascination with alien abduction and the success of films such as the Star Wars series shows. Any halt to manned space flight will eventually be reversed, just as we will return to the Moon, and travel onwards to other planets. Dreams of space travel are too ingrained in our culture for anything else.

These dreams are part of the problem. We are conditioned to see space travel a certain way - improbably shaped craft easily blasting from planet surface to the distant stars, flitting through re-entry without burning off those protruding radar dishes and the ubiquitous laser cannons. The truth is rather different. Despite the saying, rocket science is pretty straightforward. You provide enough thrust to accelerate to escape velocity. That's easier to do if you throw away excess weight as you go, which is why all spacecraft to date have been built to work in multiple stages. The science of all this has been understood for centuries, and is taught at school, even in these dumbed down days. More difficult is the engineering. The basic technique is to burn masses of fuel, pushing the resulting gases out the bottom of the rocket. Doing so without the vehicle exploding and while steering is the trick. A difficult trick and one where any minor mistake is disastrous, as the Challenger and Ariane 5 have shown. Getting back again is even more difficult - the fact that re-entry has not caused more deaths is a real tribute to the engineers who designed these craft.

The simple truth is that space flight is almost unimaginably dangerous. Whatever the cause of this particular disaster - and more on that later - such an event was inevitable. If we continue with manned space flights, another such disaster will occur. There is so much that can go wrong that eventually something will. And when you are dealing with the explosive potential of take-off, or the extreme temperatures of re-entry, a small mistake will tend to be fatal. More than the billions of dollars, this is the price we pay for a manned space program.

The inevitability of disaster should not mean that we don't minimise the chances of something going wrong. The sad truth is that both the Challenger and in all probability the Columbia disasters were preventable. The congressional investigation into the Challenger disaster uncovered a worrying ostrich tendency amongst NASA personnel. Simply, bad news was unwelcome, and they had developed effective methods for diverting it. The Challenger should never have launched on that tragic day - the temperature was well below its operational range. NASA should have known that, but were not interested in asking questions that might delay the launch. Worryingly, little seems to have changed. Reports of dissenting opinions to the engineering report that gave the Colombia an all clear for re-entry were greeted by the shuttle program director with comments to the effect that such opinions might have existed but "they weren't brought to my attention".

At the time of the Challenger disaster NASA did not have a culture that looked for reasons not to proceed. That the shuttle's program director can believe that there were people within the organisation who had predicted the Columbia's destruction but that he did not know shows that nothing has changed. Instead, the NASA hierarchy appears to have encouraged a positive report which allowed the mission to proceed. Whether taking a more negative attitude could have saved those seven astronauts I don't know, but the possibility of, for instance, abandoning the mission, docking at the international space station and making repairs appears not to have been even considered. When manned space flight resumes, the culture at NASA must change. This will require major changes amongst the NASA management, probably including several changes amongst the senior personnel. There will also need to be an oversight committee appointed, reporting to Congress and charged with ensuring the safety of the shuttle program.

Which leaves the question of whether manned space travel should ever resume. While I am convinced that the program will continue, there seems to be little justification for doing so. Scientifically, the history of manned space flight has provided us with very few benefits. Apart from a small number of experiments on the effects of micro-gravity on the human body, there has been nothing that actually required our presence in space. Other experiments have potentially been easier to perform - such as returning moon rocks to Earth for study - but other means for performing these could (and would) have been developed if manned space flight was not an option. Indeed, the entire scientific contribution of manned space flight is slight compared to, say, deep sea exploration, or ecological work in the rain forests. Unmanned space programs are a different matter entirely. Projects such as the Hubble telescope have been hugely successful. Of course, an argument can be made that the Hubble program relies on the Shuttle program for maintenance. Again, in the absence of manned flight, other means would be developed. Modern robots are more than capable of performing the necessary work on the Hubble and similar structures.

The origin of America's manned space program does not lie in science, but in the country's cold war rivalry with the Soviet Union. Equal parts American one-up-manship, feel good, and distraction from more worrying developments, the Apollo program was purely political in motivation. Whether the political objectives were worth the immense cost is debatable, but the political justification has long passed. America now stands alone, clearly recognised as the world's premier power. Feel good has vanished from a space program that only garners mass attention when something goes disastrously wrong.

On any fair analysis, the financial and human cost of the shuttle program cannot be justified. Logic dictates that stopping manned space flights and spending the money on unmanned programs will bring far greater benefits. The reality, on the other hand, is likely to be that if manned space flights stop, the money will vanish. Without the glory of brave astronauts hurtling into space, the American government is likely to cut NASA's budget drastically. It seems entirely likely that astronauts risk their lives for no other justification than that the only way to raise the money is by allowing politicians to vicariously to live out their dreams. However, the space program is no longer reliant on government funding. The increasing demand for communication and military satellites provides an alternate source of income for NASA, one which could be served at lower cost via unmanned vehicles.

There is no justification for the manned space program. Abandoning it and seeking cheaper, safer, unmanned alternatives is the only sensible option. I don't expect logic to come into the decision making process, and so the Shuttle program will restart, possibly as early as this summer. If manned space flight is to continue, there needs to be a significant change of culture at NASA. Ignoring potential problems has already killed fourteen astronauts. Unless NASA changes, it is only a matter of time before more die.

Graham Robinson. 5th February 2003.

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