Columbia's final mission

Yesterday, over the skies of Texas, seven astronauts perished when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated in flight. With Columbia's final mission, we were again reminded that manned spaceflight is anything but a routine venture. As with the launch of the Challenger in 1986 that ended in tragedy, the astronauts of the Columbia perished not in space, but in Earth's atmosphere.

This marks the third time that an American manned space mission has ended in disaster. In 1967, the astronauts of Apollo 1 died during a test on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral's Complex 34, the victims of a fire in their spacecraft. NASA suspended operations, and investigated the cause of the fire. The report issued was frank and pulled no punches: with the rush to get Apollo 1 operational, safety was compromised when flammable materials were permitted in the capsule.

Similarly, after the Challenger disaster, NASA stood down and an investigative panel was convened. Simply put, there was no reason for the Challenger astronauts to have lost their lives. Morton Thiokol (the manufacturer of the booster rockets) knew there was a problem, but their management did not give it the emphasis it deserved. According to what I've read, the managers at NASA pretty much forced a launch decision, and people died.

It was nearly three years until the next Shuttle launch. After that, NASA settled back into the groove, and manned spaceflight became routine again. Sure, there were delays caused by the occasional hydrogen leak, and some erosion in the O rings every now and again, but everything was going well. The public lost interest, and Shuttle launches were relagated to the final part of the news broadcast, right before the obligatory "human interest" story. Now, I don't think that the astronauts that flew the missions, or the engineers on the ground that monitored them looked at spaceflight as routine again. I think the public saw it as routine, and it wouldn't surprise me if NASA's management structure thought of it as routine.

We were all jolted rudely awake yesterday, with the grim reminder that being launched into space atop a stack of propellants, and screaming back to earth at Mach 18+ are not something to take lightly. As we grieve with the families and friends of the fallen astronauts, I can only hope that NASA will be able to regain what it has lost.

The base of the launch structure where the Apollo 1 astronauts lost their lives still stands alongside the Atlantic ocean at Complex 34 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. There is a plaque on a leg of the structure that provides a memorial for the Apollo 1 astronauts. What it says still holds relevance today, 46 years later:

            IN MEMORY
               OF
THOSE WHO MADE THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE
 SO OTHERS COULD REACH FOR THE STARS
        AD ASTRA PER ASPERA
 (A ROUGH ROAD LEADS TO THE STARS)
      GOD SPEED TO THE CREW
               OF
            APOLLO 1

...and God speed to the crew of Columbia STS-107.