The Waterkooler

Related Story: Why NASA Can't Get it Right


large photo of shuttle damage

We used to use tiles that worked well. Then we stopped using them because they were not politically correct - they were freon-based. So we changed the tiles and ever since then the tiles have been problematic at best, and for the lives of the Shuttle crew, disasterous. So, why are we still using inferior tiles on the Shuttle?

"You have to admit when you're wrong. We were wrong," said shuttle program manager Bill Parsons. "We need to do some work here, and so we're telling you right now, that the ... foam should not have come off. It came off. We've got to go do something about that."

NASA administrator Michael Griffin said pre-flight safety checks had fallen short. "Everyone has said without any attempt to hide it ... we goofed on that one."

The loss of a chunk of debris, a vexing problem NASA thought had been fixed, represents a tremendous setback to a space program that has spent 2 1/2 years and over $1 billion trying to make the 20-year-old shuttles safe to fly.

"We wont be able to fly again," until the hazard is removed, Parsons told reporters in a briefing Wednesday evening. "Obviously we have some more work to do."

Well, this is nothing new, unfortunately:

• Environmentalists ban DDT - millions of deaths over the world.

• Environmentalists ban asbestos - the WTCs collapse instead of burning out, resulting in 3000 deaths instead of a few hundred.

• Environmentalists ban freon - space shuttle foam and tiles less rugged, resulting in the loss of a shuttle, and its mission, and crew, and even after looking at the problem, another orbiter has suffered damage on take-off.
  

Steven Milloy, 2003...

Until 1997, Columbia’s external fuel tanks were insulated with a Freon-based foam. Freon is a chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) supposedly linked with ozone depletion and phased out of widespread use under the international treaty known as the Montreal Protocol.

Despite that the Freon-based foam worked well and that an exemption from the CFC phase-out could have been obtained, NASA succumbed to political correctness. The agency substituted an allegedly more eco-friendly foam for the Freon-based foam.

PC-foam was an immediate problem.

The first mission with PC-foam resulted in 11 times more damaged thermal tiles on Columbia than the previous mission with the Freon-based foam.

A Dec. 23, 1997, diary entry on the NASA Web site reported: “308 hits were counted during the inspection, 132 were greater than 1-inch. Some of the hits measured 15 inches long, with depths measuring up to 1.5 inches. Considering that the depth of a tile is 2 inches, a 75 percent penetration depth had been reached.”

More than 100 tiles were damaged beyond repair, well over the normal count of 40. Flaking PC-foam was the chief suspect.

In 2001, the Environmental Protection Agency exempted NASA from the CFC phase-out. Even assuming for the sake of argument that widespread use of CFCs might significantly damage the ozone layer, the relatively small amount used by NASA would have no measurable impact. The bulk of CFC use, after all, was in consumer products such as air conditioners, refrigerators and aerosol cans.

But contrary to the exercise of common sense, NASA didn’t return to the safer Freon-based foam. Instead, NASA knowingly continued to risk tile damage -- and disaster -- with reformulated PC-foam.

This is obviously a potentially embarrassing situation for NASA.

In what smacks of an effort to avoid blame, NASA is now claiming the disintegration of Columbia has turned into a scientific mystery.

NASA says computer modeling fails to show how foam insulation striking the thermal tiles could do enough damage to cause catastrophe -- apparently ignoring that flaking foam substantially penetrated thermal tiles on an earlier flight.