NASA's Darkest Week Remembers
Fallen Astronauts
By Mark D. Marquette
This is NASA's darkest week as 16 Americans and Israel's first
astronaut are remembered for their ultimate sacrifice in pushing the boundaries
of human exploration.
Since Alan Shepard's first sub-orbital ride into outer space
54 years ago, there have been three fatal American accidents claiming
astronauts lives in their spaceships.
Separated by decades but falling in the same week, the NASA
family and all Space Age followers will be thinking of the men, women and their
families as the tragic dates roll by: Jan. 27, 1967, Apollo 1; Jan. 28, 1986,
Space Shuttle Challenger; Feb. 1, 2003, Shuttle Columbia.
A unique and beautiful memorial to the fallen astronaut corps
is a centerpiece of the public grounds at Kennedy Space Center. A huge slab of polished stone has the names
of the deceased astronauts etched, the huge memorial rigged to catch
floodlights shining on the structure, highlighting the names.
There are 24 names on the memorial, though 17 died in
spaceships. Seven astronauts in training are also on the memorial
Jan. 27th marks the 49th anniversary of three
Apollo 1 astronauts trapped inside their capsule when a fire broke out during a
launch pad dress rehearsal.
Succumbing to the searing heat sparked by an electrical spark and
fueled by pure oxygen were three future Moon voyagers, space veterans Gus
Grissom and Ed White, and rookie Roger Chaffee.
Grissom was the second American in space, duplicating Alan
Shepard's suborbital flight in 1961. He
then commanded the maiden voyage of the two-man Gemini spacecraft with John
Young. Grissom's command of the first
Apollo spaceship put him on the short list of men NASA wanted to command the first
Moon landing.
Indeed, it could just as easily be Virgil “Gus” Grissom in the
history books as the first man to set foot on the Moon instead of Neil
Armstrong.
And right there on the Moon with Grissom could have been Ed
White, who's first American spacewalk in 1964 has produced the iconic image of
man floating freely outside a spaceship.
Chaffee, too, would have had a ticket punched for a Moon
mission, and all three Apollo 1 astronauts are revered across the country with
schools, museums and awards named in their honor.
Their ultimate sacrifice resulted in a greatly improved Apollo
spacecraft, one that literally rose out of the ashes and first flew to the Moon
in December 1968 in the historic orbital mission of Apollo 8.
The lessons learned from the destruction of two $2 billion spacecrafts
and the death of 14 astronauts in the Challenger and Columbia Space Shuttle
accidents have also yielded a huge reward—the safe construction of the $100
billion ISS.
Sold to the US Congress as a “space truck” that would
stimulate space commerce with affordable, twice-a-month launches into Earth
orbit, the Space Transportation System (STS) of Shuttle orbiters and launching
rockets never lived up to the ambitious dream.
First launched in April 1981 with Columbia, the Shuttle fleet
was lucky to be launched every two months, and issues were constantly cropping
up in the most complicated machine every built to fly.
The patchwork fixes of the dynamically precarious Space
Shuttle caught up with NASA on the 25th launch and 10th
of orbiter Challenger. In NASA lingo, it
is known as STS-51L
A segment on the right side Solid Rocket Booster blew a seal
and hot flame gushed out like a blow torch.
That sent the Orbiter crashing into the huge, orange External Tank,
holding 500,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen. It was 73 seconds into the 11:30 am launch
when the explosion ripped Challenger apart.
So apathetic was the public in 1986 about a Space Shuttle
launch that only cable news networks showed Challenger live, the main interest coming
from thousands of school children across the nation. They were watching the first “Teacher in
Space” Christa McAuliffe, the first true civilian launched into space. She was
to give a school lesson to those thousands of kids from space later that week.
But she never made it.
The Challenger disaster was directly caused by below freezing
temperatures at Cape Kennedy. Rubber seals were prohibited from setting up
properly in the seven giant segments that were stacked to make up the Solid
Rocket Boosters on each side of the Shuttle. One “O-ring” didn’t seal the gap,
hot flame blew through and eventually brought Challenger down.
A Congressional investigation blamed poor management decisions
to launch Challenger under unfavorable and unknown weather conditions, while
compromising human safety to keep an unrealistic launch schedule. Pressure to launch was exacerbated by several
previous delays, and President Ronald Reagan was scheduled to talk to the crew
in orbit during his State of the Union address on Jan. 28, 1986.
Dead were Commander Dick Scobee, Pilot Michael Smith and
mission specialists Ellison Onizuka, Ronald McNair, Gregory Jarvis, Judy Resnik
and Christa McAuliffe.
Evidence showed that the astronauts probably survived the
initial explosion when the rigid, space-proof crew cabin was blown out of the
fuselage and tumbled the 7 miles to a 300 mph impact with the Atlantic
Ocean. Three astronauts had turned on
their emergency oxygen packs, so they were conscious for a while before the
fatal impact with the ocean. The entire
Shuttle program was revamped with several close calls being revealed. The Solid Rocket Boosters were redesigned to
prohibit another segment blow through, and other concerns were addressed.
But what kept nagging launch inspectors was the amount of ice that
clung to the big, orange External Tank—created by the -250 below zero liquid
helium and oxygen inside. Video had shown many flights were ice and sometimes
foam sections of the External Tanks would break off during the first minute
after blast off, sometimes striking the Orbiter and its wings.
Finally, the problem became a disaster when the matriarch of
the Shuttle fleet, Columbia, was launched on January 16, 2003.
STS-107 was the last Shuttle mission scheduled not to visit
the ISS. Instead, the Space Lab filled the cargo bay for a 16-day science
mission. Had Columbia docked with the
ISS, no doubt a gaping, two or three-foot hole in its left wing would have been
seen by Space Station astronauts.
Instead, the crew of Columbia were unaware that while they
performed two weeks of the most productive science ever done in a Shuttle's
Space Lab, their spaceship was crippled and could not survive the blazing,
10,000 mph reentry through Earth's atmosphere.
Again, NASA had employees who suspected something was wrong
with Columbia.
Launch video showed that seconds into the launch a five-foot
chunk of foam broke loose and smashed into the left wing. Engineers investigated the possibility that
damage may have occurred, and several managers requested that a US spy
satellite be pointed at Columbia in orbit to see if any problems could be
detected. That request was turned down
as unnecessary.
Had the damaged wing been discovered by that spy satellite, a
rescue scenario would have been incredibly difficult. Columbia would not be able to reach to ISS
because of orbital differences and lack of fuel. But food and water would have been rationed
to the crew while another Shuttle was hurriedly prepared for a rescue launch—a
two-month process crammed into a few weeks at best!
NASA never has publicly assessed if they could have pulled off
a Columbia rescue mission. And when the
July 2009 final repair of the Hubble Space Telescope was added to the Shuttle
manifest, orbiter Endeavour was on the adjacent pad 39-B as a rescue ship when
Atlantis roared off pad 39-A The
400-mile high orbit of the Hubble made it logistically impossible for the Space
Station to be a safe haven.
So, in another NASA comedy of fatal errors, a simple puncture
in Columbia's wing brought the 10-ton spaceship to its doom as the reentry
plasma tore through the fuselage, and within minutes the supersonic speed
ripped the vehicle apart, debris and human remains being spread over East Texas
and Southwest Louisiana.
Like the Challenger astronauts, the Columbia 7 had no chance,
though their death was probably swift and merciful.
Lost were Rick Husband,
Willie McCool, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark. The
seventh member was Israel's first astronaut, Ilan Ramon, a popular national war
hero.
NASA's darkest week always gives space enthusiasts a
reflective time to assess where the space program has been and where it is
going.
These deaths have been the price that America has paid for
expanding into the Solar System, the first primitive steps away from our home
planet.
The
loss of life has not been in vain. Built
on their shoulders is the incredible orbiting International Space Station, home
to mankind's first serious outpost in outer space. And a place, in spirit,
where we touch the stars.