Michael Turner compares the hubris of mountain climbing with the fatal choices that led to the Apollo I, Challenger, and (in his view) Columbia disasters.
If I understand him correctly (the article wanders quite a bit), he is criticizing NASA, and the space advocacy community(!), for supporting and reinforcing the “astronaut-as-hero” image. Maintaining this image of invincible bravery, hypercompetence, confidence, etc., drives the agency to take unneccessary risks that eventually lead to catastrophe.
The responsibility doesn’t lie with the “space community” except to the extent that the space community (whoever that is) is to blame for being NASA’s doormat, and for being NASA’s political shock-troops, whenever pork-barrel space-heroics programs are in danger. The problem was not lack of support.
In a way, the problem was too much support, given with so little questioning, and so much confidence. As well as timidity, where timidity is a weakness, rather than mere prudence.
The overconfidence (and the timidity) that this support engendered in NASA and its contractors is what ultimately killed the crew of the Columbia.
I wonder what gave him that idea? The members of the space community that I know personally have attitudes towards NASA that could be better described with the terms “frustration”, “resignation”, or even “contempt”.
Frankly, it’s hard to see these disasters as the result of proponents being “doormats” and “shock-troops”, pushing NASA to do what it should not be doing or to take risks that it need not take. Quite the opposite, in fact — the Challenger launch decision, for instance, was in part motivated by the need to demonstrate schedule performance in order to answer the critics of the program. There is a thread of opinionizing at present which points a finger of blame for the Columbia accident at Sean O’Keefe’s focus on getting the agencies finances in order (the implication being that he was cutting corners, which led to the accident), a move motivated by Congressional critics of the agency and it’s massive overruns on ISS.
The problem with blaming anyone for Columbia‘s loss is that we just don’t know yet what caused it.
I wrote, in a SpaceDaily op-ed
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The overconfidence (and the timidity) that [space community] support engendered in NASA and its contractors is what ultimately killed the crew of the Columbia.
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And T.L. James replied:
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I wonder what gave him that idea? The members of the space community that I know personally have attitudes towards NASA that could be better described with the terms “frustration”, “resignation”, or even “contempt”.
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Yes, *now*. And your sentiments align perfectly with almost all of the members of the “space community” that *I* know. However, as I hint when I say “the space community (whoever that is)”, you must admit that offering the opinions of one’s friends is anecdotal evidence. “Space community” can mean anything from “the people who agree with me about space development” on up to “the American people who think an American space program is a good idea.” That’s a difference of about 7 orders of magnitude in headcount. Settling into some middle ground for the sake of argument, I don’t think that it’s going out on a limb to suggest that, pre-Columbia disaster, most Americans interested in space were also interested in seeing Shuttle flights continue for as long as possible. If opinion had swung the other way, decisively, I think we would have seen real work on a more sensible spacecraft, starting some time ago.
Let’s also put it in historical perspective — how many true-blue space advocates back in the 1970s were opposed to the Shuttle? How many of us simply bought NASA’s lies about projected launch costs and launch frequencies? “How could we have known?” you might object. Well, how about by doing real loyal-opposition homework?
It’s not hard to see the doormat mentality at work even in a National Space Society quote on your site (their online petition):
“I encourage President George Bush and the U.S. Congress to provide the funding needed to safely resume flying our Space Shuttle fleet in support of the assembly and operation of the International Space Station. I also support accelerating investment in next-generation space launch technologies and systems to help us continue reaching for the stars. ”
Why word it this way? Especially when they could have written something like the following?
“The President must be made to understand that accelerating investment into cheaper, more practical, and (for human launch) safer launch systems is our paramount concern, and that we believe that the Shuttle should only be operated to bridge the gap until those systems become available.”
-michael turner
leap@gol.com
I can’t speak for the advocates back in the 1970’s, when I was in kindergarten. My point was that there are plenty of people in the space advocacy community who have felt frustrated, resigned, or contemptuous towards NASA and its failures and fecklessness, and that these sentiments well predated Columbia. Your words suggested to me that those of us who think this way were being lumped together with the rest — all of us Trekkish sycophants parroting the same NASA-ueber-alles line.
As for the NSS quote, I read that pretty much the way you rephrased it.
I agree, of course, that “there are plenty of people in the space advocacy community who have felt frustrated, resigned, or contemptuous towards NASA and its failures and fecklessness, and that these sentiments well predated Columbia.” On the other hand, there are plenty of Americans who felt similarly about the Bush administration’s adventure in Iraq back in January of this year, but it’s fair to say that most Americans have bought the Sep 11/Saddam connection, and still buy it, for a roughly similar failure to think carefully and review the evidence thus far. I’m sorry if my use of “space community” is too broad-brush for you, but NASA is a democracy’s space agency, and that’s how democracies tend to work: by agglomerating opinion and obliterating distinctions. Show me reliable statistics that most space advocates in fact are and have been Shuttle critics, and I’ll happily not only reverse my position, but submit an op-ed to SpaceDaily with a retraction. Then, of course, I’ll get flack from “space commmunity” members who are pro-Shuttle, and for the same reasons. What fun!
As for the NSS quote, I don’t see how you could possibly have “read that pretty much the way [I]rephrased it.” After all, “next generation space launch technologies” leaves NASA not just wiggle room, but very wide latitude — so wide, in fact, as to permit the Shuttle to operate through its previously-projected lifespan, possibly with no practical alternative emerging from “next generation launch technology” R&D. Is this what you thought you were agreeing with?
-michael turner
leap@gol.com