NIGHTLINE (11:35 PM ET) - ABC February 03, 2003
NIGHTLINE THE LOSS OF THE COLUMBIA
CHRIS BURY, ABC NEWS
(Voice Over) While a small army
continues to search for debris, NASA widens its investigation.
RON
DITTEMORE, SHUTTLE PROGRAM MANAGER
We are extremely interested in
any debris upstream of the primary impact area. If we truly were shedding
some material as early as California, that's going to be significant to
us.
CHRIS BURY
(Voice Over) But were any signals missed?
JOHN PIKE, ABC NEWS CONSULTANT
I think
that it's quite obvious that NASA has had to compromise safety because
they simply haven't had enough money.
GREGG EASTERBROOK, EDITOR "THE NEW
REPUBLIC"
The shuttle is just basically a bad vehicle.
CHRIS BURY
(Voice Over) And has the time come to change
the space program as we know it?
ROBERT PARK, UNIVERSITY OF
MARYLAND
The fact is, it's going to open up that discussion. And
we will have a discussion of whether this is really the way we want to
spend our resources.
graphics: the Loss of the Columbia
CHRIS BURY
(Voice Over) Tonight, "The Loss of the
Columbia", are the risks too great?
graphics: ABC NEWS: Nightline
ANNOUNCER
From ABC News, this is "Nightline." Reporting
from Washington, Chris Bury.
CHRIS BURY
(Off Camera) Like
so many long-time love affairs, America's infatuation with space travel
had been losing some of its old spark. No longer did the networks
broadcast every liftoff and landing. No longer did schoolchildren learn
every astronaut's name. In fact, the shuttle's comings and goings had
become so ordinary. So routine it's taken another tragic accident to make
many of us sit up and take notice. But naturally in the wake of Saturday's
Columbia disaster, the questions are coming hard and fast. Some are
urgent, did something happen on liftoff to damage those tiles protecting
the shuttle from the heat of reentry? Some questions fall into the
category of second- guessing, were warnings missed and critics ignored?
Then there are larger questions, are the shuttles in particular, and
manned space flight in general, really worth the risk to human life? Can
the old American infatuation survive another shuttle catastrophe? Our
broadcast tonight is an attempt to examine some of those questions. And we
begin with the latest on the investigation, from "Nightline's" Deborah
Amos.
DEBORAH AMOS, ABC NEWS
(Voice Over) The clues
collected from forests and fields, from ponds and schoolyards, don't yet
add up to much. How did the Columbia come to such a terrible end? NASA is
no closer to an answer today.
RON DITTEMORE
That missing
link is out there. And here we are, 48 hours from the event. So, we're
still struggling with it.
DEBORAH AMOS
(Voice Over) Lisa
Stark has been covering the NASA briefings.
LISA STARK, ABC NEWS
(Off Camera) NASA says they may never be able to figure out what
caused the heat buildup on the left side of the shuttle during reentry.
One focus of the investigation remains that piece of insulation that came
off the tank, hit the wing during liftoff. We've now learned that piece
was 16 by 20 inches, weighed more than two and a half pounds. NASA says it
will assume that was the cause of the accident and try to determine if
what happened to Columbia fits that assumption.
DEBORAH AMOS
(Voice Over) An assumption that will focus on these, the shuttle's
thermal tiles, tiles that protect a spacecraft from the searing heat of
reentry in the earth's atmosphere. In a 1990 report, scientist Elisabeth
Pate-Cornell showed that when crucial tiles are damaged, the risk
increases significantly. NASA wants another look at her data.
ELISABETH PATE-CORNELL, SCIENTIST
Yesterday, someone from
headquarters asked me to send back to him a copy of my report because they
remembered very well that it existed and what I'd said. What they could
not remember is where they had put it.
DEBORAH AMOS
(Off
Camera) There were promises today for the most open accident investigation
ever. A former Navy Admiral, Harold Gehman(PH), has been named to oversee
a review, additional investigative teams are expected to be named soon.
NASA officials are getting high marks for sharing, rather than hiding
frustration in the early days.
DEBORAH AMOS (CONTINUED)
(Voice Over) It was very different 13 years ago, after the first
shuttle disaster, the Challenger, and the investigation that followed.
EUGENE, AERONAUTICS PROFESSOR, MIT
There was a feeling
that NASA had put the wagons in a circle, to use a bad analogy.
DEBORAH AMOS
(Voice Over) Eugene, a professor of
aeronautics at MIT was on the commission that investigated the Challenger
disaster. He says the investigators must also come from outside the
government.
EUGENE
They are, in a sense, grading their own
examination paper. And there are going to be people who have difficulty
accepting that they can be absolutely open honest and forthright under
those circumstances.
DEBORAH AMOS
(Voice Over) Questions
about the cause of the crash of an aging spacecraft raise broader
questions about overall safety. Last August, Don Nelson, a 36-year NASA
veteran, sent this letter to the President, pleading for a halt to the
shuttle program. He feared a major crash.
DON NELSON, RETIRED NASA
OFFICIAL
There's no way that you can make this vehicle 100 percent
safe. And it was just a matter of time until you have another tragedy like
the Challenger.
DEBORAH AMOS
(Off Camera) In July 2002,
NASA's Inspector General's report showed the shuttle's safety program
required additional funding. The government's accounting office raised
safety concerns. They warned that the NASA shuttle's work force had
declined significantly, to the point of reducing NASA's ability to safely
support the shuttle program.
DEBORAH AMOS (CONTINUED)
(Voice Over) The concerns are not new, but the media and the
public are not focused on the shuttle program. Flights are so routine that
in the early hours of Saturday morning, few Americans were aware that
Columbia was about to land.
GREGG EASTERBROOK
I think the
shuttle's always been dangerous. Space flight, no matter how you did it,
would be dangerous. I think there have been so many generalized warnings
about the shuttle. They're like generalized terrorism threats. As long as
it's working, people don't pay attention. What matters now is that it's
failed a second time. And it shown us, I think, that it's fundamentally
flawed through the second failure.
DEBORAH AMOS
(Voice
Over) Space flight is dangerous. Just how dangerous was made abundantly
clear in the early hours on Saturday morning. The seven astronauts onboard
accepted the risk. But after this disaster, are politicians and the public
willing to continue? It is a question that Ken Bowersox and Don Pettit may
be asking. Along with a Russian astronaut, they are orbiting in the
international space station. A Russian cargo ship was launched yesterday
to bring them supplies. NASA officials say they are safe.
MICHAEL
KOSTELNIK,
NASA DEPUTY ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR
We have
sufficient life support capability to support the international space
station without the help of the space shuttle for several months. In fact,
up until the May or June time period.
DEBORAH AMOS
(Voice
Over) But these men may be the last Americans in space for some time to
come. The three remaining NASA shuttles have been grounded until the cause
is found and fixed. After the Challenger disaster, it was nearly three
years before NASA launched a manned space flight. This is Deborah Amos,
for "Nightline" in Washington.
CHRIS BURY
(Off Camera) The
Columbia catastrophe, like the Challenger disaster before it, raises the
inevitable question, is manned space travel really worth the risks? That
part of the story when we come back.
graphics: Nightline
ANNOUNCER
This is ABC News "Nightline", brought to you by
. . .
commercial break
CHRIS BURY
(Off Camera)
President Bush has already answered the biggest question posed by the
Columbia disaster, he has insisted NASA's manned space program will carry
on. But in light of the loss of Columbia, are the benefits still worth the
risks? Here's ABC News correspondent, Jim Wooten.
JIM WOOTEN, ABC
NEWS
(Voice Over) Why? Why do we do this? An American President
once tried to answer that question.
JOHN F. KENNEDY, FORMER US
PRESIDENT
We choose to go to the moon, and do the other thing. Not
because they are easy, but because they are hard.
JIM WOOTEN
(Voice Over) Is that it? Because it's hard? Because it's hard to
do? It is that, of course. So hard, in fact, that in the 41 years since
the first one, this country's manned space missions have cost 17 lives.
And tonight, as the latest casualties are mourned and memorialized, that
question, that very same question, is being asked yet again. Why? Why do
we do this?
SENATOR BILL NELSON, DEMOCRAT, FLORIDA
The
American people want a space program. They want to dream. They want to
soar. They want to be inspired.
JIM WOOTEN
(Voice Over)
The Senator is a politician, of course. But he once soared into orbit on
the shuttle.
SENATOR BILL NELSON
In most Americans'
hearts, there is this yearning to be an explorer, to be an adventurer. I
think it's probably part of our character, as a people.
JOHN
LOGSDON, SPACE POLICY INSTITUTE
After the flag, after the bald
eagle, it's usually an astronaut on the moon or the shuttle at launch that
we use to symbolize what we do as a nation.
ROBERT PARK
Why are we still doing it? It's a very good question. And the
reason is, basically, that NASA has been convinced, from the beginning and
have convinced many members of Congress, that the public simply would not
support a space program if there were not human beings involved. I think
they're wrong.
JIM WOOTEN
(Voice Over) Still, although
NASA has been putting human beings up there with some regularity, the
public, or at least the Congress, hasn't seemed all that excited. The
budget for space is now about $15 billion a year, less
than one percent of the Federal government's total expenditures. But even
at that, it's been flat for the last decade or so. Last year, President
Bush asked for an $800 million cut. And some NASA
advocates say its budget has been reduced in real terms by 40 percent
since 1990. Meanwhile, since every manned shuttle mission cost nearly
$500 million, there's been a growing clamor for increased
use of robots in space. They're cheaper, the argument goes, better,
faster. You don't have to bring them down. And if something does go wrong,
the only cost is money.
SENATOR BILL NELSON
Because you
need the human in the loop, using human judgment, in order for us to
accomplish a lot of things.
JOHN LOGSDON
We couldn't have
fixed the Hubble space telescope, without the astronaut crew that went up
with the corrective optics. Sure, there are lots of exciting scientific
things that can be done by robots. But there are also lots of exciting
scientific things that require human presence.
JIM WOOTEN
(Voice Over) On the other hand, Doctor Park compares, unfavorably,
the unmanned Pathfinder mission to Mars, 300 million miles away, with the
space station, which is about the distance from New York to Washington,
DC, above the earth.
ROBERT PARK
And yet, that mission,
with all the information it, sent back about Mars, cost about a fourth as
much as a single shuttle launch. So, when it comes to cost, there's a
factor of at least two orders of magnitude, maybe three, to get the same
information robotically, as opposed to with human beings.
JIM
WOOTEN
(Voice Over) And there's plenty of evidence that the media
are not as hypnotized with the space program as they once were. The story
of Columbia's departure, for example, was on page three of "The Washington
Post." Page 14 of the "New York Times." And the last time this network
broadcast a launch live was more than five years ago. Nevertheless, when
disaster struck on Saturday, no story was more important. Perhaps because
when something does go wrong, the old myth of Americans as adventurers
comes to the fore, the vision of a country that does things because
they're hard, no matter what.
JOHN PIKE
Space flight is the modern embodiment of the American dream.
America is about pioneering frontiers. It's about taking risks. It's about
boldly going where no one has gone before. I mean, Americans don't go to
the Air and Space Museum to get a history of Tang and Velcro, okay, they
go there to be inspired.
JIM WOOTEN
(Off Camera) So,
that's why we do it, to inspire ourselves and others with what courageous
adventurers we are as individuals. With how mighty we are as a nation. And
not really, or at least not mainly, for the science and technology NASA
says has so improved and enhanced our lives on earth. Maybe so. But what
is the maximum acceptable cost in terms of lives of that inspiration? The
answer to that may lie in the story of the first circumnavigation of the
globe back in the 16th century. In 1519 Ferdinand Magellan left Spain with
270 men on five ships. Three years later, one ship returned with only 18
men, not including Magellan. The age of exploration had begun with an
enormous cost. It still continues. I'm Jim Wooten for "Nightline" in
Washington.
CHRIS BURY
(Off Camera) Since NASA is so
determined to keep sending men and women into space, is the shuttle still
the right way to go? That conversation in a moment.
commercial
break
CHRIS BURY
(Off Camera) Joining us from the Johnson
Space Center in Houston, Doctor Mae Jemison, who was among the first
astronauts selected after the Challenger accident. She flew as a science
mission specialist on a shuttle flight in 1992. And from Durham, North
Carolina, Duke University professor Alex Roland, who spent eight years as
a historian with NASA. Doctor Jemison, let me begin with you because you
are in a better position than any of us to talk about the risks involved.
But the question is, in light of the Columbia disaster, should NASA put
the shuttle program on hold?
DOCTOR MAE JEMISON,
FORMER
SPACE SHUTTLE ASTRONAUT
The prudent thing to do right now is to
put the shuttle program on hold until one understands what went on during
the Columbia incident. Because, the reality is, until we understand, was
it a problem with the tiles? Was it something that came off with the foam?
Is it having to do with the APUs? Whatever the issue is, we need to
understand that to make sure it's not a problem that's going to occur with
every vehicle, that we resolve that problem and figure out any ways to
move things forward, to make it safe. So, yes, it's a prudent move to do
right now. However, that doesn't mean that you extend it to say that we
don't continue on with human space flight.
CHRIS BURY
(Off
Camera) Professor Roland, obviously there are many risks involved in human
space flight. Have the risks become unmanageable now in the wake of the
second fatal catastrophe?
ALEX ROLAND, FORMER NASA HISTORIAN
No, I don't think they're unmanageable. But I don't think they've
been managed very well. I think, by the time this investigation's done,
we're likely to see that there are the same systemic problems at work now
that were at work behind the Challenger accident. That is, we have a
shuttle program that is overstressed for being underfunded. They're trying
to do too much with the money they have available. And that puts stress on
the managers, causes them to make bad decisions. So I think we need to
re-evaluate the program, surely find out what the specifics of this
accident were. But then look for systemic ways to improve the program so
it has chances for a better safety record in the future.
CHRIS
BURY
(Off Camera) Doctor Jemison, is the shuttle still the right
vehicle for the job? Or is it too old? Too big? Too unwieldy, as some,
including Professor Roland, have suggested?
DOCTOR MAE JEMISON
I think what we have to do is understand what the shuttle was
designed for. The shuttle was designed initially to carry a multitude, a
variety of cargo, up into space and bring it back down. Initially it was
designed to go to a space station. And then other requirements were levied
on it. So, in the other hand, what Professor Roland is saying about
understanding what we're doing and NASA's budget being too tight, may have
some validity. But I don't think that there's a validity so much in the
safety, as in, we have to, as a country, commit to a program and then fund
it to that level instead of changing it.
CHRIS BURY
(Off
Camera) Professor Roland, as Doctor Jemison just pointed out, the shuttle
was in fact designed for a far different mission, to fly far more
frequently with great payloads. And the question is, has the shuttle
outlived its usefulness?
ALEX ROLAND
Well, you would still
want to use it for certain kinds of missions. I don't believe we should
have a space station. But if you're going to have one, it's appropriate to
use the shuttle to carry up some of those large components. It's not
appropriate to use it for just crew resupply to the station where you only
have small number of crew going up or for the kind of mission we just had.
It's like driving a truck to do what a small automobile could do.
CHRIS BURY
(Off Camera) Larger question, Doctor Jemison,
and this has based on the assumption that manned space travel is still
necessary, and the question is, why? Why do we still need to put men and
women in space?
DOCTOR MAE JEMISON
Well, human space
flight is about extending human presence in the universe. I think that
there's a number of ways to look at this. People advocate robotic
missions. Robotic missions can only do things. They can only do things
that you've already thought of, in terms of possibilities. Humans have the
ability to be much more flexible, where you can change the possible
experiments that are done. We see with a different eye. We may notice
things that are not noticed on robotic missions. And I think that there's
also the very real need to just extend human presence. There is a drive
for us to explore. And to set that aside, I think, is not in the best
interest of the advancement of mankind, of humanity.
CHRIS BURY
(Off Camera) Professor, isn't it cheaper and safer to use cameras
and computers and robots?
ALEX ROLAND
Of course it is.
Anything you can identify to do in space, you can do more efficiently,
more effectively, and more safely with machine. Doctor Jemison, really
offers two rationales for having humans there. One, is that we need a
human in space. But that's having humans in space as an ends in itself,
which doesn't make any sense to me. Secondly, she says that humans are
able to adapt to unexpected circumstances in space. I think that seldom
happens in the space program because as we've seen with the recent shuttle
accident, those humans have to have the proper equipment, the proper
information. Their whole mission has to be designed for whatever they're
going to do. They have little flexibility to change that mission once
they're launched. In fact, I believe that when you put humans on a
spacecraft, you limit its capabilities to do exploration and research
because the primary function of the space craft then becomes getting the
humans back alive, not conducting the mission.
DOCTOR MAE JEMISON
I actually have to disagree with Professor Roland. Because when
you do things like work experimentation with animals, that kind of thing,
you do need humans around. The whole idea that a robotic mission's profile
can be changed is not true, either. Yes, safety is an issue. The very
safest flight would be, not to do it at all. So, there is a question
about, what is it that you're attempting to do? I think some mixture of
robotic missions and human missions is what's necessary. To say that
humans don't need to go somewhere would be, to say that we can send a
robot to Hawaii and have the same experience, the same evaluation as
having sent a human explorer there.
CHRIS BURY
(Off
Camera) Mister Roland, we just have a few seconds left. How much of the
drive to put humans in space still, after all these years, is a matter of
pure politics, of getting public support and Congress' support?
ALEX ROLAND
NASA has always believed, since the Apollo
program, that manned space flight would be the essential ingredient of any
successful space program. They believe that the American public and
Congress wouldn't support a program without manned space activity. I think
they ought to give it a try. I'm not saying we should get rid of all
manned space flight, but I think the public would be tolerant of a lot
more good space science and a lot less of astronauts floating around,
tending experiments that don't amount to much.
CHRIS BURY
(Off Camera) On that note. Thank you very much. Professor Alex
Roland, Doctor Mae Jemison, we appreciate you joining us tonight. I'll be
back with a note about ABC's coverage of tomorrow's memorial service in a
moment.
commercial break
CHRIS BURY
(Off Camera)
Tomorrow afternoon, President Bush will attend the memorial service for
the Columbia astronauts in Houston. ABC News live coverage is scheduled to
begin at 1:00 Eastern time. And that's our report for tonight. I'm Chris
Bury in Washington. For all of us here at ABC News, good night.
Copyright © 2003, American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.
