USA Today February 27, 2003
NASA engineers saw signs of 'really bad news'
By Alan Levin
WASHINGTON -- The first sign that sensors had gone haywire aboard Columbia during re-entry must have seemed ominous to flight controller Jeffrey Kling, at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Only a day before, Kling had described in detail the high temperature readings and lost sensors that would occur if a jet of superheated air penetrated the wing.
"If there was hot plasma sneaking into the wheel wells, we would see increases in our landing gear temperatures and likely our tire pressures," Kling wrote in a Jan. 31 e-mail that NASA released Wednesday. In the minutes before Columbia's destruction, he saw virtually identical readings.
Kling also predicted that the heat would burn through wires, which would blank out sensors, and eventually destroy the landing gear. Heat that severe would threaten the shuttle itself, he wrote. "There must also be a concern with the wing structure," he wrote.
On a recording at NASA's mission control, Kling is the calm-voiced controller who can be heard first announcing four lost sensors aboard Columbia more than five minutes before it broke apart Feb. 1. On Wednesday, he said he was confident that Columbia would return safely and had been engaging in a what-if exercise.
His e-mail, among numerous e-mails released Wednesday by NASA, illustrate in stark detail that engineers at the space agency anticipated -- at least as a worst-case possibility -- that hot gasses could penetrate the shuttle's wing and destroy it.
Other e-mails also show that some NASA engineers were worried that an impact that had occurred shortly after launch on the shuttle's left wing may have been worse than analysts predicted.
"It really looks like there was somebody that grasped the possibility of some really bad news," said John Pike, a space policy analyst with GlobalSecurity.org. Pike, a frequent critic of NASA, said the e-mails indicate that the space agency has not been forthright since the accident.
Other experts cautioned that it's difficult to know the context of the e-mails.
Chuck Eastlake, a professor of aerospace engineering on the Daytona Beach, Fla., campus of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said the public shouldn't confuse a vigorous discussion of the most dire possibilities with a prediction of Columbia's destruction. "Creating a list of 'what-ifs' doesn't imply that they thought these terrible 'what-ifs' on the list were going to happen," he says. "That's crucially important to realize."
Richard Blomberg, former chairman of NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, said such exchanges look awful in hindsight. But that is how NASA's engineers make certain that they fully explore the risks of potential problems, he said.
On the Columbia flight, most of the discussion was about a piece of foam or ice that had come loose from the fuel tank and struck the wing. Engineers wanted to know whether it damaged the heat-resistant tiles on the shuttle's underside.
Led by Robert Daugherty, an engineer at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia who was an expert on the shuttle landing gear, the engineers debated what would happen if damaged tiles allowed hot gases into the left wheel well.
In one e-mail from Kevin McCluney, a shuttle engineer at the Johnson Space Center, options for how to deal with a burned-up landing gear are discussed. The options range from doing nothing to calling for the crew to bail out. "All equate to a bad day," the e-mail said.
There was no indication that NASA attempted to urge the Columbia crew to bail out. Abandoning the shuttle is possible at low altitudes, but not at over 200,000 feet, where the shuttle broke apart.
NASA has insisted that the analysis of possible damage to the tiles predicted that the shuttle could return safely. NASA spokesmen have said that no one within the agency took issue with the analysis by Boeing, a NASA subcontractor.
But in another e-mail, John Kowal, a thermal expert at Johnson, took issue with a colleague's conclusion that the shuttle would be damaged but survive re-entry.
Kowal said the analysis failed to take into account the possibility that tiles on the seam of the wheel well had been damaged. If that occurred, he wrote, hot gas could penetrate the wing during re-entry. "I think this should be clarified; otherwise, the note sent out this morning gives a false sense of security," Kowal wrote Jan. 27. None of the e-mails released indicated whether Kowal got an answer.
Daugherty, the Langley tire expert, also apparently sought more information. "Any more activity on the tile damage or are people just relegated to crossing their fingers and hoping for the best?" he wrote.
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Contributing: Peter Eisler, Blake Morrison
'You're not going to make the runway'
A day before the Columbia disintegrated during re-entry Feb. 1, NASA workers raised concerns that the shuttle's left wing might burn off if damaged or missing protective tiles could not deflect superheated air. Some excerpts:
In an e-mail Jan. 31, William Anderson, an employee for the United Space Alliance, a NASA contractor, wrote to his colleagues: "If there were an explosion in the wheel well with the gear up and locked, I would think the wing panel structure would break before the gear uplocks would be broken. . . . If the wing is off, or has a big hole in it, you're not going to make the runway, and the gear question is moot."
In the same message, Anderson wrote: "If you lost all the hydraulics, you won't have to worry about whether to deploy the gear, or ditch, etc. Bailout is your only option (probably won't even be able to do that)."
In an e-mail sent earlier that day, Jeffrey Kling, a flight controller at Johnson Space Center's mission control in Houston, wrote: "If there is a serious breach in the wheel well and we are concerned about the wheel (aluminum) properties changing to the point that the wheel fails then there must also be a concern with the wing structure (also aluminum)."
Kling also wrote: "If there was hot plasma sneaking into the wheel wells . . . ultimately our . . . recommendation in that case is going to be to set up for a bailout (assuming the wing doesn't burn off before we can get the crew out)."
GRAPHIC: PHOTO, B/W, Pool photo by Bruce Weaver; At Kennedy Space Center: A member of the space shuttle Columbia reconstruction team in Cape Canaveral examines one of its recovered windows Wednesday.
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