On the eve of the release of the Gehman report, Joe Katzman has a good roundup and summary of space policy links, including some that I saw this weekend but neglected to note. And they’re not good just because several of them are mine. Think of it as “Winds of Space.”

Kathy Sawyer has a long, but worth-reading description of Columbia’s last flight. It provides a hint of what will come out in the CAIB report on Tuesday.

…Don L. McCormack Jr., a senior structural engineer, gave the management team its first formal report on the foam strike: “As everyone knows, we took the hit . . . somewhere on the left wing leading edge.” The review was still going on, he told Ham, and “we’re talking about looking at what you can do, uh, in event we really have some damage there but . . .”

Ham interjected. “Hey, just a comment. I was just thinking that our flight rationale [for going ahead with launching after the foam strike in October was] that the material properties and density of the foam wouldn’t do any damage . . .” She suggested looking at that data and also the data from a 1997 flight where there had been debris damage.

McCormack agreed and noted that on the earlier mission, “we saw some fairly significant damage area” on the wing — but on the glassy ceramic tiles that cover the underside of the orbiter, not to the carbon fiber panels on the leading edge.

Returning to Columbia’s situation, Ham continued, “And really, I don’t think there is much we can do, so you know it’s not really a factor during the flight…”

Sound familiar?

And this was disturbing:

Conventional wisdom among the engineers was that the RCC, designed to withstand higher temperatures than the tiles, was also more resistant to impact damage. But they really did not know. Nobody had tested the question. This fact had been clearly noted in Boeing’s written Jan. 23 assessment of the potential damage to Columbia: “No SOFI [spray on foam insulation] on RCC test data available.”

The engineers had, in effect, been guessing. And neither Ham nor any other manager challenged the conclusion.

[Late afternoon update]

Check out this related piece from Friday’s WaPo.

Ham, the lead flight director, has been singled out by board members and others for having deflected concerns about wing damage and for having failed to investigate the adequacy of the engineering analysis because — as she told reporters July 22 — she did not feel competent to do so. “For her to say ‘I don’t have the technical competence’ is just mind-blowing,” said Perrow. “She should either have stepped down or gotten someone to train her.”

Vaughan, at Boston College, criticized Ham’s self-described effort on the seventh day of the flight to chase down rumors that some engineers wanted to get imagery of the shuttle and to remind the engineers to go through authorized channels.

“Who would speak up in an environment like that?” Vaughan said. “There is no indication that management has been trained to ask for dissenting opinion. People are often reticent to come forward when they think it contradicts what they think management wants.”

Mind blowing indeed. A lead flight director who is self-admittedly not competent to “investigate the adequacy of the engineering analysis”?

I hate to say it, but considering this was Dan Goldin’s NASA, was this disaster caused, in part, by affirmative action?

The Lemon bravely tells it like it is: the cycle of a news story.

[Via the truly pathetic earthling]

There’s quite a bit of discussion in this post about NASA’s role in general, and particularly in technology development.

Reader “Tristan” says that:

The two key problems of space travel have yet to be solved: inexpensive access to LEO, and a way to get around in deep space quickly. Both require high-risk, long term research to produce breakthroughs in propulsion.

While these are two key problems, the former doesn’t “require high-risk, long term research to produce breakthroughs in propulsion.” As Andrew Case points out, correctly, in a later comment:

I have to disagree with Tristan on the propulsion issue. No new breakthroughs are needed in the basic technology of propulsion. We just need to take technologies already known to work and figure out ways to make them cheaper, more efficient, and more robust. Up to a point NASA can do that, by research programs aimed at ferreting out the various ways in which rocket engines can degrade and fail. Even better is if the power of the market can be brought to bear. History shows that markets are very effective at reducing the costs associated with a given technology.

Technologists often refer to “enhancing technologies” and “enabling technologies.”

The former improve systems, in terms of cost and performance. The latter allow them to be built at all. Of course, the definitions are dependent on the context of the mission being carried out, and no technology falls purely into one box or the other, but it’s a useful distinction.

For going to Mars, enabling technologies are required to make it practical (some of which I mentioned in the linked post (e.g., nuclear propulsion, or capability to manufacture propellants from the Martian atmosphere). But for earth to orbit, it is possible to achieve dramatic cost reductions without new technology, unless you define vehicle design integration and development as a technology per se. That’s because the cause of high launch costs isn’t lack of technology, but lack of activity, and vehicles designed to be flown at a high flight rate (and such vehicles can indeed be designed with today’s materials and propulsion, but no one has made the investment to do so).

I make the distinction because it helps us prioritize NASA’s potential role. It is useful for the agency to be working on enhancing technologies, but it’s essential for them to be working on the enabling ones. That’s how the resources should be allocated, if they’re limited (as they are, of course).

NASA has been spending (and sadly, squandering) entirely too much money on launch technologies, and altogether too little on deep-space and planet-settling technologies, though the former aren’t needed as badly and can be funded by the private sector, whereas the latter are vital, with no apparent near-term payoff.

A Brazilian rocket blew up on the pad at Alcantara, killing an unknown number of people.

Hopefully, soon they’ll have a new model to follow, and stop emulating failed strategies.

A Brazilian rocket blew up on the pad at Alcantara, killing an unknown number of people.

Hopefully, soon they’ll have a new model to follow, and stop emulating failed strategies.

A Brazilian rocket blew up on the pad at Alcantara, killing an unknown number of people.

Hopefully, soon they’ll have a new model to follow, and stop emulating failed strategies.

In a brief press conference, I just heard a reporter from the Houston Chronicle ask the president if, in light of the report coming out of the Gehman Commission next Tuesday, if he supported the manned space program, thought it should be restructured, thought it needed more money, etc. The president punted, saying that he’d get back after seeing the report, but something to the effect that it was important for a nation that wanted to stay on the technological edge had to have a space program.

Gee, is that the only reason? There are lots of ways to “maintain a technological edge” without having a space program.

Frustrating, because I don’t know necessarily what either the reporter or the president meant by a “space program.” And sadly, I’m not sure that they do either. Such broad questions are pointless until one gets down to goals and specifics. I hope that we can have a debate that will do so in the wake of the report, but I’ve no reason to expect it, based on history.

With each other (not a permalink). This is the most entertaining and encouraging thing to come out of the Schwarzenegger candidacy yet.

Cybill Shepherd is freaked out by the prospect of the Austrian-born action hero in the executive mansion.

“That would be the worst tragedy in the history of California,” Shepherd hyperventilated to “Access Hollywood.”

Really? The worst?

Worse than the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, in which much of the city burned to the ground?

“I think that we are the laughing stock of the world, with Arnold Schwarzenegger running [for] governor,” Shepherd said. “I think he’s a real hypocrite. I think he has a past that is going to come out, and I’m not going to mention what it is, but it’s not going to be pretty.”

Gee, she says that as though Tinseltown wasn’t the laughing stock of the world before Arnold ran for governor. This, from someone who thinks that Gray Davis is a good kisser…