| Show the Salt NATION Tribune tht- I Sunday rubruat) 20( 1 MI tI Three men linked by haunting questions of Columbia -- year later A Aidower the manager and a physicist recall the tragic loss of the shuttle 1 - ex-shut- tle 4 I ' A 1 t a ' - - - -- i I -- - '' '- -- - -- APIMmot I ( - ' ' - 0 - J' - ---- - l'i) A The Awriatal Pint '' I CAPE CANAVERAL Fla — For the rest of time these three men will be linked by the Columbia disaster strangers thrown together by that awful Saturday morning in February The accident has altered their lives forever: NASA's most visible persona during those dreadful first days a scientist who would dig into the cause of the accident the grieving husband of one of the two women on the flight Ron Dittemore the space shuttle program manager who took the most dramatic public fall remains emotionally scarred one year later He left e NASA and now holds a aerospace job in Utah The seven lost lives weigh heavily on him After repeatedly shuttle delaying previous launches for all sorts of reasons he wonders what prevented him and others from seeing the risk in the piece of foam that broke off and hit the shuttle wing "Why didn't the hair stand up on your neck?" he asks himself Douglas Osheroff the Nobel physicist who inthe accident still vestigated wonders if NASA can save itself He sensed from the start that the flyaway chunk of foam at liftoff probably doomed Columbia But he forced himself to keep an open mind and followed the evidence over six months to that very conclusion Jon Clark still numbed at times by the pain of losing his wife uncomfortably straddles two worlds He is an insider working for NASA as a neurologist But ever since Laurel Clark and six other astronauts perished aboard Columbia he feels more like an outsider as he pushes for cultural change within an agency he believes does not have what it takes to put humans on the moon or Mars The three men had no way of knowing on Feb 1 2003 that their lives would intersect 1 i 1 t 'k I 1 !1 ( 1 I e A '--- i 1 4- 0 ' t If i- 'r' i4 r4k 4t ' i1 I A t 4: ) I (11 ‘' $ t t 1 N ' ! i:) - rA i k '' f 'i 1 (- 2 ' 1 -- i i Ivocuttni Mrsvfik plug° low-profil- Prize-winnin- g The unimaqinable: Moments after 7 am MST Columbia shattered in the sky over Texas while streaking through the atmosphere toward Cape Canaveral The families of the astronauts waited along the runway The twin sonic booms that herald a shuttle's arrival never came The sky was empty Clark with his all his intimate knowledge about launches and landings knew something was very wrong He had been listening to Mission Control's commentary on the loudspeakers and was disturbed by the call to Columbia about the tire pressure alarms and the commander's truncated reply His brain went into highspeed analytical mode: The crew was probably going to have to bail out and his wife was in one of the worst spots on the upper flight deck By his count she would be the fifth to Jump What was happening though was unimaginable — even to him Descending at nearly 20 times the speed of sound in a bucking Saying goodbye: As Dittemore briefed the world on NASA's second shuttle accident in 17 years Osheroff was driving with his wife through the Santa Cruz Mountains in California Neither had listened to the news before leaving home and Oshemff was puzzled when he turned on the car radio and heard a NASA news conference in progress The radio announcer then summarized what had happened: Columbia had and a broken up on chunk of foam had fallen off the fuel tank during launch 16 days earlier and hit the left wing Osheroff cursed Ile knew enough about the brittle graphite leading edge of the shuttle wing to know that the foam had probably created catastrophic damage Ile had no way of knowing then that he would be called to join the investigation As Dittemore answered reporters' questions and Osheroff listened in disbelief across the country Clark was on a NASA jet flying back to I louston The newly widowed Clark 4 Jon Clark is pushing for culture change at NASA to help prevent accidents such as the one that killed his wife Laurel Clark and six other space shuttle Columbia astronauts on Feb1 2003 A poster honoring the fallen is behind him at the Johnson Space Center in Houston a "This is what happens to an organization that simply doesn't have the money to do what it wants to do easier as the time passes because I still what did focus on we miss to alkno such to occur" a tragedy DOUGLAS OSHEROFT RON DITTEMORE e shuttle program manager spacecraft the astronauts could not have bailed out least of all from 200000 feet They never stood a chance Within a minute or a little more it was all over The Columbia and its seven souls were gone hurled all over Texas and Louisiana The families were rushed to astronaut quarters where they were told that while there was no confirmation of fatalities the accident was believed to be unsurvivable The screams were bloodcurdling President Bush later called the families to console them and then announced to the world that Columbia was lost and that all seven on board — Rick Husband William Mc Cool Kalpana Chawla Laurel Clark Michael Anderson David Brown and Israel's first astronaut Ilan Ramon — were dead A Dittemore appeared before the TV cameras in midafternoon and urged journalists not to rush to judgment about the foam impact back during the Jan 16 latmch Four days later he insisted the foam was not to blame The very next day once the accident investigators hit town he acknowledged he was wrong to rule out anything so early Sean NASA Administrator O'Keefe was outraged by Dittemore's swift dismissal of the foam It turned out that the suitcase-siz- e section of foam insulation was the biggest piece ever to break off a shuttle fuel tank and it slammed into the underside of Columbia's left wing edge at more than 500 mph 81 seconds after liftoff Shuttles had been struck y safely" Physicist who investigated the accident before by foam and other debris to no great consequence But while viewed as a problem little was ever done to stop the foam from breaking off Jon Clark — a doctor not an engineer — was puzzled during Columbia's flight when he saw a foam reference to the launch-dastrike as he read the Mission Control log notes He decided not to make a fuss It wasn't his area of expertise Mission managers grown Sprint The Eight Plan Guarantee commit to a until to know it? 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"I'm waving goodbye to Mommy" he said "I felt her" accustomed to uneventful landings and under the flight schedule gun dismissed the concerns l of engineers and did not seek spy satellite pictures of the damaged wing NASA's top safety official Bryan O'Connor learned of the foam strike while Columbia was still in orbit lie was tipped off by a colleague with a friend in the Pentagon that people there were surprised the space agency had not requested zoom-ipictures O'Connor didn't have military clearance to (teal with the issue so he passed it off to I bus-towhere it languished One year later O'Connor is filled with regret lie offered to quit after the accident but O'Keefe urged him to stay and make the shuttle program safer - |
