The COLUMBIA SHUTTLE DISASTER and the 9/11 Catastrophe People will believe a simple lie until they experience the complex truth. A section of foam slammed into the leading edge of the Columbia at 525 MPH during lift-off . High level NASA "management" failed to take the incident seriously even when one mid-level engineer pleaded for a closer analysis of the incident.

Rodney Rocha, Division Chief Engineer for Columbia's final mission was one of the few who knew that the foam impact could cause catastrophic damage to the Columbia. He pleaded with management to take a closer look at the incident but his requests were denied. This section of transcript reflects Rocha's "out-of-body" frustration when the desperate need for truth is overwhelmed by a zombies of mass denial -- an experience all too familiar to those who see the desperate need for 9/11 Truth. RODNEY ROCHA: We felt were in a topsy-turvy world. It's like someone saying, "I want you to tell me how bad that car accident is that you just heard out the window." And you..."I want you to tell me if we need an ambulance or not." And you say, "Well, I'll go look out the window," and you say...and someone says, "No, you may not look out the window. You do your analysis first, and you tell me if you need to call an ambulance first. It's a lot of trouble to call an ambulance. You tell me, you do an analysis first. You tell me an answer first." How can you possibly get out of that, that kind of uncertainty? It's impossible. The foam incident was counter-intuitive to management but not to the Engineer. Even when management was later confronted with calculations to prove Rocha's assertion they refused to believe it. Their stubborn denial continued until a field experiment in Texas replicated the conditions of the foam impact on the wing. The test blasted a large devastating hole in the wing. Suddenly, management was convinced that the foam impact had caused the death of the Columbia crew.

The 9/11 Truth Analogy Many people still believe the government's official 9/11 story that the Twin Towers were demolished by the impact of jet aircraft and the brief fireball of jet fuel. They insist on denial even when presented with calculations that conclude a jet impact and jet fuel were insufficient to explain the free-fall speed explosive collapse of the Towers and the ejection of giant steel beams into the adjacent buildings across the street. The transcript from the Columbia disaster NARRATOR: But after the accident, the investigation team took a harder look at the foam. SCOTT HUBBARD: I said, "Doug, you won a Nobel Prize in Physics, you know, let's just do some high school arithmetic here, okay? DOUGLAS OSHEROFF: We knew that the time, the transit time for the foam was, I think, .16 seconds. SCOTT HUBBARD: Here's how fast it's going, okay? And we do some simple high school physics. DOUGLAS OSHEROFF: The distance is equal to one-half-A.T.-squared, and you calculate the acceleration, you calculate the velocity. SCOTT HUBBARD: It would impart a force of roughly three thousand pounds, you know, roughly a ton of force. DOUGLAS OSHEROFF: But, in fact, NASA management claimed they didn't understand this. I mean this was very trivial stuff.

TV Program Description Original PBS Broadcast Date: October 14, 2008

At the end of a nearly flawless 15-day mission in early 2003, the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry into Earth's atmosphere, killing the crew of seven. In this documentary, NOVA probes the accident and the decisions stretching back four decades that made the tragedy almost inevitable.

The Columbia disaster, during the 113th shuttle mission, was the beginning of the end for the space plane. NASA responded by announcing the retirement of the shuttle in 2010, to be replaced by the Orion crew exploration vehicle as part of the Constellation program, which is inspired partly by an earlier generation of Apollo-style rocketry and spacecraft. The decision to retire the space shuttle program is currently under intense review, as it would leave the U.S. with a "space gap" until the new Orion vehicle becomes ready around 2015.

Exploring the past and future of the shuttle through the lens of the Columbia accident, NOVA interviews key NASA personnel who witnessed problems with the space shuttle program firsthand, including NASA engineer Rodney Rocha, who tried to sound the alarm about Columbia's potentially damaged condition; and flight director Leroy Cain, who worked with controllers to make sense of a cascade of warning signals from the craft during its ill-fated return to Earth. (Hear Rodney Rocha speak about the disaster.)

Rocha and others worried that a piece of foam that tore from the shuttle's external propellant tank and struck the left wing 81 seconds after liftoff could have damaged the craft, making it vulnerable to the high heat generated during reentry. But Rocha's superiors refused his request to try to confirm possible damage.

Also interviewed are members of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB), NASA administrators, astronauts, journalists, and prominent space-policy experts. (Read an interview with Scott Hubbard, a CAIB member, about the struggles he faced in trying to get to the truth about the accident.)

The Columbia disaster was the second catastrophic failure in the shuttle program. In 1986, the shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after launch, also killing seven.

NOVA shows that both accidents can be traced to design trade-offs built into the shuttle concept. Apollo-era spacecraft were designed with the cabin that holds the crew positioned on top of the rocket, offering some protection from falling debris and a chance of escape from a malfunctioning vehicle. However, the crew- and cargo-carrying section of the shuttle is so large that it has to be strapped to the side of a huge external propellant tank.

In the case of Challenger, one of the Solid Rocket Boosters developed a leak that ruptured the external tank, immediately destroying the shuttle. For Columbia, a piece of foam insulation covering the external tank fatally damaged the leading edge of Columbia's left wing. (See for yourself in Force of Impact.) Neither scenario is likely with an Apollo-style design, in which the manned spacecraft sits on top.

Both accidents were foreseen by engineers, who were then ignored by NASA managers under pressure to meet launch schedules and cut costs. Renowned during the heady days of Apollo for its clear-eyed evaluation of risk and willingness to do everything possible to reduce it, NASA, some experts felt, had become complacent and bureaucratically rigid. Even while the damaged Columbia was still in orbit, there was a chance the crew could have been rescued by another shuttle if only the true state of her condition had been known (see Rescue Scenarios). But that chance was tragically missed.

"Space Shuttle Disaster" is a penetrating look at the history of the shuttle program and the political pressures that made the shuttle a highly complex engineering compromise, which fell short of its ambitious goal to make space travel routine, cheap, and safe. The film brings to the forefront the uncertain future of human spaceflight after the 2010 scheduled shuttle retirement. Many questions remain, including what are the consequences if the U.S. is out of orbit for five years? (Explore arguments for continuing the shuttle program.)

Program Transcript Program Credits

Source:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/columbia/about.html

Watch the Program





watch chapter 1 in Quicktime Windows Media: hi \| low		An Experimental Vehicle By the time Columbia takes off in January 2003, NASA had completed 87 successful space shuttle missions since the Challenger accident in 1986. But the spacecraft is still considered experimental. running time 9:44





watch chapter 2 in Quicktime Windows Media: hi \| low		Safety Concerns The capsules of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo had an auxiliary rocket that could propel the crew to safety if the main rockets failed. Challenger and Columbia had no such fail-safe. running time 10:58





watch chapter 3 in Quicktime Windows Media: hi \| low		A Tragedy in the Making Eighty-one seconds after Columbia's lift-off, a large piece of foam insulation breaks off the external fuel tank and hits the Orbiter on its left wing. But mission managers believe the impact does not pose a safety problem. running time 9:54





watch chapter 4 in Quicktime Windows Media: hi \| low		The Investigation The Columbia Accident Investigation Board finds that damage caused by the foam impact during launch caused the shuttle's sudden failure during reentry. In its report, the Board criticizes NASA's "broken" safety culture. running time 8:53