More than 20 years later, families of the Columbia crew carry on their loved ones\u2019 legacies<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt helped me understand exactly what the consequences are, not just for you (the astronaut) \u2014 but for all the people you love,\u201d Reisman said. \u201cThat stayed with me.\u201d <\/p>\n
Reisman flew on two shuttle missions after the program resumed flight in 2005 as NASA put in numerous safety stopgaps, including a mandate that a spare shuttle was always prepared to rescue crew members in orbit if their vehicle was damaged during launch. <\/p>\n
Despite any lingering anxieties, the changes provided a newfound sense of security, Reisman said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe had all these inspection and repair techniques,\u201d he said. \u201cI felt like when I was flying on Endeavour and Atlantis and Discovery (the three remaining shuttles) that it was much more safe than <\/strong>what the crew on Columbia \u2014 and certainly Challenger \u2014 had taken on.\u201d <\/p>\n The space shuttle Atlantis completed the final flight of the program in July 2011, leaving NASA without a means to fly its astronauts to the International Space Station.<\/strong> <\/p>\n The program\u2019s end forced the space agency to turn to Russia, which \u2014 as tensions eased in the post-Cold War era \u2014 was a primary US partner on the space station and had a reliable vehicle called Soyuz to ferry its cosmonauts to the orbiting outpost.<\/strong> <\/p>\n The arrangement kept NASA astronauts space-bound. But as US-Russia relations became strained once again in the mid-2010s, sharing those rides to space became increasingly politically unpopular. <\/p>\n
By the end of the shuttle program, a contingent of engineers within NASA <\/strong>already had ideas for the path ahead. <\/p>\n Rather than keeping the design and development of the next astronaut-worthy spacecraft in-house, NASA could turn to the burgeoning private space industry to take over the task. <\/p>\n
Commercial companies had a bit more leeway to innovate in the post-Columbia era, Hale and Reisman acknowledged. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think one of the big challenges was to find the right path between the really huge bureaucracy and paperwork requirements that NASA had \u2014 which in some cases were frankly over the top \u2014 and figure out how to accommodate the culture of a commercial (company),\u201d Hale said. <\/p>\n
In 2014, NASA selected the Elon Musk-led SpaceX and its longtime partner Boeing to take up the task. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/div>\n
Related article<\/span> The space shuttle was revolutionary for its time. What went wrong?<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The prospect of moving faster and paving a new future for the astronaut corps excited Reisman, who left NASA in 2011 to work for SpaceX on its Crew Dragon vehicle. <\/p>\n
Wary after the Columbia tragedy, NASA didn\u2019t always see eye to eye with its commercial partners. The result was a culture clash that played out behind the scenes. <\/p>\n
\u201cI have an org chart that shows all the different (NASA) review boards that all engineers working on NASA programs had to go to approve any major design decision,\u201d Reisman said. \u201cWhat happened was, post-Columbia, they were listening to dissenting voices so strongly that all of those dissenting voices effectively became a veto.\u201d <\/p>\n
Long, painful meetings characterized relations between SpaceX and NASA, according to records of the era that the space agency compiled. <\/p>\n
But eventually, SpaceX got its Crew Dragon to the launchpad, and its inaugural crewed mission in 2020 returned astronaut launches to US soil for the first time in a decade.<\/strong> <\/p>\n Boeing is still working toward the first crewed mission of its Starliner spacecraft. <\/p>\n
The lessons learned from Columbia \u2014 and the Challenger explosion before it \u2014 have left an indelible mark on the design of modern US spacecraft. <\/p>\n
\u201cProbably the biggest example is just by putting the crew on top of the rocket instead of on the side of the rocket, you eliminate the hazard of any debris coming off the vehicle and hitting the spacecraft,\u201d Reisman said. <\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of those things were baked into the requirements that NASA gave us,\u201d he said, referring to instructions given to SpaceX and Boeing. <\/p>\n
Crew Dragon, Starliner and NASA\u2019s own Orion capsule \u2014 designed to return humans to the moon later this decade \u2014 all launch atop rockets rather than being strapped to the side of them. <\/p>\n
In this new era of rocketry with commercial companies largely leading the way, Hale said the challenge is to ensure the space industry avoids being lulled into the same complacency that led to the Columbia disaster. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy only concern now, as an old retiree, is \u2014 all these years later \u2014 how well are those lessons still communicated?\u201d Hale said. \u201cAfter 20 years, are people starting to forget?\u201d<\/strong> <\/p>\n \u201cVigilance,\u201d he added, \u201chas got to be maintained.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n
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Perhaps more than any other moment in NASA\u2019s history, the Columbia shuttle disaster reshaped the US space agency\u2019s approach to innovation, forever altering how it balanced risk with the call to explore beyond Earth. The tragedy killed seven astronauts as the Columbia shuttle disintegrated upon its return to Earth on February 1, 2003, due to <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1797,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1796","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}