Essay About Columbia Accident Investigation Board And Debris Impacts

Failure and Culture
Failure and Culture 1
Strayer University
Developing a Learning Organization
January 26, 2014
According to Smith, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) created the
Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) and it was chaired by Admiral Harold Gehman
(Retired) to investigate the shuttle accident. The CAIB concluded that the shuttle crew died from
blunt trauma and hypoxia (lack of oxygen) after the crew cabin separated from the rest of the
disintegrating shuttle and there was no explosion. The CAIB asked NASA to evaluate two
options for returning the crew safely if the degree of damage had been understood early in the
mission (1) repairing the damage on-orbit and (2) rescuing the crew with another shuttle mission.
However, the repair option would have been logical but it relied on several uncertainties and was
rated as being an high risk and the rescue option was considered challenging, but feasible.
The CAIB recommended that NASA increase the orbiter’s ability to reenter the atmosphere
with minor leading edge damage to the extent possible; develop a better database to understand
the characteristics of Reinforced Carbon-Carbon (RCC) by destructive testing and evaluation; (1)
improve the maintenance of launch pad structures to minimize leaching of zinc primer
onto RCC, (2) obtain sufficient RCC panel spares so maintenance decisions are not subject to
external pressures relating to schedules, costs, or other considerations, (3) develop, validate, and
maintain physics-based computer models to evaluate Thermal Protection System damage from
debris impacts, (4) maintain and update the Modular Auxiliary Data System (MADS) on each
orbiter to include current sensor and data acquisition technologies can reconfigured during flight.
According to Elkekes & Phillips and the text, evaluation in a performance improvement