The Columbia
The Columbia
It’s been 19 years since the Challenger blew up and The Luddite was just beginning to regard shuttle flights as a routine thing when 60 some seconds from landing, with seven people aboard, February 1, 2003, the Columbia fell apart like Watergate testimony.
The Luddite is not being blithe. This was his reaction to the bad kind of surprise. What makes it really bad was that as technologically hopeless as he is, The Luddite knew one of these things was going to kill some more people because it was a compromise design. I have lots of ammo supporting my contention that compromise designs are always a bad thing.
Here’s one you’ve probably never heard of: the chauchat, which was the name of a World War I machine gun, designed by a committee. The Luddite is not a gun nut, he simply files away big mistakes in his head as a weird sort of hobby and because there are all kinds of teaching parallels out there.
Anyway, the chauchat didn’t just jam; this thing made a habit out of jamming just when you needed it the most. Soldiers going over the top in any attack that depended on the chauchat just knew it was going to fail. They weren’t being pessimistic, either. They knew it was a bad idea from bitter experience.
The space shuttle is designed the same way. Originally it was to be a completely reusable vehicle. Then, for some reason, a committee got together and suddenly, just the rocket boosters on the sides of the big main tank were reusable. The shuttle became a big kludge job. Martin Caidin, a former NASA engineer and the person who created the Six Million Dollar Man, remarked that the design of the space shuttle was the ‘act of a lunatic.’ And he said that in an interview with a small science-fiction fan magazine about a decade ago—a copy of which I just happen to have. Caidin’s whole point was that the space shuttle is a winged explosion waiting to happen.
Now this damn thing has killed 14 people and the word is that we will not replace the Columbia as we did the Challenger. Well, good. The design was goofy anyway. The Luddite is just grateful that we flew more than a hundred missions with it and got away with a death toll under 20. After the Challenger blew up, Newsweek magazine ran a cover story that said, among other things, that one of the problems at NASA was this culture of progress. This was a mindset so severe that a popular criticism of something that otherwise got the job done was “Well, it doesn’t advance the technology very much.” Apparently, no one shot back that something burning up on reentry doesn’t either.
There is a lot of talk about replacing the space shuttle fleet with something that is more up-to-date. That’s fine with me. The Endeavor, the replacement for the Challenger, cost something like $2 billion big ones. Why should we be spending that kind of money on a big firecracker? The only drawback to this approach is that the technology to replace the space shuttle is supposed to be ten years away; in other words, the space shuttle is all we’ve got until 2013. Meanwhile, we still have an orbiting space station to resupply and the space shuttle is the best bet to do that.
The effect of the dumb ‘well, it doesn’t advance the technology very much’ remark, is that the entire point of NASA is space exploration, not designing a better way to get there. The effect of the Columbia and Challenger explosions has been a lot of talk about humans not going into space anymore; that it’s too dangerous; that it’s too expensive; that the job can be done by robots, etc. Since the government is involved and the government is the sole entity rich enough to make space exploration possible, there is a very real possibility that this talk may bear fruit. [Note: This was written before the private enterprise-backed Space Ship One made its maiden voyage, and that thing never left the atmosphere, so if it never actually got into space, it couldn't really be called a 'spaceship.'] Whatever it may do in the future, the government will still be responsible for the deaths of the Columbia astronauts just like it is responsible for the deaths of those aboard Apollo I. That means it will have to DO something about it. People launching rockets from their back yards sure aren’t going to take up the slack.
People have a need to personally go and see what’s around the corner. This is not just an idle flight of fancy. It is very, very real. The Luddite recognizes this. For government to try and shut it off is not only nonsensical but perilous as well because unfulfilled, this need can be perverted. Bungee jumping is only the first ragged signpost on this road. Danger junkies have always been with us but only resentment toward the brigade that wants to put rounded corners on everything could fuel the desire to duplicate stunts from a movie like ‘Jackass.’
So The Luddite hopes that we won’t abandon space. It’s too big, too grand, and too important for us not to turn our attention to it. I think we should just look at the space shuttle as a mistake that is way overdue for a change. Do we belong Out There? Hell, we don’t even belong HERE, but mass suicide sure isn’t the answer; neither is giving up on space.
It’s been 19 years since the Challenger blew up and The Luddite was just beginning to regard shuttle flights as a routine thing when 60 some seconds from landing, with seven people aboard, February 1, 2003, the Columbia fell apart like Watergate testimony.
The Luddite is not being blithe. This was his reaction to the bad kind of surprise. What makes it really bad was that as technologically hopeless as he is, The Luddite knew one of these things was going to kill some more people because it was a compromise design. I have lots of ammo supporting my contention that compromise designs are always a bad thing.
Here’s one you’ve probably never heard of: the chauchat, which was the name of a World War I machine gun, designed by a committee. The Luddite is not a gun nut, he simply files away big mistakes in his head as a weird sort of hobby and because there are all kinds of teaching parallels out there.
Anyway, the chauchat didn’t just jam; this thing made a habit out of jamming just when you needed it the most. Soldiers going over the top in any attack that depended on the chauchat just knew it was going to fail. They weren’t being pessimistic, either. They knew it was a bad idea from bitter experience.
The space shuttle is designed the same way. Originally it was to be a completely reusable vehicle. Then, for some reason, a committee got together and suddenly, just the rocket boosters on the sides of the big main tank were reusable. The shuttle became a big kludge job. Martin Caidin, a former NASA engineer and the person who created the Six Million Dollar Man, remarked that the design of the space shuttle was the ‘act of a lunatic.’ And he said that in an interview with a small science-fiction fan magazine about a decade ago—a copy of which I just happen to have. Caidin’s whole point was that the space shuttle is a winged explosion waiting to happen.
Now this damn thing has killed 14 people and the word is that we will not replace the Columbia as we did the Challenger. Well, good. The design was goofy anyway. The Luddite is just grateful that we flew more than a hundred missions with it and got away with a death toll under 20. After the Challenger blew up, Newsweek magazine ran a cover story that said, among other things, that one of the problems at NASA was this culture of progress. This was a mindset so severe that a popular criticism of something that otherwise got the job done was “Well, it doesn’t advance the technology very much.” Apparently, no one shot back that something burning up on reentry doesn’t either.
There is a lot of talk about replacing the space shuttle fleet with something that is more up-to-date. That’s fine with me. The Endeavor, the replacement for the Challenger, cost something like $2 billion big ones. Why should we be spending that kind of money on a big firecracker? The only drawback to this approach is that the technology to replace the space shuttle is supposed to be ten years away; in other words, the space shuttle is all we’ve got until 2013. Meanwhile, we still have an orbiting space station to resupply and the space shuttle is the best bet to do that.
The effect of the dumb ‘well, it doesn’t advance the technology very much’ remark, is that the entire point of NASA is space exploration, not designing a better way to get there. The effect of the Columbia and Challenger explosions has been a lot of talk about humans not going into space anymore; that it’s too dangerous; that it’s too expensive; that the job can be done by robots, etc. Since the government is involved and the government is the sole entity rich enough to make space exploration possible, there is a very real possibility that this talk may bear fruit. [Note: This was written before the private enterprise-backed Space Ship One made its maiden voyage, and that thing never left the atmosphere, so if it never actually got into space, it couldn't really be called a 'spaceship.'] Whatever it may do in the future, the government will still be responsible for the deaths of the Columbia astronauts just like it is responsible for the deaths of those aboard Apollo I. That means it will have to DO something about it. People launching rockets from their back yards sure aren’t going to take up the slack.
People have a need to personally go and see what’s around the corner. This is not just an idle flight of fancy. It is very, very real. The Luddite recognizes this. For government to try and shut it off is not only nonsensical but perilous as well because unfulfilled, this need can be perverted. Bungee jumping is only the first ragged signpost on this road. Danger junkies have always been with us but only resentment toward the brigade that wants to put rounded corners on everything could fuel the desire to duplicate stunts from a movie like ‘Jackass.’
So The Luddite hopes that we won’t abandon space. It’s too big, too grand, and too important for us not to turn our attention to it. I think we should just look at the space shuttle as a mistake that is way overdue for a change. Do we belong Out There? Hell, we don’t even belong HERE, but mass suicide sure isn’t the answer; neither is giving up on space.
posted by S. Olson at 8:24 AM
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