Michael Leinbach - Bringing Columbia Home - The Untold Story of a Lost Space Shuttle and Her Crew

I asked my managers to start putting together an intense schedule of launch countdown simulations. We would normally run these “sims” once per mission. However, since the program was on indefinite hold, there might be months or years of stand-down time before the shuttle was ready to fly again. I scheduled the first countdown sim for June 1, exactly four months after the accident. I wanted our team to run a full launch countdown sim every six weeks until the program was back on its feet. It would keep us sharp and future-focused, feeling good about our team, and ready to launch shuttles again.

Overcoming inertia to run sims again was challenging. The team had to take on a massive amount of work. However, people soon found themselves deep into the hardware and procedures again, pulling schematics and drawings, and working through problems. They gradually began to function as a cohesive team again.

The hard work was therapeutic. Some people thought I was pushing too hard, but responding to a tough challenge was what the team did best, and it was what they needed. It helped the team turn the corner from despair over the loss of Columbia to hope for the future of the program.

We didn’t know it then, but it would be another two years before the space shuttle would return to flight. The book was not yet closed on Columbia , and the rules for the future of the program had yet to be written. However, we were finally able to start focusing on the future and putting the past behind us.

Ron Phelps was NASA’s project manager for reconstructing Challenger after the 1986 accident. When the investigation concluded and it was time to dispose of the debris, Phelps and his team evaluated several sites at KSC and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station as storage facilities. They selected the Launch Complex 31 and 32 Minuteman missile silos at Cape Canaveral—each seventy-eight feet deep and twelve feet in diameter—as an appropriate location. Smaller pieces of Challenger ’s debris were cataloged, packed into 102 crates, and stored in the silos’ underground equipment and battery rooms. [1] Robert Pearlman, “Smithsonian Considering Display.” Larger pieces of debris were lowered directly into the silo. One segment of a Challenger wing was too large to fit and had to be cut in half. Pieces of Challenger debris that still occasionally wash up on the Florida shore are placed in the side chambers.

The silos are sealed off with concrete caps, to be opened only under extraordinary circumstances. Although Complex 31/32 is officially classified as a storage site, most people consider it a burial site. Sadly, not even a marker or sign identifies the site.

NASA occasionally studied some of Challenger ’s debris during investigations of specific issues on the other orbiters. For example, when we discovered cracks in the fuel system flowliners of several shuttles in 2002, our engineers examined the recovered flowliner assemblies from Challenger to see if the problem existed in 1986. Otherwise, Challenger has remained undisturbed and out of sight.

About one month into the Columbia reconstruction effort, I discussed with my team what to do with Columbia ’s wreckage once the investigation concluded. I met with Phelps, who advocated burying Columbia ’s debris as the easiest thing to do. A wave of emotion immediately overcame me. It is hard to put that feeling into words, but I knew at that moment that we had to do what was right, not necessarily what was easy. I came back and told my team, “I don’t know what we’ll do yet, but we are not going to bury Columbia .” They were relieved. We couldn’t just put her in the ground and pretend the accident didn’t happen.

We discussed alternatives for the next several days. We knew Columbia ’s collective debris had the distinction of being the most material ever to have survived a hypersonic breakup and reentry from the boundary between space and the upper atmosphere. The collected eighty-five thousand pounds of debris was ten times the amount recovered from all previous uncontrolled reentries combined. [2] Interview with Mike Ciannilli. Our materials scientists said Columbia was providing them a diversity of material and accident conditions that they had never studied before. [3] Interview with Scott Thurston. Columbia was hard evidence of the effects of high heat, aerodynamic stresses, and an ionizing oxygen plasma environment on a wide variety of materials used in spacecraft. NASA clearly needed to seize the opportunity to learn from Columbia to make future space vehicles safer.

I informally floated the idea of preserving Columbia past Sean O’Keefe, when the administrator was visiting KSC. He encouraged me to develop a plan. Sean’s leadership was absolutely the key to the success of the entire effort. He set the tone for the agency from the outset—one of openness and a willingness to bring something positive out of the tragedy. He embraced the CAIB and its recommendations, and made sure everyone else did as well. This was so different from the mood of NASA following Challenger . Back then it was “put it behind us and move on.”

I asked our vehicle flow manager Scott Thurston to lead a Columbia Preservation Team and develop ideas for storing and studying Columbia ’s debris. On May 9, 2003, the team issued a formal Request for Information to gather ideas from the scientific, academic, and government communities. We received fifteen letters of interest in June. [4] “Storage of Columbia Debris to be Determined,” Spaceport News , July 11, 2003, 2. In addition to suggestions for storing and curating the material, the responses included recommendations for studying pieces of debris, using the material to teach failure analysis techniques, examining how various types of welded or bonded connections performed during Columbia ’s breakup and reentry, and analyzing the trajectory of the debris as the vehicle broke up.

The enthusiastic reaction of the research organizations was heartening. The responses validated our vision of Columbia performing an important, ongoing scientific mission.

With approval to preserve Columbia , Thurston’s team next examined options for an appropriate storage facility. Putting Columbia into a silo at the Cape would have challenged the objective of making the material accessible to researchers. They also considered storing the debris in a section of the reconstruction hangar, at the Spacecraft Assembly and Encapsulation Facility in KSC’s industrial area, or in a leased facility near KSC.

By late July, the team identified a 6,800 square foot room on the sixteenth floor of A Tower in the Vehicle Assembly Building. The VAB afforded environmentally controlled space and secure but relatively convenient access to researchers. Since NASA already owned the facility, the costs of revitalizing the site and moving the debris would be minimal—only about $130,000. [5] Interview with Scott Thurston.

Pam Melroy and Jim Comer flew to Washington, DC, to meet with the families of Columbia ’s crew and obtain their blessing for exhibiting the material for research and education purposes in the VAB. The families endorsed the proposal. They felt that the crew would have wanted Columbia to be used as a means of advancing scientific knowledge.

Once NASA leadership approved the VAB site, we started packing everything in the reconstruction hangar and began preparing the VAB room to receive the debris. Amy Mangiacapra, James Harrison, and Jack Nowling of United Space Alliance had all worked in the reconstruction hangar. Now, they would oversee the task of moving the eighty-four thousand pieces of Columbia ’s debris to the VAB.