{"id":254525,"date":"2011-07-08T16:06:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-08T16:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mathewingram.blog\/?p=254525"},"modified":"2011-07-08T16:06:00","modified_gmt":"2011-07-08T16:06:00","slug":"the-space-shuttle-so-flawed-yet-so-inspiring-so-human","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2011\/07\/08\/the-space-shuttle-so-flawed-yet-so-inspiring-so-human\/","title":{"rendered":"The space shuttle: So flawed, yet so inspiring \u2014 so human"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(Note<\/strong>: This was originally published<\/a> at Gigaom<\/em>)<\/p>\n

As the U.S. space shuttle program comes to an end with\u00a0today\u2019s launch of the Atlantis<\/a>, there\u2019s been a lot of looking back at the modern space program, including our own\u00a0collection of memories<\/a>\u00a0from a number of GigaOM staff. As I mentioned in that post, my memories of the shuttle come not just from watching the Challenger explode in 1986 but also from covering the launch of the shuttle Discovery in 2005, the\u00a0first launch after the explosion of the Columbia shuttle<\/a>\u00a0two years earlier. What struck me most about that event was how jury-rigged and flawed things seemed, especially for a multibillion-program aimed at putting people into space \u2014 and yet, how inspiring it all was at the same time.<\/p>\n

The so-called \u201cReturn to Flight\u201d mission in 2005 (STS-114 in official terms), was a pretty big deal, even for NASA. After the\u00a0Columbia blew up on re-entry over Texas<\/a>, killing the entire crew, an investigation found that a small piece of foam had broken off the vehicle\u2019s main propellant tank and then hit the edge of the left wing, damaging the protective shield that protected the wing during re-entry. NASA engineers said\u00a0later they knew this had happened and that it could cause problems<\/a>, but the agency didn\u2019t mention it because there was nothing they could do at the time.<\/p>\n

NASA spent two years working on the foam issue, and getting ready to go back into space, and I could tell just from walking around the Kennedy Space Center and listening to briefings before and during the mission that there was a huge amount riding on the mission (the space agency spent much of the time between launches working with\u00a0the manufacturer of the Canadarm robot arm<\/a>\u00a0so the shuttle crew could use it to inspect the exterior of the shuttle after they were in space).<\/p>\n

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Everyone was very aware of how much was at stake, especially a couple of the astronauts I spoke with at the time \u2014 such as\u00a0Canadian commander Chris Hadfield<\/a>, who talked a lot about NASA\u2019s duty to honor the memories of those who were killed in the Columbia disaster. And the pressure intensified when the launch was postponed after some faulty sensor problems in one of the external fuel tanks. (I wrote about the launch<\/a> for the Globe and Mail newspaper, where I worked at the time — if you can’t get to that link, here’s a local copy<\/a>). <\/p>\n

The subtext to many of the discussions about the shuttle and future launches was the knowledge that the shuttle program was approaching the end of its life \u2014 and not just that, but the knowledge that despite all the billions that were poured into it, the shuttle\u00a0never managed to fulfill the initial dreams that fuelled the program<\/a>, even if it did contribute to the development of the space station.<\/p>\n

Many of the science and space experts on hand for the launch (and even one or two astronauts, off the record), pointed out that the shuttle was essentially flawed from the beginning because it was a hybrid beast: not really a plane and not really a rocket, but a fusion of the two with all the associated problems of both (including no escape route for the crew). More than one person noted that the Russian space program \u2014 which went with the old-fashioned capsule and rocket method \u2014 had an almost spotless record of sending people into orbit, and was substantially cheaper as well.<\/p>\n

But during the days I spent there between the original launch date and when the shuttle actually lifted off, that wasn\u2019t what people talked about in the back halls and trailers around the Kennedy Space Center. What people like Cmdr. Hadfield talked about was the human elements of the program \u2014 the little jokes and tributes that the mission specialists on the ground would send out to the astronauts while they were in orbit, including playing the on-duty astronaut\u2019s favorite song or national anthem as the shuttle passed over their home country; or the long hours spent lying on their backs waiting for the shuttle to launch and the off-color jokes they told to pass the time.<\/p>\n

What struck me about these kinds of stories was the same thing that hit me when I got to the Kennedy Space Center and noticed the somewhat run-down looking nature of the facility \u2014 from the 1960s-era chairs and decor in the media building (black Bakelite rotary telephones!) to the battered rental trailers that still made up much of the Center\u2019s administrative quarters, even in 2005. Far from being some kind of monolithic, glossy, Star Trek<\/em>-style venture, the shuttle program seemed more like a startup in some ways: underfunded, making do with whatever it had, just a bunch of smart engineers and eager pilots engaged in trying to do something incredible.<\/p>\n

Yes, the idea of the space shuttle never really panned out, and maybe it was a flawed idea to begin with. And it certainly had more than its share of problems, some of which were probably avoidable, and suffered from the usual military and government bureaucracy to boot. But it still managed to achieve something pretty inspiring \u2014 and when it came right down to it, it was the human beings at the center of it all who mattered most, not the billions of dollars in technology. That\u2019s something worth remembering.<\/p>\n

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(Note: This was originally published at Gigaom) As the U.S. space shuttle program comes to an end with\u00a0today\u2019s launch of the Atlantis, there\u2019s been a lot of looking back at the modern space program, including our own\u00a0collection of memories\u00a0from a number of GigaOM staff. As I mentioned in that post, my memories of the shuttle…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-254525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254525\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}