BBC: The Space Shuttle that Fell to Earth

[Star One]

The documentary did not include any discussion with her. I wonder if they tried to contact her?

The second episode as aired on CNN has a card at the very end that reads:

Attempts to reach Ron Dittemore
and Linda Ham were unsuccessful.

Jodie Peeler

I’m guessing I must have missed that on the BBC showing.

[woods170]

But nobody hesitated back in 1981, unlike several of the managers working the STS program in 2003.

There was 30 years in between.

Obtaining imagery of a shuttle in flight was not a normal procedure or requirement. It is unclear how often it was done, but the documentary mentions an instance where it was done on an earlier flight and was inconclusive, apparently leading to an attitude that a lot of effort had been expended for no benefit, so they were reluctant to do it again.

Have you ever read Rowland White's book "Into the Black"?

[Blackstar]

But nobody hesitated back in 1981, unlike several of the managers working the STS program in 2003.

There was 30 years in between.

Obtaining imagery of a shuttle in flight was not a normal procedure or requirement. It is unclear how often it was done, but the documentary mentions an instance where it was done on an earlier flight and was inconclusive, apparently leading to an attitude that a lot of effort had been expended for no benefit, so they were reluctant to do it again.

Have you ever read Rowland White's book "Into the Black"?

Yes. I'm also cited in the footnotes.

[Emmettvonbrown]

Attaching the little story I wrote. Can't publish it, the events are too recent and the subject too sensitive (even if if I'm 100% respectful in the story - you never know).

[Blackstar]

http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-041224a-space-shuttle-columbia-final-flight-cnn-documentary.html

[Durham Park]

It is far too soon and far too emotional a subject but I would love to see one of these rescue stories dramatised on screen one day if it can be done respectfully.

[Emmettvonbrown]

To the 50 people who downloaded this: feedback is welcome, just drop me a message in my forum mail box. Cheers !

[Blackstar]

I have not watched eps 1-3, but I just watched most of ep 4 about the investigation.

Although it looks like it was really well done, I didn't like how they approached the investigation episode. They chose the style of not having a narrator and simply having the interviewees tell the story. The problem is that then the producers have to use what they are told rather than having somebody explain what was going on. This can come at the expense of both details and context.

What I wished they had done was explain more of the CAIB story, the independent investigation. They had on CAIB board member Steve Wallace, but nobody else from the CAIB side. And they did not really explain what the CAIB was, how it was created, or how it did its work. So the way they told the story is that the key details that pointed to the foam strike and the hit on the RCC just sorta happened, rather than them being uncovered as part of an investigation that at times was at odds with NASA. This created a somewhat distorted view, a deterministic narrative that the outcome of the investigation was just pre-determined, rather than the result of a lot of people working on it. For instance, it is presented as if there were NASA engineers who were concerned about the foam strike, and then other NASA people who were not concerned. And then, voila, the evidence was uncovered and presented. But the way it happened was that CAIB board members and investigators (like me) dug through evidence and conducted interviews and tried to get to the bottom of what happened, and we then forced NASA to confront the issues.

As one example, the documentary shows only the final test of foam hitting the RCC panel at the test facility at San Antonio. But that was actually one of a bunch of tests that were done. I witnessed one of the tests prior to that one when foam was shot against a lower section (I think it was a landing gear door taken from Enterprise). The investigation gradually worked up to a higher-fidelity test, going for the correct angle and an actual RCC panel as opposed to a plastic mock-up. Before we did that test, there was actually some pushback from NASA, because if I remember correctly they only had two of those RCC panels, they took many months to manufacture, and they were majorly expensive. (I cannot remember, but they were something like $750,000 apiece, so that test was going to cost NASA a lot of money.) NASA pushed back and CAIB said no, do the test. They did the test and blew a big hole in the RCC.

What the episode got right, although they did not say so explicitly, was that the math behind the foam strike was pretty simple. It was F=MA. It did not matter if it was 2 pounds of rock or 2 pounds of foam, the impact energy was the same. But people could not wrap their heads around that. So that expensive RCC foam strike test that the CAIB told NASA to do was as much about psychology as it was about physics. Once there was a big hole in that piece of RCC, nobody could deny that foam could do that anymore.

I will have to watch the series from the first episode. But I need to be in the right frame of mind to do so.

[sdsds]

In general I give the CNN presentation an "A-" grade. There were no glaring omissions, but coverage of details was uneven.

Regarding the rescue mission option, Mark Kelly handled that well. Regarding the failure to characterize the earlier STS-112 foam strike as an In-Flight Anomaly, the presentation did not connect the dots regarding the Shuttle Program Manager and the Chair of the Mission Management Team having been pivotal in that earlier erroneous decision. Regarding the option of flying a modified re-entry profile, kudos to the documentary producers for showing the footage of the question asked by Marcia Dunn (Associated Press) and answered at the Flight Day 16 Entry Status Briefing.

[Blackstar]

In general I give the CNN presentation an "A-" grade. There were no glaring omissions, but coverage of details was uneven.

Having only seen about 25% of it so far, I agree with your grade. They were clearly leaning more heavily on the emotional story than a factual retelling. There's nothing wrong with that, but it does leave some things untold. For instance, they could have dug more deeply into Sean O'Keefe's role in all of this. After all, he was the NASA administrator, and previous NASA administrators did not fare well after major accidents. (I'm not saying that he was culpable, only that this subject could have deserved more attention.)