Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Columbia's Aftermath: "Butterfly on a Bullet"

Episode Date: December 29, 2003

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This is Planetary Radio. at the loss of Columbia this week. Stay with us for a conversation with Robert Lee Holtz. The L.A. Times has just published his remarkable series of articles about what we now know about the tragedy and the amazing work by hundreds, if not thousands of people, which has generated this knowledge. Bruce Betts gives us more good reason to look up in What's Up, along with our latest trivia contest. First, though, here's Emily, returning to answer one of your questions about that big backyard we call the solar system.

Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, What are the fastest moving objects in the solar system? Comets are the solar system's fastest solid bodies. The speed of a comet depends on the size of its orbit and its proximity to the sun. An object in space will reach its fastest orbital speed when it passes closest to the sun at a position in its orbit called perihelion. Among short-period comets and asteroids, an asteroid called 1995 CR and a comet named

Machholz 1 are the fastest. At perihelion, both of these objects are eight times closer to the Sun than the Earth is and reach speeds above 110 kilometers per second. You can see animations of both objects on our website at planetary.org. For comparison, the better-known comets Halley and Hale-Bopp reach more leisurely maximum speeds of only around 50 kilometers per second. But these short-period comets and asteroids are left in the dust by another class of solar system speed demons, the sungrazers. To hear about sungrazers, stay tuned to Planetary Radio. For the last six days, readers of the Los Angeles Times have seen a remarkable series

on page one. I've been reading the Times for a very long time, and I've never seen anything like it, called Butterfly on a Bullet. The six installments trace the aftermath of the Shuttle Columbia disaster. It is the work of Times staff writer Robert Lee Holtz, and he joins us now on Planetary Radio. Lee, thanks very much for being here. Oh, it's a pleasure to be talking with you. And I should say, we're speaking on the Friday before this program is first heard,

and it happens that I have just read the last installment of the series. I congratulate you. It's quite an accomplishment. Well, thank you very much. We invested a lot of time and effort in it. It shows. Why butterfly on a bullet? Well, as it happens, butterfly on a bullet is a descriptive phrase that I should really credit to a retired astronaut named Story Musgrave, who used to call the shuttle system the butterfly bolted to a bullet because the winged orbiter, which is really the portion of the space system

that the astronauts actually inhabit and fly in. As your listeners no doubt know, it's a very distinctive-looking white delta-shaped thing, and it's attached during launch to this enormous bullet-shaped copper fuel tank. And it's a quite evocative word picture, which I was happy to borrow and hopefully improve on slightly. But it does, it seems to me, go to the heart of the essence of the space shuttle system, which is it is a very, very fragile flight vehicle that is attached to this rather brutal and ballistic equipment. It's what it looks like on the pad, but it also sort of evokes the fragility of the whole thing the bullet, the tank itself

but also in this context I think it evokes the block of foam that hit the left wing of the shuttle and we'll be talking about that foam of course and its critical role in what happened to Columbia I mean it struck me that this metaphor butterfly and a bullet it's much more attractive but in some ways somewhat similar

to the old one used by the Mercury astronauts, spam in a can. Oh, well, the spam in the can aphorism really was a kind of insulting thing that I think the X-15 test pilots first came up with as a way of dismissing the importance of the manned space effort because the astronaut in the Mercury capsule, who would have very little direct flight control, they felt would just simply be, you know, well-potted meat. You know, the idea of the butterfly and the bullet is just more, I think,

goes to the beauty and the fragility of this space transportation system. Interesting that you call it beautiful. I mean, I agree with you there, but it certainly was not the space transportation system that was hoped for by some of its designers, one of whom, a legendary man who could probably most accurately be described as the designer of the shuttle, you got to meet. You're referring to Max Faget. I sure am. Maxime Faget, who was, I believe, the first chief engineer of the manned spaceflight program, a guy who was responsible for the design of, I think, every manned spacecraft, every manned U.S. spacecraft that has flown,

Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and contributed a great deal to the final shape and design of the space shuttle system. He did have a very different idea of how the shuttle system ought to work. It was fascinating to sort of meet a guy like that who he's now in his early 80s and has retired to a home in Houston. The opportunity to kind of sit and listen to him replay a lot of these design debates and things made something that for some of us is almost ancient history come back to life.

And that's one of the points that you cover in the series, that one of the difficulties faced in the shuttle program and in investigating this accident is that we're talking about a system that is quite elderly now and that a lot of the people who created it are either also retired, like Max Faget, or have passed away. Max Faget, or have passed away? Well, it turns out that the shuttle system's chief virtue has, over the course of time, become a terrible curse, if I may put it that way, which is to say its reusability. I mean, we don't think of this often, perhaps, but when you engineer something, I mean, you take materials and they embody

the design choices that you make. And with the shuttle system, it's wing shape, coordination of the various systems, the particular approaches to the quite daunting problems of ascent and re-entry. These are all kind of 1972 ideas. And because the system is reusable, and for a variety of reasons, some of which are technical, but some of which are political,

it's never been replaced itself. We're stuck with these choices, some of which were quite wise and good, but some of which were limited by what we knew at the time. And we've never really had the fundamental opportunity to incorporate the lessons that we've learned about human space flight that the shuttle has taught us.

So every time we launch this vehicle, we're sort of going back in time to 1981 with the best that we could do, you know, 22 years ago. And yet there is still no viable alternative. And so we continue, even in this period following this terrible accident, to pin our hopes for manned spaceflight, at least for the near term, on this system. Yes, and I don't really think that NASA can be faulted for that. That's a decision that lies properly in the White House and in Congress. And when the idea of an orbital space plane that might in some way serve as a replacement for the space shuttle was broached this fall in Congress,

I mean, it was promptly slapped down. So whether we like it or not, we are stuck with the shuttle. Let's talk about NASA a little bit. One of the clear conclusions, I think it's safe to call it that of your series, is that we can be pretty confident that we know what caused this accident. And I wonder if, in your opinion, NASA was overconfident in some respects, If, in your opinion, NASA was overconfident in some respects, for example, or in particular regarding the likelihood of damage to the system that protected the shuttle when it reentered Earth's atmosphere? Well, I think that we can be quite confident that we understand both the technical and the human causes of the Columbia accident,

and the human causes of the Columbia accident, although it took a great deal of scientific and engineering investigation to arrive at the conclusion. We all, I think, know that the technical cause of the accident was foam that shut off a spacecraft's 15-story external tank, hitting it at a particularly vulnerable spot on its left wing and the superheated gases of reentry coming into that hole in the wing during its final glide home and basically burning the craft up from the inside out, causing a catastrophic breakout. The human cause, actually, I think it's probably more insidious than simple overconfidence. I think it's probably more insidious than simple overconfidence. It's kind of an unfortunate combination of time and success.

It's important to remember that it's been 17 years since the shuttle program has had a fatal accident, since Challenger in 1986, and a lot of things happened in that 17 years. A generation of spacecraft managers, as you alluded to earlier, turned over. New people came in, new people who were not connected to the creation and construction of this spacecraft, and so perhaps didn't quite understand it as well. But they also, I think, came to this indifferent, I think is perhaps a better word than overconfidence. That's a harsh word, but I choose it with care. Indifferent to the kinds of engineering risks that were built into the design of the spacecraft itself. Because the truth is,

is that the particular technical flaw that killed the seven astronauts aboard Columbia could have happened on any flight in the 22 years that the space shuttle has been flying, because the problem of the foam shedding off the tank is one that has plagued the spacecraft since its first launch. An important design characteristic of the heat shield system that protects the astronauts during launch and reentry is that nothing, repeat nothing, underscore nothing, can strike that system because it's very, very fragile. And, you know, these people, I think, in believing that they were operating in good faith, just got used to the idea that they could violate that specification with impunity, simply ceased taking the kinds of precautions that earlier shuttle managers had taken as regards that danger.

Lee, we need to pause for a moment, take a quick break, and then come back and talk some more about this series that you have written for the Los Angeles Times, Butterfly and a Bullet, about the Columbia disaster and its aftermath. Planetary Radio will continue right after this. Come to Pasadena's other big New Year's party. Wild About Mars comes to the Pasadena Convention Center on Saturday and Sunday, January 3rd and 4th. Join Buzz Aldrin, Ray Bradbury, and Bill Nye the Science Guy

as the first Mars exploration rover arrives at the red planet. Order your discounted tickets by calling 1-877-PLANETS today. That's toll free, 1-877-PLANETS, or online at planetary.org. Matt Kaplan back with Planetary Radio and our special guest this week, Robert Lee Holtz. Lee Holtz is the author of a special L.A. Times series, which has been appearing for six days on the first page of the L.A. Times, very prominently displayed. And one thing, Lee, I'm sorry people won't see if they go to the website,

are the beautiful illustrations that have gone with these six installments. But it is well worth reading, nevertheless. And even if you're not where you can easily get a copy of the L.A. Times, it's on the website at latimes.com slash Columbia. And, of course, we will have that website URL, that address, on the website of the Planetary Society where this radio program is posted. Lee, we only have a few minutes left. Let's talk a little bit about some of the people who became part of this really vast

and sometimes, though not always, highly technical investigation that followed the Columbia disaster. I suppose it really started even before the appointment of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board because there were people out there who actually witnessed what happened to Columbia and became involved because of that. I think there's a Caltech radio astronomer that you spoke to? Yes. One of the things that I found just quite extraordinary about the whole process was that this terrible accident almost instantly called forth a level of interest

and enthusiasm and energy and creativity that I think the human spaceflight program has not seen in decades. Various people that we highlighted in the LA Times series embodied this, and you've mentioned, one, Tony Beasley, is a uh radio astronomer at caltech and is and manages the uh caltech radio observatory in the ellens valley which was uh under the flight path of the uh entering columbia and uh he was out there with his family uh the mother-in-law was visiting from australia um out there in the pre-dawn, and they saw the spacecraft re-enter. And, of course, like many people in California and then points east,

saw very puzzling visual phenomena as the spacecraft flew over, you know, flares, flashes, sparks. When they heard that the Columbia had actually broken up catastrophically over East Texas, they immediately on their own tried to piece together what they had seen. And what was fascinating to me was how people like Beasley, astronomers, physicists, aerospace enthusiasts, who had maybe just a sightseer's interest in the shuttle itself and the normal course of events, but who had sort of special technical knowledge, whether it was engineering knowledge or scientific knowledge, felt not just the interest in doing something to try and help understand what happened to Columbia,

but an obligation, I mean, a very strong sense of public duty. I find that very impressive, and it surfaced in dozens of ways. This was an enormous investigation. I mean, just the ground search alone was the largest search ever conducted in North America, and no doubt the largest such search ever conducted in the world, but I really don't know that there's anyone who keeps track of those things. conducted in the world, but I really don't know that there's anyone who keeps track of those things. Well, and that ground search is a good example of how this involved not just scientists and engineers.

You tell the personal story, the experience of a fellow named Chauncey Birdtail. Yes, he was a very good example. He is a contract firefighter from the Gros Ventre Indian Reservation up near the Canadian border, about 60 miles south of the Canadian border in Montana. The U.S. Forest Service at one point put out a call for volunteers to come to Louisiana and East Texas to help beat the bushes. They had to search an area roughly the size of the state of Connecticut. It's an enormous amount of terrain to be covered. And so Birdtail, like many, just volunteered to join the search. Now, he's a quite wonderful character, if I may say so, because he had a lot of family obligations. His wife was pregnant. But he had to pay a driving fine, and the money from the

Forest Service was pretty good. And so he initially went down to join the search simply as a way of earning some spare change. But as the days went on and he got caught up in the emotions surrounding the accident or whatever, I mean, he himself, who had no contact with spaceflight and no particular interest in it, began to feel the romance of this great exploration effort. And at the end, I think, was a quite changed person. And actually played a pretty important role in what he discovered. In a funny way, you could say he almost played the most important role, because it was Birdtale who found the crucial piece of spacecraft wreckage that really helped unlock the secrets, the technical

secrets of the accident. He found the onboard orbiter experiment recorder, which had spooled onto its very old-fashioned reel-to-reel tapes all of the onboard sensor data, very little of which was ever transmitted during the mission itself to mission control. So while Columbia itself had hundreds and hundreds of temperature sensors and pressure gauges and strain gauges and things, all of that data up until that point was simply lost in the wreckage. And Birdtale was the guy who found the black box, the crucial missing link. There are stories like this throughout the investigation.

I think of the fellow you described early in the series who discovered how very vulnerable the heat-resistant panels were just by dropping pencils on them. Another place called the Hogwarts, which I wish we had time to talk about, but we are running pretty short of time. I certainly and very strongly encourage our listeners to check out the series that Robert Lee Hotz has written in the L.A. Times. Again, it's latimes.com slash Columbia. Lee, with just a couple of minutes left here, where does all of this leave us? Where do we and NASA now go, and do you think the steps that should be taken are being taken? Well, I think that there are two answers to your question.

The first is that NASA's most remarkable achievement, I think, is underappreciated, and it's not the space shuttle or the Hubble Space Telescope or the Mars landers, which are due at Mars, I remind you listeners, in just a couple of days. But it has made space exploration a routine part of our government's activities. I mean, if you think about it, every year, as a routine part of our budgeting exercises, we allocate billions and billions of dollars for the exploration of space. I mean, that's an unbelievable thing. That's routine spaceflight.

And I think we don't sufficiently appreciate that. Now, vis-à-vis the future of manned spaceflight, the Accident Investigation Board concluded its quite excellent report with a call for a national debate on where America should be going in space. And that is a conversation which has not taken place. And perhaps the fact that neither Congress nor the White House is interested in such a conversation is telling in and of itself. The desire to explore, the desire to visit new places, the desire to sort of be the first to put human footprints in the soil, I mean, seems to me to be sort of a part of the characteristics of the human species,

but uniquely, perhaps, part of the American character. And I think that when we turn our backs on that impulse, we lose something very important of ourselves. Couldn't agree with you more. Robert Lee Hoach, thanks very much for joining us on Planetary Radio today. His series in the LA Times, six parts, six installments, is Butterfly on a Bullet. You'll find it at the latimes.com website, and we do have a link on the page at planetary.org, our own website. Look forward to reading your work in the future, as I've enjoyed it very much in the past. Well, thank you very much for allowing me

to come on and have this conversation with you. Our pleasure. I'm Emily Lakdawalla, back with Q&A. What are the fastest moving objects in the solar system? Sun grazers. Sun grazers are comets on highly elongated orbits that pass very close to the sun. A sun grazing comet discovered by the Soho spacecraft in 1996 achieved a maximum speed of over 1,000 kilometers per second, over 30 times faster than the Earth moves in its orbit. At this speed, you could make the trip from Los Angeles to New York in just over three seconds. The highest theoretical speed for

a solar system object would be even faster, about 1,600 kilometers per second, for a sun grazing comet in a nearly parabolic orbit with its perihelion near the edge of the sun. However, these super swift sun grazers pay dearly for their reckless lifestyle. Eventually, in a final sunward plunge, nearly all of them are consumed by the solar inferno. Got a question about the universe?

Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org. Be sure to provide your name and how to pronounce it, and tell us where you're from. And now, here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. Well, it's that awkward neither-this-nor-that time between Christmas and New Year's. It's a pleasant time, though, and I don't know if you could find a better time for What's Up with Bruce Batts. Hello, Bruce.

Hello. It's a fabulous time for What's Up. Of course, it's always a fabulous time for What's Up. That's right. You've got some great things to see in the sky. They're the same planets I've been talking about, but let me tell you, I was out looking at them last night, crystal clear skies. They're just beautiful.

You've got Venus looking stunningly bright in the west shortly after sunset. Up above that, you've got Mars and Saturn nearly overhead in the middle of the night. And then Jupiter coming up after midnight, but also stunningly bright. If you've got a nice view of the sky, try something fun and find one of these planets and then look in a line crossing roughly from east to west and you'll see the other planets along

this line because, of course, all the planets orbit in almost the same plane. The Earth's plane being called the plane of the ecliptic. There you go. A little education for you. But it's fun to watch them in the line across the sky. Good stuff. Good planets.

We like them. And a cool time to do that just before Spirit arrives at Mars, as most people are probably listening to us. But I digress. We'll get back to that in a moment. What else do you have for us? Well, speaking of Mars, this week in space history, we look back on a launch,

the last launch of a U.S. lander to Mars before the Mars Exploration Rovers. January 3, 1999, Mars Polar Lander was launched. It was later lost on its way to Mars, making the arrival of these new rovers all the more exciting. Let's move on to random space facts. Did you know, Matt, actually you probably did, that many of the larger rocks, both Viking landing sites as well as the Mars Pathfinder landing site, were given fun names? Oh, yes, because I have the Planetary Society poster of those,

and they're a crack-up. And you can go to planetary.org, follow the links to the store, and you, too, can order this poster. But they are, and a lot of people are familiar with Pathfinder. But Viking also had a lot of fun names, including Toad, Badger, and Guppy, which, with some of the Pathfinder names, were named because of some resemblance to those creatures. They also had one's name for all seven dwarfs, and the largest of the rocks near the landers was named Big Joe. All right, good stuff.

Let's go on to the trivia contest. Last week we asked you what famous dead physics dude was born on December 25th in the 1600s. How'd we do, Matt? We did great. We continue to get more responses than we used to, so we hope you'll join that crowd. We do pick our winners randomly. Randomly chosen this time. It is a past winner.

Liam Turley of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, who had the correct answer, Bruce. Isaac Newton, born December 25, Christmas Day, 16... Is it 42 or 92? I may have written it down wrong. I think it's 42. 1642. Liam, congratulations.

Congratulations to you. This week's trivia, we're going to talk about the Mars Exploration Rovers, which, of course, the first Spirit will land January 3, 2004, just a few days away. We're very excited. The Mars Exploration Rovers have rad motors. This, of course, is AstroBiff's darling's favorite piece of equipment on the spacecraft, because they're rad.

What does rad stand for? And how many rad motors does each spacecraft have? Radical dude. Get it planetary.org slash radio and find a way to enter our contest and win stuff. Speaking of Mars Exploration Rovers, of course, we've also had the European Space Agency Mars Express orbiter

went into orbit successfully around Mars during this last week. And as of this recording, the Beagle 2 lander had not been heard from. But Mars Express, very successful. We send our congratulations to the European Space Agency, and we look forward to the first landing of the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit on January 3rd. We will, of course, be having Wild About Mars in Pasadena. People can tune in to the webcast on the web at planetary.org slash WAM, W-A-M, or come visit us in Pasadena.

See Matt. He's real, not just a hologram. See me and see other actually genuinely famous people and have fun experiencing the landing live and a giant screen. Absolutely humongous. And not only will you see Bruce, you may see Bruce juggle.

Let's not dissuade the people. No, no, no. It's worth seeing for at least a couple of minutes, folks. And because of Wild About Mars, you may see Bruce juggle let's not dissuade the people no no it's worth seeing for at least a couple of minutes folks and because of Wild About Mars next week's Planetary Radio will be a special edition of the show now exactly what that means

we don't know yet because it hasn't happened but you can bet that there will be some good surprises and probably some very interesting people featured as part of the show and don't worry we'll have What's Up.

Once again, Bruce, that's it. Fabulous. Well, everyone, as the year closes out, look up at the night sky. Think of all the things you're thankful for in the year 2003. Thank you. Good night. Happy New Year, Bruce. Happy New Year, Matt.

Bruce Betts there, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society, who joins us each week right here on Planetary Radio. Please do return for our special show next week, and check out the live webcast Saturday and Sunday, January 3 and 4, from Wild About Mars in Pasadena. Finally, keep your fingers crossed for the safe arrival of Spirit on the Red Planet. Take care, everyone.