Columbia Accident Books

The book was very interesting. I am in disaster cordination for our funeral directors Assn. I fond it elpful in knowing there procedures used and agencies involved.

Funeral director Byron Starr presents Finding Heroes: The Search for Columbia's Astronauts, the true story of his participation in mass volunteer search to find and catalogue the debris and human remains from the tragic space shuttle Columbia explosion that happened in 2003. Part memoir, part firsthand chronicle of sad history, Finding Heroes narrates not only the difficult hunt through the pinewoods of East Texas, but also the coming together of a community, and compassion amid fellow human beings in the wake of national loss. A touching and inspirational chronicle.

Having worked with Mr. Starr as he completed this book, I found myself fascinated by his account of his personal participation in the search for the astronauts from the Columbia shuttle. He introduces the widely varied searchers and support people involved, who outnumbered the entire population of the tiny town that was the center of the search. Old and young, from many areas, from organizations and alone, volunteers came. Local people worked endlessly to offer them food, housing (mostly tents) and all kinds of support. Starr manages to make everyone come to life, so that the reader feels he knows them personally. I am proud to have worked as his mentor as he produced this work. I think anyone will find i interesting and enjoyable.
Ardath Mayhar

I really like this book and I found it to be an easy read. The author made everything facinating, even the "waste management system" (toilet). I did have a problem though some pages were missing in the middle of my book (I don't know if it was my copy or if it was a publishing error)overall an excellant read that I would recommend to people @ NASA today so they could see what we could do as todays culture seems to have forgotten.

-Wilfred A. Roberge

This is the official NASA history of the Skylab orbital workshop program. Long the dream of spaceflight enthusiasts, space stations became the core mission of both the American and Soviet space programs during the 1970s. From virtually the beginning of the twentieth century, those interested in the human exploration of space have viewed as central to that endeavor the building of a massive Earth-orbital space station that would serve as the jumping off point to the Moon and the planets. Always, space exploration enthusiasts believed, a permanently-occupied space station was a necessary outpost in the new frontier of space. In 1903 Russian schoolteacher Konstantin E. Tsiolkovskiy studied this possibility and argued for the creation of a dramatic wheeled space station that rotated slowly to approximate gravity with centrifugal force. During the 1920s Romanian-German space flight theorist Hermann Oberth and Austrian engineer Hermann Noordung both elaborated on the concept of the orbital space station as a base for voyages into space. In the 1950s, Wernher von Braun also emphasized the role of an orbital space station as a laboratory, observatory, industrial plant, launching platform, dry-dock, and military facility.

Although it did not pursue a space station during the Apollo era, as the program was reaching completion in the 1960s NASA began to forge ahead with a plan to use Apollo technology to realize at least partially the longstanding dream of a space station. What NASA built was a relatively small orbital space platform, called Skylab, in 1973-1974. After initial problems with the workshop, NASA sent three crews to Skylab. During the three missions, a total of nine astronauts occupied the Skylab workshop for a total of 171 days and 13 hours. In Skylab, both the total hours in space and the total hours spent in performance of EVA under microgravity conditions exceeded the combined totals of all of the world's previous space flights up to that time.

Following the final occupied phase of the Skylab mission, ground controllers performed some engineering tests of certain Skylab systems (tests that ground personnel were reluctant to do while astronauts were aboard), positioned the orbital workshop into a stable attitude, and shut down its systems. Unfortunately, on 11 July 1979, Skylab reentered the Earth's atmosphere. The debris scattered from the southeastern Indian Ocean across a sparsely populated section of western Australia. It was an inauspicious ending to the first American space station.

This story is well told in this very fine historical study. The book was published through the Government Printing Office by NASA in 1983. It is now out of print, but available on the second-hand market. For those who do not need a physical copy of it on their shelves, it is also available for downloading free of charge by NASA at http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4208/sp4208.htm courtesy of the NASA History Division.

The Courage and Faith that Commander Husband exhibited in his life is to be admired! My 15 year old grandaughter wanted this for Christmas and she shared it with me. The title really tells you about his life: "High Calling".

I read this book and re-read it several times. Evelyn Husband did an excellent job describing the life of Rick Husband in this book. Some folks accuse her of being preachy, but what those folks need to know is that faith and religion is such a big part of Rick Husband's (and his family's) life that if she hadn't written it all, it would not have accurately portrayed the life that Rick Husband lived. This book changed my life in many more ways that not even people closest to me ever had. This book changed me from a nominal believer to a dedicated believer. This book helped me set my priorities correct in my life. It showed me the value of dedication, hard work, faith, and determination. In fact, this book has become my "Bible". After reading this book, Rick Husband and his family have and will always have a very special place in my heart.

I was surprised how really good this book was. As well as telling you tons of fascinating info about NASA and lots of interesting detail about the work of the astronauts, the reader is given an intimate look into what their families are put through. I highly recommend it.

The book High Calling is good. I recommend that if you enjoy real life novels you buy this book. It is about the astronaut Rick Husband and his wife Evelyn Husband. I liked it for that reason. Also, it gets to the point without too much detail but it has enough. It was also interesting how it told about all of the procedures that astronauts do and how their lives are. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes books about real people in real situations. Another good thing is that the book is spiritual and tells people who read it to become more spiritual.

Very meaningful personal testimony to a most important event in our Nation's history.
Should be read by everyone.

Having recently completed this book, I am saddened and outraged at NASA management for coming full circle. I have read several accounts and the offical Presidential report on the Challenger accident. You literally could swap dates and names and the events leading up to the disasters are identical.

Early on in this account, you quickly learn that no one in NASA was surprised by the events that took place that awful morning. It describes how managers at the landing facility at Kennedy immediately knew that the foam impact had destroyed the orbiter and killed its crew as they watched the families still oblivious to the situation, smiling and waiting on their now deceased loved ones.

As you read, you at first feel for the lower level engineers trying to have their concerns heard. Shortly, however, you find yourself screaming at them for not having the "fortitude" to break the protocol for fear of damaging their careers.

A couple very minor errors. A "this" instead of "his" or a "on" instead of "in" overall, a very educating account of the communication problems that exist(s) / (ed)? in NASA.

Wayne Hale summed it up best by comparing Columbia to Apollo 13 and Mission Controller Gene Kranz. "Everybody considers Kranz a hero because he and mission control saved the day, we never gave ourselves a chance."

I can't say I enjoyed the book since it discusses the events leading to the deaths of seven astronauts but I did find it worth-while reading. The authors discuss the biographies of the seven astronauts and how their deaths impacted their families and friends as well as the technical and "cultural" failures that cause the Columbia's breakup during re-entry. I found it interesting that the same engineering thought processes of "perceived risk" that allowed the continued flying of Challenger despite known failures of the O-rings went into allowing the shuttle program to continue when the engineers (and management) knew dislodged foam struck the heat shields on the shuttles at liftoff without attempts to "fix" the problem (or, at least, determine if the falling foam formulated a safety hazard!). The authors conclude with the notice that the shuttle program terminates in 2010 without a manned space program to follow it because NASA has not created an acceptable (or even an unacceptable) replacement for the shuttle, which is based on 30 year old engineering. Congress has not allocated monies for continued development of a manned space program to continue beyond 2010 - so who supplies the International Space Station after 2010?

A good, thorough analysis. It's unfortunate that the author(s) felt it unavoidable that they should fill the book with Christian propaganda. It really took away from the objectivity.

"Comm Check..." tells the story of the loss of the space shuttle Columbia. If you are expecting a top-level, academic analysis, like the one found in Diane Vaughan's "The Challenger Launch Decision", then this book is not for you. It is a well written book with lots of human interest anecdotes about the people and the organizations involved in the tragedy. It is factual and reasonably well organized but is written with a sense of drama that I found both distracting and unnecessary. At times, the continual stream of mini-biographies made it hard to follow the book's main theme. While interesting, I gained little from the litany of who went to which school and who had flown so-many thousands of hours in jet fighters. Even the the climactic chapter "Re-Entry Revisited" was light duty in terms of the technical information and overly dramatized events from the astronauts perspective.

If you are just starting to research events surrounding Columbia's loss or are simply interested in learning the whole story, this book is a good starting place. It provides the "big picture" in an easily understood fashion. However, it lacks the depth and comprehensive coverage that one would expect from a well done historical summary. Also, there is minimal analysis, of the events leading up to and following the loss of Columbia, beyond a superficial compilation of basic facts and the conclusions of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. The few conclusions expressed by the authors are neither insightful nor motivating.

Being a space nut, and being very impacted by the Columbia disaster, this book was exactly what I was looking for.

The writing style is smooth and segues between topics and people almost seamlessly. It covers the human side and also the technical nature of the issues that came together to create the accident that caused the loss of the shuttle and her crew.

By far the most emotional item for me was reading the detailed breakdown of what happened in the last 15 minutes of the mission. Hearing how the shuttle struggled as hard as it could to bring its crew home, and was just simply overcome by the stresses caused by the weakened left wing. I have read the entire CAIB report before and this book breaks down the final minutes of Columbia in a much more clear and to the point kind of way.

The book doesn't point blame but often infers blame on a few key managers in Nasa's space program and rightly so.

The shuttle program and history is very interesting to read about and this is a perfect addition to anyone's collection.

A very in depth study of the mechanical and human caused disaster of the Columbia space shuttle. While very tedious and technical in terms, one must realize this is a report and not a "Book". NASA again caught up in the mindset that we have done this so many times that we have a full understanding of the ship and it's systems. Sadly a reminder of that same mindset that caused the Challenger to explode. This report should be required reading at NASA and it's contractors forever, and also required reading for anyone who wishes to honor the fourteen astronauts that gave their lives for the science of space.

This is a well written book. It's almost as well written as the 9/11 Commission Report, which is high praise indeed. The report reviews how NASA's prior 30 years lead to the current state of the organization. With that context, it goes on to describe the specifics of the Columbia accident. Next follows the sleuthing that lead to an understanding of the causes of the accident, including enough techincal details for an engineer to be satisfied by the description. Finally, the report reviews the organization and culture of NASA contributed to poor safety management and an unclear relationship between the stated, accepted, and desired risks in what is inevitably a risky endeavour. Each section can be read independently of the others, as if intended for either thorough digestion or quick skimming by a busy Congressman.

I boguht this book because I didn't want to sit in front of my computer and read the downloaded pdf file. I heard that this was less bulky as well as cheaper than the one from the government printing office. When I got it, I say why, the font is small. I wanted something comfortable to read. Also, the font is not a very high quality, the edges are jagged.

I haven't actually read the Apogee edition, but I do have my own copy of the government edition, listened to the release press conference live, and again twice from the www.caib.us archive. I have burnt all the appendices and that one 203MB press briefing, so it's safe to say that I've read everything that's in the Apogee edition, even if not in the same set of covers.

Most of what's in the first part will go over most peoples' heads. The second part "Part II" has the gold. Part II shows exactly what political dynamics prevented the foam problem from being addressed, how well-intentioned culture and internal politics can break down. I've worked for many companies, and what I saw in Part II of the CAIB Report is by far the best, yet it still killed fourteen astronauts.

Anybody who runs his own business, is a supervisor at one, a director, manager, leader or aspiring leader in any capacity should read Part II of the Columbia Accident Investigation Report.

Although not cheap, this book offers a lot of value for the price. The bonus CD which includes many extra NASA documents as well as over 100 MB of video is also worth much of the purchase price.

The book is divided into two main parts. The first part discusses the technical investigation and the engineering analysis which determined the exact cause of failure. This was traced to a piece of insulating foam striking the right leading wing edge during the ascent, damaging the heat-resistant tiles and leading to a fatal thermal failure during reentry. In addition to the more narrow focus of finding the cause of the wing failure, you'll learn a lot of other interesting details about many other aspects of the shuttle design and engineering.

It's interesting to follow the chain of discovery and logic that led up to this conclusion about the wing failure, but the kicker was a sensor in the right wing that read a very high temperature before suddenly dropping to a suspiciously low one. This led investigators to conclude that the low temperature simply meant that the sensor had been destroyed by high heat moments before the Shuttle broke apart, but this interpretation wasn't arrived at until after the investigation. Even if they'd known at the time, there wasn't much that could have been done about it.

The book is surprisingly well illustrated with many color graphics, illustrations, and photos. The thermal diagrams showing the temperature variations in various colors are almost works of art by themselves. Although there's some technical jargon in the first part, overall, the book isn't difficult to read with a little perseverance, even if you're not technically inclined or an engineer yourself.

The last half of the book discusses the organizational aspects and political environment of NASA on which the shuttle disaster is ultimately blamed. The book details the numerous missed opportunities, procedural failures, and beaurocratic screw-ups that let up to the final disaster. There's some good history here about NASA and about some of the leading scientists and engineers and managers who were involved with the agency during these years, which makes interesting reading just by itself.

Last but not least, the book is printed on very high quality, glossy paper which makes the colorful illustrations even more attractive. Far from being just another government study of another failed beaurocracy, this book should be read by any manager in big business, semi-governmental agency, or government department or agency for the valuable lessons that were learned.

Challenger The Final Voyage by Richard Lewis is a must-read for anyone interested in the Challenger tragedy of January 1986. Upon writing this work, Lewis was a long-time writer and editor of scientific publications and had written several books on space exploration including "The Voyages of Columbia" in 1984. Lewis uses this expertise to write a very clear explanation on what happened to Challenger and the faulty decision making process that allowed the tragic event to take place. While the book is very technical, it is written in a way that even a reader such as myself who has no engineering background can follow along and understand. Many illustrations and photos are provided to further clarify very complex matters.

The book starts with an eerie dialogue that went on between the Challenger crew and Houston right to the moment of the explosion. What follows is a look at what went wrong and, most importantly, what was known to be a weakness to the rocket booster structure years before the ill-fated launch. The most frustrating part of the Challenger story is that the cause of the shuttle's demise was not something out of the blue that puzzled the experts, but a concern that was voiced for years before and right up to the launch. That this tragedy could have easily been avoided is the saddest fact of all.

Lewis' thorough account of the investigation following the accident demonstrates a fundamental debility in communication at NASA that, unfortunately, proved fatal again in the Columbia disaster. Lewis' book includes early concerns from Rockwell International (the orbiter's prime contractor) that an icicle may have damaged Challenger's heat shield causing the break-up and another voiced concern about insulation from the external tank hitting the heat absorbent tiles (pp. 30 & 134). The latter caused the Columbia tragedy 17 years later. One remarkable point that came out in an appendix to the Presidential Commission's report on the accident is the astronomical optimism gap between engineers and managers. Concerning the space shuttle program, engineers saw the probability for loss to be 1 in 100, for the managers this probability was 1 in 100,000 (pp. 212 & 215). I was in the sixth grade when the Challenger tragedy occurred. I remember my teacher explaining what had happened on the overhead projector. I had no idea what he was talking about. Perhaps he was planning on showing the lessons of Christa McAuliffe (who was to be the first teacher in space) to the class. Due to the dismissal of so many warning signs, McAuliffe was robbed of this experience (and, most horribly, her life) and millions of students were robbed of the chance to learn about space through her eyes. The Challenger tragedy touched the lives of people far beyond those directly involved and the family members. It can never be forgotten.

I read "Comm Check" before I read Chien's book and thought "Comm Check" was great. Chien's book was supposed to have more personal anectdotes about the astronauts so I decided to check it out. I'm glad I didn't buy it. The stories about the astronauts, while heartwarming, were not worth the read. Chien's writing style is not as graceful as I would like (what's with all the exclamation points?). But the real kicker was his totally uncalled for comment about the Israeli government, wondering if they would have shown the same sympathy for a Palestinian astronaut as the Palestinians showed for Ilan Ramon (Arafat wrote a condolence letter to the white house). What the hell is that comment doing in the book? It made what was already a mediocre book go right down the toilet for me.

Save your money and your time; read "Comm Check" instead. It is a fascinating study of how the disaster unfolded and how NASA chose to ignore the foam/wing damage which ultimately lead to the shuttle breakdown on reentry.

What Dwayne A. Day said in his Amazon review of this book.

I worked on the Columbia accident investigation as an investigator and have read several of the accounts of the accident and the following investigation. William Langewiesche's article in the November 2003 Atlantic Monthly was very good. Cabbage and Harwood's book Comm Check is also a good account of this subject. I was wary that Philip Chien could add anything significant to this story simply because it has been well covered. Now I and others have a much greater reason to be wary: the author's actions in the spring and summer of 2006.

It was obvious that around the time of the release of this book Chien was posting pseudonymous reviews of it on the Internet singing its praises. These reviews usually bragged that Chien was one of only a handful of reporters who were actively covering the flight and also bragged that this book contained information that had not been previously published. Both of these claims were misleading and exaggerated. But the fact that an author was using aliases to praise his own work was underhanded. Now that Wired Magazine online has fired Chien for making up quotes and sources in space news stories that he was writing for them (you can easily Google that story, as well as links to some of his pseudonymous "reviews" of his own book), anybody who reads this book should be forewarned that the author has a track record of deception.

In fact, it might be worthwhile for somebody to go through this book with a fine toothcomb and check the sources and quotes. It would not surprise me if some of the same deceptive practices that got the author in trouble with Wired also occur in this book. Considering that there are better books and articles available--from reputable reporters--your best bet is to avoid this book.

Much has been written about the shuttle Columbia's fatal accident in February 2003. Newspapers were filled with articles from reporters who rarely before had covered space exploration; experienced space newsfolk followed the recovery effort and accident investigation like hawks for at least the next year. Few Americans are unaware of the event or the cause: external tank foam hitting a wing edge on launch, causing overheating and break-up on re-entry. The loss of another seven astronauts in this manner has been fodder for a blizzard of opinion pieces, both for and against further human space exploration.

But all of this post-event activity is a perhaps understandable reaction to the bleak truth: almost nobody cared about STS-107 beforehand. One of the few who did was veteran space reporter Philip Chien. Chien had the unique perspective of following the STS-107 crew from the beginning, of being on the spot working for CNN the morning of the expected return, and being the first reporter to realize something had gone terribly wrong. This impressive book gives Chien's detailed account of the mission: the astronauts and their families, the wide array of science experiments and the scientists and students involved in them, and the NASA mission support people of all stripes. Even more detail is available on a website (sts107.info) and companion CD-ROM.

The central question that the book treads cautiously around is whether the failure was avoidable or not. Chien asserts that nothing could have been done once the foam had hit the wing, and that was simply one of those random things that could have been expected to happen. One of every eleven shuttle flights had had a chunk of foam fall off the same place, and the others had just been lucky not to have been damaged by it. The fact that NASA hadn't responded to earlier foam loss with proper safety analysis and redesign, and the poor design in this regard from the start, were certainly valid criticisms from the accident report - but there had been 87 successful launches in between, and human beings do make mistakes.

Nevertheless, there are a large number of strands gathered here that suggest NASA considered STS-107 a really low-priority mission, and as an organization was not focusing its best efforts on it, just as the rest of the nation was mostly blissfully ignorant. The mission was delayed a total of 18 times, and followed the higher-numbered STS-113 and several other shuttle flights assigned to space station (ISS) construction and Hubble refurbishing. Columbia, being the first operational shuttle, was heavier than the others and not suited to deliveries to the ISS with its high orbital inclination, so in this mission it was relegated to the role of orbiting laboratory, carrying out science experiments that in many cases would prepare for further research on the ISS when it was ready.

The crew was quite inexperienced - among the seven astronauts, only three had flown before, and each of them only once. Rick Husband was the first shuttle commander since 1993 to be assigned to that position with only one prior flight; he did have a lot of ground experience. Kalpana Chawla (K.C.), on her previous mission, had been responsible for serious errors that caused a near-loss and zero science return for the shuttle-launched "Spartan" satellite. Mike Anderson, one of NASA's few African American astronauts, visited the ill-starred Mir station on his one previous shuttle flight.

Thanks to the delays some of the scheduled science experiments had to be replaced by others; one constant was an Israeli experiment (MEIDEX) to coordinate space and ground measurements of dust storms, scheduled to fly with Israeli fighter pilot Ilan Ramon. But the ideal time for that was summer, not the winter launch that finally occurred. Ramon himself, while clearly enthusiastic and having received the most training for this specific mission, had little of the background in science normal for a payload specialist.

The external tank was an older-model "light weight" tank, delivered to NASA in November 2000. The Columbia orbiter was the oldest of the shuttles; part of the schedule slip had involved additional repairs. It seems likely there was some institutional resentment within NASA about the STS-107 mission: both President Clinton, who offered a shuttle ride to Israel, and the US Congress, in specifically mandating a mission to explore the commercial potential of microgravity, had had their hand in forcing the mission on the agency.

Were any of these factors a cause of the accident? Other than the external tank's age, surely not directly. But they do suggest NASA as an organization was not devoting its best efforts to the mission, and lead one to wonder whether perhaps, despite the protestations to the contrary, something could actually have been done.

Chien makes a strong case that there was no option; the crew was even informed of the debate on the ground on the implications of the observed foam impact - and also of the conclusion that it would not cause trouble. Could a fully informed and more experienced crew, with a more alert NASA team on the ground, have noticed their predicament and found a way out?

Chien's book delves deeply into the human experience of the crew: their backgrounds, their experiences in space, and the family and friends they left behind. Chien quotes extensively from the astronauts themselves - appropriately for the most part, though his reverence for his fallen friends seems to have limited his ability to edit, and the quotes get repetitious. And do we really need to know what each day's wake-up music was?

The mission itself is described with one chapter per day, covering representative experiments for the day and the way the crew worked, interacted, resolved problems, and spent some of their free time. With a busy load of experiments requiring human tending and interaction needed with people on the ground, the crew split into two shifts to make maximum use of their time in space.

Some of the experiments described do seem rather mundane; many ended up producing little science since samples were destroyed in the accident, so it's hard to know what use they might have been. However, several of the successful experiments are particularly fascinating. While the MEIDEX experiment saw few dust storms, it did make the first detailed calibrated images of the atmospheric electrical phenomena known as "sprites" and "elves". The "SOFBALL" experiment created free-floating "flame balls", a simple stable flame structure that can only be observed in microgravity. Working with scientists on the ground the Columbia astronauts found ideal ingredients for making the things, and in one instance had formed as many as nine flame balls at once. Given their longevity, the team decided they had to name each individual ball. Unfortunately due to a drift in the experiment chamber they didn't quite succeed in the goal of keeping one alive for an entire 90-minute circuit of the Earth.

Chien's text is the most poignant describing his own experience of the accident and its follow-on. He had seen landings before, and knew what was supposed to happen. Before almost anyone else, when he heard that UHF communications was out as well as the overhead TDRS, he knew something really wrong had happened. He describes the accident from the perpsective of the public and the media, mission control, and the surprising number who were able to visually observe the reentry. He describes the recovery effort and the investigation; he was able to view the recovered pieces himself, and includes his own photos of damaged components. Chien also follows up on how the families are being taken care of, and a number of the many memorials that have followed.

Those curious about NASA and congressional responsibility will likely not be satisfied by this book; while he does point out problems, and flaws, Chien seems too close to the agency to have a sufficiently skeptical perspective. But this is a thorough, detailed, and worthy effort, and anybody interested in the people and the science of Columbia's last mission would learn a lot from it.

Just about anything and everything you wanted to know about Columbia's final mission is in this book. It does more than recount the accident and its aftermath; it devotes just as much attention to the valuable science that took place aboard STS-107, reconstructs the lives of the seven amazing men and women of Columbia's crew, and takes notice of the efforts of many folks behind the scenes of the mission. The book isn't just about the mission's terrible end; it's also a tribute to sixteen days of successful science, research and exploration, and to all the efforts required to sustain human space flight.

There have already been a few books written about Columbia's final mission, but Mr. Chien's encyclopedic book is going to be hard to beat. It's packed with excellent information and broad in its scope, yet still accessible to the reader. It's a magnificent effort, and an amazing tribute.

This is not the report I had previously downloaded from NASA's web site (as a PDF) which was sent to the press. This is the internal NASA report and contains a lot of detailed data analysis and some good diagrams to help you understand what failed. It does not cover any of the work proactice problems or management descisions that are covered in the other report. One point I did note - 8 tools were lost reconditioning Columbia including three screwdrivers, two sockets and a mini flashlight. There are also several mentions of low bolt torque setting on closeout panels and other fittings. All in all not the report I wanted. The paper is average quality and printed on one side only. The pictures are OK but would be better if they were larger and on glossy paper. Would someone plase send me the report that NASA sent to the press? nigel-t@msn.com

Given that this three-ring-bound copy was printed from the PDF files released to the public, you would be far better off ordering the report from the Government Printing Office (www.gpo.gov, stock number 033-000-01260-8). Not only is it cheaper that way (only $46.00), but you get an actual printed and bound report along with the CD-ROM that came with it.