How We Nearly Lost the Discovery Shuttle
"We informed the foam technicians at our plant in Michoud Louisiana that they were the cause of the loss of Columbia..."That to me is pretty disgusting. In an incident like the loss of Columbia, there is no one, true "root cause". To assign blame to those foam technicians was disingenuous and just another instance of "passing the buck" that seems to happen so often in the post-mortem of NASA failures. NASA knew of earlier foam strikes (STS-112) yet chose to continue flying without diagnosing the problem. Even during the tragic STS-107 flight, engineers knew of foam strikes and their concerns were ignored. Even though they would have been almost completely powerless to remedy the situation on STS-107, the higher-ups decided to continue on with the mission instead of addressing the concerns with the heat shields. The article author states later in the article that he apologized to the foam technicians. Commendable, but I am still bothered by the fact that NASA was initially so eager to place the blame on a single contractor instead of owning up to their own culpability. Leadership and responsibility needs to come from the top, especially in such a prestigious organization!