 Just before we start the video, I'd like to say the name your price on my latest EP, Glaze 94, ends on Sunday. If you haven't had a chance to check it out, have a crack at it right now and pick it up for well whatever you want to pay, even free. And whilst I'm here I'd like to say thank you, your support really helps keep the channel going. Right without any further ado, let's get started with the video. It is the 16th of January 2003 and the Space Shuttle Columbia stands on the launch pad against a clear blue sky backdrop. It is the perfect conditions for watching a launch. The mission Columbia is going to embark upon is named STS 107. Seven are aboard and they excitedly wait for the commencement of their nearly 16 day mission. The shuttle stack lifts off at 1539 and majestically ascends into the sky. As usual, the mission is being observed by multiple cameras, watching the shuttle climb. Eventually she is out of sight. To all the lame and watching, the launch was a success, another thankful event since the disaster of Challenger. However, the cameras have picked up somewhat of a concern and impact of material. So little do the crew know that they are on borrowed time. In just over two weeks, tragedy will await them. Today we're looking at the second space shuttle disaster, the tragic loss of Columbia. It would show far too many similarities to the tragic loss of Challenger nearly 20 years earlier. My name is John and welcome to Plain and Difficult. Forward. So I've been to the Kennedy Space Center a couple of times in my life and I think it's one of the most fascinating places on earth. Why am I talking about this? Well the times I went there were a few years before and a few years after the loss of Columbia. Along with being older on the second visit, the knowledge of the disaster erased the magical sheen I felt from my first visit. But the shuttle still fills me with a sense of awe. As such I'm rather excited to make this video. So as usual my sources will be linked below and the facts and figures from this video will be mainly drawn from the accident investigation board's report. Right let's get cracking and I should probably say now that we will need the bingo card right from the start. Background. So I've covered a bit of the shuttle's history in my Challenger Disaster video but more background is needed, especially about Columbia in particular. I read in a YouTube comment on a video of the launch of STS 107 something along the lines of that of all the shuttles, Columbia was the one that deserved to be preserved the most and after reading up the history of it I agree. It was the first orbiter to carry humans into space in the historically important STS-1 mission in 1981. So I'm going to jump back in time a little bit from her first man spaceflight. It is 1977. The space shuttle program is well underway just five years after its official announcement in 1972. The first test flight for landing and gliding was being run on the Enterprise Space Shuttle. Although the first shuttle, Enterprise was naturally capable of spaceflight. That honour was already under construction and it was to be the Columbia orbiter. Columbia's manufacturing had begun in 1975 in Palmdale, California at the Rockwell assembly plant. She would be transferred to Kennedy Space Center in 1979 in preparation for the orbiter's first flight into space. Unfortunately it would be delayed by two years when issues arose about the shuttle's thermal protection system and its engines. But success would strike in 1981 with STS-1's 54-hour mission, manned by Commander John W. Young and pilot Robert L. Crippen. Now I just mentioned the thermal protection system so it's probably best I talk about that subject next. How not to burn up on re-entry? So when an item re-enters Earth's atmosphere it experiences a thing called atmospheric drag. So as NASA save themselves, drag is generated by the difference in velocity between a solid, object and the fluid. In our case the fluid is the air the object encounters upon re-entry. Due to the high speeds of re-entry, in the shuttle's case 17,000 miles an hour, the mechanical friction of the vehicle to the air causes aerodynamic heating. This heating is enough to disintegrate an object. This is the reason why small asteroids are harmlessly destroyed upon entering Earth's atmosphere. But if you go into space and want to come back again, the vehicle you are on board better have a method of dealing with the aerodynamic heat. So to counteract this, the space shuttle project made use of several insulation techniques depending on its location. This varied in protection requirements from 371 degree centigrade or 699 degrees Fahrenheit to over 1280 degrees centigrade or 2336 degrees Fahrenheit. So I won't go into all of the insulation and instead I'll just talk about the materials used to protect the shuttle to temperatures over 1280 degrees centigrade. Such as the nose cone and leading edges of the wings. This was a material called reinforced carbon carbon. This part of the shuttle's TPS is a composite made up of carbon fiber reinforcement in a graphite matrix. These were great at protecting Columbia from the insane heat upon re-entry. But like all things, this performance came at a cost. And that was its impact resistance. True, the carbon carbon was more resilient than the famously brittle high temperature reusable surface insulation tiles which was used elsewhere on the shuttle. But it still wasn't the most impact resistant. This was an issue after STS won with Columbia losing 16 tiles with 148 others sustaining some sort of damage as noted in the accident investigation board report released in 2003 from excess solid rocket booster ignition pressure. You see the shuttle's project design requirement was to set out that no debris would be allowed to hit the orbiter for the reason of the fragile TPS. And it would turn out that no greater culprit of debris on a launch stack was that of the space shuttle external tank. This was because of its foam insulation. This was vital as it kept the tank's fuel contents at the required temperature. The insulation was applied to the external tank via a spray. The ramps that attached the struts to the external tank to the shuttle were also covered in foam insulation. During the early launches it was found that in almost every case, some form of the foam insulation could become dislodged and become debris during the shuttle stack launch. However, even though design requirements meant that foam sheds should not be a thing at all, it was, and in a very NASA-like response, became thought of as less and less of an issue as subsequent shuttles were not lost to foam impact damage. Interestingly, it was even thought at some point during the Challenger investigation that foam loss could have been a failure point that caused a tragedy in 1986. It wasn't as we know it was the whole O-ring issue. But what I'm getting at was foam loss was a known issue and it was just kind of accepted that it would happen. We'll come back to this a bit later on in the video with NASA complacency. But to get the video moving along, we need to go to the beginning of the mission STS-107. The Launch. So the road to STS-107's launch was a long one mired by delays. It was originally scheduled for January the 11th 2001, where it would be after a frustrating 13 delays. The mission was eventually pushed back over a period of two years. Most of the delays were during the planning stages, but eventually a date of the 16th of January 2003 was set. The crew for the mission were Rick Husband as commander, William C. McCall as pilot, Michael P. Anderson a payload commander, David M. Brown, mission specialist, Kapala Chawla a flight engineer, L'Oreal Clark a mission specialist, and Ilan Raman a payload specialist. When STS-107 sat upon the launch pad, Columbia was a kind of a half of ship athesis. She as noted by NASA in their report had more than 44% of its original thermal protection system tiles and 41 of the 44 wing leading edge reinforced carbon-carbon panels were still original. But she had been modernised in other ways in the 22 years since her first manned flight, as lessons were learned from the overall space shuttle program. At around 7.30am the crew was driven to their staging area in the Kennedy Space Centre industrial area to launch complex 39A. Before this Columbia, the booster rockets and her external tank had been fuelled and inspected for launch. At 7.53am commander Rick Husband entered the orbiter followed by the rest of the crew with mission specialist Kalpana Chawla being last to enter at 8.45am. Shortly after the door was closed and locked behind them. At quarter past 10, non-essential personnel were cleared from the launch area. The auxiliary power was started at 10.35am and liftoff began at 10.39am with ignition of the solid rocket boosters. Roughly around 57 seconds the shuttle experienced a wind shear at roughly 32,000 feet pushing the nose to the right hand side. This increased the aerodynamic force on the external tank's bipod strut attachment. It was an extreme change but within design specifications. At 81.7 seconds after launch a large piece of foam and two smaller pieces detached from the ET bipod ramp. The larger piece was 21 to 27 inches long and 12 to 18 inches wide. It was travelling at between 416 and 573mph. The large piece struck the reinforced carbon-carbon leaning edge of the shuttle's left wing. The flight carried on and 2 minutes and 7 seconds after liftoff the solid rocket boosters separated from the external tank and descended back to earth. Around 8 minutes and 30 seconds after launch the space shuttle main engine shut down as expected after which the external tank was jettisoned at 11.20am. Now the debris strike wasn't known by either crew or NASA at the time. The launch had been recorded and as a usual part of post launch operations NASA reviewed all footage that was captured. This was to see if the shuttle had received any damage. The strike wasn't discovered until day 2 of the mission when the inter-center photo working group was reviewing the footage. The debris was seen but there was a lack of images of Columbia's left wing. This was just due to the lack of a camera in that particular angle. Concerned the inter-center photo working group sent a report with a video clip of the impact to the mission management team, the mission evaluation room and engineers at United Space Alliance and Boeing. How much damage? So with the information that a debris strike had occurred, NASA and its contractors began trying to figure out how much damage could be done. Previous debris strikes had not resulted in disaster, nevertheless the state of Columbia's left wing had to be discovered. A debris assessment team was set up. The first meeting of the team was 5 days into the mission. This resulted in the desire for an on orbit picture of Columbia. A request was put into the Johnson Space Center Engineering Management Directorate. But it was decided that getting images from US Strategic Command and their in orbit satellites would require the orbiter moving so its left wing could be photographed. A side effect of this would interrupt the ongoing science operations of all Columbia. Without the images, the debris assessment team were limited to mathematical modelling using a tool called Crater. It wasn't designed for this particular task. This left the team with the following result as stated in the investigation report, that some localized heating damage would most likely occur during re-entry, but they could not definitively state that structural damage would result. On the 24th of January, the debris assessment team presented their findings to the mission evaluation room, the manager of which gave a verbal summary of the presentation to the mission management team the same day. The mission management team declared the debris strike a turnaround issue and any further request for imaging was cancelled. Now the crew were made aware of the potential issue in order for an in orbit media event, but the issues were played down in the following email. Thursday, January 23rd, 2003, 11.13pm. Rick and Willie, you guys are doing a fantastic job staying on the timeline and accomplishing great science. Keep up the good work and let us know if there's anything that we can do better from an MCCPOCC standpoint. There is one item that I would like to make you aware of for the upcoming public affairs officer event on Blue FD10 and for future PAO events later on in the mission. This item is not even worth mentioning other than wanting to make sure that you are not surprised by it in a question from a reporter. During ascent at approximately 80 seconds, photo analysis shows that some debris from the area of the YET bipod attachment point came loose and subsequently impacted the orbiters left wing in an area of transition from chin to main wing, creating a shower of smaller particles. The impact appears to be totally on the lower surface and no particles are seen to traverse over the upper surface of the wing. Experts have reviewed the high speed photography and there is no concern for the RCC or tile damage. We have seen this same phenomenon on several other flights and there is absolutely no concern for entry. That is all for now. It's a pleasure working with you every day. On the 22nd of January, the debris assessment team concluded in a report that a debris strike was a no safety of flight event. Before re-entry, the mission management team held a meeting to discuss go no go of deorbiting. During this, there was only a minor mention of the debris strike and this took place on the 31st of January. The deorbiting was green-lipped for the next day. The disaster. So we are finally here. It is the early hours of the morning of the 1st of February 2003 and the entry flight control team begins their duty in the mission control center. The team begins working on the deorbit preparation checklist and re-entry checklist procedures. The weather was as expected and as far as anyone could see, all systems were looking good. A poll was held by the mission control center entry flight director for the mission control room to give a go no go decision for the deorbit burn. At 10 past 8 am, the crew were notified they were go for the deorbit burn. So in order for the orbiter to enter the earth's atmosphere, the engines needed to be fired to load a spacecraft's orbital altitude. At 8.15 am, Columbia executed its deorbit manoeuvre on its 255th orbit. The 2 minute 38 second burn slowed the orbiter speed down from its orbital speed of 17,500 miles an hour. The orbiter was then maneuvered into its nose up position. As it descended into the atmosphere, heat was produced from friction of air upon the vehicle. During this, wing leading edge temperatures rise, reaching an estimated 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. At 8.38 am, a sensor started receiving heightened strains on the left wing. However, this data isn't transmitted to the ground or to the crew. At 8.49 am, Columbia started its roll to the right in order to manage lift. She is travelling at 24.5 mach. Columbia enters the period that is considered the highest temperature the shuttle will endure. At 8.53 am, Columbia can be seen from the ground. She is a bright spark of light shooting across the sky. Temperatures reach over 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit on the left wing. At 8.56 am, Columbia undertakes a rollover reversal at a speed of 20.9 mach. Columbia is now at 219,000 feet. At this point, the shuttle started shedding debris as could be seen from photos of the re-entry. Communication between Columbia and the ground were becoming difficult with flight control asking the crew to repeat their last message. At 8.59 am and 32 seconds, a garbled message in which the only word Roger could be made out. After which, static was the only thing that could be heard. At 9 am, videos taken from the ground showed Columbia had disintegrated. During his time, control room staff frantically tried to figure out what was happening. They had lost indications or various systems aboard the orbiter. Tracking data had also been lost. The worst nightmare for them was unfolding. At 12 minutes past 9, about the video break-up made its way to the flight director. Columbia and all seven aboard were lost. After the scheduled landing time of 9.16 had passed, NASA began executing their contingency plan. This would involve readying an investigation team, notifying families of the crew and notifying President Bush. George Bush would make a statement to the public in the early afternoon of the same day. So at around 9 am, 9-1-1 calls started flooding in all over Texas, with reports of debris hitting property, motorists in their cars, and causing noise disturbances. Pretty soon it became apparent that these reports were of parts of the shuttle breaking up. Emergency response teams were dispatched to recover and decontaminate debris locations. This was no mean feat, as the area affected was estimated to be around 2,000 square miles, and the area would increase as the search efforts continued. Exact coordinates were taken of each impact site. This data would help investigators piece together the failure narrative. Over the following months, thousands of search workers would scour the debris fields. In total, over 83,000 pieces of debris were found, with some being discovered nearly 10 years after the disaster. But the main search did end in May 2003. Interestingly, during the recovery, some challenger debris was handed in. A hangar was used at Kennedy Space Center for laying out the debris, much like what happens in an aircraft investigation. The remains of each of the seven astronauts were recovered, but due to the nature of the disaster, it was nearly unidentifiable pieces of organic matter. Needless to say, an investigation would be conducted, and it wasn't immediately apparent what had gone wrong. After all, mission managers didn't think that a foam strike could cause a catastrophic failure. The investigation. So, within a couple of hours of the loss of Columbia, the NASA administration formed the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. In total, this would consist of 13 members of a mixture of various backgrounds of both military and civilian persuasions. The debris would be visited by the board, and data from the in-flight recorder was analyzed. An inconceivable amount of information had to be compiled and sifted through for the investigation. Sensor data did hint towards the starting point of the breakup, and it would sadly be around the left wing. Sensors in that area recorded heightened temperatures way beyond design spec. They also found a considerable difference in the damage to the left and right wings in the debris that they found. Left wing parts showed increased heat and aerodynamic damage. So, needless to say, all the evidence was pointing the board towards the mechanical failure, which was the foam strike damaging the left wing's leading edges, reinforced carbon-carbon thermal insulation. But the greater cause was from within the way NASA was operated. First of all, they didn't understand fully the mechanism in which the foam could have been shed off the external tank, and there were no non-destructive ways to inspect the foam for issues. But this was kind of the tip of the organization's iceberg of disaster. You see, in the 1990s and early 2000s, NASA was trying to do quite a lot with not that much, in the sense that the budget fully overall was being squeezed. This was due to the International Space Station taking up more and more of NASA's resources. This reflected in the workforce that was allocated to the shuttle. In 1993 there were over 30,000 people working on the project, but by 2002 that number had dwindled down to 17,000. Shuttle teams had more pressure to deliver a very tight schedule with limited funds. At least in comparison to the 1980s, NASA was falling into a trap it had done pre-challenger. Complacency, in which previous strikes resulted in no disaster, led management to not take foam strikes as seriously as they should have. As such, they thought the strike on STS-107 would have resulted in the same as others, i.e. no disaster. Warringly, just a few months before STS-107, a sizable piece of bipod ramp installation had fallen off during STS-112, but nothing was actioned from the event. The board was critical of NASA's organization in the lead up to the disaster. The investigation board ended up recommending eliminating external tank foam shedding, increasing imaging options for the orbiter, improving training and mission scheduling, as well as a number of other issues highlighted during the investigation. But the burning question to many was, how could the disaster have been averted, even after Columbia was in space? While the board approached this in Part 2 of their report, so there were two main paths that NASA could have taken to save the crew. The first was with a rescue mission, by using Atlantis, which was at the time being prepared for a mission due to be launched in March, under the number STS-114. The theory was that if a few checks were cut back and launched with a minimal crew, Columbia's crew could have transferred to the Atlantis and returned to Earth. The other option was to repair Columbia in orbit, while using insulation tiles taken from other parts of the orbiter, however this route would have been very risky and unlikely to have succeeded. We will never know if these options would have actually worked, but due to the way NASA was in 2003, the time the foam hit the wing, the crew's destiny was sealed. NASA would implement many of the board's recommendations, and the shuttle would return to space, with STS-114. And moving forward, NASA implemented launch on need, in which a space shuttle would be prepared for launch and ready to go whenever a mission was in orbit. These contingency missions were numbered STS-300. In 2004, the shuttle was announced that retirement was on the books, and in 2011, STS-135 was the last shuttle mission. So that's my video on the Columbia disaster. This is my bingo card results, do you agree? And my rating is going to be 4 on the disaster scale. This is a plain default production, all videos on the channel Creative Commons Actuation Share Light licensed. Plain default videos produced by me, John, in the currently very wet and cold corner of southern London UK. I have a second YouTube channel, Instagram and Twitter, or X or whatever you want to call it, so check them out for my other bits and pieces in odds and sods. I'd like to make a very warm thank you to my YouTube and Patreon members, who help financially support this channel. All I have to say is thank you for watching, and Mr Music, play us out please.