20 years ago, remembering the Columbia disaster: ‘Sickening’ sense of deja vu

 

Today (Feb. 1, 2023) marks 20 years since the space shuttle Columbia broke up on re-entry after a two-week mission, killing seven more astronauts just 17 years and three days removed from the Jan. 28, 1986, Challenger explosion. The failure of many of its tiles, which protected the shuttle from the fiery re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, left Columbia without a reliable heat shield and caused America’s first space shuttle to disintegrate upon re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, sending Columbia’s remnants all across Texas.
It was a Saturday morning, and I had just returned from my morning run when a friend and co-worker at The Sun Chronicle called to alert me to the tragedy, which brought back the painful memories of the Challenger disaster.
In addition, as one of two news editors then on Saturday duty, I had a paper to get out --- our Sunday edition was at that time still the biggest of the week for The Sun Chronicle. (The edition was phased out and combined with the Saturday paper in January of 2018).
The shuttle tragedy led to an eventful, but trying, day. John Winters, then a staff writer at the paper, penned two excellent stories, which are posted on blog right before this column, in honor of the anniversary.
In addition, I’m posting this column on the tragedy, which was published a few days later, on Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2003, in The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, MA. That column follows here.

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An eerie, sickening sense of deja vu hangs over the space program and the nation today as we collectively grieve the terrible loss of the shuttle Columbia.
The break-up of the shuttle over Texas around 9 a.m. Saturday, as it was heading toward a landing at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, was not the end of the 16-day scientific mission that NASA, or the nation, was hoping for, just as the explosion of the Challenger on Jan 28, 1986, was not what anyone was expecting 73 seconds into that mission.
But once again the country has been painfully, and powerfully, reminded that despite all of the talk about the routine nature of space flight, going into space is fraught with perils and risks. That was the lesson learned 17 years ago, and it was why thoughts immediately went back to the loss of Challenger, the nation's second space shuttle, when news broke that the nation's first space shuttle had disintegrated, killing its crew of seven.
The sense of deja vu in Saturday's tragedy was especially apparent to the families of the seven astronauts who perished onboard Challenger, including the mother of Christa McAuliffe, who was to be the nation's first teacher in space.
“ I'm not doing too well,” Grace Corrigan of Framingham told the Associated Press. “ All I know is it's very upsetting. I feel the same way everyone around the country feels.”
What the country feels now is what it felt then: profound grief, deep sorrow and pain.
Then, when the nation was mourning the deaths of the seven crew members, their names were, besides McAuliffe; Cmdr. Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, Pilot Michael J. Smith, mission specialists Judith A. Resnik, Ronald E. McNair and Ellison S. Onizuka, and payload specialist Gregory B. Jarvis, a Hughes Aircraft Corp. employee.
Then, Americans realized just how fortunate the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had been since the onset of manned space flight, because the Challenger astronauts had been the first American astronauts to die during a space mission. The deaths on Jan. 27, 1967, of Apollo 1 astronauts Virgil “ Gus” Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee happened on the ground in a launch pad fire during a test of the Apollo capsule.
Now the nation again mourns five men and two women — Columbia Cmdr. Rick Husband, Michael Anderson, Kalpana Chawla and four astronauts on their first space missions: Pilot William McCool, David Brown, Laurel Clark and Ilan Ramon of Israel. His inclusion on the mission led to high security before the launch, but his presence was not unusual as shuttle flights often promote international cooperation in space by including astronauts from other countries.
Then, as the nation mourned the Challenger astronauts, we heard eloquent words from President Ronald Reagan, whose Jan. 28, 1986, speech was remembered as one of his best, as he tried to reassure a nation wracked by grief. This time, President George W. Bush soothed a pained nation, speaking Saturday and at Tuesday's memorial service at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“ All Americans today are thinking of the families of these men and women who have been given this sudden shock and grief. You are not alone. Our entire nation grieves with you, and those you love will always have the respect and gratitude of this country,” he said Saturday. “The same creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today. The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to Earth, but we can pray they are safely home.”
Bush also said there can be no turning back in space exploration. “The cause in which they died will continue,” Bush said. “ Mankind is led into the darkness beyond our world by the inspiration of discovery and the longing to understand. Our journey into space will go on.”
Bush is right: As daunting as it is at this point to contemplate future manned space missions, they must continue.
In fact, NASA recently announced that it was reviving the Teacher in Space program that had been put on hold after the Challenger disaster. Applications have been pouring in from across the nation, including Sun Chronicle area teachers, and they should not stop. The program is a testimony to the resiliency of the human spirit, and it will be a fitting memorial to the Challenger and Columbia crews.
But whoever applies to go in space must realize that despite the hype about how “ routine” spaceflight has become, riding the space shuttle is anything but routine.
The shuttle is a fragile vehicle. When it launches, it looks like a Rube Goldberg contraption, as it's lifted into orbit by a huge external tank and two solid rocket boosters strapped to its sides. When it lands, it is a glider, homing in on its landing site with only delicate thermal tiles to protect it from the intense heat of re-entry. Until Saturday, nothing had ever gone fatally wrong in a landing. But that is no longer the case.
Today, the pain and sense of deja vu are real, but, just as the nation returned to space after Challenger, we must resolve to do so in a more modern vehicle that improves dramatically upon the 1970s-era technology that created Columbia and Challenger.
The astronauts on what proved to be Columbia's final mission — almost 22 years after its maiden voyage on April 12, 1981, when it became the world's first reusable space vehicle — deserve no less.
LARRY KESSLER covered Columbia's first flight and other space shuttle missions in the 1980s.