Day of Remembrance
NASA Observes Day of Remembrance Jan. 31
“NASA will pay will tribute to the crews of Apollo 1 and space shuttles Challenger and Columbia, as well as other NASA colleagues, during the agency’s Day of Remembrance on Friday, Jan. 31. NASA’s Day of Remembrance honors members of the NASA family who lost their lives while furthering the cause of exploration and discovery. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and other agency senior officials will hold an observance and wreath-laying at Arlington National Cemetery Friday morning.”
Pic courtesy of Eileen Hawley "Steve Hawley w/ his good buddy JR in training for 41D. She is missed." #51L #NASA pic.twitter.com/JGlK788O2T
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) January 30, 2014
now there is sleep, well earned 🙂
Besides remembering the individuals lost, there is a need for vigilance. Remember that 17 years passed between Challenger and Columbia. The time led to complacency and disjoint in Shuttle management. Now we are 11 years past Columbia and its successor has a very untidy timeline and causation. While there is reason to believe SLS and Orion would be safer but at what cost? And if the successor to Shuttle cannot be flown but once a year or two years what will that mean to the safety of the program.
Space Shuttle was not just technology. This was a program to maintain technology built in the 1970s. Flight readiness meant achieving a responsible level of safety and assurance, flight after flight. This means attention to details, procedures, repairs, upgrades when necessary or practical and review. Over that time period the Shuttle program functioned twice in such a condition that a technical issue was not handled properly leading to the two events and the loss of Challenger and Columbia which most people neglect to recall was the flagship of the fleet. The same could be said of Apollo 1 which I do not know as much details of but I recall reading that Grissom was upset with how the capsule was being developed.
Remembering these astronauts means we also remember to be vigilant and develop systems that do not allow a program to break down, to become complacent or in disarray in their management of flight or earlier – development of a project.
An article in SpaceFlightNow prompted me to think about this and write this comment on remembrance. It is mostly innocuous but sadly it lacks attention to details recalling these sad events in NASA history. An early line of defense against such systemic failures is the vigilance of the news people following the development stories, reporting to the public what their elected officials, federal workers and private industry are doing. Readers should be also cautious that increasing amounts of news content is computer generated. But in this instance an old article on Columbia was recycled by SFN and attention was not given to details. Was Columbia disaster 11, 10 or 5 years ago? According to the article, all of the above. Another concern regarding news sources is who owns the service. Maybe Keith could enlighten us on who owns some of these space news sources we read. Maybe they are all on the up and up, Mom and Pop companies. Some might be otherwise.