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Lost in Space: Risk at the Next Frontier

November 15, 2024 | 1 minutes reading time | By Roger Pielke Jr.

The case of the “stranded” astronauts, and other takeaways.

More than 30 years ago I wrote a master’s thesis that evaluated NASA’s Space Shuttle program. (The publications that followed are here and here.) As I turned to my PhD dissertation, I decided to move on from human space flight. Over the years that followed I felt like there was something left unfinished from my work on the Shuttle, and that was to write publicly about the near certainty that NASA would inevitably lose another Shuttle, following the 1986 Challenger accident. This was not the result of any complex, technical analysis, just history and the binomial distribution.

So in September 2002 – before blogs and long before Substack – I wrote an op-ed and sent it off to the Houston Chronicle, chosen because Johnson Space Center is in Houston. Published in September 2002, it argued that “inevitably, and perhaps soon, NASA and Congress will face difficult choices about the future of the space program.” Six months later, Space Shuttle Columbia broke apart on re-entry, resulting in the tragic loss of life of seven astronauts.

I have been thinking about Columbia a lot as NASA struggled with difficult decisions about what to do with two astronauts whose ride up to the station – the Boeing Starliner spacecraft – developed some technical problems. Was Starliner safe to bring the crew home?

Days Into Months

On August 22 The Economist explained: “ . . . Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams [are] two astronauts who have been stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) since docking there on June 6th. Except NASA does not like that word. As one official insisted: ‘I want to make it very clear that Butch and Suni are not stranded in space.’

“Mr. Wilmore and Ms. Williams arrived at the ISS aboard the first crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner. What was meant to be an eight-day stay [has passed the five-month mark] after their capsule leaked helium and five of its 28 thrusters malfunctioned. That has delayed their return, possibly until February 2025.”

rpielkejr-150x190Roger Pielke Jr.: Lessons from prior tragedies.

NASA decided to bring the troubled Starliner capsule back to Earth empty and leave the astronauts on the station until a SpaceX mission can be readied early next year.

NASA’s predicament has some things in common with the situation it found itself in with Columbia in 2002. As Columbia launched into space, just about 80 seconds after liftoff, NASA noticed that a piece of foam covering the big brown external fuel tank had broken off and hit the left wing of the shuttle. The only evidence was grainy footage taken from the perspective of the top of the orbiter, which did not allow any assessment of the consequences of the strike on the leading edge or the bottom.

NASA leadership decided that the impact posed little risk, and Columbia returned, with tragic results.

Issues with Culture

Following the tragedy, the 2003 Columbia Accident Investigation Board found significant issues with NASA’s culture that led to an inability to properly handle risk, including an inability to deal with dissenting views:

“Cultural traits and organizational practices detrimental to safety and reliability were allowed to develop, including: reliance on past success as a substitute for sound engineering practices (such as testing to understand why systems were not performing in accordance with requirements/specifications); organizational barriers which prevented effective communication of critical safety information and stifled professional differences of opinion; lack of integrated management across program elements; and the evolution of an informal chain of command and decision-making processes that operated outside the organization’s rules.”

There can be little doubt that NASA has understood the lessons of Columbia, and these lessons have shaped NASA’s recent decision-making.

Specifically, in 2002 NASA had evidence suggesting that Columbia could be compromised in some way and chose not to take any action. Similarly, in 2024, NASA had evidence that Starliner was compromised in some way and chose to take action by eliminating the risks of deorbiting Wilmore and Williams in that capsule.

Weighing Available Options

What is the best decision? That is impossible to say.

According to media reports, experts have different views on risks – a common situation where science meets politics. And the deorbiting decision has a lot of politics. Boeing has had a rough go of late, and SpaceX boosts the reputation of Elon Musk. There are new risks introduced by using SpaceX to bring back the astronauts, and there are no guarantees in space flight.

In 2002, NASA’s only option for rescuing its crew on Columbia, had it chosen to do so, would have been Space Shuttle Atlantis, which was being prepared for a March 2003 launch to the ISS. That would have required an unprecedented short-term preparation for a launch and posed its own set of risks to the Columbia crew and the minimum of four astronauts needed on Atlantis.

In 2024, space travel is different, with multiple options available to reach orbit – a redundancy that reduces risks by providing options.

CNN and the BBC have produced an outstanding documentary on the Columbia accident, which I highly recommend. It is a remarkable case study in pathological organizational decision-making and is exceedingly well done.

Best wishes to the astronauts getting home safely!

 

Roger Pielke Jr. is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he focuses on science and technology policy, the politicization of science, government science advice, and energy and climate. He is concurrently a professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder; a distinguished fellow at the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan; a research associate of Risk Frontiers (Sydney, Australia); and an honorary professor of University College London. He also oversees the popular Substack The Honest Broker. The article above is adapted from Lost in Space, published on the AEI website and on Dr. Pielke’s Substack.

Topics: Enterprise

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