ClubJuggler

Three past events around this time should make us cognizant of the price of complacency. Thirty-nine years ago today, astronauts Grissom, White, and Chaffee died in a fire on the Apollo 1 launchpad. Twenty years ago tomorrow, the space shuttle Challenger was destroyed while launching. And three years ago next Wednesday, the space shuttle Columbia was destroyed upon return. Each one of these disasters could have been avoided, I believe, if people hadn't grown complacent. All three were shown to be not so much failures of equipment, but rather, failures of complacency. The specifications of Apollo 1 dictated that no sparks occur. So, when a spark did occur, the combination of a pure oxygen environment and a door that took forever to open conspired to kill the three astronauts. For the Challenger, an O-ring that became brittle with cold caused extremely hot gasses to escape one of the solid rocket boosters and break the shuttle apart. Still, the astronauts were not killed instantly but rather died when their cabin hit the water over two minutes later. Finally, the Columbia was destroyed after a large chunk of foam that came loose during the launch opened a hole on the leading edge of the wing allowing the hot gasses of reentry to break the shuttle apart. In all three cases, a sense of complacency led to assumptions in the absence of actual data. Spaceflight became routine and in that, perhaps, not enough attention was given ensuring that it could stay routine. Our current leaders are fond of saying that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance and in spaceflight I believe this is true. Sadly, though, I believe that our current system has gone too far down a road that leads to nowhere to be effective. When I was a kid, I was told that by the next century we would have flying cars, bases on the moon and be starting to colonize the solar system. None of that has come true. Instead, we have become complacent with the status quo. And because of that, sadly, we have started to stagnate.

We now, however, have an opportunity to reach out again. With the success of projects like SpaceShipOne spaceflight has started to move out of the realm of government only and into the hands of private industries. This can only be a good thing. Market forces alone will demand that private spaceships be safe or else insurance for them will be prohibitively expensive. It may take some time and possibly some lawsuits, but I believe the end result will be positive. Hopefully, then, by the time my four year old son is my age, perhaps those promises made to me as a kid will finally start to come true. This, I believe, would be a true tribute to those who have gone before us.

R.I.P.

Apollo 1: Virgil Grissom, Ed White, Roger Chaffee - died January 27, 1967

Space Shuttle Challenger: Francis R. Scobee (shuttle commander), Gregory B. Jarvis, Ronald E. McNair, Ellison S. Onizuka, Judith A. Resnik, Michael J. Smith, Christa McAuliffe - died January 28, 1986

Space Shuttle Columbia: Rick D. Husband (shuttle commander), William C. McCool, Michael P. Anderson, Ilan Ramon (1st Israeli Astronaut), Kalpana Chawla, David M. Brown, Laurel Clark - died February 1, 2003