Worshiping Dogma
This week I look at an essay by Hannes Hacker. It has appeared at least twice on the internet; on NewsMax it appeared as "Cause of Two Shuttle Disasters: Enviro Dogma" and on Frontpage Magazine as "Earth Worshippers Cause Death in Space". (UPDATE: The article has now ben posted on sevreal other sites including Eco-freedom.org, Objective Science and Enter Stage Right. Hacker was also a source for an article in Insight.)
Now that a dramatic new test has confirmed that a piece of thermal insulation flaking off of space shuttle Columbia's external tank during launch was the most likely cause of its destruction during re-entry, the typical second-guessing in the press has focused on NASA engineers, asking: "What did Mission Control know, and when did they know it?"
Somehow, NASA engineers should have guessed about the damage done to Columbia's thermal tiles and pulled an Apollo 13-style rabbit out of their hat. The implication is that they should have been omniscient and omnipotent.
It was damage to the leading edge, not the tiles, that caused the accedent.
Having heroes like NASA's mission controllers around to quietly brave the world's criticism certainly serves to divert attention from those who have done the most to contribute to this disaster, and who regard themselves as omniscient and omnipotent enough to command the entire American economy and the lives of its citizens: the environmentalists.doubtful prognostications
That environmental measures are based on "doubtful prognostications" has been a favorite claim of the "brownlash" for years. But ozone depletion is based on hard science, and actual reductions in ozone levels.
But it was the elimination of the old foam that led to a real disaster for the shuttle program.
The maiden flight with the new foam, in 1997, resulted in a 10-fold increase to foam-induced tile damage. The new foam was far more dangerous than the old foam.
But NASA, a government organization afraid of antagonizing powerful political interests, did not reject the EPA's demands and thoroughly reverse the fatal decision. Instead, they sought a compromise by applying for a waiver from the EPA that allowed them to use the old foam on some parts of the external tank.
NASA notes that it is impossible to ascertain with certainty whether it was the old or the new foam that caused the recent disaster, and environmentalists will no doubt say this means that we can't pin the disaster on them. But any unnecessary increase in risk in an enterprise so unforgiving of error, is unacceptable.
The jury is still out on what caused the foam to fall off. The group looking into the Columbia disaster has not, as far as I know, tried to determine why the piece of foam broke off. This report by Bruce Moomaw shows that there were a number of problems with the foam insulation. (UPDATE: The board investigating the accident has issued its final report. The foam that did the damage came from the left bipod ramp, an area where the old foam was used. None of the groups that have blamed the accident on environmentalists or the Clinton administration have corrected or retracted their claims) (FURTHER UPDATE: As is often the case, the story turns out to be more complicated than it first appeared. In a speech to REP America Congressman Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.) described how he took action after finding that misinformation about the disaster was being spread, including sending a letter to Insight about their first article. Rather then correcting their mistakes, Insight produced a second article in which they spin several theories trying to implicate the "politically correct" foam. Also, instead of running Boehlert's letter to them, they ran a letter from the editor explaining why they would not run the Congressman's letter. BTW, I sent a letter to Insight after their first article and received no reply.)
P.C. Junk 'Science' Trumps Engineering
The bottom line is that NASA took a much greater risk to comply with EPA demands. Environmentalist junk science trumped sound engineering.
This is not the first time that has happened. The cause of the 1986 Challenger explosion is officially established as hot gases burning through an O-ring joint in one of the solid-rocket boosters. NASA was roundly criticized for its decision to launch in cold weather over the objection of some engineers, but there was a deeper cause that was not as widely reported.
In 1985 NASA had switched to a new putty to seal the O-ring joints. The new putty became brittle at cold temperatures, thus allowing Dr. Richard Feynman to teach NASA a famous lesson. At the congressional hearing investigating the accident, he simply placed some of the O-ring putty in a glass of ice water and crumbled it in his fingers.
The new putty did not become brittle at low temperatures. Feynman used a piece of the O-ring itself, and it became less resilient, it did not crumble. This story has been reported numerous times, it is inexcusable that Hacker could get it wrong.
NASA had changed the sealant because its original supplier for O-ring putty stopped producing it for fear of anti-asbestos lawsuits.
What do lawsuits have to do with "enviro-dogma" or "earth worshipers"? The company making the putty made a business decision, and NASA started using another putty that also contained asbestos.
No Lessons Learned From the Challenger Disaster
Had NASA not run out of the original putty, the Challenger disaster would not have happened. Indeed, when the Air Force ran out of the same putty and replaced it with the same brittle substitute, their Titan 34D heavy-lift boosters suffered two sudden launch failures, after a string of successes that had lasted as long as that of the space shuttle.
There is absolutely no evidence that the disaster could have been prevented if the old putty was still in use. See "Asbestos and the Challenger disaster". Also note that Hacker gives no reason for the Titan failures. At least one of these failures was a result of a failure of the main liquid fuel engine (Richard S. Lewis, Challenger: The Final Voyage, Columbia University Press, 1988, page 160).
These accidents are not primarily the fault of careless engineers, nor are they merely the unintended consequences of bureaucrats blindly following federal rules. They are the result of a philosophy that hold human needs, such as the need for a safe shuttle launch or re-entry, as less important than a concern to preserve the purity of nature from the products of industrial civilization, such as CFCs and asbestos insulation.
Laws to control asbestos, CFCs and other harmful materials are used to protect human health and the environment. They have nothing to do with preserving "the purity of nature".
Al Gore's Twisted Dream
Had 2000 presidential candidate Al Gore had his way, Columbia's last mission would have carried a spacecraft called Triana into space. Triana was meant to beam continuous images, via the Internet, of a very small Earth as seen from a point between Earth and the sun.
The Triana carries a number of scientific instruments. Its launch was delayed by Republican lawmakers, apparently for political reasons.
The idea was to convey the message of how small and fragile the Earth is, and consequently how small man is, compared to the vastness of space.
That's the theory: Man is small and should sacrifice for vast nature. The practice? Fourteen dead astronauts.
Hacker has apparently started to believe his own propaganda.
Analysis by Hannes Hacker, an aerospace engineer and former flight controller at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. He is a writer for the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead." Send comments to reaction@aynrand.org
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Written by Jim Norton
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