“NASA’s current organization does not provide effective checks and balances, does not have an independent safety program, and has not demonstrated the characteristics of a learning organization . . . Based on NASA’s history of ignoring external recommendations, or making improvements that atrophy with time, the Board has no confidence that the Space Shuttle can be safely operated for more than a few years based solely on renewed post-accident vigilance.”
Columbia Accident Investigation Board, August 2003
As our soldiers return home from the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, it is estimated that as many as 30% are at risk of neurological disorders from exposure to the shock waves of explosions. If improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are the signature weapons of these conflicts, the resulting traumatic brain injuries (TBI) are its signature injuries and the most common are at the mild end of the spectrum, the mTBI, that manifest in broad-range cognitive symptoms with no outward signs of damage. These include problems with orientation, attention and concentration, perception, comprehension, learning, organization of thought, problem solving and memory. Unfortunately, these brain injuries are the trickiest to detect and diagnose. Specialized medical research and testing is still in its infancy.
In May of 2011, Dr. Andrew Baker at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto unveiled the results of a groundbreaking study which showed how little shock-wave force is needed to permanently damage the brain. Exposing rates to one-quarter the intensity of a shock wave blast that precipitates tissue injuries in the lungs, bowels and eardrums, he employed sophisticated electrophysiology to study their brains. He was surprised to discover broken neurons and broken axons in the white matter despite no obvious signs of physical damage. These breakages progressed for hours and days afterwards.
The white matter connects the different parts of the brain and when injured, cause the symptoms of the mTBI described above. The gray matter is what we think with.
Steven Johnson, an MIT theoretical physicist, discovered that when the skull is hit by a shock wave, it generates an electric field in the brain through a piezoelectric effect causing possible brain injuries at a microscopic, sub-cellular level.
I found this information quite illuminating as I searched the internet trying to figure out what was wrong with me. On July 8, 2011, I was at Cape Canaveral in Florida to see the launch of STS-135 Atlantis which marked the finale of the 30-year Space Shuttle Program. The shock waves from the blast of liftoff, at least for me, was tremendous. Clobbered by a huge invisible wall of force, generated by 7 million pounds of thrust, I was literally electrified.
The Last Shuttle Launch
I had arrived at the Cape on the day before Atlantis’ last mission and the weather was dismal with frequent heavy showers. Buckets of water poured from the sky and it was actually great fun making mad dashes to and from the car during the lulls, through an obstacle course of mud puddles and alligators. Word spread quickly that the launch area had been struck by lightning. Forecasts were 70 percent for No-Go.
Shuttle can’t fly in rain because the tiny droplets of water act like bullets on the brittle thermal protection tiles as it accelerates to an orbital velocity of 17,500 mph, which is 25 times faster than the speed of sound, in just over 8 minutes. Lightning strikes produce fast moving electric currents with magnetic fields that can induce voltages spikes on sensitive electronic circuitry, causing damage.
So I expected at least a 24-hour delay for better weather and to allow engineers time to conduct a safety check on the shuttle and all the launch hardware. But just in case, I awoke at 3 a.m. to tune into NASA-TV for an update, and was absolutely floored. Preparations were on schedule, fueling had begun.
On the day before scheduled launch, there were two reported lightning strikes: at 12:31 p.m., lightning struck the water tower located 515 feet from the launch pad; at 12:40 p.m., lightning struck the beach area northeast of the pad. Weather forecasts indicated 70% chance of thunderstorms on launch day. Yet, NASA prepared Atlantis for scheduled liftoff seemingly in defiance of the stormy weather. Do you think that cost and schedule pressures could have easily and unintentionally undermined the checks and balances that should have been in effect to minimize the inherent risks of launching under these conditions?
Atlantis Commander Chris Ferguson: “That team of folks at launch control center that launch these vehicles, they have measured risk and they know what they’re doing. First of all, we tank the vehicle, there’s nobody around it. So if we do incur a large storm in the process, there’s nobody there to get hurt. There is really quite an involved lightning catenary protection system all around the shuttle pad. And we’ve had huge hits before. It’s Florida, it’s the lightning capital of the universe. And we had ways to dissipate any large lightning strikes. But the 70% No-Go, there’s no risks to the crew that’s in the vehicle. The risk, in my mind, is that you go out, you get strapped into the vehicle, you take it up, you get all ready to go, and then you scrub the launch. And in the process of scrubbing, you have to detank the vehicle, you have to get the crew out, you have to do a lot of things when you scrub a launch that you don’t have to do if you tank and then launch. And therein lies the extra risk. But we have launched several times when we were 70% No-Go like we were the day we launched. Rex (Walheim) launched on two separate of his three flights where the forecast was 70% No-Go. So I can completely understand the decisions that they make. You know, it’s kinda like if you never get up to bat, you’re not going to get a hit. If you never tank a vehicle, you’re never going to launch. So I understand, it’s a calculated risk. They took it, and it ended up paying off in this case.”
At T minus 31 seconds before liftoff, just prior to the autosequence start, the countdown clock dramatically halted. An indicator had signaled a problem with the Gaseous Oxygen (GOX) Vent Arm but a view from a closed circuit camera verified that the arm had properly retracted and latched, that the indicator itself was malfunctioning. The countdown resumed, and Atlantis was launched at 11:29 a.m.
Commander Ferguson: “The ground launch sequencer is a routine that basically takes over all the automatic functions inside four and a half minutes before launch and it looks at all these parameters to make sure the shuttle is as prepared as it can be to launch. And it’ll stop count automatically at certain milestones if all the gates that it has to pass through passes. So the launch count stopped at 31 seconds and one of the gates that it didn’t pass through was this beanie cap liftoff on top of the external tank. A big arm that swings out of the way apparently hadn’t made it all the way over, or at least the indication had not fed back to the launch control center. No one manually stops it, it just stops automatically until they can verify the GVA. They started talking “GVA,” this failed, the GVA is broken. And we’re all going, “what the hell is a GVA?” We didn’t know what it was. We didn’t know why the count had stopped. The launch crew, I think, knew because they had seen something like this and they knew this could happen. But we do speak a little bit of a different language here, we call it the Gox Vent Arm and they call it the GVA. And eventually after about a minute or so, I think we put it all together. But by that time, it sounded like yeah, we’re going. But we have oversight procedures that we have to follow.”
Mission Specialist Rex Walheim: “You’re mentally prepared to fly and once you come out of the T minus nine hold, that means the weather is good, everything on the shuttle is looking good. So whenever you come out of the T-9 hold, you’re thinking we’re going to go today. And so at that point, the weather worries are gone. And we practice for T-9 down many, many times so it becomes very familiar. Up until then, you’re doing stuff you haven’t done very much, but T-9 is very familiar. So we’re doing all our standard things and standard checks and turn on our O2, pull our visor down. At this point with two minutes or so, that’s the swing shot that’s pulled back and just ready to be released. And so you’re all ready to go and you’re pretty sure things are going to happen and then when the clock stops at 31, we’re all just thinking, everything is running, this is where, no kidding, it’s time to go. And for a second there, you think, okay, they stopped at T-31, and then you think, wow, they stopped for a failure. We’re not going today. So for a second, you let your mind go to, okay, we’re going to have to recycle, we’re going to have to do a bunch of procedures we’ve probably almost never done but once or twice to get out of the shuttle, to “safe” it because it’s not safe the way it is. So then you figure out, hey, they might have a chance, they know what they’re doing. Okay, we get the count now. Even if they count from 31 seconds, that only leaves about 20 seconds before the main engines are getting ready to start. And so, you have to quickly get your wits which I wasn’t expecting, we’ve never stopped at 31 seconds before. So they picked up the count. And all of a sudden, you see the tower go by and it’s like, wow! We’re really full blaze! Like, 3-2-1-Go! It caught us a little bit by surprise. We got right through our routines. But it was very exciting!”
As the shuttle blasted skyward, what surprised me was the sheer intensity of the flames. It seemed even brighter than the sun. I could watch for only so long before needing to look away and back again. Then came the shock waves . . .
It’s often recounted that in moments of extreme crisis, time unfolds in slow motion. As the supersonic wave of energy engulfed me, I could feel the magnified vibration of every single cell in my body, and it seemed to happen in slow motion. My head took the hardest hit, I could literally feel different regions of my brain being electrified. It wasn’t painful as such, but I could certainly feel the intense pressure.
I expected to lose consciousness. But I didn’t. In fact, I was more of a detached observer completely fascinated by the sensations. I felt deep compassion for the then-recent tsunami victims in Japan. So this is what it felt like, to be completely overwhelmed by a tremendous force and in the next instant, to be gone. You know the saying, be not afraid of dying, be afraid that you haven’t truly lived? In those moments, I profoundly understood the meaning of those words.
Simultaneously, here’s what was happening on board Atlantis:
Walheim: “This one, it was frightening. I’m trying to figure out why Sandy (Magnus) and I were so concerned about it, and Doug (Hurley) and Chris weren’t. They knew probably it was cabin stretch. At about probably 40 seconds after launch, we got a claps alarm which is very loud . . .AAH,AAH,AAH. . . and it means ONE thing, we’re losing pressure. So Sandy and I, what we normally do is instantly look up, there’s a pressure indicator up there, and I looked at the leak rate which was indicated and it was .15, .17, which is a sign to Return To Launch Site (RTLS) abort. So for a second there, until the control center told us what it was, I’m thinking we’re going to do an RTLS abort. And I just couldn’t believe it! So I was kind of like, slack-jawed.”
Ferguson: “What was leaking, or what they thought was leaking, was the cabin pressure. So you know, air is leaking out. It’s a bad thing especially if you’re heading into space because there’s no air up there. So it’s kind of a critical failure and the space shuttle, to protect for this critical failure, you actually would turn around and go back to the space center. Which, if you’ve never seen that, it’s really . . . you’ve never done that before. And it’s a good thing. Because a lot of people think that we’re not quite sure that it’ll all work. I think secretly, some people really want to see an abort.”
Mission Specialist Sandra Magnus: “Not us!”
Ferguson: “We’re not the ones who would try. But the way that profile works is, you actually shoot this rocket with the pointy end headed forward and the rocket exhaust coming out the back headed up to low earth orbit. You would actually just turn the whole rocket around and you would continue to burn the engines because you have to burn all the fuel out. You can’t just stop it and jettison the fuel. You have to burn all the fuel. So you would actually fly backwards through your exhaust, continuing to propel yourself towards the Kennedy Space Center, but all the while flying backwards. So you can see why there’s a lot of suspicions to whether this could really work or not. And then at a precise moment, you would slow down, you shut the engines off, drop a tank. We never want to do that.”
Magnus: “So cabin stretch, what it is, as you’re going up into the atmosphere, the pressure outside the vehicle is lower obviously and so the cabin actually stretches. And when the cabin stretches, it produces an alarm which makes it look like a leak. And so we’ve heard of cabin stretch but we’ve never seen cabin stretch, I recall, but I knew what it was as soon as they said it. But I had no idea. Cabin stretch, okay, it sounds like it would be a minor thing so don’t worry about it. But when you see a leak sign, I had no idea it would cause a leak size of that magnitude. Fergie, did you know it was cabin stretch when the alarm went off?”
Ferguson: “No. I just said it because I didn’t know any better.”
Magnus: “ No, did you say cabin stretch or did they (mission control) say it’s cabin stretch?”
Ferguson: “I said it’s cabin stretch. I had no idea.”
Magnus: “Here we find out a month later.”
Ferguson: “Yeah, you all felt better, didn’t you? I was guessing. It was an educated guess.”
The shock wave thundered past, leaving me dazed and not quite understanding what had just happened. I assumed this was just a normal part of the shuttle launch experience. Besides, I was overwhelmed with so many thoughts and emotions after witnessing such a moment in history. The person in front of me turned around to quickly leave, eyes downcast, hoping no one would notice he was crying.
It was at the post launch press conference that followed that I got the first inkling something was not quite right with me. Sitting in a packed room surrounded by fluorescent lighting, electronic gadgetry and broadcast equipment, I was overcome with crashing fatigue. A couple times I closed my eyes momentarily and jolted myself awake, I couldn’t believe I was falling asleep at a live press conference while sitting in the second row of all places. I knew that one-third of the brain was devoted to vision so in order to remain alert, I purposely closed my eyes and concentrated on just listening. A little unconventional, but it worked.
The press was polite and somewhat restrained. No one was willing to ask difficult questions lest they be blamed for jinxing the last shuttle mission. The key point to note was that a waiver was issued for a Return To Launch Site (RTLS) launch constraint because although showers were sprouting within a 20-mile radius of Kennedy, they were expected to clear in time for an unlikely emergency abort.
Unintended Consequences
Returning to Los Angeles the next day, immediately I noticed strange symptoms as I settled into the routine of my everyday life. Working at my desktop, the light from the monitor felt like a slow sunburn on my face. Sitting cross-legged with one foot dangling inches from the computer on the floor, the foot tingled as did my fingers on the mouse. The electric toothbrush left my hand numb, so did the vacuum cleaner. And accompanying these sensations always was an unusual swelling in my throat and heart palpitations. I’d feel them while driving, stronger yet when travelling or walking beneath power lines.
Most peculiar was the odd reaction of my cat. He began attacking my head, grabbing it with both paws. He seemed to sense that something was wrong with my brain, I was intrigued. Often, I’d let him try to “fix” me with his unique take on feline acupuncture, until the point where he bit too hard or his nails dug a tad too deep or I wasn’t in the mood. Then I’d bat him away. To this day, he looks for opportunities to pounce on my skull.
It didn’t take long to deduce that I was extremely sensitized to the electromagnetic fields (EMF) of electrical devices. With sheer panic being a great motivator for a frantic internet search, I was amazed, and immensely relieved, to learn that 3-5% of the population is also afflicted with the same symptoms. The condition is called Electrical Hypersensitivity Syndrome (EHS). Although it is a recognized medical disorder in Sweden, here in America doctors seem to be completely baffled. As far as my research has shown, there is no known treatment or cure, except perhaps one’s own innate powers of healing along with the passage of time.
Subtle difficulties with concentration, memory and reading comprehension became more obvious. Gathering my notes on the shuttle launch soon after returning from Florida, when I sat down to write this story, I just couldn’t do it. As often as I tried, something just wasn’t there. I even had problems balancing my checkbook, and unusual bouts of sleepiness required regular naps to get me through the day. But I knew that the brain had a remarkable capacity to repair itself, to grow new neurons and rewire its circuitry. Writing this article became part of my therapy.
The computer became increasingly hazardous. The tingling sensation on my foot turned into painful skin blisters – THAT really got my attention. I replaced my computer with a new system, it made little difference.
The swelling in my throat grew more intense and I eventually figured out it was the thyroid gland which I learned was highly susceptible to radiation. It’s part of the body’s subliminal activation of the stress response to EMFs. After prolonged exposure, my thyroid quit working, producing the classic symptoms of hypothyroidism which I’m managing through nutrition, exercise and my sheer resolve to take complete responsibility for my own health.
I can no longer use the computer much; it makes me feel ill after sitting in front of the monitor for only five minutes. That means I can no longer use the internet or email; I read a lot of books instead. However, I can no longer read at night because the light emitted from bulbs feel like painful sunburn on my skin, and my head throbs.
Because of my extreme sensitivities to EMFs, I have delayed seeking medical care for my neurological disorders. The risks of having an MRI brain scan, which most doctors will insist on doing, exposing me to strong doses of radiation, far outweighs the benefits of being diagnosed with an mTBI for which there is no cure anyways, only drug treatment for alleviating anxiety and headaches. My unusual condition demands highly specialized medical care. Since I am no longer able to use a computer to find a specialist, I hope through this article, they will find me instead.
The STS-135 Atlantis launch was reportedly covered by 1,535 members of various media in a designated area near the countdown clock. I have no idea if anyone else from this particular group had adverse effects from the launch, and it is entirely possible I had a preexisting medical condition, that I am still unaware of, which made me uniquely susceptible. I have always been in excellent health, until now.
The majority of the press were white males. I am a petite Asian female, and being chihuahua-size among a pack of German Shepherds probably didn’t help. Also, not all symptoms occur in all people exposed to the same hazards, nor are the responses of two people in the same situation the same. No two brains are exactly alike which accounts for our different personalities, whether we’re left or right-handed, even our gender makes a difference.
I had no intention of becoming part of this story, but I think someone needs to step forward and question whether or not something went wrong. Complicating matters is that by the end of the shuttle program, the best and the brightest had left, leaving behind the “B-Team” to launch Atlantis. According to the Associated Press, 9500 contractors subsequently lost their jobs.
Of special concern is that NASA’s next generation of vehicles, the Space Launch System, will use even more powerful rockets to launch 130 tons of payload, with the potential to cause even more serious injuries in case of an accident.
Searching For Clues
A friend printed out for me the +240 page Volume I report of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. Available online, these findings were published in August 2003 following the destruction of STS-107 and the loss of seven astronauts just 16 minutes before scheduled landing on February 1, 2003.
I also found of interest an internet article by Chris Bergen where he summarized the initial ascent reviews on STS-135 Atlantis which boasted of a “flawless launch.” The following comments were especially intriguing: “ . . . the emotional notes from NASA managers at the post-launch media briefing, that the launch seemed to be in slow motion due to the historic nature of the final lift off, may have been ironically accurate, albeit unintentionally. ‘Peak to peak lateral acceleration at liftoff was about 0.12 g which is less than the value of 0.19 g’s that could indicate a stud hang-up at liftoff. Final evaluation of hold down bolt performance depends on strain gauge analysis, and launch pad and booster skirt inspection but there is no early indication of any issues,’ noted the consolidated ascent report.”
The shuttle is attached to the launch platform by eight bolts on its solid rocket boosters. These bolts are secured by restraint nuts which each contain two explosives. In the process of firing up the boosters for launch, the General Purpose Computer on the shuttle sends a signal to set off the explosives which sever the nuts, allowing the shuttle stack to lift off.
Is it possible that some of the explosives did not ignite? If so, the Atlantis liftoff could have been hung up as it struggled to rip free from the launch pad to which it was still partially attached by the unsevered nuts. This build-up of energy as Atlantis tried to free itself could explain the huge shock wave of force that clobbered me and set off the cabin pressure alarm in the shuttle.
The Columbia Accident Investigation Board addressed this exact technical issue in Chapter 10 of their report. During the launch of STS-112 Atlantis in October of 2002, the shuttle “suffered a failure in the Hold-Down Post and External Tank Vent Arm Systems that control the firing of initiators in each Solid Rocket Booster restraint nut. NASA had been warned that a recurrence of this type of failure could cause catastrophic failure of the shuttle stack . . . NASA is unclear about the potential for damage if the system malfunctions, or even if one nut fails to split . . . The consensus was that the system would continue to burn on the pad or that the Solid Rocket Booster would rip free of the pad, causing potentially catastrophic damage to the Solid Rocket Booster skirt and nozzle maneuvering mechanism.”
During the mission, two of the shuttle’s General Purpose Computers (GPS) malfunctioned. To err is human but to really mess things up, you need a computer . . .
Were all your computers working properly for reentry?
Ferguson: “Yes, they were. One of them was, so they said, self-induced. We made one of them fail but the jury is still out on that. But that one came back just fine. I think that was computer number three. And then at night, about an hour and half after we went to bed, computer four which is our systems computer at the time, it just decided to quit. We were all very quizzical, not to mention that we were all awoken in the middle of the night and this was something we really had to go attend to right then. And fortunately we have five computers and we just gave its functions to another computer. But you know, we’ve had GPCs fail in the past. They’ve been remarkably reliable and robust and they’re simple and they’re effective and I never worry about it.”
Meeting The Astronauts
Returning home after the shuttle launch with my health in complete disarray, I managed to find ways to center myself and remain engaged with the world. Since Atlantis had come and gone, my focus shifted to other NASA projects such as the James Webb Space Telescope, the exciting Hubble successor, for which Northrop Grumman of Redondo Beach was the prime contractor, and JPL’s upcoming Mars rover mission. Looking for interesting future story ideas, I signed up for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ (AIAA) Space 2011 Conference at the Long Beach Convention Center. It was at this event on September 28, by sheer serendipity, that I ended up at a very intimate press gathering with three of the four STS-135 Atlantis astronauts, Commander Chris Ferguson and Mission Specialists Sandra Magnus and Rex Walheim. Meeting them was my inspiration for this article.
An Accident Waiting to Happen
Of all the space news posted on the internet during this period, the most thought- provoking for me was a feature in the Orlando Sentinel written by Scott Powers entitled “Can Space Station Dodge Dangerous Junk?” (7/24/2011). Distilling the essence of his story into a hypothetical question for the layperson, how would you respond to the following: Suppose between now and 2020, your odds of being in a plane crash were 1 in 8, would you continue flying? What if the odds were 1 in 13? Many would probably say that these odds were beyond unreasonable, bordering on insanity even. If we’re not willing to accept this level of risk for ourselves, neither should our astronauts.
The International Space Station (ISS) orbits earth at an altitude of about 215 miles, a neighborhood that’s increasingly cluttered with space debris. A 2007 task force reporting to NASA estimated a 1-in-8 chance that an astronaut would die or the station would have to be abandoned due to a serious collision. NASA’s own projections reportedly indicate the chance of a disastrous collision with space junk at 1-in-13. Based on this assessment, do you think the benefits of manning the space station outweigh the risks involved?
Magnus: “Yes. I was actually up there. We had what was called a red conjunction. We’ve had several instances like this since the Chinese satellite that was ballistically destroyed. But we had a red conjunction and I’ve never heard the term before so when they said okay we’re having a red conjuction, okay, and that is? The thing that annoyed me most about the whole event was that we hadn’t trained on it before. Now we’re trained on it. But what happens is normally, because of the Air Force Command and their debris tracking system, we know when things are coming towards the station. They have an imaginary box drawn around the station so that when it looks like a piece of debris is going to come and hit the station, with the knowledge of that trajectory, we can actually plan and move it out of the path of this imaginary box that we’re trying to keep pristine. But in this case, with this quote red conjunction, this debris was picked up a little bit late by the radar, and we didn’t have time to move the station because it requires coordinating with the Russians and being able to uphold other requirements and things like this. So what we had to do was go shelter in the Soyuz so that if indeed the debris hit the station, we would be able to literally escape. So we did, we hung out at the Soyuz. The thing that really disturbed us is the fact I didn’t have training on it. The ground response was not as coordinated working with us as you would hope. But we used it as a learning tool. Now we have a very well established procedure that we use in case this happens again. As far as the risk goes, clearly we want to minimize risk as much as we can in space flight. And we can certainly encourage other nations not to readily blow up satellites for grins. This is a risk that while we can’t control at this moment, we can certainly work in the future to keep minimal. But I don’t believe that we should let something like that stop us from exploring. So maybe it’s 1 in 100, or maybe it’s 1 in 22,000 or 1 in 2, you’re not going to stop it from happening, it’s going to happen. If we are afraid to move forward because of things like this, we’ll never advance as a species. Am I thrilled that it’s perhaps 1 in 13? No. I would certainly be interested in seeing what’s all the assumptions that have gone into the calculations to find out if I believe the 1 in 13 odd. But would it keep me from going to the space station again? No.”
Walheim: “One of the neat things about the space station is it’s a great learning tool in every respect. You can do all this research in zero gravity but it’s also, how do you build a space station and survive for that long? With micrometeoroid orbital debris, we have experiments on the outside that show us what types of things are hitting us, what kind of damage they do, and the more we learn about them, the more we learn to protect against them. So when we build advanced ships, we’ll have a chance to counteract that based on the stuff we’ve learned on the space station.”
Ferguson: “On my first flight (STS-115 Atlantis: 2006), we came back, on the inside of the payload bay door, there was a tenth of an inch diameter hole, narrowly missed one of the radiator panels. Of course, we didn’t know about this until we got back on the ground. They do an analysis of the debris, forensic, figured out that it was part of a printer circuit board.”
The 1 in 8 risk assessment is actually outdated since the Final Report of the ISS Independent Safety Task Force was compiled back in 2006 and published in February 2007. Since then, a Chinese antisatellite missile test (January 2007) and a fatal collision between a defunct Russian communication satellite and a U.S. Iridium satellite (February 2009) created an additional 4500 pieces of traceable debris.
NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) held their 2011 second quarterly meeting last year on May 23-24. From their meeting minutes: “The 1/55 at ISS has been around for a while and is driven primarily by micrometeorite and orbital debris (MMOD) hazard. This means that over the ISS lifespan (through 2020), there would be a greater than 30 percent chance of losing a mission from MMOD. The ASAP does not believe that this number has been clearly and publically communicated, and it should be.”
Here’s another item of interest from the same meeting minutes: “ . . . protection from space radiation for both crew and electronics is a critical safety issue that should be central to the safety culture in any regulatory environment that covers commercial space . . . Based upon the information that is publically accessible, it appears that radiation protection is not being pursued by the commercial firms and is not being emphasized strongly by NASA.”
MMODs consist primarily of junk created by the collision, explosion and erosion of rockets and satellites. The Department of Defense and the Space Surveillance Network currently tracks over 22,000 pieces that are 10 centimeters (4 inches) or larger in low earth orbit (LEO). To mitigate collision risks with these catalogued items, NASA performs a conjunction assessment risk analysis and based on the results, either moves ISS out of the object’s path or herds the astronauts into the Soyuz capsules which are parked there for use as emergency escape vehicles.
As impressive as this tracking ability may sound, the majority of objects are below this traceable size and debris shields around the station are only effective for vaporizing minor impacts. NASA estimates that 500,000 fragments are between 1 and 10 centimeters (marble to softball size), with tens of millions of particles even smaller. Because these objects travel at such high velocities, between 11,000 and 155,000 miles per hour, from virtually any direction, therein lies the danger. Debris that is too small to track can easily penetrate pressurized areas and destroy critical hardware, causing catastrophic damage to the ISS.
A 2011 report by the National Research Council concluded that “the current orbital debris environment has already reached a “tipping point.” That is, the amount of debris currently in orbit has reached a threshold where it will continually collide with itself, further increasing the population of orbital debris. This increase will lead to corresponding increases in spacecraft failures, which will only create more feedback into the system, increasing the debris population growth rate. The increase thus far has been most rapid in low earth orbit (LEO) . . . but the serious implications of such a scenario requires careful attention because of the strategic importance of U.S. space operations.”
This report also revealed that “nearly all of NASA’s MMOD programs are only one person deep in staffing. This shortage of staffing makes the programs highly vulnerable to budget reductions or changes in personnel.”
Of further concern is that between 2012 through 2013, our sun is expected to be increasingly volatile as it approaches the peak of its 11-year cycle called solar maximum. A growth in the number of sunspots signals an escalating turmoil of magnetic activity on the sun that builds up and explodes out into space. When this explosion is directed towards Earth, it unleashes an onslaught of radiation and high energy particles that arrives on our planet in eight minutes and can last for hours or days, disrupting radio communications and satellite signals.
Our atmosphere, along with Earth’s magnetic field, shields life on the surface from most of the dangers. However, among its many hazards, the stream of radiation heats the upper atmosphere, causing it to expand. The increased density of this space through which debris travels causes atmospheric drag on the objects which alters their predictable and stable orbits. This will dramatically heighten their risk of collision with the space station.
Here’s another disturbing fact. The space shuttle flew at a latitude of about 42 degrees (New York) which sheltered it from the damaging effects of the sun’s activities. In a concession to Russia, the space station orbits at an inclination as far north as 51.6 degrees to make it more accessible for them, thus placing the astronauts at higher radiation risks by being so close to the auroral zones which are most vulnerable to the effects of solar storms.
The space station also transits through the inner regions of the Van Allen belt which lie close to the Earth’s surface near Brazil in an area known as the South Atlantic Anomaly. Neil Comins in his book The Hazards of Space Travel writes, “The International Space Station passes through this region about five times daily, spending up to twenty-three minutes in the inner Van Allen belt during each passage. The flow of hazardous particles that the space station encounters during this time is impressive. Twenty thousand high-energy particles pass through each square inch of this region every second. For the sake of comparison, the flow of galactic cosmic rays above the Van Allen belts comprises about six to twelve particles per square inch per second.”
What all this means is that it has become increasingly dangerous for our astronauts to be up there. All signs point to an imminent catastrophe that’ll strike like lightning, and it’s not a question of whether it’ll happen, it’s only a matter of when. What does it speak of our humanity if we allow the program to continue by the mere rationalization of weighing the lives of six human beings on one side of the scale against the number of jobs that are supported on the other? It’s time for a graceful ending to the International Space Station Program.
Space Shuttle Enterprise at the Smithsonian
Ever since my first visit in the Fall of 2005 to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, an annex facility of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum near Dulles, I have been a smitten fan of Space Shuttle Enterprise. My travel companion at that time was one of the Center’s long distance donors and was curious to see the exhibits, a convenient stop on our return to the airport. We ended up spending a couple hours there on a day with hardly any visitors, the place is enormous.
I had meandered alone into the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar and dominating this enclosure, to my complete astonishment, was Space Shuttle Enterprise. A space shuttle! It was like turning a corner and walking right smack into T-Rex. The size of a DC-9 airliner, it was way bigger than I had imagined. And for those few unforgettable moments, alone in the room with Enterprise, gazing up with wonder, it filled me with enormous joy and admiration for America.
I never realized, until I saw the shuttle in person, that it is not an airplane that can fly in space, although it sure looks like one. In fact, the first thing I asked was, how can this chubby plane with such small wings fly? It’s actually a glider vehicle that drops back to Earth with the pull of gravity, it glides home in a controlled fall to a landing. More specifically, it is a human-rated rocket ship for eight-and-a-half minutes; a habitable spacecraft for two weeks capable of rendezvous, docking, deploying, retrieving, repairing and supporting spacewalks for space construction; a hypersonic reentry vehicle for an hour; a piloted subsonic glider for about five minutes. Isn’t that incredible?!?
But the most astonishing fact may be that the space shuttle main engines use water as its fuel. Water is a chemical compound of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, or H2O. NASA separates water into its basic components, hydrogen and oxygen, and freezes them to a liquid at minus 423 degrees and minus 297 degrees Fahrenheit respectively. The foam-covered external tank is filled with these liquids which fuels the shuttle main engines for liftoff. The tank is jettisoned from the vehicle as it reaches orbit, burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Space Shuttle Endeavour Is Awarded To Los Angeles
On April 12, 2011, NASA announced the award of space shuttle Endeavour to the California Science Center in Los Angeles. Surprised and elated, that was how this entire article came into being. This was originally going to be her story.
Endeavour’s final mission was scheduled for April 29, 2011. I planned to fly into Orlando the day before to see the launch – my very first – and earlier that week, took a tour of NASA’s Dryden Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, a backup shuttle landing site. By the time I tried to book my nonstop flight, however, all seats had unexpectedly sold out. It turned out the launch got scrubbed due to heater problems, slipped to May 16. Forecasts for the new date, to me, suggested bad weather so I waited, surely there’d be another schedule slip. Well, they went ahead and took off without me, rats!
So that’s how I ended up instead at the Atlantis launch, tumbling head over heels down a rabbit hole.
Endeavour returned home on May 31 at 11:35 PDT. I followed the live coverage on NASA’s website via my home computer. Watching how Mission Control and the astronauts brought the shuttle back for a landing at Kennedy was absolutely phenomenal. It made me proud to be an American.
About 70 minutes before touchdown, the shuttle begins its return in orbit belly up, then flips over so it’s flying backwards with its tail pointing forward such that its engines can be fired for about 20 seconds to break its speed which initiates descent. The shuttle is then rotated back to a nose forward, belly down position for reentry. In its fall to Earth, it becomes enshrouded in glowing hot plasma as it encounters friction in the atmosphere. To prevent it from burning up or overflying its destination, computers maintain a critical angle of attack at 40 degrees. Reaching an altitude where flight surfaces become usable, the shuttle makes a series of four S-bend turns to break its speed. By the time the plasma flares cease, deceleration takes place more rapidly and conventional flight surfaces become effective, the shuttle glides in for a landing.
Watching Mission Control at work and listening to the commentaries was totally captivating for this first-time observer. At 11 p.m., Endeavour was travelling at 24 times the speed of sound! “Heading for landfall at Mexico . . . 17,000 miles per hour . . . Mach 25 . . . left-hand turn at 80 degrees . . . nose-up angle of 40 degrees . . . banking 73 degrees . . . 15,850 miles per hour . . . crossing Guatemala on Northeast track . . . 13,000 miles per hour . . . heading out of the Yucatan Peninsula . . . Mach 17.5 . . .”
Houston, We Have A Problem . . .
During the last ten months of my health limbo, an interesting book that came my way is one by Mark Bowen, a physicist whose riveting expose of how NASA headquarters is run was clearly fueled by a strong conscience and a passion to make a difference in the world. His book Censoring Science offers yet another disappointing example of the pervasive corruption of our political system and should be required reading for college students, members of the Texas House of Representatives and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown.
When NASA announced the award of Shuttle Endeavour to Los Angeles, they also announced the award of the remaining three shuttles: Shuttle Atlantis would be displayed at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Shuttle Discovery would go to the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia and Shuttle Enterprise would be relocated to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York.
So what’s wrong with this picture? At first, my only awareness was that LA was getting a shuttle, hurray, and I thought nothing of Florida, Virginia and New York as being the other recipients. That is, until I read Mr. Bowen’s incisive book and had an epiphany.
Since its beginnings, Houston has been synonymous with America’s human spaceflight programs. It’s home to Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center, it’s where our astronauts are based. So proud is this city of their special heritage that they even named their professional sports teams the Astros and the Rockets.
Houston was not selected to receive a shuttle despite it being an obvious first choice. But New York is getting one. New York has absolutely no relevance to NASA or human spaceflight and the city’s Intrepid Museum is only 224 miles from the Smithsonian Center where Shuttle Discovery will be displayed. With Shuttle Atlantis slated for Florida, that means three shuttles will end up on the East Coast and one in California.
What do you think of Houston not getting a shuttle?
Ferguson: “Wow! That killed me. It really does. It still does. NASA contends that they conducted a fair evaluation using a predefined set of criteria. And these cities came out in this order. I don’t doubt that they did a fair evaluation using those sets of criteria. I would question the criteria that they used. I’ve always maintained but I think Houston deserves a shuttle and it really hurts to see one go to these cities that really had very little to do with human spaceflight. Now I can sort of see the other side. But I can’t see the other side as much as I can see my side. One of these things belongs in Houston and I’ll always believe that. I’m speaking out directly in contrary to my management’s opinion but I figure I’m entitled to that. It hurt, and I see it really has affected the local space work force and the local economy and our citizens there in Houston to really get dissed this way.”
Texas legislators were quick to demand an explanation and Ohio’s Senator Sherrod Brown also jumped into the fray. The problem is, you may be asking the wrong questions.
NASA, as well as all agencies in the executive branch, is entangled by varying degrees in the political bureaucracy that is the White House. Pick a desired outcome, then load the team with your “friends” who will wily tailor a selection process to achieve the intended result.
To be absolutely clear, I greatly admire and respect President Obama. His grace and fortitude in these challenging times is truly exceptional. Unfortunately, he has inherited a lot of people, both good and sinister, with carryovers from previous administrations.
Is it pure coincidence that prior to her current position as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was a senator from New York, and that New York, which has no connection with NASA or manned spaceflight, is getting a shuttle? It is highly suggestive that the Clintons or their pals have exerted undue influence in snagging a shuttle for New York.
Who drafted the scoring criteria? In particular, who decided to give 15 points for international access which shrewdly loaded the dice for New York, when the decisive factor instead should have been the historical pertinence of a city to NASA and manned spaceflight? In NASA’s Request for Information (RFI) to organizations applying for a shuttle, the applicant needed only to describe how their site selection would best serve to educate and inspire the American public. There was no mention of international access in the documents I read, but perhaps it was listed in an earlier draft. Regardless, international access has absolutely no relevance in educating and inspiring the American public.
The mere fact that two of the shuttles will be only 224 miles apart should be a huge red flag that this process has been corrupted. Really, how much more despised do you professional politicians want to be?
An investigation into this matter, for breach of public trust, should address these issues. If there is nothing to hide, there should be complete transparency of the whole selection process. Most important, ask the dedicated employees of NASA for their frank input as no one knows better the inner workings and alliances than they. Please be sure to do this in a safe environment for them.
In 2007, an ethics committee apparently investigated NASA’s inspector general, its supposed watchdog, for retaliating against whistleblowers. Their findings further revealed that he squashed a report on the Columbia shuttle disaster that would be embarrassing to the agency.
To Celebrate, Engage and Inspire
We are getting the wrong shuttle. California exemplifies imagination, innovation and inspiration, and the one that best captures this joyful spirit that manifests dreams into reality is the nation’s very first space shuttle, the Enterprise. She was designed and manufactured right here in California where she spent most of her career before retiring for display, and she’s our proud first-born who blazed the trail for Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour.
Enterprise is the best fit for LA, and as a full-scale vehicle used in approach and landing tests at Edwards Air Force Base, she never flew in space which is fine for a state that is otherwise unconcerned with human spaceflight. We are home to JPL and our hearts belong to a rover named Curiosity who is currently on its journey towards Mars.
Endeavour belongs to Houston. She is the newest of the shuttle fleet and was commissioned as a replacement after Challenger and its seven astronauts were lost on that cold winter day on January 28, 1986. Built with spare parts from Discovery and Atlantis, Endeavour embodies the essence of four shuttles. She would be a poignant tribute to the heroic endeavors of our beloved astronauts in Houston.
The shuttles are not free to the educational institutions, NASA is selling each of them for $28.8 million dollars to make ends meet.
To put this into context, the U.S. has spent $1.2 trillion dollars on the Iraq and Afghanistan war. In 2008, $700 billion dollars were set aside to literally give away to troubled banks such as AIG, Bank of America and Citigroup and whose executives in turn were rewarded with million dollar bonuses for engineering a bailout; many of these companies recently reported profits in the billions of dollars.
The defense budget for 2012 is $662 billion dollars. That’s how much money we spend on war. Yet, our government does not have $28.8 million dollars (times four?) to invest on educating and inspiring the American public.
Furthermore, $8.3 million dollars of the shuttle price is just for “ferry”: the cost of transporting it in one piece from Florida to an airport near the display site. The museum is then responsible for hauling it from the airport to its location, a logistics nightmare that involves removing power lines and traffic signals, closing busy streets and hiring gobs of people to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Has anyone stopped to think this through?
The retired shuttles are disemboweled and reduced to their outer shells, they are no longer functional and are basically objects of display. Why then is it necessary to haul them whole at $8.3 million a pop as though they were still operational and capable of transporting safely our astronauts into the vacuums of space?
The vehicles are comprised of nine sections with a generally simple structural design using standard aircraft manufacturing practices. Why can’t the shuttles be broken down into component pieces which can be detached, shipped and reassembled, which then opens up more possibilities: they can be loaned to museums across the country, instead of being permanently installed at one location, to engage and reach more Americans who are otherwise unable to travel to a big city.
There’s no reason why the shuttles couldn’t be transported more than once in manageable sections and expertly restored at their designated sites. Keep in mind that our museums are able to dig up mere fragments of fossilized bones and recreate an entire dinosaur that looks completely real, they are THAT good! For ideas, take a look at the clever Lego Space Shuttle. In fact, ask JPL how to do this. They are absolutely brilliant at imagineering and ingenuity.
As a country deeply divided, we are greatly in need of inspiration, and the shuttles represent a remarkable evolution in science, engineering and our quest to understand life in this vast universe. There is nothing ordinary about a nation and its people with the vision, knowledge and audacity to create and fly these machines. This is truly America at its very best.
Yes, you can make a difference in how this NASA story plays out. Send your letters to: Senator Barbara Mikulski, 901 S. Bond Street, Suite 310, Baltimore, MD 21231. Phone: 410.962.4510, FAX: 410.962.4760.
