Prescription for Disaster II

Deja vu describes my reaction as I read through the final report from the board investigating the destruction of the space shuttle Columbia.

Investigators conclude that a "broken safety culture" at NASA was as much to blame for the disaster, which killed seven astronauts, as the actual heat shield damage.

It all sounds disturbingly similar to the conclusions of the investigation into what destroyed the Challenger in 1986, detailed and dissected in Joseph J. Trento's excellent (but, sadly, out-of-print) book, "Prescription for Disaster: From the Glory of Apollo to the Betrayal of the Shuttle."

As the New York Times put it oh-so-succinctly in an analysis piece today:

The bitter bottom line of the Columbia space shuttle disaster comes down to this: NASA never absorbed the lessons of the Challenger explosion in 1986 ...

The same keep-it-flying culture that was found to have disregarded ample evidence of a fatal flaw in the O-rings in the Challenger case failed again to heed warning signs that foam debris could cause deadly damage to the aging, fragile Columbia.

I, too, was caught up in the romance of exploring and conquering the stars. But, do we have any business going into space if we can't do it properly, intelligently and safely?