NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

By: Jim Hodges

"Everyone" is painted in light, hushed hues around the Shuttle Columbia Safety Exhibit, on display at Reid Center until June 9.

The way it's displayed makes "Everyone" seem subliminal, even on the message on the back of the exhibit, behind a selection of the pieces that were found. The message reads, "Everyone that touches a mission, on every level, is responsible for what it represents, and the lives that are involved."

Many people touched STS-107, the Columbia space shuttle mission that ended in disaster on Feb. 1, 2003. They are still touched by it.

"It brought back some memories," said Rodney Russell, one of 20 people from Langley who scoured the Texas-Louisiana countryside to retrieve pieces of the shuttle that might lend a clue to what happened.

He saw the exhibit last Tuesday.

Teams of searchers from NASA Langley and other NASA centers worked with Native Americans to scour the Texas and Louisiana countryside for pieces of Columbia, which were used to try to determine why the shuttle broke up while re-entering Earth's atmosphere.
Credit: NASA/Charles Poupard.

Click on the image for a larger view
"When I went down there, the first couple of days, I was just there to do a job," Russell said. "But then, when we started finding pieces, personal items, it kind of tugged at me. After a while I told myself, 'you're doing a good thing here.' "

Charles Poupard was with Russell in Texas.

"When you were there, it was a job," he said Friday. "But then, afterward, when you got back and there was a memorial and you thought more about it, it became personal. It impacted you that you were a part of it, that everyone was a part of it."

Poupard expects to visit the exhibit Tuesday. He expects it to be an emotional time.

So does Glenn Brehm, also one of the 20 people from NASA Langley who was part of the search.

"It was the highlight of my career," said Brehm. "I know it sounds strange, for something so tragic to be a highlight, but being able to make a direct contribution to NASA meant something to me. It was satisfying personally.

"It was like that for a lot of people."

His role continued after the search ended, right up through the return to flight of STS-114, two and a half years later.

"I was working in hypersonics then," he said. "I had looked for pieces in Texas, and then I had done tests that were used in the accident report. Then testing for the return to flight. Everything stopped for that, the return to flight. There was a lot of pride in that."

There’s a message reinforced by the exhibit -- that safety never ends.

It's the message sent to NASA employees in February by Wayne Hale, the former Space Shuttle Program manager, about the exhibit:

"… How can we honor the brave memory of our crews and live in such a way to ensure that the exploration of the new frontier does not falter?

"Two thoughts: first, we must renew our vigilance and our technical thoroughness. Both shuttle accidents and Apollo 1 as well were preventable. If we had collectively recognized the danger or been more rigorous in our review, all of these tragedies could have been avoided. This is not a new message. After every accident, this same message blazes across our consciousness. But in the long, slow, daily grind of little compromises and tedious details, this message can be lost. Can we maintain our vigilance five years after our last tragedy? Ten years? For the next generation?"

Mike Kelly is at NASA Langley, at least in part, to do just that. He once worked for the National Transportation Safety Board, investigating airplane accidents. Two years ago, he was hired by the NASA Engineering Safety Center.

In many ways, he owes his job to the Columbia accident, which fostered NESC.

"It was touching," he said upon leaving the Shuttle Columbia Safety Exhibit. "Everyone should see it. Everything in it grabs your attention."

A list of the crews of Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia, painted on one end of the exhibit, makes it personal.

Hauntingly so.

"Avoidable tragedy can happen again," Hale wrote. "The only bulwark between an accident and a safe, successful space mission is the competence and attention of highly focused individuals.

"I wish there was an easier message, but there is not. If we are to truly honor the sacrifice of these crews, we must teach that lesson to every new person that comes to work here and live each day with the utmost commitment to safety in all its details."

Kelly is one of the new people, hired three years after Columbia. And on Friday, the message of safety was hammered home for him.

"It's our business," he said of the NESC. "I thought I should go over and take a peek."

Said Russell: "Everybody should."



 
NASA Langley Research Center
Managing Editor: Jim Hodges
Executive Editor and Responsible NASA Official: H. Keith Henry
Editor and Curator: Denise Adams