美国国家公共电台 NPR Total Failure: When The Space Shuttle Didn't Come Home

 

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

We tend to mark our successes in life, but what if we're thinking about it the wrong way? What if it's failure that shapes us? All this month in a series we're calling Total Failure, we will examine mistakes and how they change people's lives. Today, NPR's Geoff Brumfiel brings us the story of Wayne Hale. He's an official at NASA who was involved in one of the agency's greatest failures - the loss of the space shuttle Columbia.

GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE¹: On the morning of February 1, 2003, the Columbia was supposed to come back. Wayne Hale was at the landing site at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Wayne was an up and coming manager with NASA. He'd just taken a job overseeing shuttle launches. But since today was a landing, he didn't have much to do.

WAYNE HALE: Really, it was kind of a party atmosphere out there.

BRUMFIEL: He and the other managers were hanging around in a grassy² viewing area near the landing strip. Families of the astronauts were there, too. Loudspeakers were playing communications between Columbia and Mission Control.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Columbia continuing toward Florida, now approaching the New Mexico-Texas border.

BRUMFIEL: Wayne was chatting with his friends and feeling pretty relaxed. The astronauts were scheduled to land any minute.

HALE: And I really was not paying a bit of attention.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: And Columbia, Houston, we see your tire pressure messages, and we did not copy your last.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: Roger.

HALE: And finally, somebody - and I can't remember who - said, isn't it unusual for them to be out of contact for so long? And I looked over at the clock, and I said, you know, to myself - I thought, no, this is really unusual. Not to have communication with the crew at this point is not good. There is something seriously wrong. And that's the first time I thought we were in real trouble.

BRUMFIEL: Wayne and the others rushed back to the main buildings at the Space Center. By the time they made it, the television was already showing footage of the shuttle streaking³ across the sky, breaking apart with seven crew members inside.

HALE: It was just, I mean, a very low time, really bad.

BRUMFIEL: Wayne had spent his entire adult life in the space business. He knew it was dangerous, but NASA had the smartest engineers, the best rockets.

HALE: I mean, I thought our organization was great. I thought we could handle anything.

BRUMFIEL: Wayne and everyone at NASA that day felt an incredible sense of loss and also of failure.

HALE: Our job is to keep the crew safe, and they weren't safe. And that's an immediate⁴ failure. Now you're just asking, in what way did we fail?

BRUMFIEL: Trying to answer that question changed Waynes life forever. To understand how that happened, we need to go back to the day after the launch, when an engineer who worked for him, a guy named Bob Page, walked through his door.

HALE: Bob comes into my office and says, hey, we had a debris⁵ strike on the orbiter. And I've got this video clip. Let me show it to you.

BRUMFIEL: He popped a CD into Wayne's computer and pulled up the clip. It showed something fuzzy coming off the shuttle's big orange external fuel tank. The object smacked⁶ into Columbia's side.

HALE: Somewhere on kind of the left wing area and went poof.

BRUMFIEL: Pretty much right away Wayne knew what had happened. The big tank is covered in foam⁷ insulation⁸. Some of that foam had fallen off and hit the shuttle during liftoff. Wayne and the other managers had meetings to look at the incident, and in the end, they decided⁹, yeah, this is not a problem.

HALE: The bottom line was we all felt pretty good. This is not going to be a safety issue. We're going to have to do some maintenance work but not a safety issue. And that's what we told the crew, you know, that's what we all thought.

BRUMFIEL: Foam had been striking shuttles every now and then for years. It had done some damage in the past but not too much. This time was different though. On this fateful flight, the foam punched a small hole in the left wing.

When the shuttle re-entered the atmosphere, hot gasses seeped¹⁰ into the hole. The aluminum¹¹ frame melted. The wing buckled¹². The shuttle broke apart. So the wing failed because the foam failed, but for Wayne and NASA, that was not the real failure.

HALE: All real problems are people problems. It's not, you know, did the foam come off the tank. It's why did people let the foam come off the tank? Why did we think it was OK for foam to come off the tank?

BRUMFIEL: Remember, he'd known about the foam problem for years. He'd been in meetings where he could have said, hey, this looks dangerous.

HALE: There are a hundred times I could have stood up. And would it have made a difference would? Would people have listened to me? I think they probably would have. I was senior enough. So yeah, I feel like this was probably the worst failure of my life.

BRUMFIEL: Why didn't you? Why didn't you stand up?

HALE: Well, you need a psychiatrist¹³ for that, I guess. I mean, I didn't think I needed to. I mean, I didn't think of it. I wasn't smart enough.

BRUMFIEL: After the accident, an official investigation¹⁴ found there were some smart people at NASA who were worried. Engineers lower down in the shuttle organization had discussed problems with the foam many times before, but their concerns weren't clearly understood by people at the top like Wayne.

HALE: We've got an awful lot of smart people in the space program, but many of them are not very good communicators.

BRUMFIEL: And managers had a lot to worry about. They needed to keep the shuttle program on schedule and on budget. And there were always problems that needed fixing, so if an engineer couldn't explain an issue clearly, it got ignored.

HALE: If somebody brought a concern to you and it was not, you know, it just didn't sound logical, you were very dismissive and basically told them to get a life.

BRUMFIEL: After the accident, the heads of the shuttle program were removed. And in a strange twist of fate, Wayne Hale was promoted to second in command of the entire fleet.

HALE: How can this be? You know, we screwed up. We failed. We made this big mistake. I was in the middle of it. And yet, you know, they put me in a higher position of authority. So yeah, you talk about feeling guilty. Now there is something to feel guilty about.

BRUMFIEL: Part of Wayne's new job was to fix the cultural problems at NASA, and he resolved to start right away.

HALE: We said the first thing we got to do is we got to put the arrogance¹⁵ aside.

BRUMFIEL: Wayne became a listener. When an engineer came to him with an issue after the accident, even if he didn't understand it, he tried.

HALE: I really had to take a step back and start treating people with OK, you've got this concern, I don't understand it. Back in the old days I would have yelled at you, but you don't say that. And now I have to really think about how I get you to give me some more information.

BRUMFIEL: Wayne oversaw¹⁶ many of the shuttle flights after the accident. It did not fail again. He says they made plenty of changes to checklists, but he thinks the biggest change was that everyone who worked at NASA became better at talking and listening. Geoff Brumfiel, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF SEBASTIAN TELLIER'S "LA RITOURNELLE")

CORNISH: Next week, our series Total Failure continues with the story of how mighty¹⁷ George Foreman lost the heavyweight title.

1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 grassy   

adj.盖满草的；长满草的

参考例句：

• They sat and had their lunch on a grassy hillside.他们坐在长满草的山坡上吃午饭。
• Cattle move freely across the grassy plain.牛群自由自在地走过草原。

3 streaking   

n.裸奔（指在公共场所裸体飞跑）v.快速移动( streak的现在分词 )；使布满条纹

参考例句：

• Their only thought was of the fiery harbingers of death streaking through the sky above them. 那个不断地在空中飞翔的死的恐怖把一切别的感觉都赶走了。 来自汉英文学 - 家（1-26） - 家（1-26）
• Streaking is one of the oldest tricks in the book. 裸奔是有书面记载的最古老的玩笑之一。 来自互联网

4 immediate   

adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的

参考例句：

• His immediate neighbours felt it their duty to call.他的近邻认为他们有责任去拜访。
• We declared ourselves for the immediate convocation of the meeting.我们主张立即召开这个会议。

5 debris   

n.瓦砾堆，废墟，碎片

参考例句：

• After the bombing there was a lot of debris everywhere.轰炸之后到处瓦砾成堆。
• Bacteria sticks to food debris in the teeth,causing decay.细菌附着在牙缝中的食物残渣上，导致蛀牙。

6 smacked   

拍，打，掴( smack的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He smacked his lips but did not utter a word. 他吧嗒两下嘴，一声也不言语。
• She smacked a child's bottom. 她打孩子的屁股。

7 foam   

v./n.泡沫，起泡沫

参考例句：

• The glass of beer was mostly foam.这杯啤酒大部分是泡沫。
• The surface of the water is full of foam.水面都是泡沫。

8 insulation   

n.隔离；绝缘；隔热

参考例句：

• Please examine the insulation of the electric wires in my house.请检查一下我屋子里电线的绝缘情况。
• It is always difficult to assure good insulation between the electric leads.要保证两个电触头之间有良好的绝缘总是很困难的。

9 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

10 seeped   

v.（液体）渗( seep的过去式和过去分词 )；渗透；渗出；漏出

参考例句：

• The rain seeped through the roof. 雨水透过房顶渗透。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Icy air seeped in through the paper and the room became cold. 寒气透过了糊窗纸。屋里骤然冷起来。 来自汉英文学 - 家（1-26） - 家（1-26）

11 aluminum   

n.(aluminium)铝

参考例句：

• The aluminum sheets cannot be too much thicker than 0.04 inches.铝板厚度不能超过0.04英寸。
• During the launch phase,it would ride in a protective aluminum shell.在发射阶段，它盛在一只保护的铝壳里。

12 buckled   

a. 有带扣的

参考例句：

• She buckled her belt. 她扣上了腰带。
• The accident buckled the wheel of my bicycle. 我自行车的轮子在事故中弄弯了。

13 psychiatrist   

n.精神病专家；精神病医师

参考例句：

• He went to a psychiatrist about his compulsive gambling.他去看精神科医生治疗不能自拔的赌瘾。
• The psychiatrist corrected him gently.精神病医师彬彬有礼地纠正他。

14 investigation   

n.调查，调查研究

参考例句：

• In an investigation,a new fact became known, which told against him.在调查中新发现了一件对他不利的事实。
• He drew the conclusion by building on his own investigation.他根据自己的调查研究作出结论。

15 arrogance   

n.傲慢，自大

参考例句：

• His arrogance comes out in every speech he makes.他每次讲话都表现得骄傲自大。
• Arrogance arrested his progress.骄傲阻碍了他的进步。

16 oversaw   

v.监督，监视( oversee的过去式 )

参考例句：

• He will go down as the president who oversaw two historic transitions. 他将作为见证了巴西两次历史性转变的总统，安然引退。 来自互联网
• Dixon oversaw the project as creative director of Design Research Studio. 狄克逊监督项目的创意总监设计研究工作室。 来自互联网

17 mighty   

adj.强有力的；巨大的

参考例句：

• A mighty force was about to break loose.一股巨大的力量即将迸发而出。
• The mighty iceberg came into view.巨大的冰山出现在眼前。