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Editorial: Tokyo, Rome cast doubt on NASA, shuttle Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo on space shuttle Columbia The midair breakup of the space shuttle Columbia Saturday consumed the United States in frustration and grief. Space shuttles have been a point of pride for the American challenge to the frontier of space. Seventeen years earlier, the space shuttle Challenger exploded just after blastoff, killing its crew of seven. The shock of this second tragic accident is even greater. Attention will turn to investigation of the cause of the accident. The United States has a body of experience to draw upon. In the Challenger probe, Richard Feynman, the physicist, and not a rocket expert, had a central role. His team determined that faulty rubber O-rings in seals of the craft's solid-fuel rocket booster were at fault. Technicians knew the potential risk for more than three years and had said so. But NASA at the time tended to put more emphasis on keeping its overstuffed organization going, and because of that, negative information never got to the management. Investigators who pursued the Challenger investigation and reported their findings emphasized the biggest failing was in structural fatigue of NASA itself, and in the minds of people. The report became a text for streamlining organizational management and establishing reliability critical for big, complex systems. Now for pursuit of the Columbia investigation, such a diverse and thorough investigation will be needed again. La Repubblica, Rome on NASA and the Columbia shuttle tragedy The Columbia crew members did not die on the first of February. They died sixteen days earlier, 30 seconds after the launch, when a piece of thermal insulation tore a fatal gash in the left wing, marking the fate of the Columbia mission. The sixteen days in orbit served only as a final pilgrimage of seven people unaware they had been condemned to death. With them, however, dies the credibility of a space agency, which, over 42 years, managed to obtain our unconditional trust, our admiration, and our gratitude. It is our duty to ask NASA, and above all the American government which has slowly strangled it, about a space program where the safety margins have been reduced, while safety risks have multiplied exponentially. The aging of the fleet, government stinginess and "Pentagon wolfs" who want to militarize NASA have pushed the agency to take greater risks, hazarding a game in which the human beings on board have no chance of survival if something goes wrong. LINKS: DAILY TIDINGS: Main | News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Opinion | Columnists | AP News | Subscribe | Archives | Weather | Classifieds | Contact Us | Privacy REVELS: Main | Calendar | Dining | Movies | T.V. OTHER: Road Cams Copyright 2003 Ashland Daily Tidings 541.482.3456. 1661 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland, OR 97520. Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. - Advertisers -