Customer Reviews

Comm Check...: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia

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I followed the Columbia accident very closely so I wasn't sure this book would have anything new for me, but I was surprised by its depth. The authors are veteran space journalists and were able to get interviews that no one else did. The retelling of how the critical information about the foam strike never got anywhere past a few bobbled opportunities to discuss how dangerous these foam strikes could be is fascinating. Many, many wrong turns were taken by people who thought the worst wouldn't happen, at least not during their hectic workday. A great book and the only book about the Columbia accident worth reading.

I have no reservations in recommending this book to anyone who wants to learn more about the Columbia disaster. This book isn't "technical," in the sense of giving lots of equations etc. Rather it gives a thorough non-technical, managerial, and cultural description of events.

All of this book's sections are well written, and fit into a cohesive whole. There's the required section describing how things unfolded on that awful morning. The authors also describe the doomed members of Columbia's crew, and the unusually long period of training and delays they had to go through to get to space in the first place. This gives a glimpse into the space station and shuttle politics within NASA, and also gives a real human touch to the tragedy. Esp. with details such as Rick Husband's decision to make Kalpana Chawla the flight engineer, helping her to redeem her career as an astronaut after an earlier mistake.

There's background from previous flights to set the stage, esp. the near-catastrophic foam strike on Atlantis, 2 flights before Columbia. This section shows NASA's inadequate response on a past flight, which then leads into the description of the debris assessment team's work during Columbia's mission. I found this section particularly enlightening, and I could relate very much to it, working in a large organization myself. All too understandable, and thus even more frustrating.

The work of the CAIB is described more in broad-brush strokes, since it took place over a much longer period. But its points are well taken. NASA's organization repeated the mistakes of Challenger, despite some very good work on some other safety concerns with the shuttle. The author's give a blow-by-blow account of how Columbia came apart in this section, which is gripping reading.

Overall, I enjoyed this book a great deal, esp. the sections on the work of the debris assessment team, and the account of how Columbia came apart. The authors' epilogue on the need for a vision at NASA is also well taken. Thoroughly recommended.

When Space Shuttle Columbia broke apart over East Texas, the morning of February 1, 2003, the country mourned for astronauts and the space program yet again. Columbia, on Mission STS-107, came apart during reentry just a few minutes away from its scheduled landing in Florida. My first fear upon hearing about the tragedy was that it was a terrorist attack, especially since the mission included the first Israeli on a shuttle mission. That was replaced by the fact that a small chunk of foam doomed Columbia. I listened to as many newscasts, read as much as I could and tried to understand how that small piece of foam insulation could bring down one of the most complex machines ever built.

Soon transcripts were made available of the last few minutes of the flight. Houston finally realized that there was a problem long after veteran observers on the California coast noticed the shuttle breaking apart. Transcripts and data from onboard sensors revealed that the shuttle was burning up, inside out from the heat of reentry. They also revealed that the crew had no idea that anything was wrong.

News started falling off about the loss of Columbia and the crew of STS-107 until I saw a blurb about "Comm Check." Apparently someone had received a pre-publication copy and I knew that I had to get my hands on a copy when it came out.

I read the book in only a few settings. Michael Cabbage and William Harwood, veteran space journalists presented fairly tight storylines from the background of the astronauts, past NASA history (including the Apollo launchpad fire and the 1986 Challenger disaster), a timeline of Columbia's reentry interface, NASA business culture, the accident investigation, findings and a wrap-up. The most incredible portions of "Comm Check" dealt with the investigations and findings and the internal problems that NASA has.

The investigation and their subsequent findings show that the only plausible explanation is that a small piece of lightweight foam impacted Columbia just a few seconds after liftoff and severely damaged (breached) the wing. Upon reentry superheated gases entered the breach in the wing and allowed the shuttle's infrastructure to disintegrate. The authors explained every detail, narrowing the breach down to a specific spar on the left wing. The writing was extremely thorough but not overly complex. High school level readers will be able to comprehend this. Thankfully the book doesn't contain scientific or mathematic equations to explain points - just great, sound writing. One thing that I never understood was the sudden failure of communications and then a return to a stream of (albeit garbled) data. This meant that the systems (at that time) had not completely failed. I long wondered why this dropout occurred in the last few minutes of the mission. The authors revealed that as the wing?s aluminum structure melted, molten globules were flying off and were caught in the windstream. These globules, it was explained, acted like "chaff" from a jet fighter to interfere with the enemy?s radar. The molten globules interfered with the shuttle's communication and data streams. The title of the book "Comm Check? relates to the radio call that Houston used in the last few seconds, trying to reestablish contact with the stricken craft.

The other section of note deals with NASA culture as a business. A few mid level engineers examined video and low-resolution still photos of the launch and were concerned with the shedding of the foam piece. Their request for high-resolution photos from Earth to examine any damage were snubbed by those at higher levels within NASA. These managers were of the opinion "there is nothing that can be done now." The book revealed many complex levels and egos within the NASA community. While the shuttle may never have been able to reenter safely, engineers may have been able to come up with a possible solution but were completely negated by NASA management. The book also showed problems with NASA's operating culture dating back to the 1986 Challenger disaster. A 1996 book by Diane Vaughn (The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA) was heavily quoted. She has shown that in the ten years after the 1986 disaster little was done at NASA. In fact she had recommendations for NASA. They were adopted by all sorts of other institutions but not NASA:


"I heard from many organizations that were concerned with reducing risk and reducing errors and mistakes. The U.S. Forest Service called and I spoke to hot shots and smoke jumpers, I went to a conference the physicians held looking at errors in hospitals, I was called by people working in nuclear regulatory operations, regular businesses where it wasn't risky in the sense that human lives were at cost. Everybody called. My high school boyfriend called. But NASA never called."

The interviews in the book were first rate and were done with respect.

All in all "Comm Check" is a unique read. It is very interesting for those interested in space exploration but also for those who need to look at the struggles with corporate structure. Godspeed to Rick, Willie, Kalpana, David, Michael, Laurel and Illian.

Once started, I couldn't put this down. I was a little leery, expecting another "NASA bashing" and lots of Monday morning quarterbacking, but I must congratulate Cabbage and Harwoord on an extremely thorough, and balanced account of this sad tragedy.

Like the CAIB lead by Adm. Gehman, which decides early in its investigation that it would stay away from searching for individuals to blame, the authors have adopted the same course. This is not to say that they are NASA apologists - the book devotes much attention to the managerial and cultural environment within the agency that leads to the Columbia's damage and subsequent loss. A realistic discussion of the options that faced the crew and NASA, even had they known of the leading edge damage to the left wing, once in orbit is also well handled. The "flow" of this work is also very well thought out in starting with the events of Feb. 1 as they were experienced, then detailing the investigation before returning to those events, this time detailed in light of the new findings. In addition, the authors are very successful at introducing the personal side of all the participants, especially the astronauts. I doubt that anyone will be able to get through this book without an increased respect for everyone involved in the shuttle program, and having shed more than a few tears along the way.

This book presents a thorough first analysis of the Columbia accident - Not nearly as thorough as Diane Vaughan's telling of the Challenger accident, but similar in scope and tone. Although these are journalists reporting on the accident, the book contains a good analysis and enough technical details to keep the engineer as well as the layperson interested. The book is insightful regarding risk management cultures at large organizations and is a worthwhile read for anyone managing risk in any industry.

I read this book in three evenings. The authors -- two of the best in space journalism -- did an outstanding job of retelling the story of the final flight of Columbia. If you followed the news closely after the disaster you will not find too many new revelations in this book. What you will find is a high level, but gripping narrative similar to going back and re-reading all the news papers from February 1, 2003 onward, but with the advantage of perfect hindsight. The book is necessarily high level. What do I mean by that? A lot of detail had to be left out. For instance, a book this size could be written on the recovery efforts alone. A book this size could be written on the foam impact testing alone. On the work of the CAIB alone. And so on. (And those would all be very interesting books -- especially on the recovery efforts; do you know how often the volunteers encountered 6 ft long water moccasins?)

Other reviews are right -- there is no NASA-bashing. It is a fair and unbiased retelling of the story, as you'd expect from people like Bill Harwood and Mike Cabbage. Its impact lies in having the whole story told all at once. It's a lot to take in. The gravity of the disaster hits the reader pretty hard, especially when reading the theory of exactly how the shuttle disintegrated, stage by stage. The authors were vivid but at no time disrespected the lost crew or their families.

I highly recommend this book. Below is the table of contents:

1 Re-Entry
2 Preparations
3 "Safe to Fly with No New Concerns"
4 Launch
5 A Shot in the Dark
6 Mixed Signals
7 Disaster
8 Aftermath
9 Echoes of Challenger
10 Re-Entry Revisited
11 Returning to Flight

A great first telling of the Columbia disaster. The authors interviewed a score of persons involved at some point with the shuttle program, and seemingly spared no one's feelings, regardless of the access they were given. We share the sinking dread of the junior engineers as they watch the foam strike, and are then denied photos of the orbiter by senior management from military surveillance vehicles. And then comes the awful moment, to observers across the country, in Houston, and at NASA, when disaster strikes...

The final report of the investigative board saw little hope for NASA to effectively manage the shuttle program at the levels of quality control that the program required. So the macro problem was not a case of sub-par people doing sub-par work, but of normal people doing normal work. For the most complex machine ever invented, normal wasn't good enough. Bureaucratic inertia would build up over time, trumping any system of feedback and cross-checks. People in any organization eventually come to see what they expect to see, swamping the efforts of those individuals who strive to "pound a problem flat."

Ultimately of course, if everyone is to blame then no one is to blame. Every snowflake in an avalanche can plead "not guilty". That, plus the creeping obsolescence of the shuttle design and components led the investigative board to recommend replacing the shuttle altogether. Does this mean the end of manned space flight from America? I personally hope so. We've learned so much more from projects like Voyager, Hubble, Chandra, and the like than from using the shuttle to put some elementary school's bean sprout dixie cup gardens into orbit. But I suspect that the general public will not support the space program unless they have live astronauts to cheer for. So, who knows what will come next. For now, this book is a thorough, and thought-provoking account of what everyone hopes will be the final shuttle disaster.

I found the book to be interesting. There was very little new material, however, especially for those of us who followed the mission investigation through the Internet. The book does serve as a good reference to anyone who wants very detailed information about the Columbia breakup. I found the NASA infighting about the request for in-flight pictures of the potential damage areas to be typical of any sizeable company - and a classic example of the problems within NASA that contributed to the accident. Other interesting areas were the details of the debris recovery and the stored tape data about the final few minutes of the flight and how the spacecraft actually disintegrated.

"Comm Check..." tells the story of the loss of the space shuttle Columbia. If you are expecting a top-level, academic analysis, like the one found in Diane Vaughan's "The Challenger Launch Decision", then this book is not for you. It is a well written book with lots of human interest anecdotes about the people and the organizations involved in the tragedy. It is factual and reasonably well organized but is written with a sense of drama that I found both distracting and unnecessary. At times, the continual stream of mini-biographies made it hard to follow the book's main theme. While interesting, I gained little from the litany of who went to which school and who had flown so-many thousands of hours in jet fighters. Even the the climactic chapter "Re-Entry Revisited" was light duty in terms of the technical information and overly dramatized events from the astronauts perspective.

If you are just starting to research events surrounding Columbia's loss or are simply interested in learning the whole story, this book is a good starting place. It provides the "big picture" in an easily understood fashion. However, it lacks the depth and comprehensive coverage that one would expect from a well done historical summary. Also, there is minimal analysis, of the events leading up to and following the loss of Columbia, beyond a superficial compilation of basic facts and the conclusions of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. The few conclusions expressed by the authors are neither insightful nor motivating.

Being a space nut, and being very impacted by the Columbia disaster, this book was exactly what I was looking for.

The writing style is smooth and segues between topics and people almost seamlessly. It covers the human side and also the technical nature of the issues that came together to create the accident that caused the loss of the shuttle and her crew.

By far the most emotional item for me was reading the detailed breakdown of what happened in the last 15 minutes of the mission. Hearing how the shuttle struggled as hard as it could to bring its crew home, and was just simply overcome by the stresses caused by the weakened left wing. I have read the entire CAIB report before and this book breaks down the final minutes of Columbia in a much more clear and to the point kind of way.

The book doesn't point blame but often infers blame on a few key managers in Nasa's space program and rightly so.

The shuttle program and history is very interesting to read about and this is a perfect addition to anyone's collection.