Customer Reviews

NOVA: Columbia - Space Shuttle Disaster

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Columbia Space Shuttle Disaster video is an incredible production. The producers did an exceptional job of making the case for the importance of responsive leadership within all organizations. After reading the official report and viewing this video, I have formed the opinion that the Columbia crew did not have to die. I'm sure others will find the back-story very compelling. I highly reccomend this video.

This video is good. It reached me a day before schedule, just in time for the training programme we planned to show it in. I was told before hand that people outside the US may have trouble in viewing this video, but I had no problems at all here in India. All in all a good experience. However I thought the same thing shown on TV had more about test firing the foam on to the wing. Maybe I am mistaken.
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After viewing this video on the PBS net, I ordered through Amazon.com.
The item arrived in excellent condition as ordered, I am very well pleased, as usual -- I am a continuing customer!

The most poignant part of the documentary happened near the end. A scientist recalls that when researchers figured out what doomed the shuttle he was pleased until a woman said, "Please remember that seven people died due to this quote-unquote discovery!!!" This work was about a tragedy, but it was hard to focus on that when the work was so dry and the impact of the tragedy hasn't been intensely felt.

Let me step back for a second. I thought this work was going to be about the shuttle disaster of 1986. When that happened, I remember the nation being in national mourning. That tragedy occupied front pages and news reports for months upon months. This recent tragedy did not. I think Americans were too devastated by 9/11 and the War in Iraq. In the 1980s, we were still in a Cold War and there was gossip of needing a Star Wars defense shield. In this decade, we have learned that America's enemies don't need to go into outer space to damage the country. So I recall this shuttle disaster being met with "Why do we bother to go to outer space at all!?" I never want to disrespect the lives of the seven astronauts, but honestly, I feel like this tragedy came and went in the national eye. You may want to see the documentary "The Endurance" where Britons couldn't focus on the seafarers that almost died in Antarctica because they were too traumatized by how the whole nation was being hurt by World War One.

There was a documentary that described the fall of the Twin Towers made a few months after that tragedy happened. This work follows that same reporting. It was easy for this work to focus on technicalities, rather than emotions. I am not sure the audience for this documentary will be large and so there was no reason to put 110% into this. I am glad that we can learn from this horrible tragedy, but 50 people just died in a plane crash in New York. In California, 25 people died in a train crash a few months ago. The tsunami in late 2006 and Hurricane Katrina has the nation and world thinking and crying more than this particular accident.

Also, people die when learning new technologies. One of Columbus' ships sank. Magellan was killed before his crew circumnavigated the globe. The Curies died learning about radon or uranium or something. People died when airplanes were first being made. Some doctors died trying to control Ebola and SARS. This tragedy in space is a risk we humans take when we advance. I found myself wanting to cry while watching this documentary, but being too occupied by other things.

Luckily, the work tries to honor the seven when a later astronaut calls out their names, in the same way that Ripley did at the end of "Alien." We see the last minutes before the astronauts perish and this was like seeing the last tragic minutes of Lisa Lopes' life in a new powerful documentary on that entertainer.