With a heavy heart, ACSA expressed it's strongest misgivings regarding NASA's Investigation of the Columbia Disaster, which it has sent to NASA Director Sean O'Keefe, today, requesting "a call to action". We have listened to Scott Hubbard and other Team members, and read Press accounts of this "smoking gun" test and find it singularly lacking, misleading and, well, hogwash.

    IN SUMMARY: ACSA wishes to respectfully point out to NASA that small pieces of falling foam accelerate at 16 feet per second per second, they do not travel with the kinetic energy of foam fired from a gun at a stationary wing at 525 miles per hour, and would fall far short of bearing sufficient kinetic energy and mass to penetrate the wing.  The TEST foam is compressed by such a firing, into a near solid.  The TEST wing resists the foam far more than normal, and at an angle that is not an accurate recreation of what took place.  One could drive a straw through a potato, done right.  But falling on a potato, a straw does not even scratch the skin.  Anyone who has played billiards knows where kinetic energy goes, and the physics community can verify that the relative mass of the shuttle vs. that of the foam, would dictate that more than 99% of the kinetic energy would go into the Foam, resulting in it's breakup, not the other way around.  Respectfully, NASA needs to widen it's investigation.  We note that the sensors failed first below the OMS engine and further sensors failed up wing to the payload adjacency corridor in the airframe on the left side of the payload bay.  This denotes that the Shuttle OMS engine failed to cease delivering fuel after completing the final braking maneuver, and the fuel likely ignited from external heat to the OMS housing, which runs quite a bit hotter on Columbia, due to it's older design.  Since telemetry does not support this leaking fuel to our knowledge, it would suggest failure, or planned failure, of the OMS cluster's controlling computer, which failed to notice the open valve (for any number of reasons)..  Any failure there could have been accidental, programming error or deliberate sabotage, which of course, casts a negative light on security surrounding the programming of shuttle flights, and suggests that the security of the program has been compromised, and foreign intelligence infiltration is very possibly behind the shuttle disaster.

DETAILED REBUTTAL OF NASA'S TEST.

    Frankly, we think the approach being taken by NASA to try and simulate the damage to the outer front edge of the wing of Shuttle Columbia is being done in a way that is misrepresentative of actual conditions Columbia experienced.  We condemn the physics of it, and the representations about it suggest deliberate malfeasance of science and possible misconduct.  We expect that falsification of the test conditions will likely surface, as testing personnel move rapidly to cover up the mistakes of the test demonstrated to the Press on July 7.  Accordingly, failure to accurately recreate the events experienced by Columbia are at best, misguided and off focus, and will yield distorted conclusions. Clearly, Southwest Research is engaging in a study NASA leadership wants. NASA has already stated the research is an effort to try it's BEST TO SUPPORT the theory that small pieces of foam that broke off the Orbiter's Main Hydrogen Tank and struck certain front left panels of the wing during Lift Off caused the Disaster.  This is a very "BLINDERS ON" recreation of events, at best.  At it's worst, it is a deliberate deception.  Air around a wing traveling at that speed develops an enormous shock wave and aerodynamic flow that redirects small objects away from it. And, the kinetic energy of the wing would have transferred to the Foam, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND, as in NASA's tests.  Anyone who plays BILLIARDS can tell you that which object is traveling faster and has more mass, governs the outcome... which one with the lower mass receives most of the kinetic energy, from a collision, unless you fix the larger one static and fire the smaller one at it.  In the case of NASA's test, the ENERGY OF THE FIRING DEVICE is conveyed by compressed foam directly to the Carbon Fiber/Tile surfaces and leads to damage that Columbia would never have encountered.  The test is a deception and the object appears to be to deceive the Public.  A point by point rebuttal follows.

    a) ACSA has wrongly concluded that based upon the factual evidence at hand: NASA'S SUGGESTION THAT FOAM FALLING DOWN AT 60 MPH ENCOUNTERING A FULLY AIRBORNE SHUTTLE WING MOVING AT 250 MPH UPWARDS COULD ACTUALLY CAUSE THE EVENTS THAT LED TO COLUMBIA'S DISINTEGRATION DAYS LATER AFTER RE-ENTRY, WOULD BY ANY STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION BE HIGHLY IMPLAUSIBLE, SUSPECT AND VERY LIKELY, AN IMPOSSIBILITY.  At the very least, the foam impacts would be the LESS LIKELY THE CAUSE and more likely: a COINCIDENCE and very likely something that might hide the true cause from being looked into. 

    ACSA has concluded that the tests, if intent upon being accurate, should have the Wing moving in a WIND TUNNEL accelerating up to 200-450 miles per hour, then striking in the upwards direction falling foam moving at about 60 miles per hour.  In that case, without wind propelling the foam, it will be demonstrated that air cushions and inertia would explain the shattering of the falling Foam, and that only minimal damage to the very surface of the effected tiles would be demonstrated. Insufficient to explain the Payload Bay and OMS Pod fire that ultimately disintegrated Columbia, the internal design of Columbia could not, in the time given, have spread a fire so far across the wing and yielded so much damage, Columbia's interior design is just not capable of convection of the heat in such a manner. 

    ACSA accuses NASA's present investigation team of deliberately firing foam at a stationary wing because it knows that about anything of sufficient mass, fired at a stationary shuttle wing, will damage it's surface sufficiently to compromise seals. It knows this because the Contractor, in it's Safety Tests, did the same thing years ago, and knows exactly what speed, hardness and conditions it's Wing Design will fail.  NASA is simply reproducing those breakage tests, which in this case is a cheap trick.  Tthe opposite would be true in the case we describe above, an accurate test based on actually recreating the moving wing and the foam falling.  NASA's "proof test" is bordering on criminal negligence and fraud, by staging a test DESIGNED to prove an implausible theory NASA is voiding further investigation that could save future lives and protect Astronauts.  NASA has already experienced two major Disasters. It needs to PUT THE BRAKES ON and not RUSH TO JUDGMENT.  The lack of mass in the Foam, would have brushed it aside and shattered it upon impacting the air shockwave, leading to minor damage to the Wing.  Such would suggest that there was an other, far more MAJOR cause to the COLUMBIA DISASTER that is being deliberately, or unknowingly, ignored by NASA.

    b) The vast majority of the initial fire damage and sensor outage just prior to the Shuttle's disintegration ran along the inside edge of the PAYLOAD BAY, many, many feet away from the point where foam was brushed aside by the wing during Lift Off.  And the fire line, which sheered off the wing, either ended at, or much more likely started with the UPPER LEFT OMS UNIT, the engine and fuel pods used to fire for reentry braking just prior to the Columbia's orbital reentry into the Atmosphere.  The fire at that point is a MATTER OF RECORD.  There is no record of extensive fire at the site where the foam allegedly caused damage during the lift off, an entire wing width away. In fact, for a disintegration, that part of the wing is remarkably intact, even allowing for the inspection that proved some damage was caused by impact.  The fact is, to cause so much damage to the Left rear OMS engine and Left side of the Payload Bay, THAT ENTIRE SEGMENT OF THE WING WOULD HAVE DISINTEGRATED INTO A MILLION PIECES, it would not have left a full, charred piece to examine.  Frankly, that there was a full, charred piece (charred by the final fall through the atmosphere), suggested it was sheered off by gravimetric forces, and by forces that blew the wing all the way off the left side of the Shuttle, causing it to fall away from the main Shuttle Payload and engine pieces.

    c) The OMS unit and it's housing and fuel are on the top right and left of the rear assembly of the payload bay and rear Tail of the Shuttle.  In Columbia's design, a slightly more exposed OMS unit sits there on either side of the tail.  Among other things found in the OMS Pods are: motion control systems for the guidance system, fuel lines and fuel and firing chambers for the OMS rockets, and below it, the entire combustion system for the main engines.  The Shuttle's tri-processor IBM APxxx Fault Correcting Onboard Computer controls the various flow points using a network of sub-controllers.  It's programs are subject to subcontractor audit and modification. 

    Throughout it's onboard management systems, Columbia has what can only be described as "inadequate" and "inconsistent with it's design philosophy" fuel leak sensors: it simply can not tell if there is an accumulation of leaking fuel within the OMS housing itself, for instance.  Yet the presence of an unrestrained fire within the OMS housing and along the left side of the Payload Bay suggests that Columbia's left hand OMS unit itself either malfunctioned or computer control deliberately left one of it's fuel valves in ON position.  This could have caused a quantity of fuel to enter the skin surrounding the OMS Pod and to flow into subassemblies ahead of the OMS unit adjacent to the Payload bay and Tail, during reentry after the OMS burn for Reentry Completed.  This scenario, if true, could have led to ignition of the leaking fuel, causing a fire in the OMS unit and amidships, while preventing fire control systems (if it possesses any sufficient to the task) from activating. Such a fire would be rapid spreading, and could lead to destruction of necessary sensors along the left hand wing leading from the OMS unit forward to the primary Oxygen reserve tanks. 

    Furthermore, ACSA has analyzed early versions of the computer control system programs.  We are of the belief that tampering with a subroutine that controls shutoff point of the OMS Burn cycle, during re-entry maneuvers, could have caused a single fuel valve to lock in the ON position, after the OMS Engines were shut off, and not a single telemetric signal would have been transmitted to NASA if the subroutine tampered with were switched "in flight" with the standard routines controlling the engine. 

    This could have created a condition where if the physical attitude (pitch) of the Orbiter were deliberately mispositioned to the wrong attitude by only a few degrees, such a slight change could have had the consequence of increasing the friction along the outside of the OMS Housing, which could have superheated it and provided excessive heat to internal Jackets, by as much as a thousand degrees.  That could have led to a state of superheating throughout the skin of the Tail, OMS Pod and rear left hand side of the Payload bay, a condition the Orbiter is capable of withstanding in normal flight conditions if it was gradually cooled by the surrounding air flow. 

    However, the flight conditions were probably anything but ordinary that day: it would have taken only a single valve on the OMS fuel system, tampered with through programming modification, to bring heat and fuel into proximity. If a valve were opened by tampering with programming within the computer system, then that open fuel valve would easily have allowed the area from the OMS unit to a dozen feet forward into the left side of the Payload Bay to become almost immediately flooded with fuel.  This would have been  sufficient to set the shuttle on fire in areas where no recovery were possible, in the exact manner mirrored by the temperature sensor failure and the observed disintegration, which demonstrated fire was largely confined internally to the OMS, and along the left side of the wing adjacent to the Payload bay. Such a rapid spreading fire would have ignited materials there that would have rapidly spread to the connections holding the wing system in place and to the oxygen canisters inside of the Payload bay, leading to an explosion capable of tearing the entire Wing off of the Shuttle and causing the balance of the disintegration.

    d) ACSA would respectfully request that NASA stop trying to disprove human error in the Shuttle Disaster and focus strictly on the ACTUAL CAUSE of it.  There is a condition inside our country where individuals are capable of justifying their own activities when others pay them to engage in improper acts.  Challenger is a classic example of what can follow, for instance, when a combination of failure to properly inspect Solid Rocket Boosters and Tank Seals is challenged by individual tampering with or negligence in connection with the manufacture of Booster "O-Rings" and Tank connection seals. EVERY SINGLE ASPECT OF THE SHUTTLE PROGRAM REQUIRES CONSTANT ATTENTION, PROPER ANTICIPATION OF ANY LIKELY MISHAP, AND CONTINUAL DILIGENCE.  Such is NASA's obligation here. It's not like the Shuttle Program can be treated like a Fleet of Rented MiniVans or that it's General Contractor should be treated like a Scapegoat. Such is fraud and blame spinning.

    e) After analysis of all the evidence available, we have come to believe:  1) that the OMS engine and fuel system components and pods ignited after the shut down command sequence supposedly took place, upon completion of their reentry burn, and then caused a line of fire from the Tail down the underside of the Wing adjacent to the Payload bay along the left side of the Orbiter, and 2) that fire over two-four minutes eventually burned through all the parts where sensor failures were recorded, and combined with aerodynamic forces, gravity forces and destabilization of the Shuttle's structure, led to the sheering off of the entire Left Wing before any of the Astronauts could respond, causing the rest of the shuttle to disintegrate, causing the Left Wing to break apart into large sections, as evidenced, as it was no longer amid the wreckage of the rest of the Shuttle tumbling over and over into smaller, more solid component pieces.

    f) We have further come to believe:  3) that either the Shuttle was sabotaged from within it's computer systems so as to interrupt subsystems intended to turn off the fuel flow to the OMS unit as a safety measure during reentry superheating, or 4) achieved maneuvering angles that mistakenly caused the OMS components to superheat and catch fire, despite all deterrents NASA and Boeing designed into Columbia.

    g) We believe that either could have been the results of component failure from fatigue (valve cutoff failure), computer error, or by deliberate computer sabotage or component sabotage.  The design of Columbia, earlier and a bit different than other orbiters in NASA's fleet, would make it naturally vulnerable to only slight attitude alteration by guidance control software, and even a single misplaced valve opening to the OMS burn unit during reentry.  We believe that the Shuttle Program has been undermined by continued use of contract providers who are not mature enough, nor well enough trained in the notions of Zero Defects Programs developed in the 70's. 

    We believe the Shuttle Fleet is vulnerable to outside political forces and that sabotage IS NOT OUT OF THE QUESTION, given the peculiarly POLITICAL nature of the Columbia Mission that ended so tragically, bearing an Indian and an Israeli Astronaut, among others.  We do NOT believe the orbiters are obsolete, but we believe that the human factors around the Fleet does not reflect the potential for infiltration and sabotage, given the narrow tolerances that, if overwhelmed by sabotage, could lead to another Disaster.  We believe that sabotage of the O-Rings by contractors' employees led to the Challenger Disaster.  We believe that it is entirely not impossible, nor improbable, that sabotage of emergency guidance parameters and even a single subroutine, could have caused the Columbia Disaster, but that like in the case of the O-Rings, NASA IS NOT ENTIRELY FACING THE TRUE ISSUES REGARDING POTENTIAL COMPROMISE OF THE SPACE PROGRAM by outsiders.

    h) We further believe that NASA and the Shuttle Program need to FACE FACTS and CEASE TRYING TO DISPROVE THEIR OWN RESPONSIBILITY HERE.  No one BLAMES NASA for any deliberate intent or knowing negligence in the program.  However, we believe that NASA is committing wrongdoing by trying to PROVE it's theory about the visually evident foam impacts, as an easy way to discard any other theory.  We believe such a course of action is not only misconduct in science, but borders on Criminal Fraud.  The proper INVESTIGATIVE METHOD SPENDS ALL IT'S TIME TRYING TO DISPROVE PROBABLE CAUSE, NOT TRYING TO PROVE IT, AND WHERE UNSUCCESSFUL, TO THEN CONTINUES TO STUDY THE CAUSALITY UNTIL A SELF PROVING SET OF FACTS DEFINES WHAT THE CAUSE WAS.  TO DO OTHERWISE, AS IS TAKING PLACE AT SOUTHWEST RESEARCH, WOULD TEND TO CLOUD THE ENTIRE INVESTIGATION.  We believe it would be best for NASA to make full discovery of and disclosure of the TRUE CAUSES of this disaster, rather than trying to gloss it over with wrong information.  There would be nothing worse that NASA could do than to violate the Public's trust in it.

    i) All of us, many of whom have been involved in the Shuttle Program since day one, love the program and NASA.  Yet: we CONDEMN the current course of Testing of the Foam, and the present "politically charged and guided" state of the Investigation.  We are forced to throw our hands up in despair and curse the ground that anyone walks on who would ALLOW THE BIASING of the INVESTIGATION for POLITICAL REASONS.  The Investigation has taken a "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" turn in what seems to be a knee jerk aimed at re-directing a tragic situation away from NASA RESPONSIBILITY.

    We would suggest that no matter WHAT the CAUSE, in a ZERO DEFECTS PROGRAM, ANY AND ALL TRAGIC LOSSES LIKE THIS ARE ALWAYS NASA RESPONSIBILITY and: RESPONSIBILITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY ARE EXACTLY WHAT NASA IS DESIGNED TO UNDERTAKE AS AN ORGANIZATION. NASA WAS NEVER INTENDED TO ENGAGE IN POLITICAL "BACKSIDE PROTECTION" IN SUCH A CASE.  WE BELIEVE THAT NASA'S COLUMBIA INVESTIGATION BOARD IS, FOR WHATEVER REASON, JUST NOT LOOKING AT THE TRUE NATURE OF THIS DISASTER'S CAUSE.  IN MANY WAYS, SUCH MAY BE A CONDITION OF THE TIMES.  NONETHELESS, THAT SUGGESTS NASA IS IN ABROGATION OF ITS PRIMARY OBLIGATION.

ACSA POLITELY SUGGESTS THAT THESE SEVEN BRAVE
INDIVIDUALS DESERVE WAY BETTER THAN THIS.

DESPITE THE OBVIOUS POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF DISSENT...
WE STAND OUR GROUND IN MEMORY OF THESE SEVEN BRAVE HEROES.

Copyright © (2003) American Computer Scientists Association Inc. 
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