Space Shuttle Disaster

NARRATOR: The disintegration of the space shuttle Columbia, in 2003, was a blow to the nation; for NASA it was unthinkable.
JON CLARK (Flight Surgeon, NASA): We were at the landing site, and then all the cell phones started going off, with the astronauts that escort us, the family escorts. And then, boom, all of a sudden we're rushed to vehicles.
NARRATOR: Columbia was America's first space shuttle, and it redefined what a spacecraft could do: it took off like a rocket and landed like an airplane; it was reusable.
ROGER LAUNIUS (National Air and Space Museum): NASA really believed that space flight was going to become routine. And they really believed that it was their responsibility to build a vehicle that would make space flight something that happened all the time, with relative ease, comfort and inexpensiveness.
NARRATOR: But the loss of Columbia forced NASA to reevaluate the very idea of a space shuttle, just as the loss of Challenger, 17 years earlier, killed the dream of safe and routine space travel.
HOWARD MCCURDY (American University): They all kind of had conflicting design requirements, as a result of trying to get too many people agreeing on a single vehicle. The accident, in effect, was planned from the moment of the conception.
JOHN LOGSDON (Space Policy Institute): This is a tragedy: that it took the loss of seven lives to force the realization that there had not been a compelling, strong rationale for sending humans into space.
NARRATOR: The tragedy highlights deep questions now facing NASA, as it designs the next generation of spacecraft and determines the future of America's role in space. Up next on NOVA: Space Shuttle Disaster. PBS Airdate: October 14, 2008