When an engineer came to him with an issue after the accident, even if he didn't understand it, he tried. "I said the first thing we've got to do is we've got to put the arrogance aside," he says. Part of Hale's new job was to change the cultural problems at NASA, and he resolved to start right away. "You talk about feeling guilty, now there is something to feel guilty about," he says. Hale was promoted to second-in-command of the entire fleet. Wayne Hale (center) at the console in Houston's Mission Control Center in 2001.Īfter the accident, the heads of the shuttle program were removed. "If somebody brought a concern to you, and it just didn't sound logical, you were very dismissive and told them to get a life," he says. So if an engineer couldn't explain an issue clearly, it got ignored. And there were always problems that needed to be fixed. They needed to keep the shuttle program on schedule and on budget. But their concerns weren't clearly understood by people at the top like Hale. Engineers lower down in the shuttle organization had discussed problems with the foam many times before. So yeah, I feel like this was probably the worst failure of my life," he says.Īfter the accident, an official investigation found there were some smart people at NASA who were worried. He'd been in meetings where he could have said something. He'd known about the foam problem for years. It's not, 'Did the foam come off the tank?' It's 'Why did people let the foam come off the tank? Why did we think it was OK to let foam come off the tank?'" So the wing failed because the foam failed, but for Hale and NASA, that was not the real failure. The wing buckled, and the Columbia broke apart. When the shuttle re-entered the atmosphere, hot gases seeped into the hole. On this fateful flight, the foam punched a small hole in the left wing. It had done some damage in the past, but not too much. And that's what we told the crew," he says.įoam had been striking shuttles every now and then for years. We'd have to do some maintenance work, but it's not a safety issue. "The bottom line was, we all felt pretty good.
In the end, they decided it wouldn't be a problem.
Hale and the other managers had daily meetings to look at the incident. Some of that foam had fallen off and hit the shuttle during liftoff. The big tank is covered in foam insulation. Pretty much right away, Hale knew what had happened.