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

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.

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 l

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.

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-Entry2 Preparations3 "Safe to Fly with No New Concerns"4 Launch5 A Shot in the Dark6 Mixed Signals7 Disaster8 Aftermath9 Echoes of Challenger10 Re-Entry Revisited11 Returning to Flight

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.