The Role of a PowerPoint Slide in the Columbia Disaster
Before a normal February morning in 2003 became tragically unforgettable, there was a meeting with engineers and NASA officials...and an infamous PowerPoint slide
On a routine February morning in 2003, Mission Control Center’s Entry Flight Control Team began their reentry procedures as they would any other mission. Running through their checklist procedures for de-orbit and reentry and getting frequent weather forecasts, the team was ‘in the green’ to proceed with reentry.
The crew aboard the space shuttle Columbia, having spent the previous 16 days in orbit conducting experiments were looking to return home. At 8:10 that morning, they received the go ahead for de-orbit burn. By 8:44, Columbia entered the discernible atmosphere, or the Entry Interface, over the Pacific Ocean. At 8:50, Columbia was in a 10-minute peak heating period with maximum thermal stress.
As 8:53 approached, reports from people on the ground seeing debris came in. Sets of bright streaks that glistened across the predawn skies of the West Coast were also seen as onlookers noted something looked wrong. Between 8:55 and 8:56, the shuttle passed through Nevada, Utah, Arizona and into New Mexico.
At 8:59 a sensor had stopped functioning and the last telemetry signal from the shuttle was received a Mission Control. By 9:00 a.m. reports of disintegration of the shuttle came flying from the Dallas area. At 9:05, residents of Tyler, Texas reported a loud boom as smoke trails and debris streaked across the sky.
Shock Strikes the Space Community and the Nation
The disaster of the Columbia, the first for NASA since the infamous Challenger explosion in 1986, shook the country. Immediately questions about what went wrong came streaming in. Seven astronauts, just minutes from home, were dead.
Most of us are remember this tragedy; its images forever tattooed in our memory. But do you know the story of how it happened, or more specifically, the oversight that resulted from a poorly crafted PowerPoint presentation?
As Columbia launched just 16 days earlier, foam falling from the launch - a fairly common occurrence - struck the left wing of the shuttle. The impact knocked loose a heat tile that was designed to protect the shuttle from the extreme heat of Earth’s atmosphere during re-entry.
NASA was aware of the situation. Not fully aware of the significance of the damage, the team back on the ground weighed their options. Have the crew conduct a space walk to examine the extent of the damage? Launch another shuttle on a rescue mission to pick up the astronauts? Or proceed with reentry?
A Meeting’s Big Miss
Boeing engineers and NASA officials assembled in a meeting with several to evaluate reentry. This meeting centered around three reports and 28 PowerPoint slides, all focused on the debris impact to Columbia’s left wing. The most notable topic around data from testing conditions that simulated tile reliability after impact (say if a piece of foam during launch had struck a heat tile on a wing). The data presented indicated that test results featured foam nearly 600 times smaller than the piece that had struck the Columbia’s left wing.
In what is believed to be a vociferous meeting, the engineers were confident they had clearly outlined the risks of reentry to NASA officials. Inversely, NASA walked away feeling as if the engineers weren’t sure one or the other, but that the data they provided didn’t indicate any significant danger to the crew.
The fateful decision to reject the space walk or shuttle rescue mission was made and crews moved forward with normal re-entry procedures. The chilling outcome soon followed.
In the wake of the tragedy, a professor of communications at Yale, Edward Tufte, reviewed the slideshow the Boeing engineers had used to present to NASA.
One look at the slide, the pivotal slide that was meant to communicate that the situation fell outside any known tested parameters, and it becomes pretty apparent that there was lack of clarity. If there were even the slightest of concerns regarding reentry or recognizing test data was not real-world applicable due to lack of scale, there would have been clear, explicit call outs. There weren’t.
We won’t get into the recommendations made by Professor Tufte upon review of the slide deck, though if you do spend a fair amount of time giving PowerPoint presentations, there’s some salient tips that could be useful.
History isn’t always made through cunning or superior strategies. Unfortunately, historical events, especially the less triumphant ones, are made as a result of simple mistakes that prove costly or fatal. In the case of the space shuttle Columbia, the world’s most brilliant minds at some its most preeminent institutions, suffered tragedy at the hands of a miscommunication from a routine PowerPoint presentation.
History for the Hurried
August 3, 1642: The Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, led by Christopher Columbus sail west from Palos, Spain with hopes of reaching the Far East. They would land in the Bahamas in October 12th thinking it was initially an outlying Japanese island.
August 2, 1776: Fifty-five members of the Continental Congress signed the parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia.
August 2, 1939: President Franklin D. Roosevelt received a letter from Albert Einstein indicating the possibility of atomic weapons. Nearly six years later to the day, the United States drops the first Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima in Japan.
Interesting, the significance of information and how it’s communicated and presented play a key role in mitigating risks.
Typo. I think you meant August 3rd 1642.
The PP presented to NASA was tremendously confusing and poorly written. It told me nothing. I’m shocked Boeing would present this to NASA and equally shocked that NASA didn’t demand clarification. I’ve seen many bad PP’s myself, and have certainly created bad PP’s, but always strive to be as clear and concise as possible. A bold takeaway at the bottom of the slide clearly stating the risk was certainly warranted.
Keep the articles coming!