TSR: A few lessons from the return to flight

Posted on: Aug. 29th, 2005 || Source: thespacereview.com | E-mail Article | Print Article

When space shuttle Discovery landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California it was the end of the first post-Columbia test flight. It is important to stress that this was a test flight, and that all future shuttle flights will also be, to one extent or another, test flights. The August 2003 Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) report found that many of the problems with the shuttle system were due to NASA’s premature decision to declare the system "operational" back in 1982. The CAIB report explained that the "approval process (for the Shuttle) also produced unreasonable expectations, even myths, about the Shuttle's future performance that NASA tried futilely to fulfill…"

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