Immediately after take-off on 16 January 2003, the US space shuttle Columbia sustained some ostensibly minor damage. The seven crew were reassured by Nasa that it had “no concerns” about the craft’s ability to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere. But 15 days later, the shuttle broke apart above Texas and Louisiana, killing them all, said Dan Einav in the FT.
“The Space Shuttle That Fell to Earth”, a new three-part BBC documentary, “provides a probing account of the disaster which not only examines what happened”, but why. As one former Nasa chief engineer put it, the disaster “didn’t have to happen”. Other interviews are with relatives of the dead astronauts. It adds up to a “grimly engrossing and enraging” film that is “less a study of complex rocket science than a universal parable about institutional failings and human misjudgement”.
There are some wrenching moments, said Carol Midgley in The Times. We hear from Iain Clark, who as a child had pleaded with his mother, Dr Laurel Clark, not to go into space. We also watch the crew playing a final game of cards before take-off and hear commander Rick Husband saying: “We’re going to have a great mission.”
The series’ case, that the accident could have been averted, is meticulously pieced together like the “thousands of pieces of debris” that were recovered after the crash, said Benji Wilson in The Daily Telegraph. The one question the series leaves unanswered is whether enough lessons have been learnt from the mistakes it so painstakingly lays bare.