Tom Overton has worked for NASA all his life. The 63-year-old integration manager, the man responsible for fitting the spaceship to its fuel tank and boosters, joined the agency when he was 15. He insists the shuttle is a magnificent craft, but admits to two serious deficiences.
“The first is that it is so expensive. It costs hundreds of millions of fly it,” he said. “The second is that it is so big. It is a space truck. It could carry a tour bus with 50 people in it. We just don’t need that any more. However, I will be very said when it is gone.”
Over the years, Overton has witnessed significant changes to the shuttle program.
“When we started integrating the shuttle orbiter, payload, fuel tanks and booster, we used to be able to do that in 35 days. In fact, the record is 29 days. But as soon as we had fatalities that changed. Now we take about 120 days to put it all together. That, of course, drives up the cost,” he said.
“When we have a tragedy like Challenger or Columbia, we have to look at its cause and put it right. That also gives us time to look at other things that might go wrong. We redesigned the foam that fell off and damaged Columbia, for example. But we also thought about other issues and came up with a plan that allows the astronauts to check the shuttle’s insulation tiles once they are in orbit,” he said.
“The thing about this job is that you know the people that fly on these machines. You know their families. The last thing you want to do is to lose them. Challenger was very hard. I was standing with the mother and father of the teacher Christa McAuliffe, who was flying on Challenger when we watched it blow up. And then, after Columbia, I had to ask: Are we doing the right thing?” Overton said.
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