Questions Remain About Safety at NASA

In the years leading up to the Columbia tragedy, the habit of NASA managers was to hammer employees into agreement at meetings or get them so exasperated they walked out, creating a last-stand consensus.

It was just as brutal during Columbia’s doomed flight: Managers dismissed engineers’ concerns about the now-infamous piece of foam insulation that flew off and knocked a hole in the shuttle’s wing; they downplayed the problem at meetings and, from beginning to grisly end, insisted nothing could be done.