Linda Ham

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Linda Ham addresses the Columbia Accident Investigation Board following the loss of Space Shuttle Columbia on February 1, 2003.
Linda Ham addresses the Columbia Accident Investigation Board following the loss of Space Shuttle Columbia on February 1, 2003.

Linda Ham was the program integration manager in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Space Shuttle Program Office. In this position, she chaired the mission management team for the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia mission STS-107 that ended with the catastrophic destruction of Columbia upon its planned reentry into the earth's atmosphere. As a NASA manager, Ham was a U.S. government (public) employee.

Ham's actions and decisions, along with those of several other senior NASA managers involved in mission STS-107, were discussed repeatedly in the official Columbia Accident Investigation Board report, often in the context of management actions, practices, or culture that contributed to the disaster; however, neither she nor anyone else was individually blamed in the report for the deaths of the seven Columbia astronauts. After the report's release, Ham was demoted and transferred out of her management position in the space shuttle program.

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[edit] Early career

Born as Linda Hautzinger, Linda Ham grew up outside Kenosha, Wisconsin. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Parkside in 1982 with degrees in mathematics and applied science. Soon after graduation, at twenty-one years old, she applied to and was hired by NASA.[1]

Ham's first position at NASA was as a propulsion systems monitor at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. This was a "back room" position where she offered real-time specialist advice and support to the Propulsion Engineer, a flight controller in Mission Control. She was soon promoted to a position in Mission Control itself; later, as director of her section of flight controllers, she became the first female section director in the center's history. As one of her superiors, Ron Dittemore, later commented, "she had so much talent and her intellect was so strong she could compete with the best in assessing the facts. She rose through the ranks fast at a young age because of her ability to assimilate information." [2]

[edit] Flight director

Linda Ham as ascent flight director on the launch day of STS-95.
Linda Ham as ascent flight director on the launch day of STS-95.

In May 1991, Ham became NASA's first female flight director. The first mission she worked was STS-45, which launched on March 24, 1992. During her first three missions, all of which took place in 1992, she was assigned to the "Orbit 3" shift, later known as "Planning," a quieter shift which generally coincides with the space shuttle crew's sleep cycle. [3] For STS-58, launched October 18, 1993, she moved up to lead flight director. In 1998, Ham's husband, U.S. Navy and NASA pilot Kenneth Ham, was accepted into the NASA astronaut program. She then applied for astronaut training herself, but was refused due to issues with her eyesight.[4]

Ham worked three missions in 1997 and 1998 as the ascent/entry flight director. One of these was STS-95, on which United States Senator John Glenn (D-Ohio) flew as a payload specialist. A week after the flight landed, Ham was included in a Saturday Night Live skit, which featured the deceased sports announcer Harry Caray as the host of a space and astronomy talk show. Portrayed by Joan Allen, Ham was asked how many survived the mission.[5]

In 1999, Ham again served as lead flight director, this time on the STS-103 mission. Launched on December 19, 1999, it was technically demanding, involving servicing the gyroscopes of the aging Hubble Space Telescope. "This flight will be a challenge," said Ham before launch, "I can assure you of that."[6] Although challenging, the mission was a success, and all its objectives were met. [7]

[edit] Manager

In 2000, Ham was promoted into a position in the Space Shuttle Program Office as a personal assistant to the shuttle program manager. In 2001, she became the shuttle program's integration manager, one of six senior managers responsible for shuttle program operations.[8] In this position, Ham chaired the mission management team (MMT) meetings that oversaw shuttle flights while in orbit and reported directly to the shuttle program manager, Ron Dittemore.[9] At the time of the Columbia mission, Ham was also serving as acting manager of shuttle launch integration, which the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) would later call "a dual role promoting a conflict of interest."[10]

[edit] Columbia disaster and investigation report

The crew of Columbia mission STS-107.
The crew of Columbia mission STS-107.
Further information: Space Shuttle Columbia disaster

Mission STS-107, the 113th mission of the space shuttle program and the 28th flight of Space Shuttle Columbia, lifted off January 16, 2003, from the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a 16-day, dedicated science mission. A large piece of insulating foam separated from the shuttle's external tank left bipod ramp area 82 seconds after launch and struck Columbia on the leading edge of the left wing.[11] Two days later, after reviewing film of the launch and detecting the foam impact on the left wing, NASA engineers made a request to Space Shuttle Program managers for an in-orbit, high-resolution image of the shuttle's left wing to check for damage. The shuttle program managers declined the engineers' request to image the shuttle's wing before reentry.[12] At 9:00:18 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on February 1, 2003, during reentry, Columbia disintegrated over Texas, causing fatal injuries to all seven members of the shuttle's crew.[13] In total there were three requests for imagery of Columbia on-orbit during the 16 days mission, to search for potential damage on the wing, that were rejected, according to the same source. In addition, the Board identified 8 missed opportunities to determine the extent of the damage, that got no response from the mission management or no action was taken. The first of these was an inquiry on the day 4 of flight, by the chief engineer of Thermal Protection Systems, if the crew had been asked to inspect the damage, that never received an answer. The opinion of the program managers that the debris strike was only a maintenance-level concern was established early in the mission, making it increasingly difficult for concerned engineers to be heard by those with decision-making capacity. As mentioned in the Report: In the face of Mission managers' low level of concern and desire to get on with the mission ... the engineers found themselves in the unusual position of having to prove that the situation was unsafe - a reversal of the usual requirement to prove that a situation is safe.

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board commissioned to investigate the disaster determined, in a report released August 26, 2003, that the physical cause of the destruction of Columbia was damage to the shuttle's left wing caused by the foam strike during launch.[14] The board also determined that several organizational and human factors contributed to the disaster. These included:

“ Reliance on past success as substitute for sound engineering practices; organizational barriers that prevented effective communication of critical safety information and stifled professional differences of opinion; lack of integrated management across program elements; and the evolution of an informal chain of command and decision-making processes that operated outside the organization's rules.[15] ”

It was in the context of these organizational factors that the CAIB discussed the role of decisions made by Linda Ham, as well as by other NASA managers, in contributing to the disaster.

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[edit] Aftermath of Columbia investigation

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On July 3, 2003, NASA's new shuttle program manager, William Parsons, reassigned three senior engineers who had been involved in the Columbia disaster, including Linda Ham. NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe took the opportunity to praise Ham publicly, saying that the reassignment was "no reflection, in my judgment, on the competence or diligence or commitment or professionalism of anybody...."[16] According to the Washington Post, "O'Keefe said she is so talented there is going to be a 'bidding war' for her among NASA facilities."[17]

Ham's new position was as assistant to Frank Benz, director of engineering at the Johnson Space Center. However, she stayed in the job for less than six months. In December 2003, she took a temporary position on secondment from NASA at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, where she worked on federal plans for the storage and distribution of hydrogen fuel.[18]

[edit] References

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Cabbage, Ex-flight boss
  2. ^ Cabbage, Ex-flight boss
  3. ^ 1992 JSC news releases
  4. ^ Cabbage, Ex-flight boss
  5. ^ [(blacklisted hyperlink removed) SNL Transcripts: Joan Allen: 11/14/98: Space: the Infinite Frontier]. Retrieved on 2006-11-01.
  6. ^ Carreau, Astronauts to make emergency flight to fix Hubble Telescope
  7. ^ STS-103, Mission Control Center Report #11.
  8. ^ CAIB, Report of CAIB, Vol 1, p. 17
  9. ^ CAIB, Report of CAIB, Vol 1, p. 32; Cabbage, Ex-flight boss.
  10. ^ CAIB, Report of CAIB, Vol 1, p. 200.
  11. ^ CAIB, Report of CAIB, Vol 1, p. 34
  12. ^ CAIB, Report of CAIB, Vol 1, p. 38
  13. ^ CAIB, Report of CAIB, Vol 1, p. 39
  14. ^ CAIB, Report of CAIB, Vol 1, p. 49
  15. ^ CAIB, Report of CAIB, Vol 1, p. 9
  16. ^ Sawyer and Pianin, 3 Top Shuttle Managers Replaced.
  17. ^ Ibid.
  18. ^ Cabbage, Ex-flight boss.

[edit] Further reading

  • Starbuck, William H. (Editor); Moshe Farjoun (Editor) (2005). Organization at the Limit : NASA and the Columbia Disaster. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 1-4051-3108-X. 

[edit] Web
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