The scene was both dazzling and appalling as a stunned nation watched video replays of the space shuttle Columbia disintegrating in the clear skies of Texas on February 1, 2003. Like a fiery shooting star the spacecraft separated into streaks of light. Yet the image was all too real, the bright spots in the sky representing massive chunks of ma- chinery no longer capable of keeping intact and alive its cargo of seven astronauts. For the second time the U.S. space shuttle program had experienced a major catastrophe, this time upon reentry from space rather than liftoff, the culprit in the 1986 Challenger accident.

The fact that seventeen years had passed from the previous disaster may have added to the shock. Although the space shuttle program, inaugurated in April 1981 with the first launch of the Columbia, had never reached the promised mission-a-week schedule, it...