Friday, February 21, 2003
1. COLUMBIA: SHEILA WIDNALL IS ADDED TO THE INVESTIGATION BOARD.
In the first of the many hearings that will examine the
accident, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe found himself having to defend
the independence of the Investigation Board he had appointed (WN
14 Feb 03). So O'Keefe
added MIT physicist and aeronautical engineer Sheila Widnall to the Board,
and is considering adding additional scientists. Best known for work
in the fluid dynamics of aircraft turbulence, Widnall is a former Secretary
of the Air Force (1993 - 1997), and is certainly independent. But finding
the failure mechanism that led to the breakup of Columbia is less important
than understanding the NASA culture that risked sending a crew into space
at enormous cost to do trivial science.
2. PROTEIN CRYSTALLOGRAPHY: NASA KNEW THE SCIENCE WAS VOODOO.
In the days following the Columbia tragedy, NASA repeatedly
cited protein crystal growth as an example of important microgravity
research conducted on the shuttle. NASA knew better. It was 20 years
ago that a protein crystal was first grown on Space Lab 1. NASA boasted
that the lysozyme crystal was 1,000 times as large as one grown in the
same apparatus on Earth. However, the apparatus was not designed to operate
in Earth gravity. The space-grown crystal was no larger than lysozyme
crystals grown by standard techniques on Earth. But the myth was born.
In 1992, a team of Americans that had done protein crystal studies on
Mir, commented in Nature (26 Nov 92) that microgravity had led to no
significant breakthrough in protein crystal growth. Every protein that
crystalizes in space, crystallizes right here on Earth. Nevertheless,
in 1997, Larry DeLucas, a University of Alabama at Birmingham chemist
and a former astronaut, testified before the Space Subcommittee of the
House that a protein structure, determined from a crystal grown on the
shuttle, resulted in a new flu drug that was in clinical trials. It simply
was not true. Two years later Science magazine (25 June 99) revealed
that the crystal had been grown in Australia, which is a long way off,
but
it's not in space. Meanwhile, the American Society for Cell Biology,
which includes the biologists most involved in protein crystallography,
called for the cancellation of the space-based program. Hoping to regain
some credibility, an embarrassed NASA turned to the National Academy
of Science to review biotechnology plans for the Space Station. On March
1, 2000, the National Research Council, the research arm of the Academy,
released their study. It concluded that the enormous investment in protein
crystal growth on the Shuttle and Mir had not led to a single unique
scientific result. It might be supposed that programs in space-grown
protein crystals would be terminated. It was a shock to open the press
kit for STS-107 and discover that the final flight of Columbia carried
a commercial protein crystal growth experiment for the Center for Biophysical
Science and Engineering, University of Alabama at Birmingham. The Director
of the Center is Lawrence J. DeLucas, O.D., Ph.D.
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