I live near JSC and have inside sources of information there. The good news of full deployment recently announced isn’t the whole story and NASA management is right now desperately trying to find a way to admit the existence of a severe and embarrassing mistake on par with Hubble’s mis-ground mirror. An internal investigation has been underway for weeks and last week news of the problem came to the attention of Congress. A major scandal is about to erupt and it could not come at a worse time for NASA or the country in general.
My inside source is a member of an elite team of PhD level engineers and scientists working to understand how it happened and what, if anything, can be done to salvage the mission. They are in a very preliminary phase of what will likely be an investigation every bit as broad and meticulous as those that followed the two Shuttle disasters.
The basic facts of the situation are not in dispute and the root causes are becoming more and more clear as the engineer/scientist team follow the tracks of what will be a giant embarrassment to NASA and disappointment to a nation of already depressed, angry people.
The chain of events leading to this have an unexpected origin connected to the fact that across the entire federal workforce NASA employees have, and have had for decades, the highest job satisfaction numbers by large margins; NASA, it seems, is just a great place to work. A little known privilege accorded at most of the centers is allowing support animals to be in most areas of most buildings (Langley being the exception after the never reported poodle-in-the wind-tunnel incident). Before the pandemic I had a visitors pass that I used to pick up my anonymous friend on days his old geeky BMW from college was in the shop and the sight of all those dogs, cats, chickens and armadillos, along with miniature horses, cows, and one tiny little camel heading to the parking lots, helping their harried owners home at the end of a hard day of rocket science, is the image of the JSC family that will always be nearest my heart.
The vacuum chamber shown above has been as JSC since the beginning. It’s big enough for an entire Apollo Command/Service Module spacecraft to be placed in it. It was used for mission simulations lasting for days where astronauts operated the spacecraft while it was in a hard vacuum with realistic thermal conditions. Since the Apollo program the chamber has been used for testing spacecraft components and materials in a realistic space-like environment. In June of 2017 the Webb was brought to JSC and placed in the chamber for one last systems check before the final folding before flight. While there a tremendous failure unfolded unseen.
One of those pet-supported people whose image has stuck with me is that of Senior Engineer Chester Poindexter. An Apollo alumni, Dr. Chitty (he has a PhD in EE), as he’s known to his friends and grandchildren, began in backroom support at Mission Control and rose up through the ranks to be eventually put in charge of space toilet development for both the Shuttle and International Space Station. It was an absolutely essential task that, nevertheless, subjected Dr. Poindexter to an endless series of micro-aggressions; the first letter of his nickname was changed and he once attended a meeting where a toilet seat had been place on his assigned chair. Being a consummate professional, he took these insults in stride and went on to oversee the successful development of a system without which human exploration of space would be completely obstructed.
When his role as what he called ‘the space plumber’ ended, he was rewarded with the more respectable, less demanding but equally important job of overseeing the big vacuum chamber in building 32. It was in this role that I remember him dressed in all black carrying his briefcase with his cat Flumpy riding on his shoulder as he walked to his VW bus painted up to look like the Shuttle. On chilly days he wore a cape.
In early June of 2017 preparations to receive the Webb into the big vacuum chamber began in earnest and Dr Poindexter’s meticulous oversight often required that he work all night. He began to sleep in his office and have his wife ‘Missy’ bring him clean clothes and various feline supplies for his ever supportive cat, Flumpy. As the testing proceeded the work hours increased and Flumpy often remained in the office.
When the tests were completed, close out teams from JPL and Goddard were brought in to place the Webb into the fairing which would protect it during launch. With the completion of this operation it was loaded onto the Super Guppy and flown to the Cape.
During this time, Flumpy was absent from Dr. Poindexter’s office, but was assumed to be in one of his many hiding spots amid the chamber’s many pumps, pipes and valves, but since locating the cat wasn’t part of the official checklist, this wasn’t checked. You can see where this is going — Flumpy was launched.
The first paw prints were detected during the unfolding operation — over three hundred have been identified so far. The primary aperture is 25% obstructed by what is believed to be mostly gakk and fur, with other components being referred to as FSWC (feline solid waste contamination) an acronym NASA never expected to use. Flumpy is assumed to be deceased, but his legacy will remain as the most expensive cat funeral since the time of the Pharaohs. This is about to come out. NASA does’t have enough litter to keep it covered up.
Update No cats or spacecraft were harmed in the writing of this story