The recovered diary of Columbia’s Israeli astronaut now on loan to Israel’s national library
One page from Ilon Ramon’s space diary
According to a May 29, 2024 announcement by the National Libary of Israel, the recovered diary of astronaut Ilan Ramon — who died when the space shuttle Columba broke up on its return to Earth — has now been transferred from the Israel Museum to the National Library of Israel so that it can finally be put on display.
The diary, a personal and national treasure, should have disintegrated along with the shuttle and its crew, but a few weeks after the disaster, to the surprise of the search party, someone found the remains of the diary on a muddy patch of land in Texas.
How is it possible that it survived? It withstood the explosion, and then a journey of several kilometers till it hit the earth. No one knows for sure, but leading researchers in the field believe that due to the light weight of the pages, the diary didn’t fall directly to the ground but probably glided slowly downwards, carried on wind currents that eventually allowed for a soft landing. Most of the damage to its pages probably only happened after it reached the ground, resulting from the humid conditions in the marshy area where it landed.
Since then the Israel Museum has been carefully documenting its contents, which included daily accounts by Ramon of his experience in space. One example:
Travel diary, day six. Today was perhaps the first day that I truly felt like I was really ‘living’ in space! I’ve turned into a man who lives and works in space. Like in the movies. We get up in the morning with some light levitation and we roll into the ‘family room’. Brush my teeth, wash my face, and then go to work. A little coffee. Some snacks on the way, off to the lab…a press conference with the Prime Minister, and then immediately back to work, observing the ozone layer.
However, the most gut-retching communication from Ramon was this email sent the day before landing:
Even though everything here is amazing, I can’t wait any longer until I see you all. A big hug to you and kisses to the kids.
He never did, as Columbia was destroyed during re-entry because of damage to its heat shield during launch.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in the past two weeks has the mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuses to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
One page from Ilon Ramon’s space diary
According to a May 29, 2024 announcement by the National Libary of Israel, the recovered diary of astronaut Ilan Ramon — who died when the space shuttle Columba broke up on its return to Earth — has now been transferred from the Israel Museum to the National Library of Israel so that it can finally be put on display.
The diary, a personal and national treasure, should have disintegrated along with the shuttle and its crew, but a few weeks after the disaster, to the surprise of the search party, someone found the remains of the diary on a muddy patch of land in Texas.
How is it possible that it survived? It withstood the explosion, and then a journey of several kilometers till it hit the earth. No one knows for sure, but leading researchers in the field believe that due to the light weight of the pages, the diary didn’t fall directly to the ground but probably glided slowly downwards, carried on wind currents that eventually allowed for a soft landing. Most of the damage to its pages probably only happened after it reached the ground, resulting from the humid conditions in the marshy area where it landed.
Since then the Israel Museum has been carefully documenting its contents, which included daily accounts by Ramon of his experience in space. One example:
Travel diary, day six. Today was perhaps the first day that I truly felt like I was really ‘living’ in space! I’ve turned into a man who lives and works in space. Like in the movies. We get up in the morning with some light levitation and we roll into the ‘family room’. Brush my teeth, wash my face, and then go to work. A little coffee. Some snacks on the way, off to the lab…a press conference with the Prime Minister, and then immediately back to work, observing the ozone layer.
However, the most gut-retching communication from Ramon was this email sent the day before landing:
Even though everything here is amazing, I can’t wait any longer until I see you all. A big hug to you and kisses to the kids.
He never did, as Columbia was destroyed during re-entry because of damage to its heat shield during launch.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in the past two weeks has the mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuses to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Reminds me of 9/11 when the people and buildings were crushed and pulverized but many paper documents fluttered to the ground intact.
A poignant reminder, I expect his family is happy to have this last communication from him.
In that regard I have a question. I’m under the impression that NASA did not tell the shuttle crew about the damage to the wing and they did not know the danger they were in. Is that true?
I hope it’s not true because the shuttle crew were trained professionals who were prepared for danger and they had the right to know.
Mitch S: It is my understanding that NASA officials purposely downplayed the damage, both among people on the ground as well as in discussions with those on the shuttle. Many ground engineers wanted to use various high resolution military reconnaissance resources to inspect the shuttle and determine if a rescue attempt was necessary. NASA blocked those efforts. Its culture then (and now) was to make believe the problem wasn’t there in the hope it would simply go away.
Tomorrow’s Boeing launch might be another example. I pray not.
The recent Starliner delays give me hope that at least the space side of Boeing realizes at this point more delays can’t damage their reputation but a tragic failure can hurt them. We’ll see…
About Columbia I can understand NASA not wanting to go public but to not inform the crew is disgusting.
For the Challenger tragedy, NASA gets a bum rap from most people. Thiokol had lied. The previous year, when there had been a similar cold soaking of the O-rings, Thiokol said that was OK. The night before launch, engineers at Thiokol said it was not OK, and when the NASA engineers asked for clarification, at Thiokol the lie won the day. Ironically, it was the same engineer at Thiokol, Roger Boisjoly, who wanted the launch delayed who had initiated the lie to NASA. Thiokol should have listened to him the night before the launch. Instead, Thiokol’s engineers further confused NASA’s engineers by making the incredible claim that the SRBs were not safe below 53F at launch, which wildly contradicted everything that Thiokol had said previously since its bid on the project.
The Thiokol engineers went out of scope of the conversation with the 53 degree comment, and in my estimation, they should have only brought that up at the review of the SRB safety and readiness that would inevitably follow. That 53 degree comment appalled NASA (their word) and likely appalled the other Thiokol engineers and the company’s managers. I suspect that the Thiokol engineers lost credibility even with their own managers, so they were pressured by their managers to tell NASA to go ahead with the launch.
In the case of Columbia, NASA had been given a bean counter as its administrator, and he was there to save money, thus changing the culture at NASA away from its previous priorities. Which weren’t well followed to begin with. Thus, NASA did not do a due diligence investigation, did not know the extent of the damage, and most likely assumed that it was no worse than previous incidents. No need to inform the crew if there is no real danger. The crew was not told. There was nothing known to tell them. Administrator Sean O’Keefe put NASA into wing and a prayer mode.
Preventing icy insulation from the external tank from falling off and striking the orbiter was not high on the priority list. Could that have been prevented by resuming the painting of the external tank, as had been done for the first two flights? This is a real question. Would the paint have prevented condensation from seeping into the insulation and causing it to break off during launch?
As Mitch S, noted, the good news for Starliner is that both NASA and Boeing have demonstrated a willingness to take hits to finances and reputations in favor of doing it right. I hope that this means that lessons learned are not resulting in mistakes repeated.
The bad news is that Orion is scheduled to go around the Moon on its first manned mission (with a possible, safer, deviation from this plan). Even Apollo, which was desperate to get to the Moon on a deadline, had been flown manned once in low Earth orbit before taking the risk of being a week away from reentry and safety. So maybe my hope of a safety culture at NASA is not as well founded as my previous paragraph suggests.
” So maybe my hope of a safety culture at NASA is not as well founded as my previous paragraph suggests.”
There is no real “safety culture” at NASA.
NASA believes that the safest thing to do is nothing.
“We still get paid, why should we risk it?”
If you actually try to accomplish something there is a literal army of people stopping you.
Painting the ET again amounted to NASA admitting they did something wrong so they never officially considered it even though a lot of engineers were pushing for it.
Something else of note about Ilan Ramon – he was one of the pilots that destroyed Saddam Hussein’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981; throwing a big monkey wrench into the tyrant’s nuclear ambitions..
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Opera