That's a question that Investor's Business Daily asks in its "Issues & Insights" column:

After 2 1/2 years and $1.4 billion spent to make the space shuttle safer, the same problem that doomed Columbia now plagues Discovery. Has environmentalism doomed the shuttle program?

After the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry in 2003, a scathing report by the Columbia Accident Investigating Board noted the contributions NASA's "organization and culture" made to the shuttle disaster.

But the root cause for both the disintegration of the shuttle Columbia due to thermal tiles damaged by chunks of insulating foam falling off the large external fuel tank, the earlier loss of Challenger, and the repetition of the foam problem with Discovery, may be the decision imposed on NASA to use parts and materials that were more environmentally friendly.

In 1997, during the 87th space shuttle mission, similar tile damage occurred during launch. NASA's Greg Katnik stated in his December 1997 review of the problems of STS-87: "During the STS-87 mission, there was a change made on the external tank. Because of NASA's goal to use environmentally friendly products, a new method of 'foaming' the external tank had been used for this mission and the STS-86 mission."

NASA was just responding to pressure from the Environmental Protection Agency to stop using Freon, a fluorocarbon that greenies claim damages the ozone layer, in the manufacture of its thermal-insulating foam. But the politically correct foam was known to be less sticky and more brittle under extreme temperatures.

Hannes Hacker, an aerospace engineer and former flight controller at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, states: "The risk of a piece of debris falling off and causing significant damage to the shuttle's thermal protection system was 10 times greater with the new material than the old material."

Indeed, NASA found in 1997 after the first launch with the politically correct substitute that the Freon-free foam had destroyed nearly 11 times as many of the shuttle's ceramic tiles as had the foam containing Freon.

Similarly, the explosion of the Challenger after hot gasses burned through an O-ring joint on one of the shuttle's solid rocket boosters came after NASA was encouraged to use a new type of putty to protect the O-rings — one that didn't contain particles of environmentally unfriendly asbestos.

In 1977, the Consumer Product Safety Commission banned the use of asbestos in a wide range of paint products. NASA, through the mid-1980s, had used a commercially available, "off-the-shelf" putty manufactured by the Fuller O'Brien Paint Company in San Francisco to help seal the shuttle joints. But, fearful of legal action, the company stopped making the putty which contained asbestos.

NASA was forced to obtain a more environmentally friendly putty from a New Jersey company, but almost immediately problems were noted. A July 23, 1985, memo by budget analyst Richard Cook warned about new burn-through problems with the O-rings.

"Engineers have not yet determined the cause of the problem," Cook wrote. "Candidates include the use of a new type of putty." Six months later the Challenger blew up, killing its crew, as hot exhaust gases burned through the brittle asbestos-free O-ring putty.

Malcolm Ross, who studied asbestos as a research scientist for 41 years at the U.S. Geological Survey, noted that, about the same time, the Air Force had two launch failures with its Titan 34-D rockets after 50 straight launch successes before substituting for the asbestos-based putty.

Exploding and disintegrating space shuttles can damage the environment too.

Exactly. I don't believe I had heard of the changeover from an asbestos-based O-raing before, but it doesn't surprise me. As Donald Trump recently told the Senate International Security Subcommittee:

In New York City, we have a lot of asbestos buildings. And there's a whole debate about asbestos. I mean, a lot of people could say that if the World Trade Center had asbestos, it wouldn't have burned down. It wouldn't have melted, okay? A lot of people think asbestos...a lot of people in my industry think asbestos is the greatest fire-proofing material ever made. And I can tell you that I've seen tests of asbestos, verus the new material that's being used, and it's not even a contest. It's like a heavyweight champion against a lightweight from high school. But in your great wisdom, you folks have said asbestos is a horrible material, so it has to be removed.

We did however, look at the change of foam on the external tank back in February of 2003, shortly after Columbia crashed, in a post whose title foreshadows the Investor's Business Daily column headline: "Did Environmentalism Kill Columbia?"

(Via The Corner.)