Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
Americans are beginning to see how the nation's vaunted space program managed to lose 14 astronauts in two preventable space shuttle disasters. An independent commission investigating the February breakup of the shuttle Columbia has found a number of safety, maintenance and management problems that NASA has failed to address ever since the 1986 Challenger explosion. The mechanical cause of the two catastrophes was not the same, but the root problem is - the failure by NASA to grasp the significance of damaged parts, the reluctance of lower-level staffers to red-flag problems and the tendency of shuttle program managers to overstate what they do know and understate what they don't.
The Columbia accident board has released some of its findings in dribs and drabs, which, mercifully for NASA, will blunt the sting of public criticism once a final report is released next month. It was already known that NASA had grown complacent about foam debris at launch striking the shuttle's wings, an event investigators believe caused Columbia's left wing to crack, allowing in superheated gases that broke apart the craft. But investigators found a broader culture of complacency. One senior shuttle manager dismissed the need to request advanced imagery of the Columbia, believing, incorrectly, that satellites could not detect the damage. She also discounted the chance to make repairs or rescue the crew.
Investigators have also revealed that many of NASA's early claims were misleading or outright false. The size of the foam debris that hit the Columbia was much larger than NASA suggested, and it hit with greater severity than the agency first claimed. The number of engineers who raised safety concerns about the damage and who asked for satellite photos was far more than NASA had indicated. There is also the question of whether NASA leveled with the crew. The agency has tried to blanch the criticism, acknowledging what it calls "communications" problems, more meaningless NASA vernacular that clouds the search for specifics and solutions.
The agency tolerated a history of foam damage without ensuring whether the risks could accrue to catastrophic proportion. NASA employees disclosed to investigators that safety inspections had been cut, spot checks by quality assurance inspectors had been eliminated and staffers even, in at least one instance, were forced to buy their own equipment because NASA lacked the right tools for certain jobs.
The board chairman, Harold W. Gehman Jr., has said his report will focus on the operational and management problems at NASA that played a role in the Columbia disaster, leaving to the agency and Congress the narrower focus on who to blame. That is the right approach. While individuals need to be held responsible, Gehman is sending the correct message that the breakdown at NASA was institution-wide, not limited to one person or a single department. NASA's reliance on private sector subcontractors to run the shuttle program best symbolizes how skewed the working culture there has become. Gehman's board has exposed, in these few short months, not only an alarming disregard for safety but a porousness at NASA that cannot stand. Manned space flight is risky enough without adding danger on the ground.