Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
After planning an overly ambitious return to space, NASA has prudently slowed its schedule to address safety concerns. This decision shows a willingness by NASA to temper its gung-ho operating culture, a key factor in the sequence of events that led to both space shuttle disasters. Sean O'Keefe, the agency administrator, should be careful not to send any more mixed signals about NASA's commitment to safety. He should also welcome the creation of an outside board to monitor NASA operations.
Even after the Columbia broke apart Feb. 1, O'Keefe seemed at times more focused on damage control than on honestly addressing legitimate criticism. His equivocation, and the agency's haste in dismissing concerns that its management culture was insensitive to safety, led all nine members of an outside safety board to resign in September. Critics saw NASA making the same mistakes it did in 1986, when the Challenger exploded. On the issue of whether safety came first, the agency said one thing and did another.
Thanks to the blueprint provided by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, NASA has, in recent months, made the shuttle program safer and more accountable. The agency has put a new emphasis on safety and design, tightened maintenance and inspection standards and given engineers greater input into decisions by shuttle mission managers. NASA also ordered that future shuttle flights be launched during daytime, so cameras can detect any damage during liftoff. These are wholesale improvements in safety procedure that in time should become routine practice.
NASA also promises a stronger commitment to developing an in-flight repair kit. Astronauts might not be able to repair potentially catastrophic damage during all circumstances, but the capability needs to exist when feasible. A chunk of insulating foam struck Columbia's left wing on liftoff Jan. 16, tearing it and allowing super-heated gases to melt the wing on re-entry. Columbia broke apart, and all seven astronauts were killed. The accident board called on NASA to develop an in-flight capability to inspect and repair "the widest possible range of damage scenarios." NASA officials said later they were unsure a patch-kit could actually work. But NASA later postponed its next shuttle launch - now scheduled for September 2004, instead of March - so engineers could design a kit that might repair damage in the shuttle's heat shield.
Ambition made this nation's space program the most fabled in the world. But in the aftermath of two space shuttle disasters, NASA needs a new approach to safety. The agency lacks vigilance, it resists reform and it backtracks from commitments made in the course of trying to recapture popular support. The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, whose members resigned, should be reconstituted as an independent, standing board with broad authority to monitor NASA's safety compliance. Bringing astronauts back safely is not an obstacle to NASA's mission, but a fundamental part of space exploration.