IS IT MONDAY MORNING ALREADY?
Posted on 02/01/2003 6:20:40 PM PST by ATOMIC_PUNK
Nasa chiefs 'repeatedly ignored' safety warnings In a letter to the White House, Don Nelson, who served with Nasa for 36 years until he retired in 1999, wrote to President George W. Bush warning that his 'intervention' was necessary to 'prevent another catastrophic space shuttle accident'. During his last 11 years at Nasa, Nelson served as a mission operations evaluator for proposed advanced space transportation projects. He was on the initial design team for the space shuttle. He participated in every shuttle upgrade until his retirement. Listing a series of mishaps with shuttle missions since 1999, Nelson warned in his letter that Nasa management and the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel have failed to respond to the growing warning signs of another shuttle accident. Since 1999 the vehicle had experienced a number of potentially disastrous problems: · 1999 - Columbia's launch was delayed by a hydrogen leak and Discovery was grounded with damaged wiring, contaminated engine and dented fuel line; · January 2000 - Endeavor was delayed because of wiring and computer failures; · August 2000 - inspection of Columbia revealed 3,500 defects in wiring; · October 2000 - the 100th flight of the shuttle was delayed because of a misplaced safety pin and concerns with the external tank; · April 2002 - a hydrogen leak forced the cancellation of the Atlantis flight; · July 2002 - the inspector general reported that the shuttle safety programme was not properly managed; · August 2002 - the shuttle launch system was grounded after fuel line cracks were discovered. Nelson's claims - which The Observer could not independently verify yesterday - emerged against a background of growing concern over the management of safety issues by Nasa. They followed similar warnings in April last year by the former chairman of the Aerospace Safety Advisory panel, Richard Bloomberg, who said: 'In all of the years of my involvement, I have never been as concerned for space shuttle safety as I am right now.' Bloomberg blamed the deferral or elimination of planned safety upgrades, a diminished workforce as a result of hiring freezes, and an ageing infrastructure for the advisory panel's findings. His warning echoed earlier concern about key shuttle safety issues. In September 2001 at a Senate hearing into shuttle safety, senators and independent experts warned that budget and management problems were putting astronauts lives at risk. At the centre of concern were claims that a budget overspend of almost $5 billion (£3bn) had led to a culture in Nasa whereby senior managers treated shuttle safety upgrades as optional. Among those who spoke out were Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, who warned: 'I fear that if we don't provide the space shuttle programme with the resources it needs for safety upgrades, our country is going to pay a price we can't bear. 'We're starving Nasa's shuttle budget and thus greatly increasing the chance of a catastrophic loss.' Although Nasa officials said that improvements were being made they admitted that more needed to be done. A year earlier, a General Accounting Office report had warned that the loss of experienced engineers and technicians in the space shuttle programme was threatening the safety of future missions just as Nasa was preparing to increase its annual number of launches to build the International Space Station. The GAO cited internal Nasa documents showing 'workforce reductions are jeopardising Nasa's ability to safely support the shuttle's planned flight rate'. Space agency officials discovered in late 1999 that many employees didn't have the necessary skills to properly manage avionics, mechanical engineering and computer systems, according to the GAO report. The GAO assembled a composite portrait of the shuttle programme's workforce that showed twice as many workers over 60 years of age than under 30. It assessed that the number of workers then nearing retirement could jeopardise the programme's ability to transfer leadership roles to the next generation to support the higher flight rate necessary to build the space station.
Peter Beaumont
Sunday February 2, 2003
The Observer
Fears of a catastrophic shuttle accident were raised last summer with the White House by a former Nasa engineer who pleaded for a presidential order to halt all further shuttle flights until safety issues had been addressed.
In a letter to the White House, Don Nelson, who served with Nasa for 36 years until he retired in 1999, wrote to President George W. Bush warning that his 'intervention' was necessary to 'prevent another catastrophic space shuttle accident'.
You know your right it just says fears raised last summer not written and its very vague on when a letter was received by the white house
And this guy retired in 1999 how fresh could he be on safety regs if they change daily like news reports say which still puts it back in nasa's lap.
How many of us maintain our cars the was a shuttle is? C'mon, the military is flying aircraft built in the early sixties. Why? Great maintenacne and safety standards. The age of the vehicle (by itself) is a non-issue.
Roger that. As in B-52.
Why didn't I think of that?
IS IT MONDAY MORNING ALREADY?
Writting letters to the president is just silly. Does anyone really think that the Whitehouse can fully investigate all letters of doom and gloom that come in each day? This is what managers at NASA are for. If they ignored warnings it's their fault, not Bush's. And, from what I've seen, NASA is goign all out, political correctness, hire nbased on race, not ability, etc. With race based hiring, rather than qualification based hiring, expect more of this in the future.
Welcome to government/NASA hiring based on race (no white guys allowed...). I've seen it first hand.
It has long been known that the technology exists to bring the costs down by a factor of 10 and increase safety by perhaps a factor of 100. http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2001/010412-sts1.htm But for various reasons, including politics, a replacement was never built.
Now the question is whether the current level of cost and safety is acceptable in an era when we can do much better. We shut down the shuttle production line a long time ago, and there would be no point in tooling it up again to build a Nixon-era craft. There is no element of "face" in retiring the shuttle any more than there was in replacing B-707s with 747s.
An accident of this kind, given statistical probabilities, was going to happen one day. Today's the day. And not only were the lives of astronauts lost, but our access to space, which is one of the cornerstones of our national strength, has been somewhat limited. It's too old and too expensive.
Heck, they could even try to launch the things in a hurricane if they wanted to, and if it crashed then the only concern would be how much money they've lost.
Great post...this IS Rocket Science.
The new frontier will cost us lives. That is the nature of frontiers. But the only ship that is safe is the one that stays in harbor, and that ship accomplishes nothing.
BTW, I wonder how many of the folks who will scream their regrets at the age of the shuttles are the same people who can't see a reason that we need another $40 billion to fight a world war, or understand why we need to replace a KC-135 fleet that is about to hit 50 years of operation.
There IS a problem and the people of this country, who pay enormous sums to fund NASA do have a right to know the nature of the problem. It is not reasonable to simply dismiss the Columbia explosion with "accidents happen" and keep pouring vast sums into a program that is doing something wrong. We shouldn't put fine people at risk nor should we allow a huge fleet of new craft to replace the ones blown up without questioning the entire NASA safety program.
All these investigation panels picked to find out the root causes of such accidents should not end in a report that places no blame. If nobody is to blame, then we are dealing with a crap game - a roulette wheel where things will just blow up periodically without warning or explanation on some random timetable.
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