Posted on 06/25/2003 7:06:59 AM PDT by bedolido
WASHINGTON -- The panel that NASA appointed to probe the destruction of the Columbia and the deaths of its nine-person crew won't address the merits of undertaking a major redesign of the shuttle to fly it with robots instead of people or to install a much better crew escape system, the panel's chairman revealed Tuesday.
The Feb. 1 accident prompted scattered calls in Congress and academia for scrapping crews aboard the three remaining shuttle orbiters and led the agency's own safety advisers to urge, at a minimum, the rapid creation of an improved escape system. But the panel has elected not to take on these issues, Retired Admiral Harold Gehman told reporters at a Washington news conference.
Those decisions effectively limit the scope of the panel's investigation of the shuttle and exclude its members from a key topic of debate in the wake of the disaster: whether the shuttles should undergo a major redesign and overhaul before any space flights resume. Altering the crew capsule or eliminating the crew were the most costly and time-consuming options that the panel might have recommended.
Alex Roland, a former NASA historian who now teaches at Duke University, has argued for example that the accident proved the shuttle is "a death trap and a budgetary sinkhole." He urged that it be phased out until a new space plane could be constructed, posing far less risk to the astronaut corps.
But the panel plans instead to recommend a series of engineering fixes that can be accomplished by NASA in time to resume flights in just six to nine months, Gehman said. This is roughly the schedule that NASA has preferred.
Gehman attributed the board's decision "not to address" the mechanics of crew survivability or the wisdom of flying the shuttles in the future by remote control to a conviction that NASA officials should decide these questions by themselves. He also said the board was leery of probing the last few seconds of the crew's flight, how the astronauts died and what equipment was working during the last moments before the shuttle broke apart.
Top agency officials have already belittled proposals for a crew escape system -- such as an ejectable crew "capsule" recommended in March by some members of NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel -- as excessively costly and complex, and suggested that such a radical redesign of the shuttle should await creation of a new space plane at some undefined date in the future.
Explaining the limited scope of the board's final report, Gehman said, "We're going to say the shuttles can be flown more safely if you do the following things." He added that "it's never going to be safe" to fly the shuttles in an absolute sense.
Gehman said, moreover, that detailed reforms the panel will recommend in NASA's culture and management practices -- a topic that he said would occupy roughly half of the report -- need not be implemented before shuttle flights resume, but can instead be implemented as the shuttles are used repeatedly in years to come.
"We believe the next couple of dozen flights will be the safest in years," because NASA will promptly make needed technical fixes, he said. Over a long period, he added, "we think there needs to be some basic management changes."
Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, a proponent of barring any future manned shuttle flights, on Tuesday criticized the Gehman panel's decision, which he said would make it much harder for lawmakers to insist on a major shuttle redesign or the rapid construction of a completely new manned space vehicle.
"To say I am disappointed with the decision the admiral made today is an understatement," Barton said. He said the shuttle's flight safety record makes it clear that "there is almost a 100 percent probability that each orbiter we have remaining will have a catastrophic accident."
Barton said sweeping safety improvements could be engineered after a five to 10 year hiatus in manned space flight -- an option that he said he still advocates.
A member of the House Science subcommittee on space and aeronautics, Barton attributed the board's decision to "pressure to try to maintain some sort of schedule for the space station," which needs regular resupply from earth and has been maintained by crews and equipment transported aboard the shuttle. He said that "in a narrow sense (board members) are fulfilling the role they have been asked to play, but in a broader sense, they are not."
Fact checking at it's finest for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Nine... Seven...
"Women and minorities were hardest hit."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.