NASA managers insist books aren’t cooked

HOUSTON - Safety standards for the next space shuttle launch are not being relaxed through mathematical manipulation, NASA shuttle managers insisted Friday, in response to a New York Times article that cited internal agency reports to raise that possibility. The managers denied that they were trying to “cook the books” about safety tests in order to force a foregone conclusion.

Instead, they insisted that their teams were pulling together two years of exhaustive tests and analysis programs to provide NASA decision-makers with the information necessary to make the launch decision in early May. The shuttle Discovery is currently scheduled for launch no earlier than May 22.

The Times reported on Friday that NASA officials were loosening the standards “for what constitutes an acceptable risk of damage from the kind of debris that led to the disintegration of the shuttle Columbia.” It said there was strong debate within the agency over whether “long-established rules” were being jettisoned “to justify getting back to space quickly.”

In response to the Times' report, NASA made two of the NASA officials most extensively quoted in the article available to journalists Friday afternoon. Wayne Hale, deputy director of the space shuttle program, and John Muratore, the manager of systems engineering and integration for the shuttle program, talked by phone for more than an hour.

The Times had shown the NASA reports to Paul Czysz, professor emeritus of aerospace engineering at Saint Louis University. Czysz said the documents did not show that the shuttle was too dangerous to return to space, but he did tell the Times that he felt NASA had changed the statistical standards to get desired answers. "I was amazed at how they were adjusting every test to make it come out right," he told the newspaper.

Muratore rejected this interpretation of the safety process. “This is the most rigorous activity I’ve ever been involved with in my career at NASA,” he declared.

“We’re not doing anything that tries to hide the risk,” Hale added. While stating that he found the Times article “pretty balanced,” he said there were two aspects of it that caused him some distress.

One theme was that people who spoke with the newspaper still feared retribution for their views. “I found that disheartening,” Hale said.

Hale said he believes NASA leadership is seeking out dissenting viewpoints and responding rationally to them. “It bothers me that somebody felt they couldn’t come forward,” he added.

Hale also vehemently disagreed with Czysz’s claim that NASA officials were changing standards to force the data to support a desired outcome. “I find that personally offensive,” he told the journalists. “There will be no corners cut on my watch.”

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