Critics say return to flight was flawed

By Marcia Dunn

updated 2:11 p.m. ET Aug. 18, 2005

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA skipped some shuttle safety improvements as it tried to meet unrealistic launch dates for the first flight since the Columbia tragedy, some members of an oversight panel said in a scathing critique.

Poor leadership also made shuttle Discovery’s return to space more complicated, expensive and prolonged than it needed to be, the seven task force members said.

In fact, some of the “disturbing” traits that contributed to the Columbia tragedy — like smug, overbearing managers influencing key decisions — were still present in the months leading up to Discovery’s launch in July, the panelists said.

“We expected that NASA leadership would set high standards for post-Columbia work. ... We were, overall disappointed,” they wrote.

The critique by the seven was included in the final report of the full 26-member task force, which was released Wednesday.

At a news conference Thursday, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said he knew part of the task force had serious concerns, and he urged members to “speak their minds” and include the criticism in the group’s official report.

“When I was asked the question, ’Do you want to hear this stuff,’ the only answer I could ever give would be, ’Yeah, I want to hear it,”’ Griffin said. “We do not shrink in NASA from criticism of our engineering processes, our decisions or anything else. We will listen to it, we’ll evaluate and we’ll make a decision and we’ll move on.”

The seven critics were a former shuttle astronaut, a former undersecretary of the Navy, a former Congressional Budget Office director, a former moon rocket engineer, a retired nuclear engineer and two university professors.

The task force was assigned to monitor NASA’s progress in meeting the recommendations set forth by the Columbia accident investigators. The group concluded in late June in an advance summary — just a month before Discovery’s liftoff — that the space agency failed to satisfy three of the 15 return-to-flight recommendations.

Those three failed recommendations were arguably the most critical: an inability to prevent dangerous pieces of foam and ice from breaking off the fuel tank during launch; an inability to fix any damage to the shuttle in orbit; and a failure to make the shuttle less vulnerable to debris strikes.

As it turned out, a large, potentially deadly chunk of foam insulation broke off Discovery’s modified fuel tank during liftoff on July 26. Unlike in Columbia’s tragic case, the piece did not hit Discovery. Nevertheless, NASA grounded the entire shuttle fleet.

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