The Left Seat: Space
by Jim Slade
The "New NASA."
NASA's top management has decided to attempt a launch of the next space shuttle mission on July 1st at 3:38 and some seconds PM. It will be the second test flight of the renewed shuttle system following the Columbia Disaster, going to the space station to deliver supplies and a third crew member. To reduce operating demands, the station has functioned with a two-man crew ever since Columbia was destroyed and the shuttles were grounded.
Not all of the team is happy about it.
But that's OK; agency administrator, Michael Griffin says they're going to fly anyway.
It's the new NASA.
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To bring you up to speed: It's been just a year since the last test flight. Discovery launched last summer after extensive efforts were made to keep the system's large fuel tank from shedding foam insulation during those critical first minutes in the dense lower atmosphere. A large chunk of the stuff knocked a hole in Columbia's left wing, leading to the shuttle's destruction  and death of its crew during landing approach over Texas.
Last summer, in spite of all the remedial efforts, a good sized piece fell off the tank again, flitting past Discovery's underbelly . So, back to the drawingboards.
Now, it's time to launch again, but at least two of the agency's top shuttle managers, the Chief Engineer and director of the office of Safety and Mission Assurance, voted against it. Their concern is for the possibility of foam breaking away from 34 brackets that support vital cables and lines running down the side of the External (fuel) Tank. In long debates, engineers agreed that these brackets should be listed as: "probable / catastrophic." In short, that means that if left as they are now, these brackets will likely cause damage that will disable a shuttle sometime during the 17 flights remaining in the program. The two dissenters want to hold off until the brackets are redesigned, refusing to fully endorse the document that gives permission to fly on July 1.
But they were out-voted.
Griffin and his immediate deputies agreed with the "probable / catastrophic" classification but directed the system to plow on "as is" while redesign goes on. Their rationale is that even if their shuttle is damaged, a crew would be in no physical danger since they could take "safe haven" aboard the space station while their spacecraft is repaired on orbit or another can be sent to get them.
Shuttle Program Manager, Wayne Hale, defends the process, pointing out to Peter King of CBS Radio news that the fact that the issues were "widely aired and debated without any suppression of evidence or discussion, is a sign that the new NASA is willing to engage in these debates and, in fact, face problems head on rather than sweeping them under the rug."
Hale continued: "We gamble the program every time we launch the vehicle in a thousand ways, many of which may be obscure to folks, but we take a calculated risk," he said. "I think NASA, by the way, is about the only federal agency that does sort of put the whole agency on the line every time we do our normal business. And we do it in public and we do it with a great deal of discussion with the public. But we do recognize the fact, and always have, that we bet the entire agency, the entire space program, every time we try to launch a rocket."
Yes, they do. There are thousands of things that could go wrong, thousands of things lurking in the woodwork of an overly complicated, super powerful, not fully understood mechanism that, in spite of its peculiarities, still qualifies as the eighth  wonder of the Engineering World.
Frankly, they don't know how to do any better than the shuttle yet; that's witnessed by the fact that in order to go back to the Moon (NASA's current chief interest) they are reverting largely to the design and technology of the Apollo program. It benefits from things learned since Apollo, but it's still Apollo.
Griffin and Hale deny they are yielding to any kind of "schedule pressure" in making the decision to go ahead right away. However, you'd have to stretch your faith pretty far to overlook that: (1) The Bush Administration has decreed that the space shuttle system will be retired in 2010 whether there is a suitable replacement available by then or not. Probably won't be one, by the way. (2) The space station is only half finished, much to the consternation of overseas partners who have invested billions in its development. (3) The shuttles are the only systems that can carry the loads needed to finish the station. (4) The Bush Administration doesn't seem to give much of a damn about the space station, anyway..and it is abundantly clear that if NASA loses another shuttle, 1600 PA Avenue will not support building a new one (5) Bottom line (for now), NASA is panting to get back to the moon and the shuttle/station program is in the way, sucking down dollars that could be put to work in the Lunar Project shops.
You'd have to be an awful cynic to believe that things like those affect any of their current thinking, though.
Wouldn't you?
There was a time when they bragged that anybody could stop the operation with valid objections. But now we have the new NASA.
Warts and all, I think I preferred the old one.
Jim Slade
6/21/2006
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