Shuttle Flight Delayed for Fourth Time

Bad weather socked in emergency landing sites both here and abroad and kept the space shuttle Columbia lashed to its launch pad again Tuesday, marking the fourth time in three weeks that officials were forced to put off the start of the craft’s planned five-day flight.

The mission was rescheduled for Thursday or Friday morning, depending on how quickly workers can complete safety inspection and refueling operations caused by the delays.

“I tell you, we’ve got to stop meeting like this,” ground engineer Donald Weinberg told crew members as they emerged from the cabin after a disappointing four-hour wait.

Replied shuttle commander Robert L. Gibson: “Yeah, I agree. We have a bad habit going.”

First House Member

The seven-man crew also includes Rep. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and Franklin R. Chang-Diaz, who will become the first member of the House and the first Latino-American to fly in space once the shuttle finally does leave the ground.

Previous postponements, including one Monday morning, were caused by mechanical bugs or maintenance work that was behind schedule, but Tuesday’s problems were not man-made.

Clouds and haze obscured two key airstrips in Spain and Senegal, making it unsafe for the shuttle crew to land at those facilities should it have been necessary to abort the mission before reaching orbit. NASA officials said it was the first time since the shuttle flights began in 1981 that weather problems knocked out both the primary and secondary emergency landing sites.

Visibility also was poor along a three-mile length of runway here at the Kennedy Space Center, where the shuttle might need to land if problems cropped up shortly after takeoff.

Costs Up to $300,000

Jesse Moore, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration official in charge of the shuttle program, estimated that overtime pay and extra refueling charges cost the space agency $200,000 to $300,000 every time a flight is delayed.

“We’re certainly disappointed we’re not getting off on time, but it’s important our systems work properly,” Moore said.

He said the flight, the 24th in the shuttle series, must get aloft by the weekend or it could set back the next shuttle mission aboard Columbia’s sister ship, Challenger, now scheduled for Jan. 23. New Hampshire schoolteacher Sharon Christa McAuliffe is one of the crew members for that mission, the first by a member of the general public.

Columbia, which flew the first shuttle mission in April, 1981, has been out of service for more than two years while technicians refitted it with new equipment. Its cargo bay is loaded with a variety of scientific experiments and a $50-million domestic communications satellite that the astronauts will deploy.