Shuttle Chief to Reassess Program, Redesign Rocket

In a move designed to re-establish the credibility of the American space program, NASA’s new shuttle director Tuesday announced a sweeping series of ultraconservative launch guidelines, but he also said the Challenger disaster would not curtail the space agency’s boldness and turn it into a “namby-pamby” operation.

Rear Adm. Richard H. Truly, in a speech broadcast to all NASA employees, said he will direct a reassessment of the shuttle program management and a redesign of the joint in the solid rocket booster thought to have caused the Challenger explosion, two areas already targeted for reform by a presidential investigating commission.

“We’re going to launch in the daytime,” Truly said. “We’re going to have a conservative flight design. We’re going to fly a repeat payload. We’re going to launch with conservative weather and on down the list of flying the safest, best way to get started again.”

He did not speculate on when the next launch could be scheduled. NASA now hopes to launch nine shuttle missions in the first 12 months of resumed flights, he said, down from the 15 that had been planned for 1986 before the Challenger disaster.

“I don’t want you to think that this conservative approach, and this safe approach . . . is going to be a namby-pamby shuttle program,” Truly said. “The business of flying in space is a bold business. It’s one that’s going to take a lot of decisions. We cannot print enough money to make it totally risk-free. But we’re going to correct any mistakes we may have made in the past.”

Truly, who took over as shuttle chief four weeks ago, announced his new guidelines well in advance of the formal report of the presidential commission investigating the cause of the Jan. 28 Challenger explosion, in which seven crew members were killed during the launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

That report, due in late May, is expected to reflect commission Chairman William P. Rogers’ view that the decision-making process used in the Challenger launch was “clearly flawed.” Commission members and NASA officials have also concluded that the booster joint must be redesigned to preclude the leak of super-hot gases that triggered the explosion.

Truly said the shuttle’s “management philosophy, structure, reporting channels and decision-making process will be thoroughly reviewed and those changes implemented which are required to assure confidence and safety in the overall program, including the commit-to-launch process.”

Engineers’ Group

He also said he will organize a group of engineers, including those from outside NASA, to redesign the joints in the solid rocket boosters.

At Morton Thiokol Inc., where the boosters are made, an engineering task force had been looking into possible rocket seal design changes for nearly a year before the Challenger disaster. Last fall, 43 specific alterations were suggested, some of which reportedly remained under consideration at the time of the explosion.

“It’s so unfortunate. We were within maybe three or four months of coming up with replacements” for the seal designs, a Thiokol engineer told The Times. “We weren’t that far away from avoiding this tragedy.”

Many of the same engineers who had been working on revised seal designs for Morton Thiokol are back on the case, this time under close NASA supervision.

All Other Components

Truly said NASA will also examine all other components of the shuttle, especially those critical parts for which there is no backup in the event of failure.

Truly said launch and abort procedures would also be reviewed, although he said at a press conference that he did not believe it feasible to build in ejection equipment for the cockpit.

“My personal feeling is that the addition of escape pods would probably not be a thing we could take on or need to take on considering the maturity of the design,” he said. But then he backtracked in deference to the commission.

“I may have strayed too far,” he said “Certainly, if the presidential commission concludes we need to do it, we will do it.”

Directs Task Force

Truly, a former astronaut, was appointed director of spaceflight for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration last month and has been directing a fact-gathering task force assisting the presidential commission.

He said the nine flights planned for the first year of renewed launchings was not a firm schedule and did not impose any pressure to launch. Rather, he said, it was primarily for planning and budgetary purposes.

Truly said the first landing will be at Edwards Air Force Base in California, where weather conditions are consistently more favorable than those at Kennedy Space Center. Chief Astronaut John W. Young complained in a memo released two weeks ago that the runway at Kennedy is unsafe.

Pentagon Payloads

Truly said he believes that on the initial flights, special consideration would probably have to be given to backlogged Department of Defense payloads, but he also said NASA and private industry projects would also be given space on the shuttles.

He said he does not know when private citizens would again fly shuttle missions. Sharon Christa McAuliffe, chosen for the Teacher in Space program, was killed in the Challenger blast.

Truly also said he does not believe that NASA officials had ignored safety.