3rd Failure Adds to NASA Morale, Scheduling Woes

Facing its third disaster in less than five months after Saturday’s failure of a Delta rocket engine, the nation’s space program will be forced to grapple with a critical morale problem and public questioning, as well as a temporary but crippling loss of the ability to launch satellites, space agency officials and members of Congress said Sunday.

With three of the four major launch systems--the space shuttle, the Titan rocket and, now, the Delta--grounded because of accidents, officials predicted a significant interruption in the nation’s space capabilities pending a thorough evaluation of space hardware and inspection practices.

“My guess is we are into a major hiatus in our flight program--maybe as much as a year--before we are ready to fly again . . . “ said James M. Beggs, former administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. “I would doubt it would be less than six months.”

A high-level space agency official, who spoke on condition that he not be identified, predicted a “push” to get a weather satellite launched aboard a Delta this summer. “But these things usually take 30 to 60 days just to get a preliminary understanding,” he said, “and I don’t imagine we’ll be taking anything up (on a Delta) until we understand what went wrong.”

Officials said the psychological effect on the space program is bound to be equally serious. “The agency has felt a certain amount of depression after the shuttle accident . . . “ said Rep. Don Fuqua (D-Fla.), chairman of a House committee that oversees NASA’s budget. “A successful launch would have kind of restored some the faith in themselves.”

Failure of the Delta, following the Jan. 28 Challenger disaster and the explosion of an Air Force Titan 34D on April 18, leaves NASA with only the unmanned Atlas-Centaur. The next Atlas-Centaur launch is scheduled for May 22 to put a Navy communications satellite into space.

“Until we are told to stop, we are continuing to prepare for it,” said NASA spokesman George Diller. “But we can always stop . . . especially if they find anything (a problem) that could be related.”

Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio), a former astronaut, said the string of failures may cause the space agency to hesitate before proceeding with the Atlas-Centaur launch.

“You just have to go through each one of them (launch systems) with the same kind of analysis, whether there were people problems, procedure problems or hardware problems . . . “ Glenn said. “Anytime you have a string of failures like this, they are going to want to double-check everything before it goes.”

Weather Satellite

The Delta rocket was carrying a $57.5-million weather satellite needed for hurricane watches and search-and-rescue operations. An identical, companion weather satellite, now in the late stages of assembly, could only be launched from a Delta, Diller said.

“The problem is now we have to continue to rely on one satellite and we don’t know how reliable it is and we’re coming into the hurricane season,” Diller said.

Satellites are built to conform to the rockets that will launch them. The Delta generally launches the lighter payload, followed by the Atlas-Centaur with an ability to carry slightly heavier cargo, and the heavy-duty Titan. A smaller rocket called the “Scout” is used for scientific research purposes.

The last Delta failure occurred in 1977. A 5 1/2-month investigation traced the explosion to one of the nine solid-fuel rocket boosters. Investigators believe Saturday’s accident, which occurred after a shutdown of the main liquid-fuel engine, will not implicate the boosters.

Both Glenn and Fuqua maintained that the string of recent space failures will not have serious consequences for congressional support of the space program.

‘A Lot of Questions’

“Long-term support of the space program will not be affected,” Glenn said. “Obviously, a lot of questions are now being raised about NASA and about NASA leadership.”

Several officials said the possibility of sabotage would be looked into. White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan, appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” called the “uncanny string-series” of accidents and the loss of the well-regarded Delta “very strange.”

But there apparently was no evidence to indicate foul play. Glenn noted that the “diversity in location and types of launches would mean it would be difficult to make a pattern of sabotage.”

The Challenger and the Delta were launched from different locations at Cape Canaveral. The Air Force’s Titan exploded during a launch from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Beggs, who officially resigned in February, pointed out that the Delta accident, like the Challenger and Titan explosions, followed a string of 43 straight successes.

“The successes breed a good deal of confidence in the hardware,” Beggs said. “What tends to happen in a program like this is you have a string of successes and then a succession of failures. What you find generally is that somebody changed something in the hardware stream along the way. It could be a fairly small change in the method by which you assemble and test a component and bang, you have a problem.”

Difficult Investigation

Beggs said he believes the accident investigation, not a shortage of equipment, will be responsible for the delay in launches. The mechanism that allows the fuel to feed power to the Delta is a “fairly simple engineering system,” he said. “But it’s going to be fairly difficult (for investigators) to duplicate exactly the environment that existed 70-odd seconds into flight.”

Jeffrey Fister, a spokesman for the McDonnell Douglas Corp., which builds the Delta, said three remaining Deltas are already booked for launches later this year and in 1987. The production line for Deltas has been closed and a new rocket could not be assembled for at least 18 months, he said.

The sister satellite to the one lost Saturday was to be launched in October. The other two missions were to carry experiments for the “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative program.