Outside Experts to Oversee NASA Redesign of Booster

Concerned about the pace and direction of redesign work on the space shuttle’s flawed solid rocket booster, the presidential commission investigating the Jan. 28 Challenger disaster has persuaded the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to use a team of outside experts to oversee the work of its own engineers.

Commission sources, declining to be identified, said several members of the panel were concerned that the redesign process was moving too rapidly toward a firm conclusion. Moreover, some commissioners were said to have strong reservations because the redesign assignment was in the hands of engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

Rocket engineers at Marshall were responsible for the existing booster design and have been at the center of the controversy over the decision to launch the ill-fated Challenger despite unusually cold weather and reservations expressed by contractors.

“Some members of the commission had an uneasy feeling that they (NASA officials) were too focused on little fixes and that the same people who have been involved with it for a long time were bringing these little fixes along at top speed,” a commission source said.

NASA officials leading the redesign work appeared before the commission in a closed session last Friday, and sources said panel members were surprised when they heard how definitive redesign plans had already become. A transcript of the closed session is expected to be released today or Saturday.

Because of their concern about the redesign work, the commission sources said, members asked acting NASA Administrator William R. Graham and shuttle program chief Richard H. Truly to arrange for independent oversight, and the NASA officials agreed. A panel is expected to be named by the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council.

Testifying before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation subcommittee on science, technology and space Thursday, Truly made passing reference to such an oversight panel, saying that it would report directly to the space agency’s administrator and that it would continue to monitor developments throughout the redesign and test-flight program.

Truly also suggested that the same panel would consult with NASA on its review of about 750 components in the space shuttle system whose failure could cause the loss of the space vehicle and the lives of its crew.

Challenger Accident

The review was called after the Challenger accident, which was determined to have been caused when a joint in the vehicle’s right booster leaked, allowing a flame to escape and leading to a massive fireball and the breakup of the spacecraft.

The entire shuttle crew, including New Hampshire schoolteacher Sharon Christa McAuliffe, died in the accident.

Recent NASA projections look toward a resumption of shuttle flights, using a redesigned booster, in July of 1987. Truly told the Senate panel that he anticipates six or seven flights by NASA’s three-orbiter fleet in the first 12 months after launches resume, increasing to 12 or 13 flights the second year and eventually to as many as 18.

Although Sen. Donald W. Riegle Jr. (D-Mich.) called the projections “terribly optimistic,” Truly said: “I am confident that we can sustain a 12 to 13 flight rate with three orbiters.”

At the same time NASA presses ahead with its redesign of the solid booster rocket, the National Academy of Sciences will undertake an independent assessment of launch rates and of the most desirable combination of shuttle flights and expendable vehicle launches in the U.S. space program.

The booster redesign, sources said, has focused not only on replacing the O-ring structure blamed for the failure in the rocket joint, but also on stiffening the rocket’s entire structure.

Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) suggested Thursday that NASA consider turning to booster rockets with fuel poured in one continuous segment rather than continuing to rely upon rockets built in segments and assembled at the launch site.

Truly said the space agency is making efforts to evaluate potential second sources for the shuttle boosters, but sources at NASA and the presidential commission said it would be enormously more expensive and time-consuming to turn to single-segment boosters than to redesign the current boosters built in Utah by Morton-Thiokol Inc.

Lack of Broad Plan

While the accident investigation focused on NASA’s plans for redesign of the shuttle booster, members of Congress increasingly turned their attention toward the Reagan Administration’s lack of a broader plan for the space program’s recovery from the accident.

Although NASA has called for construction of a new orbiter to replace the Challenger, the Administration has not come forth with a plan for funding it.

Sen. Albert Gore Jr. (D-Tenn.) said Thursday that he had been told that a senior interagency group led by White House National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter had recommended that the Administration send Congress a supplemental budget request to buy a new orbiter. However, he said, the Office of Management and Budget had blocked the request, saying that offsetting budget cuts must be found.

The Administration has left NASA “in a state of limbo,” Gore said. “The agency that has been drifting is drifting even more.”