Power of NASA’s Flight Centers to Be Reviewed

A major review of NASA management now under way will seek to determine whether too much control has passed to the powerful field centers that have the operating responsibility for the space shuttle program, the space agency’s new administrator said Tuesday.

The role of the field centers, particularly the Marshall Space Flight Center at Huntsville, Ala., has been at the center of controversy ever since the Jan. 28 Challenger shuttle disaster.

Eight-Month Study

Two weeks ago, in his first appearance before Congress as administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, James C. Fletcher announced that retired Air Force Gen. Samuel C. Phillips would undertake an eight-month review of NASA management, consulting with experts inside and outside the agency.

In an interview with several reporters Tuesday, Fletcher said that the Phillips study “will be an intensive, in-depth review on what is the relationship between headquarters and the centers, and how we divide programs up between the centers and which centers are better at what kinds of things.”

Phillips, who was assigned to NASA as Apollo program director at the time the United States made the first manned landings on the moon, was reported to be visiting NASA field centers this week.

Ironically, the review will focus on decisions that Fletcher himself made during his previous tenure as NASA administrator in the 1970s, when, with the advent of the space shuttle program, power flowed from space agency headquarters to the Marshall, Kennedy and Johnson space centers.

Marshall Center Criticized

During the four-month investigation of the Challenger tragedy, criticism has focused on the Marshall center, whose solid rocket booster experts pressed recommendations to go ahead with the Challenger launching despite reservations by engineers at Morton Thiokol Inc., the rocket manufacturer.

Although the Phillips review is expected to continue for the rest of the year, Fletcher said that NASA will take the first steps “within the next week or two” to begin the immediate “management fix” deemed necessary in the shuttle program.

Shuttle chief Richard H. Truly, he said, will “bring together a team to look over every aspect of shuttle decision-making, readiness and quality control--not just what NASA does, but down to the third-tier contractors.”

For the last several weeks, NASA has given first priority to organizing the redesign of the faulty solid rocket booster blamed for the Challenger explosion. The agency has also announced that it tentatively plans to begin launching shuttle flights again in July, 1987.

While the booster joint is being redesigned, officials are reviewing other crucial items in the space shuttle system that cause safety concerns.

Landing System Problems

Fletcher said Tuesday that as many as 40 to 50 items are of such concern and could require technical changes before the shuttle is restored to flight status. Many of them involve the shuttle landing system, which has experienced braking and steering difficulties.

In appearances before Congress earlier this month, NASA officials estimated that it will cost about $526 million to redesign the solid rocket booster and make other changes necessary to ensure the safety of astronauts flying the shuttle. But that figure, Fletcher said Tuesday, “is only a rough guess.”