New Power, Doubts : Astronauts: Life After Challenger

In the first months after the space shuttle Challenger exploded, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was swamped with requests for astronaut application forms.

“The requests went right off the scale,” recalled Duane Ross, who runs NASA’s astronaut recruitment office at the Johnson Space Center here. “They increased by 300%.”

Some applicants stated their reasons more explicitly than others. Ross dropped his voice to a comic growl as he re-created the tenor of these letters: “I’m not afraid to fly that thing! I’ll look death in the eye . . . and smile!’

Frederick H. Hauck was not smiling.

Confidence in NASA

It was late August, and the man who is about to command the first shuttle flight since Challenger had been asked about his confidence in NASA. This was the agency that, in rapid succession, had seen a shuttle and an unmanned rocket blow up, and then boggled the nation with its groping attempts to explain--with jargon and flow charts and cross-sections of O-rings--just what had gone wrong on that bitter cold January morning when the Challenger and its crew of seven were lost in a cloud of fire.

At times it seemed as though the NASA bureaucrats and engineers who testified before the presidential inquiry board could have been postal workers, making alibis for lost letters, rather than progenies of the techno-wizards who lifted Americans to the moon. And the astronauts had heard well.

“My faith was shaken,” Hauck said at a prelaunch briefing in Houston for reporters, “by the process that went into the decision-making, and by the development of where we were in the O-rings. It is regained now, but. . . . You have got to go into every meeting willing to ask hard questions. You cannot assume that because yesterday was a good day today will be a good day. You cannot assume that because a group made what you think was a good decision yesterday, it will make a good decision today.

“I don’t think any of us can count on that, and that’s the difference.”

Influenced Modifications

The launch of Discovery, scheduled for Thursday, will snap what has been a trying lull for the nation’s 96 astronauts. They have spent the 32 months since the Challenger calamity monitoring and, in some cases influencing, hundreds of modifications to shuttle procedures and equipment. They have sat on safety committees. They have trained for new emergency techniques. A dozen or so quit, forecasting accurately a long interruption of flight. And several have moved, or were moved, into top NASA management positions.

In a broader sense, such administrative and technical duties during the downtime have allowed astronauts to regain their voice within the space agency. This empowerment was given a boost by the Rogers Commission, the blue-ribbon presidential panel that investigated the Challenger explosion. Its final report concluded that NASA in the shuttle era had failed to make good use of the astronauts’ “keen appreciation of operations and flight safety.”

Finally, in an almost perverse concession to the theatrical nature of the manned space program, the first in-flight loss of an American spacecraft and crew served to install surviving astronauts as retroactive heroes. Shuttle astronauts now claim they always knew that their complicated spacecraft was loaded with peril. NASA, however, had chosen to cast it as a safe, reliable vehicle for routine space travel, a space bus. And no one stores up ticker tape for bus drivers.

The passive analogies were destroyed 73 seconds into the Challenger launch. The nation--and NASA--were taught, brutally, that grave risks had shadowed every flight, and that shuttle crews were made of heroic stock, the sort of men and women who weren’t afraid to begin to ride that thing, who could look death in the eye and, if not smile, at least not flinch.

After Challenger, veteran astronauts began to notice a new look of awe directed their way by audiences at speaking engagements, by reporters at press conferences, and in the routine, grocery store variety encounters of everyday life.

“That’s the nature of the beast, I guess,” said Daniel Brandenstein, chief of the astronaut office. “When we were ‘routine’ and everything was going great there wasn’t much interest in (shuttle launches).”

Element of Risk

And is it the element of risk that has changed that ambivalence? “I don’t know. Some people say that’s why people go to car races.”

Despite all their expanded bureaucratic reach and public respect, several astronauts interviewed said that morale, though improved, will not be restored fully until Discovery blasts off and astronauts have been returned to their elemental role.

John W. Young, the taciturn space veteran who piloted the X-15, rode a Gemini capsule, walked on the moon and flew the first shuttle mission, was succinct on just what that role should be.

“Fly spaceships.”

Period.

Intricate and often contradictory mental exercises are required for astronauts to ready themselves to again fly spaceships. For instance, while they seek to put the explosion behind them, they also dare not forget it. To forget is to risk repeat. So astronauts can be heard in one breath declaring that the shuttle is safe to fly again, and in the next observing that shuttle flight can never be safe.

Astronauts sound different going into this flight. The can-do bravado the country has come to expect of its rocket jockeys now is qualified with publicly confessed doubts and suggestions of unfinished soul-searching. Listen to this opening remark to a small circle of reporters by David C. Hilmers, a thoughtful, soft-spoken Iowan who will serve as a mission specialist aboard Discovery:

‘Lack of Belief’

“I kind of sense right now that there is a lack of belief . . . in ourselves, that we can fly in space. I think there is some real doubt in people’s minds that this is a permanent thing that we are going to continue. I think that maybe people are starting to have some confidence that we can pull off this first flight. There seems to be a lot of doubt in people’s minds that we can continue to pull them off, that the shuttle is going to be a long-term success.”

Hilmers, like commander Hauck, is a former jet fighter pilot. Four of the five Discovery crew members are former military pilots, like the nation’s original corps of astronauts. All five--Hauck, Hilmers, pilot Richard O. Covey and mission specialists John M. (Mike) Lounge and George D. (Pinky) Nelson--have flown at least one previous shuttle mission.

The use of such space veterans, as opposed to the Challenger crew, which included a schoolteacher and other astronauts with non-military backgrounds, is symbolic of a profound institutional shift in the way NASA regards the shuttle program as it prepares for the 26th flight.

Beyond the 600 changes that have been made in the machine, beyond the fortified rocket seals and the newly installed parachutes and in-flight escape pole, the whole purpose and promotion of shuttle flights have undergone a metamorphosis.

Remember where the program was at dawn, Jan. 28, 1986. Schoolteacher Sharon Christa McAuliffe was poised to become the first “ordinary citizen” in space, a precise advertisement of the shuttle as space bus. The launch was supposed to be the first of 15 that year, an ambitious step toward NASA’s goal of two flights a month. The crew did not wear parachutes and had no means of escaping danger in a launch crisis. The only maneuver available in most likely scenarios was ditching off the Florida coast, which everyone conceded likely would not work.

‘Unforgiving Machinery’

As the launch of Discovery draws near, there is no talk of routine space flight. The mission is described reverently as a test flight. The astronauts speak of “unforgiving machinery” and “pushing out the envelope.” Reporters ask and ask again about the new abort procedures. Everyone, it seems, has reread “The Right Stuff.” This is a mission for fighter jocks, for test pilots. Ordinary citizens need not apply.

The astronauts approve of this change in attitude, although they mourn the price.

“NASA got caught up in its own PR to a degree,” said Robert L. (Hoot) Gibson, who flew the last shuttle mission before Challenger. “We sold the thing as an airliner, as safe as hopping on a bus and going to work. That contributed to the attitude we have done it 24 times and can do it again. That’s a bad attitude. Every takeoff is the first takeoff.”

Young, who has been moved to a management position here since Challenger, put it this way: “There’s a lot of people at NASA who believed their own brochures I think.”

Image, however valid or manufactured, can be a demanding taskmaster. From the astronaut perspective, the space agency was pushing too hard to put up too many flights too fast--all in the name of promoting the routineness of shuttle travel.

“There was a lot of things going on,” said Young, who was chief of the astronaut office at the time of Challenger or, as it is referred to within the space agency, Flight 51L. “If we hadn’t had 51L we would have really been struggling. We had 15 launches scheduled in 1986. Some of them were very hairy. And there were some things that happened prior to the accident that were, you know, they were telling us something. But we weren’t listening.”

Traditional Role

NASA, Gibson said, did not evolve smoothly from space capsules to space planes, and this led to difficulties between management and astronauts, half of whom came from military flight lines and a tradition of pilots’ serving in the essential role of flight safety officer.

“When we first got going with space shuttles it was a real change from the way we had done business before,” Gibson said. “Now, for the first time, we had a real flying machine. Before we had a ballistic vehicle; it didn’t really fly in the pure sense of flying. NASA as an organization didn’t understand flying and didn’t understand aviation.”

He said that there were times when astronauts would complain about problems with landing brakes, steering mechanisms and other flight safety matters, only to be “overruled and ignored.”

After Challenger, Gibson was assigned to work with engineers on the redesign of the shuttle system’s solid rockets. Hot propellant leaking through a joint in a solid rocket caused the Challenger to explode.

Gibson said that, despite some disagreements over testing procedures, he received “some real good cooperation and a good attitude” from the rocket engineers, as did astronauts working with other pieces of the redesign.

“I would have to say,” he said generally, “that we get a little more attention paid to our comments.”

Acceptable Risk

In the astronaut view, there is a faded, quivering line between acceptable risk and foolhardy gamble: To launch with a rocket that would mean death and destruction if it exploded is an acceptable risk; to launch on a day so cold that it could weaken seals crucial to that same rocket is not.

For example, Young recalled being launched himself through a rain cloud. Large raindrops striking the shuttle could damage its protective tiles, causing the craft to incinerate on reentry. When he got back on the ground, Young asked the engineers how they had known the “itty bitty raindrops would not turn into big raindrops.” He was less than pleased when the engineers told him that they, in fact, had not known.

Said Young: “That was just taking an unknown risk, and not realizing you were taking a risk. If you know what the risk is and you are willing to take it, it’s OK. But when you do things that you don’t realize are risks then you are going to have an accident.”

Part of the safety equation calls for anticipation of weak points in the systems and the development of countermethods to cope with them. Much work in the downtime was spent by astronauts developing a launch escape system and increasing the options for emergency landings. They were driven in part by the haunting discovery that the crew had survived the initial explosion, and that the capsule likely stayed intact for the entire descent into the ocean.

Astronaut Steven R. Nagel played a lead role in development of a telescoping pole that astronauts would slide down and parachute from should more than one engine fail during launch. The new escape system most likely would not have saved the Challenger crew, and now can be employed only if the orbiter is in a controlled glide.

Improvement in Safety

Still, Nagel and his colleagues agree, the system is an improvement. Why this was not done before, and why the orbiter wasn’t designed initially with a complete in-flight escape system, are questions that never seem to elicit direct answers at NASA, only mumbled talk of payload weights and price tags.

“By the time I came along that design was already fixed,” said Nagel, a decorated Air Force pilot who joined the astronaut corps in 1979. “I guess in the view of people in my group it was more of a reaction of, ‘Well, I kind of wish it had one, but it doesn’t,’ and you just grit your teeth and go on flying it.”

The expanded menu of abort options has meant hours upon hours of additional training for the Discovery crew, as well as lively discussions over which methods should be taken in specific scenarios.

Said commander Hauck: “It makes for some very good philosophy, because then you can also get into the discussion of what’s more important--bring back the orbiter and save the space program? Or bring back the people in it?”

All agree, however, that the first priority is that the shuttle must be made right. The universal astronaut opinion is that to lose another oribter is to lose the program.

Tremendous Responsibility

“If we are going to have an accident every couple of years,” said Bryan O’Connor, a former Marine test pilot, “it is not worth it. A manned space program is not worth the effort unless it can be done safely. There is a tremendous responsibility to make sure you don’t kill people in the process.”

The Discovery crew takes comfort in the fact that crucial launch decisions will be made by Adm. Richard H. Truly and Robert L. Crippen, early shuttle astronauts who, since Challenger, have been elevated to the upper reaches of NASA management.

Also, Hilmers said the astronauts’ active participation in rebuilding the shuttle program has helped restore their faith. “I think,” the astronaut went on, “if it would have been something where someone had said, ‘OK, you guys go off and take a two-year vacation and when we get done we’ll call you back and we’ll tell you it is time to go fly again. Hop on, just trust us’--I don’t think that the faith would have been there.”

The five crew members have paid close attention to a series of glitches that have nagged the process of readying their ship for flight. These were to be expected, they said, and do not necessarily indicate that the space agency has failed to escape the blunder mode.

Said Lounge: “It’s a symptom of what happens when you take an airplane and send it through overhaul. . . . There will be some more problems.”

It was Young who initially recommended who should fly the first mission since Challenger. He said that he was “looking for people who could get the job done.”

The job on this flight is not complicated. The Discovery crew is scheduled to fly a relatively short four days, launch a single satellite and perform a handful of scientific experiments. The main thing is to launch and land intact what, given the extensive redesign, is in many ways a new flying machine.

Given the caution with which NASA is approaching the flight--”We won’t launch if there is a cloud in the sky,” one crew member noted wryly--the prevailing view is that this should be one of the safest missions ever.

“You know this is going to be a very good first flight,” said Young, “but it’s the 40th or 50th flight down the line that everybody ought to worry about.”

The Discovery crew to a man does not seem comfortable with the amount of attention already focused on the flight, an indicator of an even greater interest to come in the final countdown. The feeling must be like that of a circus performer on the night after the lions ate the tamer, or the high-wire artist fell, or the man shot from the cannon came down less than intact. How nice the house is full, but just what have these people paid to see?

The crew members say, hopefully, that perhaps the attention does not demonstrate a national tendency toward ghoulishness. Perhaps it demonstrates patriotism, an awareness of the importance of space travel to the nation’s future.

Whatever the motivation, none of it--the horde of press, the millions of television spectators, even their children gathered in the gallery--will matter to these five men when the morning comes to fly.

“It will be just the five of us and a couple technicians going out to this machine that is suddenly very alive and very lonely,” Lounge said. “It’s a very lonely feeling out there. It’s just the five of us.

“You don’t dwell on who is watching.”

Or on the fate of those who have gone before.