NASA Staff Cuts Stir Fears for Shuttle Safety

During launch, the space shuttle rides a pillar of flame 60 stories tall as it soars into orbit at more than 17,000 mph--making it inherently the most dangerous vehicle in America. NASA employs a work force the size of two Army divisions to keep the system running as safely as possible.

But with the space agency under unprecedented pressure to trim its staggering launch costs, fears that it is cutting into safety have driven several high-level managers out the door in recent years.

“I was concerned about how fast we were reducing,” said Jeremiah W. Pearson, former associate administrator for human space flight, who quit the National Aeronautics and Space Administration 16 months ago but has only now made his reasons public.

Earlier this month, space shuttle director Bryan O’Connor said in an interview that he believes a reorganization shifting space shuttle management to the Johnson Space Center in Houston could jeopardize flight safety.

In a series of recent interviews, other current and recently retired NASA managers said the issue of safety is widely debated within the agency and that many share O’Connor’s and Pearson’s worries.

“There is deep concern among astronauts,” said one NASA official, who asked not to be identified. “They talk about it all the time. It is only natural.”

NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin said in an interview last week that he is moving quickly to respond to the new safety concerns, although he remains confident that the shuttle is safe.

After the shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, each shuttle mission faced one chance in 76 that it would end in the same sort of disaster, according to an evaluation by Science Applications International Corp., a San Diego-based consulting firm. But thanks to safety reforms, the firm last year estimated the risk had dropped to one in 146, safer than before but still far more dangerous than any aircraft.

Goldin disclosed that he would not cut the $3.2-billion shuttle budget for the next two years, though previously planned work force reductions will continue.

The shuttle work force has already shrunk from 35,400 four years ago to 26,000. By the end of the decade, the agency plans to ax 5,000 more jobs--a cumulative cutback of 41% in eight years.

The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, a NASA advisory board of senior industry executives, raised a number of important new safety concerns in a recent report. The panel found that the shuttle’s navigation and landing equipment is obsolete and that plans to upgrade the system are being delayed until the turn of the century to save money--a finding that caught Goldin by surprise.

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As a result, Goldin said, he has ordered his managers to submit a list of proposed shuttle safety improvements immediately, regardless of cost.

Acknowledging that NASA has not succeeded in communicating the ultimate importance of safety to its work force, Goldin said he has ordered a new communications program to emphasize safety.

“Perception is reality when it comes to safety,” Goldin said. “We are going to make sure we effectively communicate that to our people.”

What Goldin is not going to change, however, is the wave of management changes sweeping over the agency. The changes broadly reflect the titanic forces affecting the rest of the government as political leaders search for a formula for balancing the federal budget.

NASA, Goldin said, must cut launch costs without compromising safety, achieve better scientific output with fewer resources and generally become more focused on exploring the universe rather than protecting its budget.

A massive and bloated work force cannot guarantee safety, Goldin insisted. Even while cutting the shuttle budget, he said, NASA has poured $1 billion in recent years into improving the reliability of flight hardware.

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Among those upgrades was a redesign of the high-pressure pumps in the shuttle’s main engines--eliminating the need to routinely tear the pumps apart for detailed inspections.

“This is how you get safety,” Goldin said. “You don’t get it from adding inspectors.”

In the interest of streamlining, Goldin is transferring management of NASA programs from the agency’s Washington headquarters to its nine centers across the country.

In the case of the shuttle, the reorganization means moving authority from Washington to the Johnson Space Center, which would then run shuttle operations at NASA facilities in Alabama, Florida and Mississippi.

O’Connor, the former shuttle director, said he believes the plan contradicts reforms established a decade ago in the aftermath of the Challenger disaster. Indeed, the commission that investigated the Challenger explosion recommended that the shuttle management be located in Washington to eliminate rivalry between NASA centers that was impeding communication.

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Goldin said he stopped the reorganization process when O’Connor came forward with his objections, and then polled senior managers. Nobody would concur with O’Connor, Goldin said, and the plan went forward.

“Although we respect Bryan, we don’t have the same concerns,” Goldin said. “I hope Bryan comes back to the agency.”

Pearson, the former associate administrator for human space-flight, said he agreed with the issues raised by O’Connor, though it was a different set of concerns that prompted his departure.

Pearson said he argued that the agency was cutting the shuttle work force too fast and that it should adopt a more cautious, incremental approach. “You should take your time and evaluate, rather than just cut and cut and cut,” Pearson said. “That was my concern. I love the program.”

But Goldin and other senior NASA managers overruled his concerns, Pearson said.

Astronauts are also growing concerned, though they have followed a long tradition of keeping those safety issues in-house. While astronauts believe the shuttle to be safe, they are increasingly worried that the changes could undermine safety, according to current and former NASA officials.

“I know everybody is concerned about it,” said James Bagian, a recently retired astronaut. “But until you have an untoward occurrence, you don’t know whether you really have a problem in safety. It is a matter of judgment, not a strict science.”

He added, “Any time you have changes in a system that seems to be running well, there is always a chance for glitch to occur.”

The changes to the program so far pale in comparison to what is coming. NASA has selected a single contractor--United Space Alliance, a joint venture of Rockwell International Corp. and Lockheed Martin Corp.--to run virtually every aspect of shuttle launches.

USA would take over most of the work force, though NASA would continue to control flights after they leave the launch pad and astronauts would continue to be civil service employees. Congress is prodding NASA to go much further, however, eventually privatizing the shuttle fleet and turning over full control to private firms.

NASA spaceflight chief J. Wayne Littles said in an interview late last year that USA should be able to eliminate 7,500 jobs--eventually taking the shuttle work force down to 17,000.

“We are going to transition to a contractor, and that is a culture shock to government employees,” Goldin acknowledged.

Another senior NASA official, shuttle operations director Brewster Shaw, left the agency in 1995 after saying he was trying to “come to grips” with creating incentives for a private firm to maintain safety. Upon leaving, Shaw would say only that the decision to retire was “extremely difficult.”

The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel repeatedly raised its own concerns in reports and testimony by its chairman, Paul Johnstone, saying the reorganization and loss of personnel might jeopardize safety.

“It is impossible to define clearly at what point the program will cross over from safe to unsafe conditions, but this crossover would surely occur if reductions are allowed to proceed uncontrolled,” the board said.

The remarkably complex shuttle demands a lot of care, attention and money--particularly because much of it uses 1970s technology. At a congressional hearing last week, Goldin noted that a typical home computer is more powerful than the shuttle’s main computers.

The four-vehicle shuttle fleet is always fighting off glitches during missions. When one of the shuttle’s four main computers failed in a mission earlier this month, NASA waived its rule requiring a landing as quickly as possible after a computer malfunction because a quick landing would have cost $1 million.

In the shuttle launched Friday, a hydraulic leak occurred in a critical steering system. The agency said the system has two backup units and that the leak does not pose a threat to safety.

The rubber O-ring seals on the shuttle’s solid-rocket booster nozzles also showed signs of burn damage, a situation the agency is watching carefully but believes does not jeopardize the astronauts.

A recent report of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel found that on one shuttle mission, the orbiter’s windshields were so badly hazed that the “astronauts’ view of the landing runway was obscured.” The risks were compounded by an obsolete microwave guidance system for landings that is not being replaced because of the cost involved, the report noted.

Goldin said he was not aware of the decision to avoid replacing the microwave system and ordered his subordinates to give him a list of all safety enhancements that could be made to the shuttle.

Some experts have questioned whether the NASA bureaucracy is less than fully supportive of its chief. By all accounts, Goldin is a strong manager who, unlike many political appointees in federal government, is not subservient to the bureaucracy.

“There is a disconnect between Goldin and the troops,” said Albert Wheelon, a member of the Challenger commission. “Right from the beginning, he has been his own person. The people at NASA are used to manipulating the boss. But the price he pays for that is that people will do things on their own in a sly way.” Frank L. Manning, executive director of the safety panel, said he believes that in some cases, lower-level NASA employees are not fully on board with Goldin’s agenda.

“Goldin has said time and again that safety is first, and he means it,” Manning said. “But as you get down into the organization, people are saying, ‘Let’s meet the schedule.’ ”