Aging Fleet Was Showing Its Years

Leaks in fuel lines. Cracked door hinges. Pitted and stained exteriors. Even holes drilled by woodpeckers. As America’s space shuttle fleet has aged, its obvious scars and glitches have accumulated. So have deep fears about its safety.

The aging fleet -- 22 years old -- has now been flying for twice as long as its builders first envisioned. Some parts were made so long ago that they are no longer available. Shuttle engineers have had to turn to Internet auction site EBay for desperately needed hardware and electronics.

Columbia, the oldest and heaviest of the four existing shuttle orbiters, was nearly mothballed at least once, as NASA tried to limit the swelling cost of the shuttle program budget.

Even as the fleet has aged, NASA has had to grapple with a series of budget cuts and layoffs that have severely compromised the space agency’s ability to maintain the fleet safely, say experts who in recent years have expressed increasingly urgent concern about astronaut safety. The shuttle maintenance staff shrank from 3,000 to 1,800 workers from 1995 to 1999, according to a Rand Corp. analysis.

“In all of the years of my involvement, I have never been as concerned for space shuttle safety as I am right now,” Richard D. Blomberg, a 15-year veteran of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel said last spring when he released the most recent safety report card to Washington lawmakers. NASA’s current approach, he said at the time, was “planting the seeds for future danger.”

A series of reports from the General Accounting Office, National Academy of Sciences and NASA’s own advisory boards have all called for upgrades to the shuttles to improve their safety. In 1996, NASA’s associate administrator for the space shuttle program, Bryan O’Connor, resigned abruptly, saying the shuttles faced unacceptable risks.

“NASA was told in no uncertain terms ... that it must not rely on the shuttle, that the shuttle was a complicated and fragile technology. NASA simply did not take that seriously,” said Alex Roland, a former space agency historian now at Duke University.

NASA officials have long responded to such concerns by saying that safety is a top priority and the shuttles are not too old to fly.

Shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore said Saturday that he did not think age was a factor in the shuttle loss. “Our vehicles are in pristine shape,” he said. “A lot of tender loving care goes into the care of our vehicles so they look brand new.”

The shuttles were built to fly 100 times each. Columbia was on its 28th voyage. But it is not known what the shelf life of a shuttle is or how gracefully the shuttles age as they endure violent launches and reentries at several times the speed of sound.

“You can only improve on a 40-year-old design so much,” said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), who serves as a member of a space and aeronautics subcommittee. “We may find that the odds have just been against us, because we’re operating with old technology.”

From the earliest days, the shuttle program has been plagued with problems. The spacecraft were conceived as cheap, cargo-carrying workhorses of space that would launch every week. They were to pay for themselves by ferrying commercial cargo, such as satellites.

But early problems with the shuttles’ brakes, insulating tiles and fuel system slowed the schedule and dissuaded commercial customers. Over the past two decades, the shuttles have gone on only 113 missions, including Columbia’s last flight.

Today, some Apollo-era technology has become so dated and obsolete that engineers repairing the shuttle have had to scavenge for parts and computer chips now considered primitive. The Intel 8086 chips used in the shuttle are a variant of those that powered IBM’s first personal computer in 1981.

Even the infrastructure used to work on the shuttle is crumbling. Workers at the Vehicle Assembly Building where the shuttle is serviced at Kennedy Space Center have strung a net below the ceiling to catch chunks of concrete plummeting from the roof.

Many reviews of the shuttle program have focused on how budget and staffing strains have reduced NASA’s ability to restructure and restore existing hardware. The budget for the space shuttle program has been steadily eroding over the last decade and, corrected for inflationary dollars, is 40% of what it once was, according to NASA officials. For fiscal year 2003, $3.2 billion of NASA’s $15-billion budget has been earmarked for the shuttle program, 70 million less than was spent in 2002.

The cuts have made it harder to deal with the litany of problems that surface routinely. These have included brittle insulation, cracks in fuel lines and explosive bolts that don’t release as they should at launch.

In a July 1999 flight, Columbia showed its age when a computer controlling its main engines short-circuited because of frayed and scuffed wiring. Cracks in door hinges on the belly of several shuttles led to 2-inch-long crevices in the doors that were discovered in 1991. Columbia suffered problems with the cooling system used for reentry.

A NASA report in the mid-1990s suggested a 50% chance of a failure before the year 2015, either by an explosion of a main engine during launch or a crash landing caused by the failure of aging landing gear and brakes.

Congressional critics have been severe, some accusing NASA of running a “timid and anemic” human spaceflight program. Meanwhile, some critics have called refurbishing the shuttles a waste of money.

Mike McCulley, the chief operating officer of United Space Alliance, the prime contractor to NASA for day-to-day shuttle operations, publicly bemoaned his ability to operate under continued NASA budget cuts at an April 2002 public hearing on the matter. “The ice is getting thinner under our feet as we move out toward the middle of the lake,” he said.

Columbia entered history books as the first shuttle to go into orbit in 1981. As the oldest vehicle, it was a prime candidate for mothballing. It was the only orbiter incapable of docking at the international space station.

NASA also looked into selling Columbia to a commercial venture but found little interest. They considered retrofitting it and parking it permanently at the international space station as an emergency escape vehicle.

In the end, NASA managers decided to give Columbia a second chance at life with a complete overhaul.

The vehicle was almost wholly remade during an 18-month, $145-million overhaul completed in 2001 at Boeing’s facility in Palmdale. The shuttle was fitted with a new cockpit. New thermal shielding, one of the items that may have had a role in the disaster Saturday, was put around its wings.

After the accident Saturday morning, maintenance workers at the Palmdale plant were going over their work in their heads, trying to think of a misstep.

“The first thing I thought was: ‘God, have I done something wrong?’ ” said one engineer who had been moved to tears by the shuttle loss (he did not give his name because plant officials had told employees not to talk to the media). “I was surprised the effect it had on me.”

But they were reassured by the fact that Columbia had made a successful journey last March to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope.

Shrinking budgets, experts said, have undercut the agency’s ability to maintain its shuttle fleet and, more importantly, design and build a new generation of safer and cheaper reusable craft that should have replaced the shuttle years ago.

But with no replacement on the horizon, NASA extended the lifespan of the shuttle, saying an intensive upgrade program would permit “safe and efficient flight to 2012 and beyond.” More recent estimates have suggested the shuttle fleet could be in use until 2020. And some have said it could fly safely for decades.

“Age doesn’t always imply a lack of performance,” said Jerry Blackburn, a retired Rockwell employee who tested materials used on the orbiter.

Others disagree. “It’s like your car,” said Alden Wright, the former director of aerospace education for California Wing, the state’s civilian branch of the U.S. Air Force.

“If you’re driving around in a 1981 car, you are going to have to work harder to keep it running.”

Safety became an issue most recently when nearly invisible cracks were discovered in the pipes that carry super-cold hydrogen fuel to the shuttle’s main engines.

The cracks were discovered in all the vehicles, old and new. While not considered a clear indicator of aging, they highlighted the many potential problems in the massively complex systems. The entire fleet was grounded this summer while the pipes were inspected and repaired.

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Columbia and the rest of the U.S. space shuttle fleet

Columbia was NASA’s oldest orbiter, the first of the fleet to be launched into orbit and the second lost in a disaster. It also was the first operational orbiter to undergo the scheduled space shuttle inspection and retrofit program, in which each orbiter in the aging fleet is refurbished in Palmdale. Here’s a look at Columbia’s maintenance history and when the other orbiters went into service.

Columbia

Weight: 178,000 lbs.

First mission: April 12, 1981

Missions flown: 28

1982: Payload and flight deck modifications.

1982-83: Spacelab support modifications; changes to payload, crew seating and sleep stations; landing gear and brake modifications; thermal protection system enhancements.

1984: Ejection seats removed; instrumentation installed for on-board experiments; global positioning system navigation adjusted; brake modifications.

1991: About 50 modifications, including removal of several experiment packages; addition of carbon brakes and drogue chute; nose wheel steering and thermal protection system improved.

1994: Various components refurbished, further enhancements to thermal protection system. Corrosion problems on the wing leading-edge minimized. Complete inspection of airframe and other work on corrosion problems.

1999: Wiring discrepancies discovered, extending normal maintenance time. Lightweight crew seats installed; various thermal protection system upgrades.

2002: Entire shuttle fleet grounded when cracked fuel lines are found and repaired in Columbia and two other shuttles.

Feb. 1, 2003: shuttle and crew lost during reentry

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Challenger

Weight: 175,111 lbs.

First mission: April 4, 1983

Missions flown: 10

Jan. 28, 1986: crew and vehicle lost during launch

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Discovery

Weight: 171,000 lbs.

First mission: Aug. 30, 1984

Missions flown: 30

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Atlantis

Weight: 171,000 lbs.

First mission: Oct. 3, 1985

Missions flown: 26

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Endeavour

Weight: 172,000 lbs.

First mission: May 7, 1992

Missions flown: 19

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Sources: NASA; “Space Shuttle: The History of the National Space Transportation System”; SPACEHAB Inc. - Researched by Julie Sheer Los Angeles Times

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Times staff writers Robert Lee Hotz, Akilah Johnson, Michael Kennedy, Rosie Mestel, Peter Pae, Paul Richter and Richard Verrier contributed to this report.