Columbia Report Places NASA’s Future Up in the Air

NASA is facing the daunting task of self-preservation during the next year as it works to resume space shuttle flights and redress the serious defects in the nation’s human space program laid bare by the Columbia accident.

The space program is in deep trouble, hobbled by a lack of vision, a flawed management culture and obsolete spacecraft that need to be replaced as soon as possible, according to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board report released nearly a month ago.

To fix those problems and obtain a political consensus about why the space program even exists will be a lot tougher than NASA or anybody had imagined in the wake of the Feb. 1 accident that destroyed the $2-billion Columbia and killed seven astronauts.

“We have a lot of challenges ahead of us,” acknowledged Wayne Hale, deputy director of the space shuttle program. “It is very risky.”

So far, there is little agreement on many central issues, such as whether the shuttle can ever be safely flown, what kind of future spacecraft will fly into orbit and whether NASA should be given a new goal such as sending humans to Mars.

“The process is moving very slowly,” said W. Henry Lambright, a space expert at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. “There are a lot of people who will want to put off all of the decisions.”

NASA itself underestimated even the engineering challenge ahead. Not long after the Columbia accident, NASA said it hoped to determine the cause and resume flights by August. Step by step, the agency has pushed back the resumption of its shuttle operations to December and then to March. Last week, NASA acknowledged that it was again too ambitious and that next summer might be the earliest opportunity to launch.

Once flights resume, the first two missions will be dedicated to testing new procedures to inspect and repair shuttles in space, requirements that were set by the accident board.

What’s more, some of the other recommendations are proving so tough technically that NASA may not be able to meet all of them, shuttle managers said last week in Houston.

One concern is the requirement to repair the shuttle wing’s reinforced carbon leading edges, which were damaged in the Columbia launch last January.

At stake is the future of the human space program, one of the most prominent symbols of U.S. technology and economic leadership for more than 40 years. Experts say the space program has three major issues facing it that must be addressed over the next year: shuttle safety, a new vision for the space program and a decision about replacing the shuttle.

Focus on Safety

The accident report made 29 recommendations aimed at improving space shuttle safety, involving both specific technical defects and improving what investigators called NASA’s flawed culture.

Although critics acknowledge that the fixes will help improve the system’s safety and that NASA’s culture needs change, they say the shuttle is inherently unsafe and that only a massive engineering effort and modernization can prevent accidents. Experts, such as former NASA safety advisor Richard Blomberg, say the shuttle badly needs safety upgrades and investment.

The critics -- who include a broad cross-section of lawmakers, policy analysts and retired NASA officials -- also complain the space program is being run by astronauts and bureaucrats, not the engineers who pioneered rocket technology and once ran the operation.

The Columbia was damaged by foam debris that fell off its external tank during launch. Investigators believe that NASA knew enough about the threat by late last year to have grounded the fleet and redesigned the external tank.

The problem with that conclusion, some experts say, is that such an approach will virtually assure that the shuttle is repeatedly grounded, because there are potentially hundreds of safety problems and it is impossible to know which specific ones couldcause an accident. Such an approach would destroy the space program, said Charles Vick, a space policy expert and a former NASA engineer.

Brig. Gen. Duane Deal, an accident board member and one of the Air Force’s top space commanders, acknowledged in an interview that the shuttle has many potential safety problems and that it will be difficult for NASA to stop operations every time it perceives a risk.

At best, NASA can attempt to calculate its risks and then determine whether they are acceptable, Deal said, rather than simply accepting risks without calculating them as he believes they did before the Columbia launch.

In a special appendix, Deal outlined dozens of specific problems, but his comments lack the power of actual recommendations. Deal said he is concerned that NASA is not going to follow many of the important findings and observations throughout the accident report and his appendix.

Critics say the shuttle’s record of two accidents in 113 flights fairly represents the vehicle’s actual risk and that improvements to NASA’s management practices are not going to change those odds dramatically on such outdated technology.

“You can’t make a modern jetliner out of an airplane from the 1930s,” said Bruce Murray, former director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “It wasn’t designed to be safe. It is a design problem, not a management problem.”

Murray said the emphasis on NASA’s management practices would require a focused and heroic effort to maintain safety on every flight, an approach that organizations seldom achieve. Murray recalled his role in assessing the failures of two Mars probes built by JPL during the 1990s. Although the accident causes were traced to human errors, it was lack of resources that forced JPL to make compromises.

In the same way, the shuttle’s 22-year history has been a story of inadequate funding.

The nation’s military and intelligence satellite programs are also hobbled by cost and technical problems, according to recent reports by the Defense Science Board and the General Accounting Office. The failures reflect many of the same breakdowns that caused the Columbia accident: too much emphasis on cost, an increasing reliance on industry to manage complex spacecraft programs and growing concerns about the capabilities of the U.S. aerospace industry.

“There is 100% linkage between the problems at NASA and the Defense Department,” said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington think tank. “They both face a common set of problems in terms of relentless pressure on cost and a shift of program leadership from government to industry.”

Since the Apollo moon landing program, the White House, Congress and NASA have groped to explain why the human space program exists. The failure to lay out a clear rationale was cited in the Columbia accident report as a serious shortcoming in the space program that undercut budgetary support. The report called for a national debate about the future of the space program.

“I see no evidence that the debate will happen,” Pike said. “The entire process is structured to minimize the opportunity for debate. And who would be in the debate?”

Rationale for Flight

Alan Ladwig, a former top NASA official for political and policy issues, said the rationale for human spaceflight is generally avoided by national leaders and turned over to independent commissions, whose recommendation can be ignored.

“The thought of another presidential commission on the future of space makes me want to throw up,” said Ladwig, who is currently putting together a commercial company to provide zero-gravity airplane rides in Orlando, Fla. “They always get a few astronauts, a few retired aerospace executives and come up with the same results.”

Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Science subcommittee on research, said in an interview that human spaceflight may be exciting for the public, but it is not an efficient way to conduct research or explore the universe. “I am not sure I would terminate human spaceflight,” he said. “But there are new questions about what is the purpose and goals of the program and how much they justify spending taxpayers’ dollars.”

Many of NASA’s toughest critics are not people who want to kill the space program, but rather believe the agency has squandered public support for human exploration of space. They see the space shuttle and the space station as diversions that fail to either produce real science or expand human presence.

“We are further away from going to Mars now than we were in 1990,” said Murray, the former JPL director. “We have gone down this wrongheaded approach. Not only have people died for things that were not worth dying for, but we have been diverted from the goals that are worth dying for.”

Replacing the Shuttle

The only thing that may be tougher than explaining why the U.S. has a human spaceflight program is justifying to the public why it should be stopped after spending more than $100 billion since the Apollo program. Even without a rationale that excites the public, most policy analysts say that the space program will grind on and that NASA will develop a supplemental vehicle for transporting humans.

The Columbia accident report urged NASA to find an alternative means for transporting astronauts to and from the space station, endorsing the current program known as the orbital space plane.

“The vision for what I am doing is crystal clear,” said Volker Roth, Boeing’s program manager for its version of the space plane. “I would like to see the U.S. keep the leadership in space.”

Not long after the Columbia accident, NASA accelerated the spacecraft’s development, and it now aims to begin operations in 2008, rather than 2010. Although it will carry hardly any cargo and perhaps just four astronauts, it is not a low-cost program.

Preliminary estimates suggest it will weigh up to 50,000 pounds, or roughly a quarter of the weight of the space shuttle. That suggests development costs could range from $5 billion to $10 billion.But so many of the shuttle’s problems result from old compromises to save money, Roth hopes the U.S. doesn’t make the same mistakes again.

“You want to provide value for the American taxpayer, but the No. 1 priority we have is safety,” Roth said.

But some analysts ask whether safety is enough to inspire the public. What is needed is a major technical breakthrough that holds out the promise of learning something new in space, said Lambright, the Maxwell School expert. If NASA could develop a space engine that would travel 10 million miles a second and journey through the universe within a single lifetime, there may be no limit to the trillions of dollars taxpayers would spend.

But does operating the orbital space plane and the space station in the meantime help further that ambition?

“If we didn’t have the space station, we would be in trouble,” Lambright said.

“It is better to move forward slowly than not move forward at all.”