Marc Flemming
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Registered: Jan 2003
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Failures in management and safety programs at NASA deserve as much blame in connection with the Columbia disaster as the piece of foam that struck a wing after takeoff, investigators said Friday.
"We've now decided that these things are equal," retired Navy Adm. Harold Gehman, chairman of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, said at a news conference.
Gehman's comments mark the first time he has put NASA's systemic problems on equal footing with the foam strike as a contributing factor.
The board's final report, expected in late August, will stop short of assigning individual blame for the Columbia accident that killed seven astronauts, Gehman said.
"We have said from the first day, the first hour, that we are not going to address personal responsibility or personal accountability," he said.
But more than half the report will deal with NASA management failures as well as inadequacies in the agency's safety and quality assurance programs, investigators said at the news conference.
Gehman said congressional lawmakers or NASA's administrator would find it easy, based on the report, "to follow-up on some process that doesn't look right because they think maybe somebody fell down on the job."
His remarks followed release of a 189-page document that cites the foam debris strike to the shuttle's left wing as the direct physical cause of the accident.
Compiled by the board and a separate NASA investigation team, the document said manufacturing flaws — such as cracks, divots and inadequate bonding — probably contributed to the fatal foam loss. The document will be an appendix to the investigation board's final report.
Stiff winds that buffeted the shuttle in flight, and a severe swiveling of the ship's twin solid rocket motors to counteract those forces, also might have contributed, the document said.
It said the damage to the wing provided a pathway for hot gasses to penetrate the ship's thermal armor during Columbia's ill-fated reentry.
"All the evidence assures us the foam did it," Gehman said.
Investigators also said:
• The National Aeronautics and Space Administration should treat its remaining three shuttles as test vehicles rather than operational spaceships. "We need to treat each launch as a first launch," added Air Force Brig. Gen. Duane Deal, another board member.
• NASA should equip its remaining shuttles with the type of flight data recorder carried aboard Columbia and recovered after the accident. NASA's oldest orbiter was the only one to be equipped with that type of recorder, and data recovered from it has been key to the accident investigation.
• NASA should be able to act on the board's recommendations and return its shuttle fleet to flight within the next six to nine months.
• The board will closely examine how the agency allowed potentially deadly events, such as a persistent history of foam debris strikes, to become acceptable, Deal said.
Source: USA Today
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07-12-2003 07:37 AM
