NASA Seen as Unable to Handle Safety Issues

CLEAR LAKE, Texas — A former top NASA official told investigators Thursday that the agency’s decision to dismiss a liftoff accident that might have crippled the Columbia was bewildering, but said it epitomizes an agency that has lost the ability to recognize and address fundamental safety concerns.

Henry McDonald, the former director of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., wrote a review three years ago warning of significant safety problems, poor workmanship and cost-saving measures that included reduced inspections.

The report also questioned NASA’s growing dependence on its maintenance contractors, Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. -- companies that have come under heightened scrutiny after the Columbia accident.

NASA ignored many of the report’s suggested reforms.

“We regret that [the report] seems to be very applicable” today, retired Adm. Harold W. Gehman Jr., chairman of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, told McDonald.

McDonald testified in the first of several public hearings the board is holding as it investigates the Feb. 1 Columbia accident, which killed seven astronauts. Board members declined to discuss what they had learned Thursday, but made it clear that even before they pinpoint the cause of the tragedy, they are zeroing in on systemic problems at NASA, which is increasingly being portrayed as a bureaucracy gone wrong.

McDonald pointed to the analysis of the liftoff accident that investigators now believe might have given the Columbia a fatal wound before it reached orbit.

On Jan. 16, about 80 seconds after launch, chunks of debris believed to be foam insulation fell from an external fuel tank and struck the shuttle. Concerned that the incident might have damaged thermal-protection tiles needed for reentry from space, NASA asked Boeing for an analysis. Boeing concluded that the incident did not pose a threat.

The analysis, however, was based on a limited database of tests that had been performed on tiles. The tests also relied on tiny pieces of foam insulation, and engineers used those results -- by multiplying, essentially -- to gauge the potential effect of the large insulation pieces that struck Columbia.

Critics call that questionable engineering, and McDonald said after his testimony that there is no evidence that top NASA officials were warned about alleged flaws in the analysis.

“This really isn’t a very good extrapolation,” McDonald said, referring to the size difference between the test samples of insulation and the pieces that struck the shuttle. “What had been communicated? ... These are very good people. These are very good engineers. But foam ... was not perceived to be a major problem.”

McDonald also cited a flurry of e-mails during the mission that circulated among more than a dozen midlevel NASA engineers, questioning Boeing’s analysis. The engineers, despite NASA’s insistence that the agency was unified in its belief that the insulation did not pose a threat, were also frustrated by their inability to alert top administrators.

NASA has repeatedly characterized the e-mail exchange as routine “what-if-ing.” That’s not the point, McDonald said. Someone in the upper echelon of NASA should have been made aware of them and ruled on the concerns, he said. Instead, NASA has conceded that top officials, including space shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore, were not aware of the e-mails until after the accident.

Three years ago, McDonald’s Space Shuttle Independent Assessment Team told NASA to adopt a new communication system to track, catalog and resolve its employees’ safety concerns.

That was one of the recommendations NASA ignored, McDonald said. Today, NASA has no formal system for surveying engineers or ensuring that their concerns land on the right desks.

“They made very good decisions in some cases. In this case, I think they were wrong,” McDonald said. “I have no concern at all that people like Ron Dittemore will make the right decision when presented with the facts. The concern is presenting him with the facts” in the first place.

Dittemore and Johnson Space Center Director Jefferson Davis Howell, also invited to testify at the public hearing, assured the board that safety remains a priority.

“I think we’re in good shape,” Howell told the board.

About 100 people attended the hearing.

It was held away from NASA headquarters, at the University of Houston at Clear Lake, in a continued attempt to declare the board’s independence from the space agency.

The board poked away over the course of the five-hour hearing at concerns over NASA’s culture and personnel decisions. Board members quizzed Howell and Dittemore about an increased reliance on government contractors and the so-called brain drain -- the widespread loss of institutional knowledge -- that has resulted from cost-saving measures.

More than 80% of NASA operations are now handled by outside contractors, including Boeing -- which, critics point out, had a financial interest at stake while it was investigating the potential damage caused by the foam insulation incident. McDonald’s review of the shuttle program found that contractors often place speed and frugality above safety, a charge the companies deny.

At Johnson Space Center in Houston, contractors outnumber civil servants by more than 2 to 1, Howell acknowledged. To save money, the agency has reduced its workforce by more than 25% since 1993, and a quarter of NASA’s civil servants will be eligible to retire in the next five years.

NASA’s increased reliance on contractors has only compounded the “brain drain” concerns, investigators said. For example, two years ago, NASA embarked on a consolidation program and asked more than 1,000 contracted engineers to move from Boeing’s Huntington Beach office to Houston. The move saved money, but just 24% of the Huntington Beach workers agreed to make the move, Dittemore said, meaning many jobs were filled with less-experienced engineers.

“They left a lot of expertise back in California,” Howell acknowledged. “A lot of people did not want to move.”

That sort of upheaval, Gehman suggested, could cause NASA’s work force to recognize the “snake around your ankles” -- the immediate problem -- but “miss the trends” that could mark a larger threat to the shuttle program.

Howell said that might be true but said it was symbolic of the risks inherent in space exploration.

Meanwhile, a budget that has not grown in nearly a decade -- even as NASA’s responsibilities have grown enormously with the development of the international space station -- could mean a dangerous recipe, board members suggested.