Mismanaging the Shuttle Fixes

NYT Editorial - New York Times: "The troubled space shuttle program is in even more trouble than we realized. Seven members of an official review panel have just issued a scathing indictment of the process by which NASA determined that it was safe to start flying the shuttles again - only to discover that it really wasn't.

Meanwhile, NASA itself, still reeling from unexpected foam shedding on the first test flight since the Columbia disaster, has been forced to postpone the next shuttle flight until March or later while it struggles to fix the problem.

Both events ought to force the administration and Congress to take a much harder look at how long the shuttles should keep flying - or perhaps whether they should be flying at all. The underlying problems suggest the need to retire the shuttles quickly, both to end this needless flirtation with catastrophe and to free up funds for more exciting space ventures.

After NASA spent two and a half years trying to repair the shuttles and instill a more rigorous, safety-conscious attitude in its work force, it was depressing to read a 19-page critique by the seven panelists accusing NASA of cutting corners to meet unrealistic launching schedules. That was precisely the kind of management failure that brought us the Challenger disaster of 1986 and the Columbia accident in 2003. If left uncorrected, it will probably bring us another shuttle catastrophe in years to come.

The seven critics were a minority on the panel, which had 25 members and was known as the Stafford-Covey Task Group, after the two former astronauts who led it. The panel was set up two years ago to assess how well NASA was doing in meeting the recommendations of the board that investigated the Columbia accident. In a lengthy final report issued this week, the task group concluded that NASA had met most but not all of the board's requirements.

The seven critics added a withering commentary based on observations they had made during two years of monitoring NASA up close. They found that arbitrary launching dates had led engineers to choose quick solutions for technical problems, not necessarily the best solutions. If a problem looked too hard to solve, the engineers and managers had a tendency to define it away. Performance standards that were supposedly mandatory became goals that simply required NASA's "best effort."

NASA's top leadership was accused of failing to set high standards and hold people accountable for meeting them, although the new NASA administrator, Michael Griffin, was praised for astute interventions after his arrival. Most troubling of all was the bald assertion in the minority report that NASA's much vaunted engineering force had lost its appetite for careful and rigorous analysis.

One technical review meeting degenerated into a series of status reports, with not a single technical question asked or answered. It can only be disheartening that such lackadaisical behavior is still entrenched after all the exhortations for NASA to reach new heights of vigilance.

A majority of the panel - which included members with substantial expertise in space matters, including some who have headed large technically based organizations - did not sign on to the minority report. Some members even praised NASA's performance.

But the minority report gains credence from the wealth of detail it cites and the expertise of the critics. Their ranks include a retired NASA engineer who spent years in key positions within the agency; an astronaut who made five shuttle flights and now oversees military space launchings in Florida; a longtime deputy director in the Navy's nuclear program, which is frequently touted as a model of technical management; a former director of the Congressional Budget Office; a former under secretary of the Navy; an academic who managed recovery operations in Texas after the Columbia accident; and a professor of public administration who has been analyzing the need to encourage dissenting views in organizations like NASA.

This is not a marginal group that can be dismissed as a bunch of misguided rabble-rousers. All seven were appointed by NASA because of their presumed expertise and objectivity.

Mr. Griffin pledged yesterday to read the critique carefully, as well as the main report, to extract ideas for improving the space program. He contended that the agency had made great strides in improving the shuttle and tightening its engineering discipline, but he clearly wants to shuck off the shuttle program when feasible.

The new administrator said he was no longer aiming at a specific number of shuttle flights but was working instead toward an expeditious but orderly retirement of the shuttle over the next five years - enough time, he thinks, to finish the space station. If the minority critique is anywhere near on target, as it appears to be, he ought to move that retirement date forward considerably."