WORLD NEWS TONIGHT SATURDAY (06:30 PM ET) - ABC February 1, 2003
NASA AND SAFETY A LOOK AT NASA'S SAFETY
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS
(Off Camera) The shuttle Columbia was returning from its 28th mission in 22 years. It was NASA's very first shuttle. Over the years it experienced significant wear and tear and was refurbished many times. One of the questions being asked this morning is whether Columbia's age contributed to yesterday's tragedy, and whether the shuttle program has had enough funding to remain safe. ABC's Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross takes "A Closer Look."
RON DITTEMORE, SPACE SHUTTLE PROGRAM MANAGER
Columbia was an amazing machine. It was the first space shuttle vehicle to fly into space. BRIAN ROSS, ABC NEWS
(Voice Over) When it completed its first mission 22 years ago in April of 1981, the space shuttle Columbia represented the latest in American technology. The technology of the 1970s.
MICHAEL WISKERCHEN, CALIFORNIA SPACE INSTITUTE
You're really talking about 1973 to 1976, was when the technology got really put into place.
BRIAN ROSS v(Voice Over) Columbia was the old warhorse of the shuttle fleet, which with frequent complex upgrades, NASA thought it could keep in service for years to come.
JOHN PIKE, ABC NEWS CONSULTANT
The space shuttle is probably the single most complex machine that humanity has ever created. Frankly, it's a miracle every time it does work and so there are an enormous number of things that can go wrong on the shuttle.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) But NASA administrators say age has nothing to do with what happened yesterday.
RON DITTEMORE
I don't think age is a factor. If you ever have the opportunity to look at any of our vehicles, you'll see that the vehicles are kept in just pristine shape. A lot of tender loving care goes into the care of our vehicles so that they look brand new.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) But as NASA also concedes, looks can be deceiving. Columbia and other shuttles were grounded last summer when hairline cracks were discovered in the hydrogen propulsion system. Columbia was in and out of the shop all the time for a long list of safety problems, which NASA says it was able to identify in order to keep the vehicle in good repair.
JOHN PIKE
The question, however, is whether NASA is in good repair and they have certainly been battered by a lot of very stringent budget restrictions over the last decade or so. And I think that this leads to the question of whether in trying to cut costs, they've also cut corners and compromised safety.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) Despite an excellent safety record overall, a general accounting office report issued just a few weeks ago reached a scathing conclusion, that cutbacks during the Clinton Administration reached the point of, "reducing NASA's ability to safely support the shuttle program." And that despite efforts to improve under the Bush Administration little had changed. "These challenges have not been mitigated."
SENATOR KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, REPUBLICAN, TEXAS
In the last six to seven years we've had Draconian budget cuts. It started in the Clinton Administration and it has continued on the theory, I suppose, that NASA and space research were a thing of the past, that we had gotten everything we could get. Well, that is just absolutely not the case.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) NASA has been plagued by years by such budget cuts and a record of mismanagement. Retired NASA manager Jose Garcia says he complained to no avail all the way to the White House about shortcuts on safety checks at the Kennedy Space Center.
JOSE GARCIA, RETIRED NASA MANAGER
They weren't testing as much. They were, on some of the critical systems they were backing out of some of the testing, not checking redundant systems. They were doing several things to try to cut back.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) And questions once again are being raised about the concept of the space shuttle that could withstand a projected 100 voyages. The shuttle was designed for the large payloads of commercial and military clients, clients who never materialized.
JOHN PIKE
You have a shuttle that is substantially larger, substantially more expensive, substantially more complex, possibly much more prone to failure than is required to perform its core mission today, which is basically to get astronauts back and forth from the international space station.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) Late last year, the Bush Administration and its NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe, again put off plans to build a new shuttle vehicle, deciding instead to put the money into the space station. That, too, according to experts had a safety impact on the shuttle.
JOHN PIKE
Under the theory that the shuttle was going to be replaced, there were a lot of modifications and upgrades to the shuttle that had been identified after the Challenger accident through the 1990s that basically got put on hold under the theory that NASA couldn't afford them and that the shuttle simply wouldn't be flying long enough to justify that sort of investment.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) Some of the first questions yesterday about the accident involved the shuttle's heat shielding tiles.
MICHAEL WISKERCHEN
If the tile is not there, if the tile, has been stripped away or damaged or some way in that direction, then you have an unprotected surface. And if you put severe heat on that surface, that surface will burn through.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) Former NASA scientist, Dr. Michael Wiskerchen, say the tiles being used on the shuttle are based on a design that goes back decades.
MICHAEL WISKERCHEN
We, in effect, have improved system all the way along but the technology is at minimum, late 1970s.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) The tiles and their tendency to fall off in flight have long been a problem for the shuttle.
JIM OBERG, ABC NEWS CONSULTANT
I think you'll be replacing tiles after every mission. Sometimes during ascent, sometimes during entry. This would happen often enough that we knew that it wasn't an immediately fatal thing.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) Some of those crucial tiles may have been damaged or knocked off when the Columbia was launched, a potential death sentence given that there is no way for an astronaut to inspect or to replaced the missing tiles once in space.
RON DITTEMORE
We have no capability to go over the side of the vehicle and go underneath the vehicle and look for an area of distress and repair a tile.
RON DITTEMORE (CONTINUED)
The risks you take when you launch is that you may suffer a tile issue. We have no capability to repair it. All we can do is, before we launch, design robustness into the system so that a loss of some tile capability will not result in loss of crew or vehicle.
BRIAN ROSS
(Off Camera) The problems, the budget problems, the safety challenges, are well known inside NASA. In effect, the aging shuttle fleet has been kept going because of the can-do, we can fix anything spirit of NASA's talented engineers. In fact, the engineers have had to go onto the Internet, to Ebay, to find replacement parts for some of the components in the shuttle which are no longer made. That can-do, we can fix anything spirit, George, will now be sorely tested.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS
(Off Camera) Thank you, Brian.
Copyright © 2003, American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.
