FOX HANNITY & COLMES (21:00) February 3, 2003
Some Accusing NASA of Ignoring Early Warning Signs About Columbia
Sean Hannity; Alan Colmes
SEAN HANNITY, CO-HOST: And tonight on HANNITY & COLMES, NASA is still trying to figure out what went horribly wrong early Saturday morning that cost the lives of seven astronauts. Did they miss signs of trouble? We'll examine that.
And former President Jimmy Carter is putting his two cents in about the standoff with Saddam. But is he the best person to be giving foreign policy advice? We'll have all that and much, much more. First the headlines.
(HEADLINES)
HANNITY: And welcome to HANNITY & COLMES. We're glad you're with us. I'm Sean Hannity. And coming up tonight, reports out of Baghdad say that some Iraqi people are happy about the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia. They hate us that much. And then former President Jimmy Carter is attacking President Bush and the U.S. policy towards Iraq once again. We'll tell you what he said.
And later tonight, you're going to meet a former CIA agent who says he's not convinced that Saddam Hussein ever gassed his own people, so does he have a personal agenda? We'll find out.
First our top story tonight. As the country mourns the deaths of seven astronauts lost in the explosion of the Space Shuttle Columbia, some are accusing NASA of ignoring earlier warning signs that a shuttle disaster was imminent. And joining us from Charlotte, North Carolina, former NASA engineer, Thomas Noyes; and from Washington is director of globalsecurity.org, John Pike. Gentlemen, welcome aboard.
I guess, Thomas, the one thing we would have to believe for that to be true -- and I know people at NASA, they work together, their families live in the same neighborhoods, they are friends -- we would have to believe that somebody involved in the shuttle program would have intentionally ignored danger signs and allowed their friends to go up in space knowing those dangers. Is that possible?
THOMAS NOYES, FMR. NASA ENGINEER: I really don't think that's possible. The shuttle, to the best of my knowledge, is the most well understood, most highly analyzed system on the face of the earth in the history of man. There are simulations for every single system, the external air dynamics. Of course, when you have such a complex system, and the way you manage that at NASA, is to break down the system into different modules or subsystems.
HANNITY: Sure. Thomas, I want hard evidence. I'm frankly getting really tired of the conspiracy theories that almost are popping up by the hour. "The New York Times" today, "NASA dismissed advisers who warned about safety," the whistleblowers. What evidence do we have that it was related in any way to the safety of these astronauts or somehow they broke the story that would have saved their lives? I find it distasteful without any hard facts.
NOYES: I completely agree with you. I completely agree. I think, you know, when Challenger was lost, there was some introspection within NASA of, did we push the envelope too far and check off -- you know launching during freezing weather. And maybe the only thing that would stick out in this launch, this was an extremely heavy orbiter coming down in what we call a January atmosphere, which is a rather dense atmosphere.
Obviously, January weather being colder in North America than say June and July. It was a denser atmosphere. So you have historically one of the heaviest orbiters coming down in one of the densest atmospheres. But other than that, I would say that there is a near zero chance that some quick decision was made that would endanger the lives.
HANNITY: I think we also tend to take miracles for granted, and this has become routine.
NOYES: Yes. I agree.
HANNITY: But the idea that we do what we do and they do what they do, and we go to the moon and we come back, that it's become a routine is a credit to all of these guys.
John, welcome back to the program. Look, I want to know, if people are going to accuse criminal negligence, I want to know specifics. I don't want generalities. I don't want a hypothesis. I don't want a theory. I don't want a pundit. We've got to have strong factual evidence, don't we?
JOHN PIKE, GLOBALSECURITY.ORG: Well I don't think at this point anybody is being accused of criminal evidence. I think that basically what we're trying to do is understand how it was that, despite all of the best efforts, apparent best efforts of NASA engineers, of the dedication of all of the contractors who have been working on this program for so many years, after all of the political leaders say they are making safety the highest priority, how is it that this accident, nonetheless, took place? And unavoidably, I think as we learned with the Challenger accident, complex accidents like this have two components.
One of them is the mechanical failure. What went wrong with the tiles or the external tank insulation, or the navigation and control system? The other is the institutional failure. How was it that that mechanical error was allowed to get through the system?
And then in this case, for instance, there is already the suggestion that they knew they had problems with the external tank insulation, but that they were treating that a maintenance problem. Something that would increase the cost of repairing the shuttle, rather than a safety problem, something that could endanger the entire program.
ALAN COLMES, CO-HOST: John and Thomas, it's Alan Colmes. Welcome to the program. Thomas, "TIME" magazine did an interesting piece on this today. Let me show you part of what they said. They said, "Though the space shuttle is viewed as futuristic, it's design is three decades old. The shuttle's main engines first tested in the late 70s use hundreds of more moving parts than do new rocket motor designs. The fragile heat- dissipating tiles were designed before breakthroughs in material science."
Is this after-the-fact quarterbacking, or is this something that should have been looked at beforehand? And is this an accurate analysis?
NOYES: Well, just because systems are old doesn't mean that they are not safe. Certainly we all fly on DC 9s and 737s. They're much older than the shuttle and have many more hours on it. These systems were designed to be safe and be best in their class during the '70s when that happened. And many of them have actually been substantially updated to be more safe.
So certainly an old system doesn't imply a lack of safety. Actually, I would make the case that because it's so well understood and so well analyzed, that changes actually can be more dangerous sometimes to an existing, well understood system than to...
COLMES: One of the other suggestions in this piece is that this did 28 other missions. And should it have been in the sky that many times? Did they try to use it too many times?
NOYES: It was designed for hundreds of missions. It was envisioned - - originally, these shuttles would be going up monthly. I think the life expectancy -- if you ever went to the Kennedy Space Center and saw the processing facility and what they do to break down the orbiter and take almost all of the wires out of it to inspect it and the structure, it's almost -- they rebuild it every single time they fly it.
COLMES: John, do you concur with that?
PIKE: Well I think that's about right, if you're talking about the individual technological components of the shuttle. But I don't think that it goes to the fundamental question that we're going to have to ask and answer over the next several weeks and months. Not whether the technology of the space shuttle is obsolete, but whether the entire conception of this space shuttle is obsolete. Because let's remember, when it was originally conceived a third of a century ago, the idea was that it was going to fly once a week. That basically every payload that America launched, many international payloads, would all be flying on the space shuttle.
Now for a lot of complex technology, safety, budget reasons, that didn't happen. And we're basically back to flying the space shuttle to the space station and that's something we could do with a much smaller, much simpler vehicle.
HANNITY: We've got to take a break. We'll talk about did NASA miss some of these safety things. Our hearts and prayers go out to the families and colleagues of these brave astronauts. We'll have more on this when we come back later.
You won't believe some of the outrageous things that some Iraqis said after the tragedy. We'll tell you about that.
And Later, Jimmy Carter, he can't stop attacking President Bush. Well he wants to see a stronger case for war. Why is he constantly on the offensive against the president? We'll find out. We'll tell you what he said straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COLMES: We now continue with Thomas Noyes and John Pike. Thomas, in the "TIME" magazine piece I mentioned, it suggested that many of these missions don't need to be manned. That you can accomplish a lot of what the mission is without humans aboard. Is there any truth to that, and do we too often put people in space to satisfy some other need when we don't need to do that?
NOYES: I think that's an excellent question. And it's one asked within NASA and the scientific community constantly. I think most would agree that if we just laid out the scientific objectives out in front of NASA and how best and most effectively accomplish those, that man probably wouldn't be part of the equation. But NASA does so much more than just accomplishing these scientific objectives.
I mean it's part of our national psyche. It's part of -- you know, it adds to the economy. It adds to our society and nation. I mean we have the perpetual Super Bowl champions of space. And is that a team that we want to keep on moving forward, or is that a team we want to shut down and let countries like China and India, who are looking to put astronauts up in the next year, do we want to let them take over?
COLMES: John, one of the arguments here -- John Pike -- is we have a whole industry here and we're supporting this industry, and that's why we put men and women on these flights. And that a lot more money, a lot of expense is gone to here when we don't really need to do that. But there is an industry to support and contractors who are under contract, and that's what's behind some of this.
PIKE: Well there is unavoidably contractors doing the work. Certainly there were contractors that built the Apollo missions to the moon. And John Glenn joked that he was always a little nervous getting into a space capsule that had been built by the lowest bidder. But I think that the real issue that the American people are going to have to decide this year is what sort of program they want, what direction they want it to take.
And I think it might be a good idea if we could separate out the fact that for most missions we're better off with robots. But for the political missions, the ones that are intended to be part of our foreign policy, to express American ideals, maybe that's where we ought to be focused on sending the people on to the moon and back to Mars.
HANNITY: John, did you say that these guys were trying to do a job -- NASA, that is -- that cost $20 billion on a $15 billion budget?
PIKE: Well, I think that that's the fundamental problem that NASA has had for the last decade and the fundamental reason that the agency at times has been dysfunctional. That they have been asked to operate a space shuttle...
HANNITY: But wait a minute. John, that implies that they would allow these safety standards and procedures to be cast aside for financial issues. And I go back to my original statement. These people work with each other every day. They are friends, they are families. And I don't believe one of these guys in NASA is going to allow one of these astronauts to get in the shuttle if they don't believe it's 1,000 percent safe.
(CROSSTALK)
PIKE: We know it's not 1,000 percent safe. They know that it cannot be made that safe.
HANNITY: But I'm saying as safe as possible. You're suggesting with that statement that money is a motivating factor in reducing the standards for these guys. Safety standards.
PIKE: It is absolutely the case that over the last 15 years there have been any number of safety improvements to the shuttles that have been proposed that have not been implemented because of the higher price.
HANNITY: So you're saying that they're going to reduce the standards, put their friends at risk, because of money.
PIKE: Absolutely. There is not enough money in the world to make the space shuttle or space flight 100 percent safe.
HANNITY: Thomas, do you want to respond to that?
NOYES: I would agree, actually, with most of what John said. Certainly there are enhancements to be made, but, you know, given it's always a cost-benefit analysis of looking at -- you know, given the cost of this expensive liquid rocket booster, or, you know, enhancing the thermal protection system. If you look at the marginal increase in safety, it's just not worth it given other program objectives.
And as I mentioned before, the complexities of testing, a change to the vehicle, can actually decrease overall system safety. When you make a change to something that's very well understood, you risk having ancillary impact.
HANNITY: But in this particular case, if we look at safety standards and procedures and the fact that they have had this track record with this particular shuttle, don't you think that they had every confidence and belief it was going to come home? That if they had any doubt in their mind for financial reasons that it would have been stopped?
NOYES: Oh absolutely.
PIKE: And that's what the problem is. That's what the problem is. They thought it was safe and it was not. And I think that what the investigation is going to have to focus on here is why is it that they thought that the vehicle was a lot safer than it was, because the bottom line, the fundamental fact that we unfortunately know right now, that they apparently did not know during the mission, is that this mission was unsafe. We need to understand what was the institutional problem that we need to correct to make it safer in the future.
COLMES: Thomas and John, we thank you both very much for being with us tonight.
And coming up on HANNITY & COLMES, one Iraqi was reportedly happy with the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) destruction this weekend. Does he speak for the majority of the Iraqis and the Iraqi government?
Later, even if we catch Saddam lying, do we have to go to war? President Jimmy Carter says no. His case is strong. We're going to look into it coming up on HANNITY & COLMES.
Copyright © 2003, Fox News Network, Inc.
