Richmond Times-Dispatch July 16, 2003
NASA setting up safety center based at Langley
By A.J. Hostetler
Criticized for failing to heed concerns of lower-level engineers, NASA has created an agencywide safety center, to be based at Langley Research Center.
The new Engineering and Safety Center comes as the Columbia accident investigation board chastises NASA's current safety structure as shallow, with engineers lacking stature to voice serious safety concerns to upper management.
NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, who was at the Hampton facility yesterday for the announcement, said the center was "an important element of what we have heard from the deliberations of the Columbia accident investigation board."
O'Keefe said the center will provide NASA engineers with a formal way to shape safety debates earlier in the process. But the center will still have a chain of command to follow in airing concerns.
"We want to make sure that this is not something where a bunch of folks independent and removed from all the [mission] activities kind of swoop in and deliver a . . . determination at the last minute."
Insulating-foam debris that struck Columbia soon after launch is now thought to be responsible for the orbiter's Feb. 1 breakup over Texas. A Langley engineer participating in an informal "what if" discussion about the foam incident sparked a flurry of e-mailed concerns prior to the disaster.
The new safety center will conduct its own engineering assessment and reviews and perform testing for crucial NASA projects, manned and robotic. It will also examine "trends" in missions, such as the number of times foam falls off fuel tanks and strikes orbiters.
Any alarms will be channeled through NASA's hierarchy. The center, for example, will not have authority to halt shuttle missions, O'Keefe said, contrary to news reports last month.
"Program-management responsibility and accountability for operational conduct [should] remain and reside within the folks that were engaged in that activity," he said.
O'Keefe put Ralph Roe Jr. in charge of the new safety center. As manager of the Space Shuttle Vehicle Engineering Office at Johnson Space Center, Roe was key in concluding that the insulation foam that struck the shuttle was not a "safety of flight" issue.
Investigators now have compelling evidence from recent tests that a foam strike caused a fatal breach in Columbia's left wing, allowing super-hot gases to get inside.
Roe will report to Langley's incoming director, retired Gen. Roy Bridges, who passes on safety or engineering concerns to Bryan O'Connor, associate administrator for the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance at NASA headquarters.
O'Connor in turn reports to William Readdy, NASA's associate administrator for space flight, who ultimately makes the calls on human spaceflight, O'Keefe said.
Details of how the safety center will function must be worked out quickly. Agency officials said the center is to be up and running before NASA's return to shuttle flight, predicted for sometime early next year.
Charles Vick of Fredericksburg, a senior fellow and space policy expert with GlobalSecurity.org, said he expected the center to act "almost as a clearinghouse" where NASA employees could raise safety issues without fear, a helpful sign in the agency's recovery.
The center's cost has not yet been determined. About 250 people will work for the safety center, but many of those will remain at their current locations and not move to Langley, O'Keefe said.
Langley was chosen to host the center because of its testing facilities, including its famed wind tunnels, and its capacity for research, O'Keefe said.
Copyright © 2003, Richmond Times-Dispatch
