[Senate Hearing 108-838]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 108-838
SPACE SHUTTLE COLUMBIA INVESTIGATION
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE,
SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MAY 14, 2003
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and
Transportation
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COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
JOHN McCAIN, Arizona, Chairman
TED STEVENS, Alaska ERNEST F. HOLLINGS, South Carolina
CONRAD BURNS, Montana DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii
TRENT LOTT, Mississippi JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West
KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas Virginia
OLYMPIA J. SNOWE, Maine JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas JOHN B. BREAUX, Louisiana
GORDON SMITH, Oregon BYRON L. DORGAN, North Dakota
PETER G. FITZGERALD, Illinois RON WYDEN, Oregon
JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada BARBARA BOXER, California
GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia BILL NELSON, Florida
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire MARIA CANTWELL, Washington
FRANK LAUTENBERG, New Jersey
Jeanne Bumpus, Republican Staff Director and General Counsel
Robert W. Chamberlin, Republican Chief Counsel
Kevin D. Kayes, Democratic Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Gregg Elias, Democratic General Counsel
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on May 14, 2003..................................... 1
Statement of Senator Allen....................................... 5
Statement of Senator Breaux...................................... 6
Prepared statement........................................... 6
Statement of Senator Brownback................................... 32
Statement of Senator Hollings.................................... 2
Prepared statement........................................... 3
Statement of Senator McCain...................................... 1
Statement of Senator Nelson...................................... 37
Statement of Senator Snowe....................................... 26
Prepared statement........................................... 29
Statement of Senator Sununu...................................... 3
Statement of Senator Wyden....................................... 3
Prepared statement........................................... 4
Witnesses
Gehman, Jr., Admiral Harold W., Chairman, Columbia Accident
Investigation Board............................................ 11
Prepared statement........................................... 13
O'Keefe, Hon. Sean, Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space
Administration................................................. 7
Prepared statement........................................... 9
Appendix
Response to written questions submitted by Hon. John McCain to:
Hon. Sean O'Keefe............................................ 51
Admiral Harold W. Gehman, Jr................................. 55
Response to written questions submitted by Hon. Bill Nelson to
Hon. Sean O'Keefe.............................................. 55
SPACE SHUTTLE COLUMBIA INVESTIGATION
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WEDNESDAY, MAY 14, 2003
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:33 a.m. in room
SR-253, Russell Senate Office Building, Hon. John McCain,
Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN McCAIN,
U.S. SENATOR FROM ARIZONA
The Chairman. Good morning. Today's hearing is the second
in a series of hearings to examine the causes of the Space
Shuttle Columbia accident. I welcome Administrator O'Keefe and
Admiral Gehman and look forward to hearing from them on the
status of the investigation, including the Columbia Accident
Investigation Board's most recent recommendations and NASA's
plan to return the Space Shuttle flight program.
It is extremely important that Congressional Oversight
Committees have access to all critical information in this
investigation, and I want to fully impress that fact on our
witnesses. I repeat, it is extremely important that
Congressional Oversight Committees have access to all critical
information in this investigation.
In addition to the Columbia accident, we will also discuss
NASA funding concerns. I am greatly troubled over the
increasing pattern of congressional earmarking, and we may
learn that the funding directives to Members' priority projects
at the expense of NASA's own funding priorities have led to
grave consequences.
Congressional earmarking of NASA funding increased from
$24.7 million for Fiscal Year 1998 to $167 million in Fiscal
Year 2003, a 576 percent increase in NASA earmarks. Examples of
such earmarking which have prevented NASA from allocating
funding to programs that it considered to be most critical
include $15.5 million for the Institute for Scientific Research
in Fairmont, West Virginia, $7.6 million for hydrogen research
being conducted by the Florida State University System, $2.25
million for the Life Sciences Building at Brown University,
Providence, Rhode Island, $1.8 million for the construction of
a Gulf of Maine Laboratory at the Gulf of Maine Aquarium
Foundation, and $1.35 million for expansion of the Earth
Science Hall at the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore,
Maryland. These are just a few of the egregious earmarks that
have little or nothing to do with NASA, or certainly its core
mission.
While the level of congressional earmarks has grown, NASA's
overall budget has remained relatively stable. As a result,
NASA has been forced to do more with less money while facing
deteriorating infrastructure and safety concerns. I would like
to hear from Administrator O'Keefe and Admiral Gehman and learn
their views on how this pork-barrel spending may have affected
NASA operations, including the Space Shuttle Program.
In addition, I am concerned that it appears that NASA tries
to curry favor with a broad base of members by trying to ensure
that programs affect as many states as possible, even when this
may not be the most effective or productive use of resources.
Even more remarkable is when NASA funds a $900,000 Computing
Information and Communications Program for mobile, wireless,
and broadband Internet capability that had been, according to
NASA's Fiscal Year 2003 operations plan, quote, ``inadvertently
dropped as an earmark,'' unquote, from the 2003 Omnibus
Appropriations Conference Report. I urge the Administrator to
conduct a thorough review of all NASA's funding plans to ensure
they are oriented to meet the legitimate needs of NASA's
missions.
Other important issues that need to be examined today
include NASA's culture and the concerns of NASA employees about
Columbia's safety, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency and
why it was not used to take on on-orbit images of the
Columbia--we have heard conflicting stories on that particular
aspect of the Columbia's tragedy, and we would hope that will
be cleared up; the impact of the Columbia accident on the
construction of the International Space Station; the safety of
the Soyuz, which is currently the only transport to and from
the Space Station; and congressional access to privileged
information from the CAIB investigation.
I look forward to an informative hearing this morning and,
again, thank the witnesses for appearing today.
Senator Hollings?
STATEMENT OF HON. ERNEST F. HOLLINGS,
U.S. SENATOR FROM SOUTH CAROLINA
Senator Hollings. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will
just file my prepared statement, with only this comment.
The distinguished Chairman has just allowed that we at the
congressional level expect to receive all statements and all
materials. The Chairman more or less gives that command like he
is still in the Navy, but that is not what has happened. As I
understand, from the news reports, you have given
confidentiality to those giving statements to make darn sure
that the Congress does not receive all materials of the
investigation.
So point one, I am disturbed about the investigation
itself, because we went through with this with Challenger. This
accident looks like the same act, same scene, with no regard
for safety for the Columbia. I will just leave it at that, and
we will have some questions.
[The prepared statement of Senator Hollings follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Ernest F. Hollings,
U.S. Senator from South Carolina
On February 1, America lost seven heroes. Today, the Committee, our
witnesses, and NASA have the responsibility to learn from this tragedy
so that we will not repeat the mistakes that led to this accident.
Mr. Chairman, those of us who have been on this Committee for many
years are experiencing a sense of deja vu. Some of the problems
highlighted by the Challenger accident are eerily present again. It
seems that some of the lessons that we learned about quantifying risk
and evaluating near-misses were learned and then forgotten in the
ensuing years.
For example, since the first Shuttle flights more than 20 years
ago, pieces of the external tank's insulating foam have come off during
ascent to orbit many times. But the Shuttle's tiles and reinforced
carbon-carbon were not designed to absorb debris hits. NASA engineers
issued waivers, then tried to eliminate foam shedding; but never fully
succeeded. Last October, Atlantis shed a much larger piece than normal
which struck the solid rocket booster. Yet, two flights later, not a
single mention of foam trouble was made in Columbia's ``flight
readiness review,'' the vigorous pre-flight discussion of safety
issues.
While there is no question that we will continue to send humans to
space, we must put everything else on the table. Today we begin at
square one--how and why did the Columbia Accident happen and what does
it mean? How does NASA deal with problems, including seemingly
innocuous ones such as foam shedding that have such tragic
consequences? What are the demands of space flight, and is NASA as an
agency, or are we as a nation prepared to step up to them?
We are not asking questions like these to find blame nor to wander
from the path that the heroes of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo laid out
before us. Rather, we want this hearing to begin to inform the larger
questions that the Committee will need to address after Admiral Gehman
and his colleagues have finished their report.
How do we go about fulfilling the charter that John F. Kennedy
originally laid out for us, to do these things because they are hard,
not easy. For too long, we have avoided dealing with the hard questions
about the future of space. We want today's hearing to begin take us to
a place from where we can see our way forward into space, not backward,
perhaps more clearly than we have ever seen this distance before.
Thank you Mr. O'Keefe and Admiral Gehman for being with us today.
The Chairman. Thank you, sir.
Senator Sununu?
STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN E. SUNUNU,
U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW HAMPSHIRE
Senator Sununu. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome, Administrator O'Keefe and Admiral Gehman. I am
looking forward to the testimony. I know there has been a
tremendous amount of work done, and I think, at the very least,
we owe a great deal of thanks to all of the personnel that have
been on the ground, volunteers--I mean, literally thousands of
them working hours and hours and hours to make sure that, to
the best of our ability, we have as much material as possible
to draw sound conclusions from through the investigation. So
welcome, and I look forward to your testimony.
The Chairman. Senator Wyden?
STATEMENT OF HON. RON WYDEN,
U.S. SENATOR FROM OREGON
Senator Wyden. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I, too, want to welcome our witnesses and thank them for
their cooperation. There are a number of areas I want to
explore this morning. One involves the preliminary
recommendations that have been received from the Accident
Investigation Board. There are two preliminary recommendations,
one calls for the comprehensive inspection plan to determine
the structural integrity of the reinforced carbon-carbon system
components, and the second is to modify NASA's agreement with
the National Imagery and Mapping Agency to use satellites to
make on-orbit imaging for each Shuttle flight a standard
requirement.
When I learned about these two recommendations, and I
recognize these are both, preliminary recommendations, what
really struck me is, ``Why were these recommendations not put
in place prior to the tragedy?'' I think this would be an area
that I would want to explore with you, Administrator O'Keefe,
because you just say to yourself, it seems really tragic that
current inspection techniques are not adequate to assess the
structural integrity of the reinforced carbon-carbon supporting
structure and attaching hardware. And I think my questions in
this area would be twofold. One, why was it not done before the
tragedy? And second, what is being done currently to implement
the recommendations?
The other area, Mr. Chairman, that I want to look at is
this question of the way technical analyses are used by the
agency. Of course, the concern here, as has been reported
widely in the press, is that NASA managers refused to seek the
photographs of the damaged Shuttle, and the engineers were
making pleas that it be done so. I recognize this deals with
the memorandum that you all sent to the Committee, but I think
I would like to explore this some more, and I will be asking
about that, Administrator O'Keefe.
Mr. Chairman, I am glad you are doing this. To me, there
really is not anything more important than the oversight
function of the United States Congress, and I appreciate the
fact that you are bringing us here on a host of the key issues
to look at these matters. I look forward to our witnesses.
[The prepared statement of Senator Wyden follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Ron Wyden, U.S. Senator from Oregon
Today the Committee will hear from Admiral Gehman, who by all
accounts is leading a thorough and objective investigation of the
Columbia tragedy of February 1. In my view, it is important that
Congress evaluate the findings of the Admiral's investigation as
thoroughly and objectively as he has conducted it.
The Economist recently reported that ``NASA spends the lion's share
of its $15 billion annual budget on manned spaceflight,'' and then
asked the question ``Should it?'' I believe that now is the time to
reexamine the nation's mission in space and perhaps reallocate our
resources. In the joint House and Senate hearing on the Space Shuttle
Columbia tragedy on February 12, I told NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe
that I personally believed more unmanned space flights would guarantee
the most efficient use of resources. In my view, it is time to ask
whether research projects currently within the space shuttle program
can be conducted efficiently and effectively on an unmanned vehicle. In
addition, now is the time to make sure that manned space flights are
safer and more efficient as well. While we are here today to discuss
the accident investigation, we must keep in mind the broader picture
and think about establishing a new course for the future of our space
program. We owe the men and women of the Space Shuttle Columbia that
much.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Wyden.
Senator Allen?
STATEMENT OF HON. GEORGE ALLEN,
U.S. SENATOR FROM VIRGINIA
Senator Allen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having this
hearing.
And, Administrator O'Keefe and Admiral Gehman, thank you
for appearing before this Committee. And, more importantly, I
want to commend you for your tireless, your honest, and your
open efforts in the last three-and-a-half months since this
disaster occurred.
Briefly, I would like to make three points. First, Admiral
Gehman and Administrator O'Keefe, I think you all have done an
outstanding job in responding to the concerns of Congress and
responding to our concerns insofar as the investigation Board
and its independence from NASA. When one looks at this tragedy
compared to that of the Challenger, the Columbia investigation,
in my view, is certainly more expeditious and certainly more
forthright; not to criticize the other, but I think you have
made a substantial, significant, and noticeable improvement in
that openness, forthrightness, and the speed in which you are
sharing that information and getting on it. I think that those
efforts are helping us, and you are to find the underlying and
contributing causes of this tragedy.
Secondly, I want to echo and underscore previous comments
about NASA's human space flight program. Virtually every aspect
of NASA depends on the success of the Shuttle and the human
space flight program. Generally, I look at space flight as a
means to a greater end, which is research and discovery and
exploration, and I know the brave crew of the Columbia engaged
in a wide variety of scientific research; in fact, research
that only could be done in space. I truly believe that if
anything good can come out of this tragedy, it would be a
reinvigorated focus on NASA and its primary mission of
scientific research that actually benefits people here, life
here on this planet. Some of the comments of the Chairman, in
my view, to the extent you end up funding extraneous matters
that are not the primary focus of NASA, it diminishes that
capability.
Now, finally and thirdly, I have previously raised concerns
about NASA in the area of one of its primary functions, which
is aeronautics, and also, insofar as space is concerned, the
advancements in technology; specifically, embracing some of the
advancements in nanotechnology, that I know Senator Wyden
shares my views on, as well as automation and robotics that
could potentially minimize the risks associated with human
space flight. I am interested in learning any specific areas
where NASA is embracing some of these advancements in
automation and robotics, which I believe are essential for us
here in Congress, as well as NASA, to work together to get that
right balance of humans, as well as the advancements in
robotics and automation to function in these scientific
research projects that are done in space.
And I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having this hearing, and
thank both gentlemen for your leadership.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Breaux?
STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN B. BREAUX,
U.S. SENATOR FROM LOUISIANA
Senator Breaux. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Very briefly, I think that it is good that we are having
this hearing. Out of the tragedy of Columbia, hopefully, can
come some good, and hopefully the good will be an assessment of
where we are and where we need to be, what steps need to be
taken to make sure that the launch vehicles for future flights
are safe and dependable. And I think that hopefully we can
start focusing in on what we need to do to meet the needs of
the future after we determine the reasons for the accident
itself.
One of the things that has given me great concern is that
there is no replacement vehicle for the Space Shuttle. Not only
is there not a replacement vehicle, there is not even anything
on the drawing Board. And if somebody came to the Administrator
tomorrow with the best designs for a new vehicle, it would take
a substantial amount of time to put that vehicle into
construction and, ultimately, into use. I mean, these are 15-,
20-year projects, at the very least. And right now I think the
failure of all of us is that we have not made preparation for
what is going to come after the Shuttle, and it's not a one-
week proposition; it's a 15-, 20-year proposition. And right
now there is nothing on the drawing Boards, and I think there
is probably a lot of fault to go around for all of us as to why
that is the situation.
But we thank our witnesses this morning.
[The prepared statement of Senator Breaux follows:]
Prepared Statement of John B. Breaux, U.S. Senator from Louisiana
The future of space flight will be composed of many things,
including a vehicle we trust, a program that makes sense and has a
clear and undeniable purpose, and an institution we think is designed
to take on the challenges of the future.
NASA was originally designed to take on a single challenge, single-
mindedly, and work until it was achieved. Since then, NASA has taken on
many other challenges that compete for NASA priority and compete for
funding in the national debate about space.
While we have seen steady progress in some areas of space--
including the marvels of the Hubble and our recent visits to the
planets Jupiter and Mars--we have seen many missteps in the human space
program, particularly in attempts to generate a second generation of
reusable launch and service technologies. Now, with the loss of
Columbia, we are far behind in these efforts, with no clear agenda
forward that we can see.
Today is a stage-setting hearing. We are anxious to hear the views
of Admiral Gehman about the accident he's been examining, and to hear
Mr. O'Keefe's response. And we are anxious to determine what happened
and what it means, how fast we can recover, and, at the end of process
that has yet to have begun, where we are going.
For too long we have had a national program in space, but not a
national commitment to space flight. The accident that occurred last
February is not the fault of any single individual--it is the fault of
anyone who did not contribute their best to this program that a very
few, our astronaut heroes, commit their lives to and others commit
their careers to.
Mr. Chairman, I think the future looks different from the past, but
I cannot today tell you how: A different vehicle; a different ambition;
a different way of doing business. Today is our first attempt to visit
these questions at a time I believe will be seen as a turning point in
the future of space. Let us get on with the debate, because our space
program has been waiting a very long time for this discussion.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Breaux.
I want to thank Administrator O'Keefe and Admiral Gehman
for their outstanding work. We will have some tough questions,
and I hope we can have some meaningful exchanges. But none of
that, I believe, will diminish the respect and appreciation
that we have for both of you and your service to this Nation.
We thank you.
Administrator O'Keefe, begin with you, please.
STATEMENT OF HON. SEAN O'KEEFE, ADMINISTRATOR,
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
Mr. O'Keefe. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of
the Committee.
Much has happened, I guess, since we last had an
opportunity, February 12th, for this Committee and the Joint
Committee with the House Science Committee, to discuss the
specific aspects of the Columbia tragedy.
First and foremost, over the course of the six weeks after
the tragedy, I have personally attended nine separate memorial
services and every funeral, which--I am still stunned, I think,
by the extraordinary effort that the Air Force, and the Navy,
particularly, went to render full honors to all of the members
of the crew of Columbia. It was an extraordinary effort, and I
think it honored and respected their memory in an extraordinary
way.
The recovery effort that occurred over the course of the
last 100 days was equally impressive and one that I do not
think anybody expected we would recover much more than about 10
percent of the orbiter. Instead, over the course of that time,
better than 20,000 people in 200 different federal, state, and
local agencies and departments from the State of Texas, State
of Louisiana, the various communities, as well as the Federal
Government, conducted the most impressive interagency,
intergovernmental recovery effort that has ever been recorded.
And, in the course of that time, there was no less than about
6,000 people in the East Texas/West Louisiana area that were
engaged actively every single day in working through an area
that is depicted on this particular chart, from a little
southeast of Dallas, Texas, into Vernon Parish in Louisiana,
that is the equivalent of--250 miles and about ten miles wide--
this is the equivalent, in acreage, to the size of the State of
Rhode Island. And the teams from NASA, the U.S. Forest Service,
the Environmental Protection Agency, and countless state and
local agencies and departments literally walked every single
acre of that area and recovered now what is the better part of
about 40 percent of the orbiter and what is equivalent to about
83,000 tons of the orbiter itself, which has now been shipped
to the Kennedy Space Center.
Our activities in that area demonstrate, I think, some of
the most remarkable efforts at interagency cooperation that is
a model for how that cooperative effort can be conducted in
pursuit of a common objective in ways that there were
absolutely no--and every single trip I made to the area was
stunned to see that there were absolutely no conflicts between
and among agencies, between state and local officials. The
Federal Emergency Management Agency conducted the primary
coordination of that effort, but it was one that required
little cooperative assistance or instigation on their part. It
was extremely well-handled and one that we are extremely proud
of and thankful to the Governor of the State of Louisiana and
the Governor of the State of Texas for their extraordinary
contributions, as well as cooperation, as we worked through
this.
This particular land area, I think, is--and, I guess, in
the category of remarkable developments, as well--is occupied
by about 400,000 citizens in a stunningly--inasmuch as this was
tragic and horrific for the loss of seven very important lives,
it is amazing that there were no other collateral-damage
efforts as a result of it. No one else was injured, all of the
claims have been very, very minor in dealing with these issues.
But an awful lot of debris was recovered, and the wreckage
itself has been, again, now reassembled, in large measure, at
the Kennedy Space Center, which is informing the investigation
in ways that we are exceeding our expectations in many
respects. I will certainly defer to Admiral Gehman on this
commentary on that point.
As it pertains to the cooperation with the Board itself,
there is no element of what they may desire, require, or need
that we have denied. And, indeed, our effort has been to
cooperate with the Board on each and every issue that is
necessary in order to reach a common objective, which is to
determine the truth, find the facts and the evidence to support
exactly what happened and how we may go about the process of
fixing it and return to flight safely as soon as we can.
In that regard, the return-to-flight efforts that we have
engaged in is, rather than wait for the final report to be
released, as Senator Breaux alluded, and Senator Wyden, as
well, there are a series of recommendations that the Board has
released as findings and recommendations thereafter that we are
beginning to implement now rather than waiting for that
activity to be in its totality. Our effort is to follow the
better than nine separate public hearings that have been
conducted, as well as the public commentary that has been
offered by the Board, in order to inform the kind of approaches
we need to take to return to flight expeditiously, but safely
in doing so. So there is a range of different recommendations
and findings that they have come up with that we are beginning
now to implement, and we will continue throughout the course of
their activity to engage in that activity as rapidly as we
possibly can.
Finally, I do want to thank the Board members for their
diligence, their literally six/seven-day-a-week activity that
they have conducted for the past 100 days. They were appointed
and assembled on the very first day of the accident, and have
been unceasing in their efforts since then to find the truth
and to find the evidence to support what happened on that day
so we may make those corrections and move on to safe flight
again.
In particular, I want to thank Admiral Gehman, who
responded to my call hours after that horrific accident and
pulled him out of retirement--blissful, I think, retirement--in
which he certainly had lots of other things to do than return
to public service in this situation. He has been relocated to
Houston, Texas, for the entire three-month period since that
time and has conducted what I think is a very thorough effort
to date at this point.
I thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. O'Keefe follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Sean O'Keefe, Administrator, National
Aeronautics and Space Administration
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, I appreciate the
opportunity to appear before the Committee with Admiral Gehman to
discuss our ongoing efforts to honor the solemn pledge we have made to
the families of the crew of Columbia and to the American people. That
pledge is that we will find out what caused the loss of the Space
Shuttle Columbia and its crew, correct what problems we find, and
safely continue with the important work in space that motivated the
Columbia astronauts and inspired millions throughout the world.
Much has happened since I appeared before this Committee and the
House Committee on Science at a joint hearing on February 12, less than
two weeks after the tragic accident.
Most importantly, a grateful Nation has laid to rest with full
honors six American heroes: Rick Husband, William McCool, Mike
Anderson, Dave Brown, Kalpana Chawla and Laurel Clark. The people of
the state of Israel also paid their final respects to Israel's first
astronaut, Ilan Ramon. We continue to be sensitive to, and supportive
of, the needs of the astronauts' families and will be at their side as
long as they desire our support.
We appreciate that the FY 2003 Omnibus Appropriations Act included
$50 million in funding to help pay for the costs of the recovery
operation and accident investigation by the Columbia Accident
Investigation Board (CAIB). We have established new accounting codes in
the NASA financial system, titled Columbia Recovery and Investigations,
to capture these costs. We are monitoring very closely the costs
associated with this effort and we will ensure that Congress is kept
apprised of our continued progress.
I would like to thank the Committee for their expeditious enactment
of the Columbia Orbiter Memorial Act which authorizes construction of a
Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery in recognition of the STS-107
Columbia astronauts. In addition, NASA has established the NASA Family
Assistant Fund which enables NASA employees to help provide for the
families of the STS-107 crew and families of other NASA employees who
have lost their lives while serving the Agency.
NASA is deeply grateful for the support we have received during
recovery operations from the men and women from the Department of
Homeland Security, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency,
National Transportation Safety Board, Environmental Protection Agency,
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Defense, Department of
Transportation, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Park Service, Texas and
Louisiana National Guard, State and local authorities, and private
citizen volunteers who have helped us locate, document, and collect
debris. In visiting with these folks, I can report to the Committee
that the morale and commitment of the recovery team was an inspiration
to me and to the entire NASA family. The outpouring of support from the
local businesses, community leaders and the citizens of East Texas have
especially humbled us. During the past three months there were
approximately 5,700 personnel in Texas at any one time involved in the
Shuttle material recovery. More than 20,000 people in all helped with
this effort.
The recovery operations, which stretched from San Francisco,
California to Lafayette, Louisiana, are essentially complete. Nearly
85,000 pounds of debris have been recovered, representing approximately
38 percent of Columbia's dry weight. Of the nearly 83,000 specific
items recovered from the accident, more than 79,000 have been
identified, with 762 of these coming from the left wing of the Orbiter.
We are continuing to search some remote areas in western Texas, Utah
and New Mexico.
As of May 5, the Lufkin Operations Center had completed searches in
all 169 Texas counties that reported Shuttle material sightings. The
Lufkin Center closed on May 10 and we have transitioned to a smaller
scale Recovery Operations Center located at the Johnson Space Center in
Houston. We are hoping that in the fall, when vegetation dies back,
hunters and campers may find additional debris. In fact, directions for
reporting any debris will be given to each hunter as he or she applies
for licenses.
I am saddened to note that one of the helicopters searching for
debris from the Space Shuttle Columbia crashed in the Angelina National
Forest in east Texas on March 27. Buzz Mier, the pilot and Charles
Krenek, a Texas Forest Service Ranger were killed in the crash, and
three other crewmembers were injured. Our thoughts and prayers go out
to the families of the helicopter crew members killed in the accident.
Using video of Columbia's re-entry provided by research
institutions and helpful citizens, along with radar and telemetry data,
we have identified several additional search areas in West Texas, Utah
and New Mexico. To date, no material in these areas has been positively
identified as coming from Columbia.
NASA Cooperation With Columbia Accident Investigation Board
The investigation of the CAIB is progressing. NASA recognizes the
need for a credible and thoroughly independent inquiry and is fully
cooperating with the Board.
The Contingency Action Plan and Standing Investigation Board were
activated within an hour after the Columbia accident. This standing
Board was the result of the lessons learned from the Challenger
accident in 1986, which indicated the importance of having a panel of
qualified investigators ready to initiate work immediately following an
accident. Subsequent to the Board's formation, we received advice and
counsel from Members of this Committee, as well as your colleagues in
the House of Representatives and others, that the Board's charter
should include revisions to guarantee its complete independence in the
investigation and to ensure that the investigation be as thorough as
possible. NASA has been responsive to these suggestions and has moved
expeditiously to make appropriate changes to the charter and to add
members to the Board to expand its composition.
More broadly, across our entire organization, NASA personnel are
cooperating with the work of the CAIB. We continue to coordinate and
categorize the collection of debris along the path of Columbia's re-
entry and reconstruct the orbiter at the Kennedy Space Center. We are
collecting and providing the Board with integrated image analysis and
data. We are conducting fault tree analyses to look at all possible
causes of the accident that the Board will independently validate.
In summary, the men and women of NASA fully understand and support
the important work of the CAIB. We look forward to learning from and
acting on the Board's recommendations.
Status of International Space Station and Hubble Space Telescope
While waiting for plans to be made for their return to Earth, the
ISS Expedition 6 crew--Commander Ken Bowersox, Science Officer Donald
Pettit, and Cosmonaut Flight Engineer Nikolai Budarin--continued to
perform science and routine ISS maintenance on orbit. The Expedition 7
crew--Edward Lu and Yuri Malenchenko--arrived at the ISS aboard the
Soyuz early Monday, April 29. The Expedition 6 crew returned to Earth
on May 3.
In the absence of Shuttle support, NASA and the International
Partners are addressing contingency requirements for the ISS for the
near-and long-term. In order to keep the Expedition 7 and future crews
safe, we must ensure that they have sufficient consumables, that the
ISS can support the crew, and that the crew is able to return safely to
Earth.
Working closely with our International Partners, we have confirmed
that the ISS has sufficient propellant to maintain nominal operations
through at least the end of this calendar year. With the docking of the
Progress re-supply spacecraft on February 4 (ISS Flight 10P), the crew
has sufficient supplies to remain on the ISS through August without
additional re-supply. The next Progress flight is scheduled for June.
As we move beyond June, however, potable water becomes the constraining
commodity. We are currently working closely with our Russian partner,
Rosaviakosmos, to explore how best to address this issue on future ISS
re-supply missions.
All remaining U.S. manufactured International Space Station
hardware for the Core Configuration has been delivered to the Kennedy
Space Center and element ground processing is on schedule. The Node 2
module for the Space Station, built for NASA by the European Space
Agency, will be delivered to the Kennedy Space Center by early this
summer. Only one Space Shuttle mission to the Space Station in the
critical path to U.S. Core Complete, STS-118, was scheduled to use
Columbia. A revised U.S. Core Complete assembly schedule and subsequent
deployment of international partner modules after installation of Node
2 will be confirmed when the Shuttle is ready to return to flight
status.
With respect to the Hubble Space Telescope, all of our remaining
Shuttle Orbiters are capable of supporting any necessary servicing
missions. Currently, the Hubble Space Telescope is performing well, and
this robust observatory is in no immediate need of servicing. Should a
delay in the planned November 2004 servicing mission occur that impacts
the Telescope's ability to perform its science mission, the Hubble can
be placed in safe mode until a servicing mission can be arranged.
Anticipating a Return to Flight
We have begun prudent, initial planning efforts to prepare for
``Return to Flight'' in order to be ready to implement the findings of
the CAIB. NASA's Return to Flight analysis will look across the entire
Space Shuttle Program to evaluate possible improvements in safety and
flight operations in addition to implementing all of the
recommendations of the Board.
I have selected Dr. Michael A. Greenfield, the Associate Deputy
Administrator for Technical Programs, to lead our Return to Flight
activity along with William Readdy, our Associate Administrator for
Space Flight. They will co-chair the newly formed Space Flight
Leadership Council. The Council is composed of the Associate
Administrator for Safety and Mission Assurance, the Deputy Associate
Administrator for International Space Station and Space Shuttle, and
the four Space Flight Center Directors. The Council will review and
assess each course of action recommended by the Return to Flight
Planning Team and provide direction to the Space Shuttle program for
implementation. The Return to Flight Planning Team is already working
to incorporate the CAIB's first two preliminary recommendations into
the Return to Flight strategy.
In the interest of assuring that NASA fully addresses each of the
CAIB's recommendations, I have asked Tom Stafford to lead a team that
will provide an independent assessment of NASA's strategy for
implementing the CAIB's recommendations. We are working to define the
full membership of the team.
I would also like to thank Admiral Gehman and the rest of the Board
members for the thorough and diligent manner in which they are
conducting their investigation. We are grateful for their efforts. We
will make our human space flight program better and safer because of
their work.
As I stated earlier in my testimony, we still have a long road to
travel until we can return the Shuttle to flight. The lessons of past
accident investigations tell us that we have reached a critical
juncture in the process of evidence gathering and analysis at which
patience is absolutely required. I commend the Members of this
Committee for their support of this vital investigation. We at NASA
look forward to continuing to work with the Committee to ensure that we
learn from this accident, move forward to develop and utilize the
capabilities that can best and safely help us achieve our national
objectives in Aeronautics and Space Research and Exploration.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for calling this important hearing. I look
forward to responding to your questions.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Admiral Gehman?
STATEMENT OF ADMIRAL HAROLD W. GEHMAN, JR., CHAIRMAN, COLUMBIA
ACCIDENT INVESTIGATION BOARD
Admiral Gehman. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Senator
Hollings, Members of the Committee. I appreciate the
opportunity to appear before you this morning.
Rather than read my statement, I will just ask that it be
entered into the minutes, and I will just----
The Chairman. Without objection.
Admiral Gehman. Thank you very much. And I will just make a
couple of brief points, and we can get on to business.
First of all, I would like to introduce a couple of my
fellow Board members, who are here today. Seated behind me is
Mr. Steve Wallace, the Chief of the Aviation Safety Division of
the FAA, and Dr. John Logsdon, from George Washington
University, who is the Chair of the Space Policy Division.
The Chairman. Welcome.
Admiral Gehman. And also, the real strength behind my move
to Houston, my wife, who's sitting behind, me, too.----
The Chairman. Welcome, Mrs. Gehman.
Admiral Gehman.--Members of the Committee----
The Chairman. Thank you for your service.
Admiral Gehman.--Members of the Committee, I am delighted
to appear before you and answer all of your questions fully and
completely on any matter that you would like to hear about. I
would have to say, however, that this report is not written.
And I will be delighted to give you my personal opinion, but
this is a Board of 13 members, some of whom feel very strongly
about some of these matters, and I do not want to overstate our
progress or get ahead of my headlights here. Many of the things
that you are interested in the Board has not decided upon.
So I will have to caveat my answers by, when I know that
the Board is comfortable with a subject or when the Board has
not even addressed the subject yet, and give you my personal
opinion. So if you will excuse me for that caveat right at the
beginning, that I am delighted to give you an interim report,
but we have not written this report yet.
The intent of our Board is to provide you with an
independent analysis and an independent review of not only this
accident and what caused it, but also a deep, rich, complete,
and intrusive inquiry into the entire manned space flight
program. The goal of our Board is to hit the target. The target
is determined by you, the Members of Congress. And in my
dialogue with Members of Congress, which I have found very
helpful, I have noticed that the target tends to move a little
bit, which is perfectly all right. And it is that dialogue
which allows me to adjust my aim, adjust my sights, so that we
meet your requirements.
Several Members of Congress have indicated to me that when
my work is finished, yours is just beginning, and, ``Please
don't hand me a half-baked loaf,'' and I understand that.
Our intent is to give you a complete, rich, deep review of
this program, a review which has not been conducted before by
any other Board. And in order to do that, we are using some
old, well-proven, tested tools that get into the culture and
the attitudes and the processes and the management and the
climate that cannot be gotten into by any other way.
Mr. Chairman, you, as a naval aviator, are very familiar
with the safety-review process that is used in several
agencies, and we have found, over the years, that that is a
process that allows you to get a look at an organization that
you cannot get by any other process.
So you really have two investigations in one here. You have
an accident investigation, what happened, that is being done in
complete public, with full disclosure, public hearings, interim
recommendations, lots of press conferences, plenty of
oversight; and then we have a safety investigation, which is
being conducted in accordance with procedures that have been
set up by several agencies in the Executive Branch, which
allows you to get the kind of look that you cannot get any
other way. It is the opinion of the Board that that will allow
us to write a report which will be of aid to Congress in a way
that no other review of NASA has ever given you before, and it
cannot be done any other way, in our opinion.
The Board is fully aware of the oversight responsibilities
of Congress. We are fully aware of your requirements. And we
are meeting right now, our staffs are meeting right now, to
find a way to fully meet all of your requirements in some
fashion or another, which I am advised, even though I am not an
expert at this, that these processes have been worked out
between the Executive Branch and the legislative branch many
times before, and there are processes to allow you complete
access to anything you want to see. So until we agree on all of
what those processes are, I do not want to get ahead of myself
here. But I do not see this as a problem, meeting the oversight
responsibilities of Congress in a way that is satisfactory to
you.
Meanwhile, the Board wants to hold onto this tool, which is
going to give you a better product, and a product that you will
not have had the advantage of having before. Enough said on
that.
This Board is completely independent. Contrary to some of
the--I have got to watch my words here--headlines of the past,
NASA does not pay our salaries; you pay our salaries. The
Congress enacted a $50 million grant to conduct this
investigation. NASA keeps the books for me, but I spend that
money. So somehow suggesting that members of this Board are
influenced by the way the records are kept, I find to be
somewhat naive.
I also would like, on behalf of the Board, to recognize and
acknowledge the work of the thousands and thousands and
thousands of volunteers who have spent weeks and weeks walking
through the State of Texas picking up debris. This serves two
purposes, one of which is a public-safety purpose, because some
of this debris is hazardous, and to get it up and out of the
ground and out of the streets and schoolyards and public places
is very important.
The second point that I would make is that it turns out
that the analysis of this debris and the reconstruction of this
debris has been very important to this Board's work. It turns
out it was more important than we ever thought it would be. We
have learned a lot of things from analyzing and learning from
the debris. So it turns out that that work turned out to be
more critical and more important than we thought it would be at
the first, and we owe a great debt of gratitude to a whole lot
of people who are never going to get their names in the paper
and their pictures on the paper. So I would like to second
that, too.
Let us see. And I think that with the exception of the
points that I make in my prepared statement, I think that I
best could serve this Committee if I stopped and responded to
the questions.
Thank you for the opportunity, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Gehman follows:]
Prepard Statement of Admiral Harold W. Gehman, Jr., Chairman, Columbia
Accident Investigation Board
Good morning Mr. Chairman, Senator Hollings, distinguished Members
of the Committee.
It is a pleasure to appear today before the Commerce, Science and
Transportation Committee. I thank you for inviting me and for the
opportunity to provide an update on the progress of the investigation
into the tragic loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia and her courageous
crew of seven.
My intent today is to provide the Committee with the latest
information on the progress and direction of the Columbia Accident
Investigation Board and its three and a half months of investigation. I
am prepared to explore any area in which you or the Committee are
interested; however, in order to be concise I've limited my prepared
remarks to these three areas:
The Board itself
The accident investigation
Matters beyond the initiating event
I. The Board Itself
Within an hour after the accident, Administrator O'Keefe activated
the accident contingency plan and the standing mishap Board that was
called for by NASA procedure--a procedure adopted based upon lessons
learned from the Challenger accident. The standing Board, excluding the
Chairman, had seven members appointed by position, not name. These are
positions such as the Commander of the Air Force Safety Center, the
Commander of the Navy Safety Center, the Director of the Federal
Aviation Administration's Office of Accident Investigation and the
Division Manager of the Department of Transportation's Aviation Safety
Division, among others. These experts are all Federal Government
employees. They are arguably some of, if not the, most experienced and
knowledgeable aircraft accident investigators in the world.
To augment this standing Board, we immediately started adding non-
government, non-NASA people, starting with me. As the need for
additional expertise and the amount of actual work grew, I added, in my
capacity as Chairman of the Accident Investigation Board, a total of
five more non-government, non-NASA Board members. This brings us to
where we are now: Thirteen Board members, which just happens to be the
same as the number of members of the Rogers Commission. Only one of
these professionals has any significant connection with NASA.
I want to emphasize that our Board members are active
investigators, not passive listeners. We are in session seven days a
week and have been since the first week. We have developed a staff that
is almost exclusively non-NASA. We are following many precedents set by
the Rogers Commission, including using the Department of Justice to
archive records and using frequent public hearings to allow our
progress to be monitored by all of our constituents. We are taking all
possible advantage of other organizations with applicable expertise.
These include, among others, the National Transportation Safety Board,
the Department of Defense, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, the National Safety Council and the Federal Emergency
Management Agency, just to name a few.
Mr. Chairman, as a Naval Aviator, I am sure you will appreciate the
significance of the Board's extensive use of the special tools
available to us under the rubric of a safety investigation. We are
gaining insights into areas we would not be privy to under other
investigatory models. The benefit of this process will flow directly to
you and your Committee in the form of a deeper and much more complete
view into Shuttle Program processes, management, safety programs and
quality assurance.
II. The Accident Investigation
The Board has made excellent progress in gaining a precise picture
of the environment and forces acting on the Columbia in her last ten
minutes of flight. Through detailed and exhaustive scientific and
engineering analysis and through just plain hard work, we have
determined the facts related to the loss of the Shuttle and her crew.
While I cannot lay out for you with absolute certainty the entire chain
of events that led to this catastrophe, I can tell you that the pieces
of this puzzle, particularly regarding the mechanics of the accidents,
are fitting together with increasing precision and consistency.
As a means for cross-checking the consistency of our evidence and
findings, we are simultaneously building six separate ``pictures'' or
scenarios of the accidence sequence. These ``pictures'' may be labeled:
The aerodynamic scenario
The thermodynamic scenario
The detailed system timeline from telemetry and recovered
on-board recorder
The photographic and videographic scenario
The story the debris reconstruction and analysis tell us,
and
The story the records of maintenance and modification work
tell us . . . .
We have developed each picture quite accurately; we then overlay
the scenarios one on the other to find the best fit. All six scenarios
point toward the same conclusion: that the Columbia entered the Earth's
atmosphere with a pre-existing deformation in the leading edge of the
left wing. That deformation allowed super-heated air, well above 3,000
+F, to get into the wing's internal structure over a period of 10
minutes. After a few minutes, the heat-damaged wing began encountering
significant aerodynamic forces with which it could not cope.
When traveling at over 12,500 miles per hour, it doesn't take a lot
of damage to create significant heat and significant aerodynamic
forces. Because the Shuttle maintained a nominal flight path and
altitude until the very end, we believe the accident itself was sudden
and catastrophic. Mr. Chairman, while the Board ultimately expects to
speak with a high degree of confidence regarding the entire accident
scenario, at present we are not entirely confident that we know for
certain what physical event initiated the failure chain of events. We
are all aware that the left wing was struck by External Tank insulating
foam 81 seconds after launch, but to date, we are still looking for
hard evidence that this foam strike caused any damage to the left wing.
We are conducting tests now to help fill in this critical link in the
chain of events.
III. Matters Beyond the Initiating Event
Defining the point of the origin and timing of the failure sequence
is extraordinarily important, but this by itself does not satisfy our
requirement to find both the contributing and underlying causes of this
accident. We also must determine why and how this failure process got
started in the first place. We are looking in parallel at all related
processes that pertain to the Shuttle system as a whole. These
processes include, but are not limited to: safety, risk management
policies and practices, quality assurance, maintenance practices,
consistency in control of waivers and anomalies, turnaround processes,
preparations to launch, work force issues, budgets, and the group
dynamics of all Boards and committees that NASA has set up to ensure
inter-disciplinary coordination.
Mr. Chairman, the Board intends to draft a final report that places
this accident in context. By ``in context'' I mean we will attempt to
build a complete picture of how this accident fits into the complicated
mosaic of budget trends, the myriad previous external reviews of NASA
and the Shuttle Program, the implementation of Rogers Commission
recommendations, changing Administrations and changing priorities,
previous declarations of estimates of risk, work force trends,
management issues and several other factors--each of which may
contribute to a safer program to a greater or lesser degree.
We on the Board are fully aware that when our work is finished,
your work will be just beginning. We have set a high intellectual bar
for the Board to clear. That bar is this: our report will be of
sufficient depth and breadth that it will serve as the basis for a
complete public policy debate on the future of the Space Shuttle
Program. We believe we can both find the cause of this accident and
relate it to these other issues.
As we find items relevant to the return to flight decision, we have
and will continue to release those results in the form of interim
findings and recommendations, similar to the way the National
Transportation Safety Board does in its aircraft accident
investigations. These will both keep the Congress, the Administration,
and the public informed of our progress and allow for interim work at
NASA to proceed as quickly as possible.
Mr. Chairman, speaking for the 13 dedicated experts on the Board
and the thousands of people working to solve this mystery, I can assure
you, the astronauts' families, and the American people that we will
spare no effort to get to the bottom of this. I estimate that we are
better than half done. We have all the assets and expertise we need, or
we know where and how to get it.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This concludes my prepared remarks and I
look forward to your questions.
The Chairman. Thank you. Thank you both.
There are several issues that I would like to address, and
we may have to have subsequent rounds. But the first issue I
want to discuss with you concerns whether satellite photos
could have been taken of the Columbia. And if so, would it have
mattered in helping prevent this tragedy?
Now, from my standpoint, here is what happened. I was
notified shortly after the tragedy, in a highly classified
fashion, that the National Imaging and Mapping Agency had
offered to take satellite photos of the Columbia in order to
ascertain whether, if any or the extent of, the damage was a
result of the foam striking the capsule on launch.
Now, I was originally briefed that the offer was rebuffed
by NASA and that the offer had been made on several occasions.
I consulted Senator Hollings, and we discussed it and sent a
letter to Administrator O'Keefe asking for information
concerning this situation.
It is still not clear to me what happened, who is
responsible, and whether a picture or imaging could have been
rendered, if it had been given sufficient priority, which may
have provided information that would have at least alerted NASA
and the people on-board Columbia that there was a significant
problem.
So Admiral Gehman, you may not have reached any conclusion
on that yet. But I would like to hear information from both you
and Mr. O'Keefe, beginning with you, Administrator O'Keefe.
Mr. O'Keefe. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am certainly going to be a bit circumspect in the
response, given how chary the intelligence community is about
discussing the full extent of the quality of the imagery that
is made available or the products that are available from the
intelligence community. But as we have discussed----
The Chairman. Could I just remind you, Senator Hollings and
I communicated to you in a classified fashion. It was not until
information was in the media that we felt free to discuss this
issue.
Mr. O'Keefe. Oh, yes, sir. No, no.
The Chairman. Go ahead.
Mr. O'Keefe. And in response to your joint letter, recall
that, immediately, we responded on an unclassified basis, as
well as classified information, to provide that information, as
well. And then we have discussed this several times in closed
session.
Nonetheless, the procedure that was followed during the
course of this operation, and prior, was the National Imagery
and Mapping Agency had an agreement with NASA that, upon our
request, they would provide products from the assets that they
operate. That procedure required a level of import that had to
be attached to it, whether it was routine, an emergency,
urgent, you know, et cetera, that kind of--``How serious is
your problem,'' essentially was the nature of the MOU.
In this particular context, there was certainly the
dialogue that goes on every day between NASA and NIMA on
matters of availability of assets in which there were offers
rendered in which they asked that there be some attachment of
urgency to it. Based on all of the Mission Management Team's
assessment in that 16-day mission, their judgement was there
was no safety-of-flight consideration. So we have certainly
asked the agency to make available those products to the extent
that was available and easy to do on a normal, routine basis.
Given the other priorities, which we are totally unaware of
that NIMA has and has to respond to, their judgment about
exactly how that is made available is their call. If we had
said, ``We have an urgent matter. We need you to take, use, or
employ your assets for the purposes of releasing those
products,'' they would have done so. We had no basis upon which
to determine an urgency. That was a judgment call. We now
realize that, given the circumstances, that may have been of
greater utility. But at the time, in order to meet that
criteria, we would had to have put a matter of some urgency
attached to it.
As a consequence of this, and based on the findings and
recommendations of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board,
which was among the first two they have released, I have re-
enjoined with General Clapper at NIMA and have asked him
specifically to, ``Let's disregard the MOU, let's rewrite it,''
and to simply make available imagery on every future
operational mission as it comes available, period, without any
qualification of its urgency or emergency requirements or
anything else.
The quality of that imagery, of course, always depends upon
a range of factors, and, as a consequence, there is no
comparability between each and every available product, as it
were. So, as a consequence, we will get wide-ranging degrees of
quality of what may be useful in the future. But, nonetheless,
we will get it, and there will be no ambiguity about that
procedure. That MOU is being, the memorandum of understanding
the two agencies, is in the process of being redrafted with
that specific understanding between the two agencies
unambiguous.
The Chairman. You have no idea as to whether that imagery
would have revealed there was a problem.
Mr. O'Keefe. Again, without describing what the extent of
their quality is, let me simply say that the Tom Clancy novels
would have us believe that the quality is extraordinary. They
may not be as close to that reality as the novelists would have
us believe. And, on that basis, it depends on a whole range of
variables, and it is purely speculation on whether or not any
of the products would have been of sufficient information to
have given us any understanding. Indeed, I think Admiral
Gehman's Board investigation process, while it has not yet
determined what was the cause, the initial factor that caused
this, it may well have been something that might not have been
even determining based on any use of any product from any
intelligence source.
The Chairman. I appreciate the indulgence of my colleagues.
My time has expired, but I would like to hear from Admiral
Gehman on this rather important issue.
Admiral Gehman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You happened to hit on a good first question, because, as
you may know, the Board has issued a recommendation on this
subject, and, therefore, this is something the Board has agreed
upon.
My evaluation when we write this section probably will be a
little more critical than the Administrator's description.
There are a number of issues here. We will attempt to pin this
issue down in our report. But there were a number of
bureaucratic and administrative missed signals here. There is
no one person responsible; there are a whole lot of people
responsible. The system did not work in this particular case.
And I would not blame that on any one person.
We have listened to a lot of people, and we have gotten
quite a bit of testimony on who said what to whom, and we have
tracked the issue, we diagrammed it out, and we are a little
disappointed at how the process worked. That is why we issued
this recommendation. We were a little disappointed in what some
of the senior people knew and understood about how you get
these images and what the images can do for you. They did not
understand. Some people in decision-making processes did not
fully understand what they were talking about here. Some cases,
people made decisions based on an erroneous understanding of
what was happening. There were missed signals going up, and
there were missed signals going down, too. And we are not quite
so happy with the process. We thought that there were some
administrative and bureaucratic missed opportunities here. So
we will be a little more critical of the process in our report.
Now, whether or not it would have made any difference, we
will not be able to speak to that. Since we do not know the
mechanical, physical initiating event, the--we do believe that
the orbiter entered the Earth's atmosphere with a pre-existing
flaw. But that flaw could be as small as two inches by two
inches, or it could be larger. So whether or not any
photography could have detected that is pretty argumentative.
But when we speak to the old-timers, some of the original
flight engineers and flight directors and astronauts, they give
us a slightly different view. They all say, ``None of that
makes any difference. This is a test vehicle. Of course you
want pictures just so you know, and all the rest of this stuff
is bureaucratic fumbling and bumbling.''
So I can answer part of your question. The Board has
investigated this. As illustrated by our interim
recommendation, we have satisfied ourselves that this process
did not work, that it was no one person's failure, but we
cannot determine, to any satisfaction, that it would have made
any difference.
I hope that answers your question, sir.
The Chairman. Senator Hollings?
Senator Hollings. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Admiral Gehman, right from the get-go, what about the
Chairman's observation that we need to have every statement,
every bit of information that you folks on the commission of
inquiry have made? Can we have all of those, or have
confidentiality agreements been made to give cover for some of
those statements that, in other words, cannot be made public or
cannot be given to the Committee? What is your answer to the
Chairman's request that we have all the information you have?
Admiral Gehman. Thank you, Senator.
As I indicated in my opening remarks, it is our belief that
the Congress of the United States will get a better report from
us----
Senator Hollings. Well, I know we are going to get a better
report. Let me ask, Have you given confidentiality agreements
to anybody in this investigation whereby their statements will
not be available to this Committee?
Admiral Gehman. We have, Senator, but----
Senator Hollings. Well, there you go.
Admiral Gehman.--but that does not mean that their
statements will not be available to this Committee. We have
conducted witness interviews, in accordance with the safety
procedures used by several branches of the executive branch,
and there are processes by which this Committee can have access
to those. And, as I indicated in my opening statement, those
processes are now being negotiated by our staffs.
Senator Hollings. Well, I am not clear yet. One minute you
say you have given confidentiality agreements, and then you
have got to argue with lawyers and so forth as to whether we
get them. But anyway, that is by the pale.
The real important question is, could anything have been
done to save those astronauts? Now, we know from Appollo 13
about the ingenuity of NASA engineers. And you have got an
ingenious group, Admiral, you and I have discussed it, and they
know how to work and go and implement.
I disagree with the distinguished Administrator's
observation that there was no urgency. The truth is, within 81
seconds, we knew that insulation had caused damage. The truth
is that two days thereafter, the engineers were calling up and
asking for an investigation and pictures. Boeing, I guess it
was, made the investigation on potential foam damage, but they
did not report until day 12. Now, that there would go along
with the Administrator's ``no urgency,'' but you had urgency on
the other side. Namely, the Mapping Agency was calling up and
saying, ``We can get pictures. We can get pictures.'' You had
the engineers calling for imagery. You call it ``bureaucratic''
and ``missed signals.'' But, really, it was not until, like I
said, day 12 that he found out, ``Wait a minute, we should have
done something.''
Could anything have been done? I have talked to an
astronaut or two, and they think that, yeah, you could have
gotten another Shuttle up; otherwise, you could have turned
that around for re-entry so the cool side would be to where the
damage had been inflicted. There are all kind of maneuvers that
could have been made. But it just looks to me like somebody
that saw that in charge just all of a sudden just crossed their
fingers and said, ``Well, it has worked before, let us hope it
works again,'' and just, ``Cool it, cool it. No, no, we do not
want any pictures.'' In other words, they were refusing to get
the pictures, not on account of urgency. The urgency was there.
What is your comment, Admiral?
Admiral Gehman. Senator, we, as a Board, early in this
investigation, considered the question about, What, if
anything, could have been done, or how close did the astronauts
come to surviving this? And in the early part of this
investigation, the Board decided that there were still too many
emotions and too many egos and too many feet stuck in concrete
to address that. Now, three months later in this investigation,
we know more, some of the emotions are off the sleeves now a
little bit, and we have just directed and just begun a formal
inquiry into what could have been done. That inquiry is about
ten days old. We think that the emotions are out of it. Some of
the reluctance to discuss these things have--we have got a
little separation of time now, so people can be cooler about
this.
That investigation is going on right now jointly with our
Board and a bunch of real smart people from NASA. And it is
headed in a direction--it is too early to say--we have not
found any magic fix. Let me put it that way. But I will say
that it is inconceivable that we would come up with the answer
that we could do nothing. I mean, of course, we would do
something. And we have determined that, for example, that--the
estimate of how long the orbiter could just hang up there, for
example, the harder we dig into that, the longer that day gets.
It turns out that they could have stayed in orbit a couple more
days, more than a couple more days. And it turns out that the
more we dig into this, the longer that number gets, and it
gives you more opportunities to do things. And even if we came
up with a fix that only had a 10 percent chance of succeeding--
--
Senator Hollings. We would have tried.
Admiral Gehman.--of course, we would have done something.
Absolutely. So, thus far, this review, which I have looked at
myself, I have found it to be pretty aggressive and pretty well
thought out, has not found any magic formula, but has found
several steps that could have been done to mitigate this. We
may find more. But this is tough work for people who are
closely associated with the program, and they are doing a good
job of it. So maybe I will be able to get back to you later on.
But doing nothing is obviously not the right answer.
Senator Hollings. Bless you.
How about Mr. O'Keefe?
Mr. O'Keefe. Thank you, Senator.
I do not disagree with your assessment, Senator. It was a
judgment call. It was clearly the wrong judgment. And as a
consequence--I mean, what we know now, hindsight being the
circumstance, there are a variety of signals that could have
gone--or told us what we should have been observing and what we
could have corrected. Nonetheless, the judgment by the Mission
Management Team at the time was--they looked at the 16-day
mission, they said, ``Every one of the things we have
observed''--all the spirited debate that you refer to; you are
exactly right, lots of dialogue back and forth--in the end,
they made a determination and said, ``Do we think this is a
more urgent circumstance than we have ever experienced
before?'' And the answer, rightly or wrongly, was they felt, in
their judgment, this was not outside the normal. That certainly
proved to be an erroneous judgment.
So, you know, looking back on this, there is no question.
The clarity is there. At the time they went through it, the
Mission Management Team certainly looked at that. I concur
entirely with Admiral Gehman's assessment. But had there been a
different determination, we would have spared nothing to find a
way to return the orbiter and the crew safely to this planet.
No question.
Senator Hollings. But just one little observation. Of
course, it does look like the judgment was made that it was
urgent and it was perhaps a fatal injury to the Shuttle itself,
and they determined to make sure that that was not proved by
not taking pictures and those kind of things. Those are the
things that worry us on the Committee.
Mr. O'Keefe. Yes, sir.
Senator Hollings. It looks like they knew it, and there was
the urgency, and they knew about the urgency and everything
else, but they tried to sort of cover up the urgency.
Mr. O'Keefe. Well, if I could--yes, Senator. I entirely
concur in Admiral Gehman's assessment of this. When you look at
the memorandum of agreement between NASA and NIMA, there is
nothing that really jumps out at you and says, ``Geez, this
looks like it is going to be a really bureaucratic procedure.''
In practice, it proved to be absolutely impossible to implement
correctly. It was the wrong way to go about doing it. We have
corrected that. There is no ambiguity about this point.
General Clapper and I have had some very specific, direct
words on how to arrange this, and there is going to be no
ambiguity on this point in the future. But there was nothing
that would scream off that page of the memorandum of
understanding that says, ``What we have here is an impractical
or impossible situation.'' In practice, I agree entirely with
the way Admiral Gehman described it. It is something that you
have got folks who do not know or were not aware of the quality
of what could be available, and then a procedure that
ultimately turned on the determination of NASA about what other
priorities the intelligence community may require, singularly
unqualified to make that judgment call. And so, as a
consequence, it ground itself down to the null set, and that is
what we have fixed. There is no ambiguity about this procedure
any longer.
It is infuriating to see how that process played out, and I
share your absolute frustration with the fact that that should
not have occurred that way.
The Chairman. And it is equally infuriating that no one is
responsible. Those decisions were not made by machines. Someone
is responsible.
Mr. O'Keefe. Yes, sir.
The Chairman. Senator Allen?
Senator Allen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me switch from this line of questioning to the current
operations. The Space Shuttle, while it is an old craft, it is
still the most capable, it is reusable, it can carry loads, as
well as, obviously, crew members, up to the Space Station. It
is clearly a national asset that is currently grounded. My
question is regarding the future of the Shuttle and the
International Space Station. Specifically, what is our strategy
that will be guiding the operation of the Space Station while
the Space Shuttle is grounded?
Mr. O'Keefe. Yes, sir, thank you.
Our partnership with the International Space Station
partners of 16 Nations has demonstrated the depth of that
partnership by responding and stepping up when we need that
capability most; in particular, our Russian partners, and the
Rosaviakosmos, the Russian Space Agency, have responded in a
remarkable way, not only by accelerating the logistics flights
that are necessary to resupply the International Space Station,
but also to honor their commitments previously made to launch
the Soyuz spacecraft, which will now be used for crew-rotation
purposes.
I was in Russia weekend before last to, after several tense
hours, welcome home the Expedition 6 crew, Ken Bowersox, Don
Pettit, and Nikolai Budarin. And, just days before, Ed Lu and
Yuri Malenchenko were launched on the Soyuz to man the Space
Station as it is today on Expedition 7. So that rotational
pattern will continue, and we will then maintain a capability
there that, again, our International Space Station partnership
has stepped up to the task of maintaining that capability
independent of the Shuttle's operation.
The catch is we cannot continue to build the International
Space Station, complete it, until we return to flight safely.
And so the imperative for moving ahead, finding the problem,
fixing it, and responding by returning to safe flight is the
imperative of building the International Space Station and
conducting the activities that we had planned and worked
through for so long.
Senator Allen. Well, implicitly, if we are doing simple
math, we are sending two crew members now, rather than three,
which then gets to the question of its capabilities and can two
do as many as three. And then, following that is what is the
strategy of NASA insofar as the balance between the use of
manned space flight versus robotic satellites?
Mr. O'Keefe. Yes, sir. Well, the maintenance of Expedition
7, as well as each crew hereafter that will be launched on
Soyuz or recovered by the return of the attached Soyuz flight
that is aboard now, is what is required to maintain continued
safe operations of the International Space Station. It is a,
you know, lights-on, fluids-running, you know, kind of
maintenance capability, and some science. There is not a
complete diminution of that. They are not just there as an
engineering or maintenance crew, but they are--it does
guarantee safety-of-flight operations and keeping it at the
appropriate altitude in order to maintain safe operations.
So the diminution of one is more a function of how many
folks can you support with logistics flight, the progress
flights that are sent now--five a year is what we are
planning--in order to maintain the logistics, the consumables--
food, water, you know, repair spare parts, et cetera--and that
is adequate in order to support two, not three. We could have
maintained a longer or more extended presence of three crew
members through early fall, but that would have drawn down the
consumables faster, so we elected to make the change to two
crew members earlier.
In terms of what is the future of human space flight and
the imperative thereof, certainly this tragedy reminds us of
the extraordinary risk that is taken when humans are engaged in
space exploration. And in doing so, it means we have to
absolutely convince ourselves of the imperative of why humans
need to be involved in certain mission activities.
As it pertains to the operations aboard the International
Space Station, I think in the opening comments from so many
Members here of the Committee, particularly your statement that
this be a science-driven research enterprise, indeed, that is
its primary purpose. A lot of that can be done robotically. A
lot of it can be done remotely. Some of it cannot. It requires
human interaction and activity in order to divine the kind of
science and research activities and experimentation that is
necessary. The Hubble Space Telescope, classic example, again,
of why human space flight is a very important element of the
overall equation. Because when we launched the capability ten
years ago, it was determined to be out of focus and was widely
deemed to be a $1 billion piece of space junk. It has come back
from the ashes as a consequence of that because of human
interaction. Were it not for the capacity on the part of humans
to make adjustments to that piece of machinery that could not
be done remotely, it would have remained a billion-dollar piece
of space trash. Today, it is rewriting the astronomy books,
based on what we are learning from it, because of human
interaction.
So we have got to be very selective, very careful, on how
we engage in human space flight and expose the risk only when
you see the imperative is there for human interaction required.
But, beyond that, I do not see a circumstance under which we
would eliminate it entirely.
Senator Allen. But you do see an increased value in it----
Mr. O'Keefe. Yes, sir.
Senator Allen.--as advancements go forward.
Mr. O'Keefe. Absolutely. No question at all.
Senator Allen. My time is concluded. Thank you both.
Mr. O'Keefe. Thank you, Senator.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Wyden?
Senator Wyden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thank
you.
And beginning with you, if I might, Mr. O'Keefe, and
explore something with you that really goes back to the days
when I chaired the Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and
Space, now chaired very well by our colleague, Senator
Brownback. And my sense, Mr. Administrator, is that there is
really an urgent need for a thorough overhaul of the way people
within NASA communicate with each other. If you look, for
example, at the kinds of things that we are talking about here,
and Senator Hollings and Chairman McCain have gotten into it,
what we see is it just does not seem that the people on the
front lines, the engineers, seem to feel that they are getting
through to people up at the top. And you hear that again and
again and again.
Now, I recognize that we are still in the preliminary kinds
of stages in this area, but I would be interested in your
sense, at this point, (a) whether you think that there really
is a need for significant change at NASA with respect to how
people communicate with each other, and (b) what you think some
of the elements of--if you feel that way, what some of the
significant elements of those changes ought to be.
Mr. O'Keefe. Yes, sir. Well, thank you, Senator.
I do not disagree that we have got to constantly work to
open the communications to garner and divine everyone's best
judgment, advice, and opinion on the engineering and technical
challenges we experience on a regular basis. There are two
things that apply on this one that I have come to--looking at
the record and all the E-mail traffic and all the reviews of
what has occurred here.
The first one is that in this age of modern information
technology, what we have created, again, as a consequence of
it, is a very egalitarian process. When you look at the wiring
diagrams of who was talking to who, who was E-mailing who, it
was independent of where they fit on the overall hierarchical
chain. There is nothing monolithic about how that approach was
taken. Indeed, you have junior engineers communicating with
very senior people in the organization on what they thought,
and responding on that basis. So the Mission Management Team
that conducted the in-flight-operations coordination effort
encouraged and received an awful lot of commentary, from not
just the folks within the space flight community, but outside
of it, and solicited commentary from others. So that part is
the good news.
The problem is it is much like anything else, where you are
encouraging volume. It becomes a cacophony. You cannot quite
put it in context, and, therefore, judgment calls get made.
And that is the second part that really is a pattern here
that it concerns me a bit. We engage in an unbelievably rigid
process leading up to launch. The flight-readiness reviews and
so forth, everything prior to that is a very methodical effort
that is a very hard lesson learned from Challenger in which
everyone is encouraged to pipe up. There are all kinds of
interaction. And then as soon as the operation begins, it
becomes a group of folks in the Mission Management Team.
You know, this derives from, I think, a very tried-and-true
kind of military operational procedure in which you want to
hear lots of commentary; but, in the end, somebody has got to
have the operational control of how this works and make
decisions about it. There is a little less of a rigidity to
that process, for good reason, in order to maintain flexibility
and to be adaptive to circumstances as they present themselves.
But, nonetheless, this clearly--this indicates that yes,
indeed, the premise of your question is right on. We need to
really examine this carefully, not because there is not enough
interaction, but its quality is confused. It is in volume, but
not in any organized manner.
And in terms of how the operational management of a mission
is conducted, it does not lend itself as well, from what I can
divine, towards any prioritization of those observations.
So yes, indeed, sir, I am committed to that, looking at how
we overhaul that function, and encouraging what is good about
it and figuring out how to put some organization to it to make
it meaningful.
Senator Wyden. The other area I wanted to ask about, we
have talked, obviously, about one of the recommendations, the
preliminary recommendations, of the Columbia Accident
Investigation Board with respect to the imaging issue, and I am
pleased to see that you would have handled that issue
differently. But what about the other recommendation calling
for a comprehensive inspection plan to look at the structural
integrity of the reinforced carbon-carbon system components?
Mr. O'Keefe. Sure.
Senator Wyden. Now, this, again, is a preliminary
recommendation from the Accident Investigation Board, but
certainly people have asked me, having been involved in these
issues, why something like this was not done before the
tragedy, and I am sure there are some technical questions in
this area, but I would like to get your response for the record
on that.
Mr. O'Keefe. Yes, sir. Thank you, Senator.
Indeed, this is an area that the finding and the
recommendation of the Board--you know, I will defer to Admiral
Gehman in terms of the approaches they looked at to come to
this conclusion; but, nonetheless, their finding and
recommendation was right on the mark. These are the kinds of
things that we need to develop.
The catch is, I am advised by our technical community, the
engineering folks, that there is no specific nondestructive
testing method that is available to do and accomplish what is
necessary while the leading edge is in place. And so, as a
consequence, we work with our friends and colleagues at the
Langley Research Center to develop such a technique, because
there has been a lot of work on it, and a lot of folks have
been talking about it trying to figure out how to do this, but
there is no known technique where you can just simply say,
``Let's go get that approach,'' and go do it. Instead, what it
requires, you take the leading edge off and then examine it
through a variety of different techniques rather than in place.
And in doing so, the engineers are of the view that that, in
turn, creates, unintentionally, the prospect that you may
further damage or compromise the seals at each of the points of
the leading edge itself. So what we have got to find is a
nondestructive testing method in place in order to do this.
Now, having said that, during the course of every OMM
process, which is the major maintenance process where you tear
down the orbiter essentially every eight to ten flights,
typically they will be removed and inspected through that
process, or replaced, if need be. On Columbia, I believe, and I
will defer to Admiral Gehman on the specifics of this, but some
number of those leading-edge panels were replaced, but not all
of them. Some of them were original material. And so the actual
inspection of them may have been, and certainly was, inadequate
during the course of that. But we are trying to develop a
technique that would do just that.
Senator Wyden. Mr. Chairman, if we could just get the
Admiral's response on it, because I think the point Mr. O'Keefe
was making is that to have really done the job as
comprehensively as the Administrator would have liked, you
needed to develop some new technology, and there were, I think
I caught in the Administrator's comments, some flaws, even in
terms of the inspection process that was used.
If that is the case, Admiral, could you tell us your
thoughts with respect to the flaws in the inspection process?
Because I have not heard that on the record.
Admiral Gehman. Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.
Once again, I will differ slightly in my analysis from the
Administrator's analysis. Of the 44 panels on the two wings of
the Columbia, 44 RCC panels, only three had been replaced. The
other 41 are original equipment. They are 25 years old. The
question is, Does anyone know whether or not those carbon-
laminate pieces--which are not fiberglass, but think of
fiberglass--which are subjected to weather and lots of other
things, does anyone know the condition of those panels? And the
Board was not satisfied that, like any other aircraft which is
approaching its 20th or 25th year, an extensive amount of
aircraft-aging analysis is done. The Board was not satisfied
that a similar engineering kind of pattern was being followed
by NASA.
And, indeed, every once in a while some of these panels are
returned to the manufacturer--for example, if there is a visual
flaw--and the manufacturer does these introspective,
nondestructive kinds of testing. And guess what? On occasion,
we find flaws, serious flaws, which are not visible to the
naked eye. That led us to believe that we have a condition
here--or we have an unknown condition. The Board is not saying
there is anything wrong with those RCC panels; the Board is
saying that NASA does not know the condition of 25-year-old
panels and that this is a big flaw.
And we, of course, wanted to make sure we did not say
anything that was factually incorrect or anything like that, so
we consulted experts inside/outside NASA. And, oh, by the way,
when we consulted experts at NASA, we got the same pushback
that the Administrator got, ``Oh, by the way, the systems are
not perfect. Yeah, we'll have to take them off in order to do
this.'' But we found that to be not relevant to our discussion.
You cannot fly an orbiter with 25-year-old pieces of equipment
that you do not know the condition of them.
Senator Wyden. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
The Chairman. Senator Snowe?
STATEMENT OF HON. OLYMPIA J. SNOWE,
U.S. SENATOR FROM MAINE
Senator Snowe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
How many people would have been involved in the decision-
making, once it was recognized after the Shuttle launch that
damage had been done?
Mr. O'Keefe. I will have to get you a head count for the
record, but the Mission Management Team is composed of folks
from the Johnson Space Center, the Marshall Space Flight
Center, Kennedy Space Center; and primarily at Johnson, because
mission control is operated there out of Houston. It is a
fairly large number, but let me get you a precise one for the
record here.
[The information referred to follows:]
The Mission Management Team (MMT) is responsible for each Space
Shuttle mission, from launch to landing. The team is composed of the
following members:
Manager, Launch Integration, (Chair, Launch MMT)*
Manager, Space Shuttle Program Integration, (Chair, Flight MMT)*
Manager, Space Shuttle SR&QA*
Manager, Space Shuttle Systems Integration*
Manager, Space Shuttle Vehicle Engineering*
Manager, EVA Project*
Director, Flight Crew Operations*
Director, Mission Operations*
Director, Space and Life Sciences*
Manager, MSFC Shuttle Projects*
Manager, RSRM Project
Manager, SSME Project
Manager, ET Project
Manager, SRB Project
Director of Shuttle Processing, KSC*
Manager, ISS Program (as required)*
Director of IS S/Payloads Processing, KSC
Commander, DDMS *
Flight Manager*
Program Manager, Hamilton Sundstrand*
Lockheed Martin Michoud Space Systems
Thiokol Corporation
Boeing-Rocketdyne
Boeing Company Payload Ground Operations Contact
SSP, Deputy Program Manager, SFOC*
The titles with asterisks represent those members who are required
to be present during each mission.
Mr. O'Keefe. But, in terms of active members of that team,
there may be that many or more folks who are actually being
tasked or required to participate or whatever else. But in
terms of decision-makers, you have got a very specified number
of folks there.
Senator Snowe. And how far up the chain of command does a
safety-related question go on the day of the mission?
Mr. O'Keefe. The mission management team is run primarily
by the Shuttle program, which reports primarily to the Office
of Space Flight in Washington, as well as to the center
director at Houston. A safety issue would escalate all the way
through that process quickly if the mission management team
were of a mind that we had a safety-of-flight consideration.
Senator Snowe. They did not, obviously, identify this as a
serious safety-related issue.
Mr. O'Keefe. They did not determine that, based on all the
evidence, that there was a safety-of-flight consideration
during the 16-day mission. That was a judgment call made by the
mission management team, indeed.
Senator Snowe. Yes, it just seems to me that there is no
question that the whole decision-making process and
communication and the bureaucratic structure that goes up
through the chain of command has to be altered significantly.
Admiral Gehman, you had mentioned that no one is
responsible. Well, that is the problem. When you have a
committee of 100 or less, if everybody is responsible, no one
is responsible. It is true. It has to change, I think, before
any next launch, among other things, because we have to get to
the root causes. It just appears to me that it was a very
complicated decision-making environment when it came to making
those kind of decisions, and red flags were not readily
identified.
You could not access previous records or abnormalities that
were associated with the Columbia Shuttle, and that is also of
concern. You cannot have an antiquated system. If there were
problems that had been identified with the Columbia Shuttle on
previous flights, there was no way to access that previous
experience readily or quickly in ascertaining whether or not
this was a serious problem.
So if there was a growing list of abnormalities, there were
no red flags being raised, because you could not access the
lists; and you have a very cumbersome bureaucratic environment
that does not raise a red flag with respect to this.
It is disconcerting, because--and I do not know if this is
true; I read this in one of the newspaper accounts, talking
about a memo that named over 30 high-risk concerns regarding
tanks and foam and identified the idea of foam shedding from
the tank and causing damage to the thermal-protection system of
the tiles and panels. But over time, the space agency had come
to classify the problem as a maintenance issue and not a
serious threat to the safety of the craft or its crew.
But even though it might have been considered a maintenance
issue, the fact that it is on a list of 30 high-risk concerns
should have raised a red flag.
Mr. O'Keefe. Senator, if I might, I want to disagree just a
bit with the assertion that there were not--there was not
enough dialogue or exchange or whatever else during the course
of this. There was plenty of that. And ultimately, there is
accountability. There are people that can be identified very
clearly as to who makes decisions about this during the mission
management activity during on-orbit operations. And they are
very clearly specified in terms of how they make those choices.
The audit trail was pretty clear on this.
Having said that, it is a judgment call. And what they came
to was--and that is the hard part of this; this is a much
tougher conundrum about this than any other aspect--it is not
that the information was not available; it was analyzed and
deemed to be within the context of safety-of-flight
considerations. That was a judgment call. And you are right,
there were several different high-risk items that were
identified, and those were all identified as things that need
to be treated; but during the course of operations every
previous flight--and yes, indeed, that information was
available that demonstrated and was reviewed during the course-
of-flight-readiness reviews and so forth--but determined to be
not a safety-of-flight risk consideration. Needed to be fixed,
but not something that would compromise the mission.
You know, last June we shut down the operations of the
Space Shuttle program for the better part of 4\1/2\ months
after identification of a hairline fracture in a fuel line.
Now, that was determined to be a safety-of-flight consideration
on those kinds of high-risk issues; therefore, stop everything
until we fix that. And that is the difference. In some cases--
there are all kinds of different abnormalities that you will
find on every commercial aircraft, on any military aircraft, no
matter what it is, that are requiring of corrections, but not
determined to be safety-of-flight. That was a judgment call;
and we will find out, in this investigation, whether that was
an accurate judgment call. And certainly there appears to be
plenty of doubt on that.
Senator Snowe. If the photos had been able to show damage
to the carbon-carbon leading edge that Senator Wyden was
referring to, would anything have changed?
Mr. O'Keefe. Absolutely. No question. If there had been
something, any evidence at all, to suggest that there was a
safety-of-flight consideration, it would have gone to, you
know, five-alarm-fire status where everybody would have been
absolutely beaten to parade rest every possible idea of how to
correct the problem. There would be nothing left.
Admiral Gehman. Senator, may I comment?
Senator Snowe. Yes.
Admiral Gehman. The Board is probably going to spend a good
fraction of the time or the, you know, the linear inches of our
report on this subject, and we have looked really hard at the
question that you asked, Why do we have all this dialogue going
on, but no transmission of any messages? And there is all this
talking, but nothing is being transmitted.
And the Board is taking an interesting approach to this,
and that is--the approach is that if you look at the O-rings on
the Challenger and you kind of backtrack on how that decision
failed to get made, and if you take the foam and the
photographs in the Columbia and you backtrack and you say,
``Oh, look, they missed something,'' we find that to be kind of
unfair, because hindsight is wonderful. So the Board has said,
``Let's look through all the waivers and all the anomalies and
all the steps that NASA has waived on all the flights and see
if there are other items like this in which we continuously
have these waivers and the acceptance of anomalies, and are
there other things like this going on? And is it symptomatic of
some process which is not working very well?'' Because to pick
these two incidents and work backwards does not take a whole
lot of introspection; that is pretty obvious.
So the Board is interested, Are there others out there? And
if there are others out there, how did they come to be
accepted? How come we are still flying?
We have found others. And what we are doing is, we are
trying to find out whether or not there is a process flaw which
is not allowing safety items and engineering items to get up to
the level that they should. We find that to be more
intellectually honest than to go back and thrash people for
what they should have seen on this one, and we have found what
we believe to be some good analysis and good data which will
help this process in the future, not just beat up on people for
the past.
Senator Snowe. Yes, I could not agree more. And I think
looking prospectively and addressing the root causes is
important so that it does not happen again--I agree.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Senator Snowe follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Olympia J. Snowe, U.S. Senator from Maine
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. America and the world was shocked and
deeply saddened by the loss of Columbia in the skies over Texas on the
morning of February 1. My thoughts and prayers continue to be with the
families of the seven brave astronauts who lost their lives that day.
It is my hope that this hearing today will honor the memory and the
service of the Columbia crew by aggressively investigating the events
leading up to that tragedy to improve the safety of all future
missions.
Clearly, many questions remain unanswered for all of us, and I hope
that the Columbia Accident Investigation Board will continue to pursue
all avenues to find answers. As we go through this process, we have an
obligation to determine not only the circumstances of the actual event
that caused the Shuttle Columbia to break up, but also the root causes
behind that tragic loss. In doing so, we must look at our space program
in its totality to identify any systemic breakdowns--from management
structure to funding requests to potentially outdated equipment to
pressures on the system resulting from the International Space Station
program or plans to create a new orbiter, so we may remedy these
problems to ensure we don't relive this tragedy.
At our Joint Hearing on February 12, I asked why military telescope
imaging had not been requested in order to assess the damage that the
Columbia Shuttle might have suffered from the foam debris that hit the
Shuttle soon after liftoff. At that time, I was told that NASA had
decided this imaging would not have been useful or necessary, even
though similar imagery had been requested on previous missions.
Furthermore, relying on computer models and past experience was
described as the best way to assess the potential damage.
Since that time, we have learned that there actually was
considerable division within the ranks of NASA regarding how important
the debris hit might have been to the Shuttle's integrity. We have
heard reports that at least two requests were placed for images, but
that these were unofficial and not considered a high priority. It has
been reported that at least one of those requests was cancelled because
it did not come through the proper channels. So I come to this hearing
very concerned about NASA's decision-making environment, and believing
that the process has to be significantly altered.
At our February hearing, the actual cause of the Columbia accident
was unclear. Now, through the tireless efforts of the Accident
Investigation Board, we have a high degree of confidence that the
Shuttle entered the earth's atmosphere on February 1st with pre-
existing damage to its left wing--that this damage allowed the hot
gases of re-entry to enter the Shuttle and destroy it. Although the
Board cannot guarantee that the foam debris that hit the Shuttle during
lift-off directly caused the fatal damage to the wing, it seems likely
there was a connection. While I am sorry that these tests are being
performed after the Columbia loss rather than before, I look forward to
hearing the results of the tests currently underway to investigate the
extent of damage that foam debris hits can cause.
While the Board has learned a great deal in the past few months, at
this point, we still don't have a detailed picture of all the factors
that contributed to the loss of Columbia. So we cannot ignore any
potential culprits--we cannot take any issue off the table that might
have contributed to the accident. It is crucial that we obtain a
complete picture of all of these factors and maintain our patient
resolve regardless of the broad changes these findings might require
before resuming Shuttle flights.
We must scrutinize what was done and what was left undone . . .
decisions that were made during the two weeks of the Shuttle mission
that we now question . . . and whether, more broadly, the competition
between short-term and long-term goals has required trade-offs for
years--trade-offs which contributed to this catastrophic event. We must
inspect the tension between these priorities to help us determine the
extent to which the Columbia disaster holds implications for our future
goals.
As I have said in the past, space travel will always be an
inherently risky endeavor. But we should never stop asking ourselves
how we might best reduce the risk. Our intent to move forward with the
exploration of space must also be accompanied by an unwavering,
unrelenting, unceasing commitment to safety--and today I hope will mark
an important step in that journey.
Again, thank you Mr. Chairman. I look forward to hearing of the
most recent progress of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.
The Chairman. Senator Breaux?
Senator Breaux. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank the
witnesses.
I have two points. First is, it seems that a great deal of
the investigation leads to the conclusion, I guess, that damage
to the leading edge of the left wing caused part of the
problem. The question then becomes, what caused the damage to
the leading edge of the left wing? And the speculation has been
that the foam coming off at the time of the launch hit the
leading edge and caused some deterioration to the panels. And I
know that you all have been testing that theory by some type of
a mechanism that threw or shot the foam towards the leading
edge to see if it could possibly do that type of damage. What
can you tell us about the results of that test so far?
Admiral Gehman. Yes, sir.
The testing started last week. We are, indeed, shooting
pieces of foam at test articles that are orders of magnitude
larger than ever been done before. This testing has been going
on for years and years and years. But the shots have always
been tiny little pieces of foam at tiles and all that kind of
stuff. And, of course, that then leads to this erroneous
analysis of how much damaged the tiles, but that is another
story.
We started by shooting foam at--once again, this was the
first time that foam of the size that came off this time has
ever been used as a test. We started shooting at the wheel well
doors, because, as you may recall, six or eight weeks ago we
suspected that the heat was getting in through the wheel well
door. The recovery of the onboard recorder changed all that. We
are now building a leading-edge test target. That will not be
ready until the first of June. The first couple of shots that
were conducted by Southwest Research Institute were very, very
mild, angle-of-impact kinds of shots. Little or no damage was
done. The angle of impact underneath here was much shallower
than was actually experienced in real life. As we start to
crank the angle of impact around, the damage gets much more
severe, and that is the testing that is going on now. We are
just now getting----
Senator Breaux. That is damage on the bottom?
Admiral Gehman. To the tiles. To the tiles.
Senator Breaux. To the tiles. On the body, not the leading
edge?
Admiral Gehman. That is correct. We have not started
shooting at the leading edge yet. We will start shooting at the
leading edge, to get to your question directly, around the 1st
of June.
Senator Breaux. But the results of the tests on the tiles
on the undersurface of the Shuttle indicated much more damage
than had been experienced before in the test?
Admiral Gehman. The damage is dependent on the angle of
impact. And as we get up into angles of impact which are
representative of what we think really occurs to the Shuttle,
the damage is more severe than previously thought. That is
correct. It is dependent on the angle of impact.
Senator Breaux. Mr. O'Keefe, how many times in previous
launches has foam insulation separated from the fuel tank and
broken off in launch or at other parts of a mission?
Mr. O'Keefe. There were four observable events that were
recorded and analyzed as a consequence--going back to, I think,
STS-7, I think, was the first one. There were several other
events of smaller pieces, apparently, that were documented, as
well. But the ones that were significantly analyzed were these
four different events, the most recent of which was on STS-112,
which was launched in October.
Senator Breaux. Are there any reports anywhere in NASA that
raised a serious concern, a red flag, alert, that this was a
problem or could be a more severe problem?
Mr. O'Keefe. I think for the reasons Admiral Gehman just
described, there were tests that were conducted thereafter that
led engineers to conclude that the impact was not--on those
four significant events, was not considered a safety-of-flight
compromise.
Admiral Gehman. Senator, may I----
Senator Breaux. Yeah, any comment on----
Admiral Gehman.--I will respectfully disagree with the
Administrator, here. Foam coming off the external tank has hit
every flight on every orbiter. If you want to measure total
number of hits, it is thousands. If you want to measure hits
that have caused damage to the tiles of greater than an inch,
it is about 30 per flight.
What the Administrator was referring to is this particular
piece of foam that we are talking about in this instance, which
is a special piece of foam molding that is hand-molded to cover
a certain connection point called the ``bipod.'' That
particular piece of foam is known to have come off six total
times, including this flight, but there are over 40 flights for
which we have no information--for example, the ones launched at
night or ones where we could not photograph the external tank
when it comes away. So there are six that we know of, out of
40, minus 113, minus--out of 70-some flights.
And so, just to make the record straight, this particular
big piece of foam, the Administrator is right, only half a
dozen times; but foam hitting the orbiter occurs on every
single flight.
Senator Breaux. Well, I mean, I think that is a significant
piece of information for everyone to understand. I cannot draw
any conclusions in my own mind, but it seems to me that that
might be the smoking gun. And the fact is that this is not the
first time it happened, but that insulating foam was coming off
on every flight, and that, on thousands of hits, damage to the
tile had occurred. It just seems to me that it was only a
question of time when one of those hits did the damage that
ultimately was done to the Columbia.
Thank you.
Mr. O'Keefe. Senator, if I could. Again, I do not disagree
with Admiral Gehman at all. I apologize for having understated
this at all, because it is a very significant event. There is
no doubt about it. I was referring very specifically to the
bipod section, and Admiral Gehman is precisely right, this is
how it has happened in each and every case. And I do not want
to understate this.
The question that is really being debated internally in
NASA right now is, Why did we permit a process that would
tolerate any strike? That is the really important factor, I
think, and we are really going through a soul search now
saying, What is it that contented ourselves to believing that
any strike should have been tolerated? And that is a much
deeper-process issue that really is being examined, and there
is a lot of real soul search going on that says, we rationalize
based on historical evidence of what we thought was acceptable
damage. Why would we think any level of damage would be deemed
acceptable?
Senator Breaux. Well, I mean, you have just put your finger
on the real question. You know, if it had been one hit at one
time----
Mr. O'Keefe. Uh-huh.
Senator Breaux.--I think someone would be justified in
saying, ``Well, you know, it happened once out of thousands of
flights.'' But it happened thousands of times, and this was
probably the last time.
Mr. O'Keefe. Yes, sir.
Senator Breaux. Thank you.
The Chairman. Senator Brownback?
STATEMENT OF HON. SAM BROWNBACK,
U.S. SENATOR FROM KANSAS
Senator Brownback. Thanks. Thank you very much, witnesses,
I appreciate the information you are putting forward.
Admiral Gehman, has the commission come up with any ideas
on changing the decision-making process to see that a mistake
that had been made in judgment this time around--Mr. O'Keefe
has already said that we clearly should have gotten imaging and
there was a mistake in judgment made--has the commission come
up with any recommendations to change the decision-making
process yet that they are willing to put forward?
Admiral Gehman. Senator, we have not come to any
conclusions yet, but I will predict that probably a third of
our report is going to be on this subject, because we believe
that is really the lasting and the significant legacy that we
can leave here.
Yes, indeed, we think this is a systemic problem, that if
you just change the people or change the names of the
committees, it will not do any good, that there actually is a
process problem here. And we have opinions on how to go about
this. We have availed ourselves of literally dozens of experts
in the area of safety engineering, risk assessment, risk
management, high-reliability organizations, in order that we
can write authoritatively on this subject.
I will add, also, parenthetically, that you--in our
opinion, neither the Congress nor this Board could get at these
very, very deep-rooted institutional problems unless we availed
ourselves of the investigating technique that is associated
with a safety investigation, in which people can speak without
being in fear of retribution.
Senator Brownback. Well, who was responsible for the
mistake in judgment this time around, particularly on the
imagery? You said, I think, clearly, ``Well, okay, there was a
mistake in judgment made. We should have gotten imagery.'' Who
made that determination? Who was responsible for that decision?
Admiral Gehman. I would not characterize that decision as a
mistake by any one individual. When you have got an
organization which is run by boards and committees, and those
boards and committees do not work, I am not sure you can blame
an individual person. So I will have to duck that question. I
can tell you which Board or committee did not work as designed,
and I can tell you why----
Senator Brownback. Well, which one did not?
Admiral Gehman. In my opinion, because the Board has not
spoken on this yet, in my opinion both the boards that assess
the condition of the orbiter before it is launched, which are
boards and committees set up by the program manager, and the
boards and committees that run the mission after it is flying,
are ill-served by an imperfect system of checks and balances.
And by that I mean specifically the safety organization sits
right beside the person making the decision; but behind the
safety organization, there is nothing back there. There is no
people, money, engineering, expertise, analysis. The engineers
sit right to the other side of them. But the engineering
department is not independently funded. The engineers all have
to charge to a program or something like that, so their
allegiance is to the program. And we find that to be an
imperfect system, and the boards are ill-served, and you are
going to get the same wrong answer no matter how many times you
convene those Boards. And it does not make any difference who
the chairman is.
Senator Brownback. Well, now, this is a very troubling
point that you make, that you are going to get the same----
Admiral Gehman. Wrong answer.
Senator Brownback.--wrong answers? Why are we going to get
the same wrong answers? These are good people. They are all
well-meaning people. Why are we going to get the same wrong
answers?
Admiral Gehman. Once again, I am kind of a little bit out
in front of my headlights here, because the Board has not
completely spoken on this. But giving my own personal view of
it, we have availed ourselves of a very, very rich and deep
academic world, who studies these kinds of things, as well as
industry, like nuclear power plants and petrochemical plants
and things like that about, How do they do safety, and how do
they build in checks and balances so that the people who are
making decisions are getting good, contrary opinions? And to us
it seems that this is the flaw in the system, that unless you
change the management techniques and unless you change the
procedures, you can change the people sitting at the seats and
they will still not give good advice.
Senator Brownback. Well, what you are describing to me is a
committee without a head or a process without a design----
Admiral Gehman. No, I----
Senator Brownback.--that just communicates a lot back and
forth, that there is not a responsible point at which a person
is responsible for the decision-making?
Admiral Gehman. No, sir, I would not agree with that. There
is a Chairman, and there is someone responsible, and everybody
knows who that is, but the process is not serving that person
very well.
Senator Brownback. How is the process not serving that
person? Specifically how is the process not serving that person
well?
Admiral Gehman. Because the key advisors, the people who
would bring up alternative points of view, the people who would
say, ``Wait a minute, this is not safe,'' or--they are in the
room, but they are not supported by--they can't come and argue
their cases with 18-inches worth of documentation, because they
are not funded well enough. They are not independently funded.
There are not enough people in there to do that independent
research in order that they can come to the table and make a
persuasive argument. They are kind of there by themselves.
Senator Brownback. They are there without backing, I guess?
Admiral Gehman. They are there without backing. And when
you get into these very technical issues about whether this is
safe or whether or not this signal is important or whether or
not this little anomaly needs to be paid attention to, you have
to come with data. These are engineers. You have to come with
facts and data and studies. You cannot just get in there and
wave your arms and beat your breast. You have got to come armed
with ammunition.
And so the safety--we find the safety organization is, on
paper, perfect. But when you bore down a little bit deeper, you
do not find any ``there'' there. And the engineering department
looks precisely organized exactly right, but then when you go
bore down and find out what these 600 engineers are doing, you
find that three quarters of them are funded by the program, and
so you know where their allegiance is, et cetera.
So we are going to try and make some recommendations to
improve the process of safety, but do not mislead, do not--that
is why I am giving you this unsatisfactory answer, and I know
the Chairman is still looking at me--but that is why we are
trying to find a way to fix this and fix it right. But it is
not necessarily any individual one person's responsibility.
Senator Brownback. So you need internal muscle that is
separate and distinct from the program that can effectively
argue within the structure--for the change that we need to be
addressing. Is that correct?
Admiral Gehman. That is correct. And now the Board is
loathe to make specific organizational and management
recommendations for the fear of the law of unintended
consequences. We are not going to be around to manage these
things and steer them. But I believe that when we write our
report, we are going to give quite direct and specific
guidelines on how this process ought to operate.
Senator Brownback. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. O'Keefe. Mr. Chairman, may I comment very briefly?
The Chairman. Sure.
Mr. O'Keefe. In this----
The Chairman. Could I comment first? When I was a young
lad, the U.S.S. MISSOURI ran aground not too far from here. The
captain was asleep in the cabin, and the navigator ran it
aground. The captain was relieved immediately. But now, since
there seems to be an interesting situation, no one is
responsible. No one is responsible because we are all
responsible; so, therefore, no one is responsible. No one is
responsible for 9/11. No one is responsible for Khobar Towers.
No one is responsible for a whole bunch of other things, bad
things, that have happened. We are all responsible; so,
therefore, no one is responsible.
Go ahead.
Mr. O'Keefe. Thank you, sir. No, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
That is a perfect prelude to my respectful disagreement with my
friend, the Chairman of the Columbia Accident Investigation
Board. There is no ambiguity on who is responsible. There are
two folks who sit at the flight readiness review. The Associate
Administrator for space flight and the Associate Administrator
for safety and mission assurance. They sign the order that
says, ``We certify this is ready for flight.'' The argument
that is being advanced here is that the quality of advice they
are receiving, in the opinion, I think, of the Chairman of the
Columbia Accident Investigation Board, needs further support.
That is a point that we have positively got to look at. But in
terms of who is responsible, there is no question about it who
signs the certification on this case. There are identified,
named individuals who are part of this mission management team.
Senator Snowe asked the question, ``How many people
participate in that?'' Lots of engineers and so forth. You bet.
Lots of folks participate there. But there are specified folks,
with name, faces, serial numbers, and, you know, pay checks
that are provided that are chair of the mission management team
and members of it that make determinations and are responsible
for that.
There will be accountability here. There is no question
about it. This will not be ambiguous about who is responsible
at the end of the day. We are awaiting the report. There are
certain changes that have to be made. But, in the end, there is
no line or argument of a mush-mouth system here of how these
decisions are arrived at. There are individuals who you can
identify and say, ``That is the responsible official.'' And I
think the point that has been made here is, the quality of the
advice that is being rendered to them may not be as organized
as it should be.
My attendance at flight-readiness reviews in prior flights,
to include, you know, most recently, I guess, 113, was--you
look in this room, and everybody and anybody who has an opinion
on the quality of the readiness of the orbiter to fly are in
that room. It is a big confab. And anybody has got the
opportunity to step up and speak. And many of them are the
functional equivalent in the space flight community of E.F.
Hutton; whenever they stand up, immediately everybody
recognizes them and they stop everything until the issue is
resolved. In the end, that judgment has to be rendered by two
people, and that is very clear in the way this process works.
Same is true during an operational mission management team.
And the issue, I think, that Admiral Gehman is raising is, What
is the quality of that advice, how is it organized, and how do
we make it more relevant for them to make the kinds of
decisions they are asked to make?
Senator Brownback. Mr. Chairman, could I respond to this,
because I want to bore in on this point, and it does seem to be
a very important one. What I hear the Admiral saying is, that
there is not a muscle, an independent muscle, behind that is
challenging this process internally, that the people, the
engineers and the others that are commenting are part of one a
systemic system all funded from one system, and it needs an
independent muscle that is there in the room that can speak
from engineering data and specifics. They can challenge the
decision-making process. Is that correct, Admiral?
Admiral Gehman. That is correct. And, by the way----
Senator Brownback. If I could, then----
Admiral Gehman. Yes, that is correct.
Senator Brownback.--if I could.
Administrator O'Keefe, I am not here trying to point
fingers, but I am trying to figure out how we keep this from
happening again. We do not want anybody to die. You do not want
anybody to.
Mr. O'Keefe. Sure.
Senator Brownback. Do you agree with that assessment, that
there is not the independent muscle behind the challenge
process internally in making these safety and engineering
decisions?
Mr. O'Keefe. Again, I am guided by the view of the Board.
If their view is that it is inadequate, that is the answer, it
is inadequate, and we will go fix that.
Senator Brownback. Thank you.
The Chairman. Admiral Gehman, did you want to make an
additional comment?
Admiral Gehman. Thank you very much.
As I indicated, we, on the Board, have grounded ourselves,
we think, in aerodynamics and thermodynamics and physics to the
point where when we write on what caused this accident, it is
unlikely that we are going to get challenged on any of our
findings. In order for us to write on this subject, we have had
to ground ourselves in what we, in the United States, know
about these very complex management techniques. And so we have
done that, to a great extent.
And two of the principles that have struck me get to the
point where, indeed, the person who is the Chairman of this
Board or the Chairman of this Committee or the two people who
have to sign the paper, they are identified by name. We know
who they are, and you know who they are. But so many of these
experts in this area have told us that just picking on those
two people and firing them or something like that will not
prevent this from happening again. If you have got a flawed
process, the next chairman is going to make the same mistake,
probably. So we are quite driven by that.
The second thing that we are quite driven by is writing out
of a report that I would like to acknowledge other people here,
but the writing goes along the lines of this. This way. That
the wonderful engineers who give us all these magical things
also make a pact with the devil--I am thinking of things like
nuclear power plants and petrochemical plants and dams and
things like that--that you get all the--and Space Shuttles--you
get all these magical things from engineers, but the pact that
you make with the devil is you have to be vigilant forever,
because now you have got this dragon by the tail. And it could
be that in the 25 years or 20 years of this program, as the
conditions of Shuttle life change, the Board is looking at
whether or not this vigilant-forever law has been observed, or
somehow have we migrated away from that? And the Board is going
to try to write on that.
Senator Brownback. Very good.
The Chairman. Senator Nelson?
STATEMENT OF HON. BILL NELSON,
U.S. SENATOR FROM FLORIDA
Senator Nelson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Brownback, I want to pick up on your line of
questioning. But first I want to say, Admiral, thank you for
your public service. Thank you for the public service that you
rendered, even after your retirement, with regard to the U.S.S.
COLE investigation. Thank you for your public service for this.
And it is this Senator's hope that you are going to succeed,
and that is what we want to see, that you succeed.
In the line of questioning from Senator Brownback and in
your response earlier with regard to the safety process that
had been set up 17 years ago, and your quote was, ``There is no
`there' there.'' Now, that makes my blood boil. Because of the
communication problems 17 years ago with Challenger, which it,
in large part, was--that was the reason for the destruction of
Challenger, that information could not flow from the bottom up;
it was much easier flowing from the top down. And so this
process of safety was imposed, and the safety process was
supposed to be an automatic failsafe. But you say ``there is no
`there' there.''
Why do you think we have not learned the lessons from
Challenger, as painful as that was?
Admiral Gehman. Senator Nelson, thank you very much for the
vote of confidence. We will see whether or not that is well
founded or not. But the Board is going to spend an enormous
amount of energy to answer that very question.
It is possible--it is possible--that we have the system
that we have right now because of Challenger. There were
recommendations to consolidate, have a more formal chain of
command, have a more strict and monolithic program, that were
part of the Challenger recommendations, and, once again, I do
not want to get ahead of myself, but we are going to look at
this in great detail.
We have also looked at best-business practices from other
very, very risky communities and have found how they do high-
reliability kinds of things, and the Board will attempt to
write an outline that will ensure that these kinds of safety
issues do, indeed, get raised at the right level and then the
people who have to make the judgments are advised well and
these issues are not submerged.
I do not want to get into anymore detail than to say that,
at this time, the preliminary--at this stage in our report, I
am willing to volunteer that we are not completely satisfied
that underneath the box that says ``safety'' and ``S and MA''
that there is a big, robust organization which allows the
person in the box to come to the table with the same number of
chips as everybody else. And under the box that says
``engineering directorate,'' that there is not enough
independent good old engineering kind of thinking that NASA
used to be known for to come to the table and bang on the table
and say, ``You are wrong, and I can prove it.''
That is about as far as I am willing to go at this time.
Senator Nelson. All right. Let me nail down something that
the Chairman and Senator Hollings said earlier, asked you
about, with regard to our congressional oversight.
Admiral Gehman. Sure.
Senator Nelson. I need to know, specifically for the
record, since you are trying to protect the identity of the
witnesses, since you want to encourage people to come forth and
tell the truth without having to subpoena them for the truth,
understandably, you want to protect their identity. What we
need to know, is that testimony, that full testimony, available
to this Committee in our congressional oversight capacity?
Admiral Gehman. The answer, the short answer, is we are in
the process of working out an arrangement by which you will
have access by some process to all that information. The
answer, the short answer, is yes.
If I may just say that the purpose of giving witnesses
guarantees of anonymity is not so they will tell the truth.
That is not the issue. They will tell the truth when they come
up here and raise their hand. The purpose is to find out things
that they would not volunteer under questioning. That adds a
whole different range of information, a whole different body of
insights in which they may say something that they are not
fully sure of, for example. They just--or it is a feeling that
they have or something they cannot prove or something like that
which they would not give to anybody who was doing this in a
public forum.
Senator Nelson. Well, there was some question in Senator
Hollings' mind. I am glad that you have clarified that, that
the answer to the question is yes.
All right, let me comment. I happen to agree with your
statement about the old-timers, that the old-timers basically,
if they knew there was the potential of a problem, they would
have started working it. They would have done photos
immediately. They would have started pulling out of their hip
pocket every possible theory of changing anything that could be
changed, as well as what Senator Hollings had said, ``cold
soaking,'' no roll reversal to the left, maybe a different
angle of attack.
What do you think? Why did NASA and its leaders tolerate--I
guess the question is, What is your report going to tell about
reenacting this of how you would do it pursuant to the old-
timers?
Admiral Gehman. The old-timers certainly taught me
something, which I find compelling. In the business about
photos, for example, on-orbit photography. They would say, ``It
doesn't make any difference whether you could have done
anything to save this crew or not, we would have taken
photographs just so we would have known what happened.'' I
mean, the old-timers have a more flight-test, test-pilot kind
of attitude that even though the loss of a crew is terribly
regretful, if you have a test-pilot kind of an attitude, you
always want to know what happened so that they did not die in
vain. So, of course, they would have taken photographs. You
would not have had to prove that there was a foam strike. All
you have to do was scratch your head and say, ``Hey, I don't
think I know what happened here,'' and the next thing all the
lights would have gone off.
And so that is compelling to me. In other words, you do not
have to prove that somebody made a mistake, or you do not have
to prove that an error in judgment was made. The old-timer
attitude would have got you photographs ``just because.'' And
maybe we could not have done anything about it, but we would
have--maybe we would have known what happened in this
particular case. It is more of an intellectual inquiry kind of
an attitude.
Senator you were not in the room when I mentioned earlier
that we and NASA have just begun, ten days ago, a very in-depth
and aggressive analysis of what could have been done. And I
mentioned that we could not have done this earlier because
there were too many emotions. Everybody was too close to it.
But now that we have got a little time separated and we, the
Board, know a little bit more about this, together we are
looking very, very hard at what might have been done. But I do
not really know that even if we find an answer, you know, put
duct tape on it or something like that, I do not know that it
is going to result in whether or not--that it can result in
whether or not we could have saved this mission or not. I just
do not know.
The only thing I do know, and I know that the Administrator
agrees with me, is that we would not have done nothing. I mean,
that is not the way we do things. We would have done something.
And even if we only had a 10 percent chance of saving this, we
would have--there were two EVA suits on-board; they could have
gone out and taken a look at it, they could have put duct tape
on the thing--I mean, I do not know, I am just making that up,
of course. But they would have done something.
The Chairman. Senator Sununu?
Senator Sununu. I thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to begin by exploring this issue of accountability
that the Chairman raised. Admiral, I think you said that,
something to the effect, you do not want to ``pick on'' those
that were responsible for signing off on the flight security,
because if there is a flawed process, even if you have a
replacement, you will still have a flawed process.
And I would maybe differ with that just slightly. The
Chairman used an example of the U.S.S. MISSOURI, I think, that
ran aground. Now, I do not know that they changed the process
or not, but my guess is not only did the subsequent captain not
run aground, I bet the Missouri never ran aground again.
So we do not want to single anyone out inappropriately. We
want the criticisms to be based on good information, good
analysis. But I do think there is something to be said for a
system that does hold those in a position of responsibility
accountable, even if there is a flawed process and even if you
are not sure you have implemented a perfect process, because a
system that holds individuals accountable will create an
incentive for those in a position of responsibility to do
everything possible to make sure the support systems, the
processes that help them make decisions, are good ones. Would
you agree with that?
Admiral Gehman. I think you--I support your comments
completely. I come from a system that is the way we do
business. And I have no problem whatsoever with the process,
the Administrative processes, of NASA and the Congress and the
Administration, of taking whatever steps are necessary if you
think someone's performance was lacking. It is just not the
function of this Board.
Now, you will be able to tell from my report where to go
looking. We are not ducking the issue. It is just not the
function of this Board. The function of this Board is to try
and make space flight safer, to find out what happened and try
to make space flight safer in the future if we can. And we
believe we will be able to do that for you. And if there are--
if we found that someone had not executed their duties in
accordance with NASA regulations, we will note that. But that
is not the purpose of this Board.
Mr. O'Keefe. Senator, if I could. I think at the conclusion
of this investigation, when this report is finalized and after
the agency takes said actions to implement those findings, I am
confident you will find no ambiguity on this question of
accountability at all.
Senator Sununu. Excellent, thank you.
Senator Breaux, in his line of questioning, talked about
the foam insulation breaking loose, and I want to be clear on
what you said. I think you indicated that there had been 30
impacts, approximately 30 impacts, that had resulted in a
specific amount of damage.
Admiral Gehman. One inch.
Senator Sununu. One inch? Or I take it that is one inch or
greater.
Admiral Gehman. One inch or greater.
Senator Sununu. And----
Admiral Gehman. Sir, excuse me, per flight.
Senator Sununu. There have been an average of 30 impacts
per flight that have resulted in damage of one inch or greater.
And can you describe--when you say ``damage of one inch or
greater,'' can you give us a little bit more background or
detail as to what type of damage that is and what part of the
Shuttle?
Admiral Gehman. Yes, sir. It is on what we call the
``acreage tile,'' the 25,000 individual tiles, like this. And
we are talking about a divot, a chip, that is greater than one
inch in any dimension. And underneath this black is white, so
if you chip this, it is pretty obvious. So a chip in the tile
anyplace on the orbiter in the thermal-protection system that
has a dimension in any direction of greater than one inch.
Senator Sununu. Thirty, an average number or----
Admiral Gehman. Thirty is an average number.
Senator Sununu. And talk to me a little about the standard
deviation. Did it vary greatly from flight to flight or----
Admiral Gehman. There were----
Senator Sununu.--was it pretty consistent that you would
have 30 impacts of that nature?
Admiral Gehman. With the exception of four or five flights
in which there were tremendous variations, up in the hundreds,
and these were accounted for--for example, when NASA changed
what we call the ``blowing agent,'' the air power behind the
foam application, in accordance with EPA regulations to stop
using freon, on the very next tank that flew with the new
blowing agent the number of divots was up in the hundreds. They
immediately knew what the problem was. They changed blowing
agents. It had gasified in a different way that they had not
anticipated. So they fixed it, and the next time it went back
down to 30, just like that.
I would also tell you, Senator, that the trend over all 113
flights is flat, not getting any better.
Senator Sununu. There seems to be, or have been, a process
to measure and quantify the damage from these impacts. Was
there any process, albeit unsuccessful, from your description,
to address or reduce the number of impacts?
Admiral Gehman. There have been steps taken. There have
been discussions, meetings, studies, analyses to reduce it.
Unsuccessful. And while our audit--we call it an ``audit,''
because--we call it ``following the foam''--there is a foam
audit going on right now, all the way from the first flight,
trying to go through the records to see what the records say
that these various boards and committees did to adjudicate,
``What should we do about the foam?'' And, generally speaking,
the records kind of just die off. What I mean is that the issue
just kind of goes away. It is never actually really addressed
in an engineering point of view.
Senator Sununu. When did it go away?
Admiral Gehman. What happen is, is that the foam hits the
orbiter, there are a couple of significant issues, it appears
on the FRR, the flight readiness review, and various material
Boards, they study it real hard to see what they can do about
it, they have four or five more flights in which there are only
minor problems, and they say, ``Well, looks like it is not a
big problem.'' And then what happens is that success clouds
their engineering judgment. They say, ``Well, look, it is still
happening, but nothing bad is happening. It looks like it is
okay.'' Then another couple of years will go by, and something
big will happen, it will appear in the records again, some
studies will be ordered, some engineering analysis, maybe a
fix, and then the number go back down to reasonable numbers,
and success again breeds this attitude that it looks like it is
okay.
Senator Sununu. But it is fair to say the average number of
impacts over the last, just say, 20 flights was relatively
constant.
Admiral Gehman. All the way from the first one, it is
relatively constant.
Senator Sununu. Throughout, the issue of space debris was
raised during just some of the early press accounts, guesswork,
hypothesis, you know, of what might have happened. I assume
that has been reviewed pretty thoroughly by the Board. Is that
concern or question still a possibility as a cause of damage or
perhaps something that made existing damage worse while in
orbit? And on a related note, have you learned anything or come
to any conclusions about our ability to track and to deal with
the threat of space debris to future flights?
Admiral Gehman. The issue of the possibility of the orbiter
being hit by space debris is unresolved by the Board at this
time after a lot of work. The Board understands the ability of
the United States to track space debris down to a certain size,
and the Board understands how the orbiter is maneuvered around
the intersection--you can call ``conjunction''--with space
debris down to a certain size. But then micrometeorite, the
little, tiny stuff that we cannot track, that we do not even
know is out there, remains an open issue.
And we have attempted to get at this issue by a number of
very clever ways. The orbiter has some very, very sensitive
accelerometers on-board the output of which is recorded on-
board and not ``telemetried'' down to earth. It turns out that
the recovery of this data recorder, which is a miracle, has
allowed us to read out those accelerometers. There are a couple
of little jiggles in some of those accelerometers, which would
suggest that we need to look harder at that. But we cannot rule
out a tiny little micrometeorite kind of a strike.
Senator Sununu. My final question for the----
The Chairman. The time has expired.
Senator Sununu. May I ask just one final question?
The Chairman. Go ahead.
Senator Sununu. And I think it is a short answer. In
hindsight, or looking back to the very first few days of this
investigation, which was a difficult time for so many people,
is there anything at this point that you would look back and
say, ``You know, in hindsight, in the first few days, I do wish
we had taken a particular step or structured things slightly
differently or taken some time, you know, to facilitate a
particular task,'' anything that you could identify,
Administrator?
Mr. O'Keefe. I guess, as a personal and professional
philosophy, my attitude is make the best decision you can based
on the information you have at the time and move on and
continue to progress. I do not spend a lot of time thinking
back to what we mighta, coulda, shoulda, woulda. I think it is
as professional and as straightforward a process as I know how
to do, and it was within hours that not only the NASA team, but
also the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, was empaneled
and the investigation began immediately. Everybody followed a
contingency plan that I had personally reviewed several times,
in the event something like this could happen, and was very
content that starting at 9:29 that morning, the first action
item on that contingency plan was actionable, and we followed
the procedure exactly the way we had talked about it. Secure in
the knowledge that we would likely not ever have to use it, we,
nonetheless, had to, and I just cannot look back on that and
really revise the history of it.
If I could, very quickly, Senator, just observe one point,
I think, in the discussion here that you have had on the
strikes. This is the--the tile damage on each and every
flight--Admiral Gehman has got it exactly right--some of it
comes from foam strikes, no question about it. And there are
many other things that will also damage the tile. Of those
25,000 tiles that are aboard, as soon as every orbiter has
landed, the first thing the commander wants to do first, and
Senator McCain will appreciate this, is you want to make sure
that the wheels are right on the center line of the runway.
That is the first obsession on the part of every commander. The
next step, though, is to walk around the orbiter and observe
every one of these strikes. And there are lots and lots of
streaking that occurs on the tiles.
And based on the condition of those tiles, they are either
replaced or repaired in between flights, and the issue that I
think Admiral Gehman was talking about--so, in other words,
there are a lot of contributing factors; not just foam, but
plenty of other incidents that will occur on orbit or on re-
entry that will create a visible kind of damage to the tiles
on-board the Shuttle itself. And each of those are either
replaced or repaired.
But the issue I think that Admiral Gehman is raising that
really, really is a point of deep consternation with us right
now, that we are really doing a lot of soul searching about, is
there are certain aspects of this that were tolerated because
it had this exacting kind of ``no unusual circumstance out of
the norm.'' And so what academics are referring to is the
normalization of deviation, as in ``if you see it so many
times, you finally consider it to be an acceptable condition,''
is the issue. That is the point we are really doing some deep
soul search about.
And as we talked about earlier, why we ever got into a
position where we tolerated anything greater than zero on this
is the point we are really debating among ourselves right now
and trying to determine how we can create a system that would
never tolerate that kind of circumstance again. And it is not
just foam; it is the range of things that could tell you, in a
trend, what could potentially become a deep compromise to
safety-of-flight consideration. That is the deeper issue that I
think is being raised by the Board, that we are hearing in
public testimony, we are hearing supported, and we are clearly
seeing evidence of that concern, and we are wrestling with, How
do you adjust that process to assure that kind of understanding
in the future?
The Chairman. Mr. O'Keefe, did you request $15.5 million
for the Institute for Scientific Research in Fairmont, West
Virginia.
Mr. O'Keefe. No, sir.
The Chairman. How about $7.6 million for hydrogen research
being conducted by the Florida State University system?
Mr. O'Keefe. Not that I am aware of.
The Chairman. 2.25 million for the Life Sciences Building
at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island?
Mr. O'Keefe. Not that I am aware of.
The Chairman. You will notice that each of these are
geographically specific? How about $1.8 million for the
construction of a Gulf of Maine Laboratory at the Gulf of Maine
Aquarium Foundation? Did you request that?
Mr. O'Keefe. No, sir, not that I am aware of.
The Chairman. How about 1.35 million for expansion of the
Earth Science Hall at the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore,
Maryland? Did you ask for that?
Mr. O'Keefe. No, sir.
The Chairman. I understand, also, you are paying for a bug
exhibit in Chicago. I saw that on one of the networks. Did you
see that?
Mr. O'Keefe. I am not aware of it, sir.
The Chairman. And yet your budget has been largely flat.
Mr. O'Keefe. I had a 3 percent increase last, and
projected, if the Congress will tolerate, a 4\1/2\ percent
increase this year that we hope for Congress' support.
The Chairman. I am talking about in previous years.
Mr. O'Keefe. Yes, sir. Prior--yes, sir.
The Chairman. Well, in the issue of responsibility, Admiral
Gehman, I hope that you will, in your deliberations, if there
are programs, critical programs, that have been underfunded in
this pork-barrel spending, which is in the hundreds of millions
of dollars over the past few years--hundreds of millions of
dollars--unrequested, add-ons, some outrageous, some not so
outrageous, some of it may be good things, none of it
requested--as I mentioned earlier, it went from, in 1998, from
24.7 million to 167 million in 2003--I hope that the Board,
when we are talking about responsibility, will talk about the
responsibility of Congress to spend these monies that are
earmarked for NASA that are supposed to be for programs
associated with NASA rather than pork-barrel spending and
whether that may have impacted the funding of critical
programs. I hope that the Board will be looking at that,
Admiral Gehman.
Admiral Gehman. We will, sir. We are going to look at
budgets, and $100 million will buy a lot of safety engineers.
The Chairman. Thank you. As I mentioned, last year it was
$167 million, and some of it, it just staggers the imagination,
has no more relation to--well, anyway.
I have one additional question for Mr. O'Keefe. We all know
what happened to the Soyuz capsule, steep angle, 10 Gs, 300
miles away, no radio communications. Are you confident that
that is a vehicle that should be used in this interim period?
And if not, what are the options?
Mr. O'Keefe. Certainly, this was an outside-the-norm
landing pattern. It was an upgrade of the Soyuz capsule, and it
was the first time that specific upgrade module had flown. The
Rosaviakosmos, the Russian Space Agency, is conducting an
investigation now. We are a participant, and we have got
members who are involved there. We have got a significant team
of folks who are resident in Moscow and in Star City, who are
working with the Russian engineers to determine exactly how
this particular abnormality occurred. But it is not outside the
envelope of what would have been expected. A ballistic re-entry
can and does occur. Very infrequently, but it did. And in this
particular case, trying to determine exactly what caused it in
this particular case is what our objective is all about.
Having said that, it has not posed a safety-of-flight, you
know, factor, and it is not one that our outside folks, General
Stafford and others who have reviewed the flight worthiness of
the Soyuz, have concluded that it is a more than acceptable,
flight-worthy craft for the purpose of the effort we are
engaged in now to replace the International Space Station
Expedition crews.
So our confidence is still very high. It was, no question
about it, the better part of two-and-a-half hours of extremely
anxious period and four hours before we were able to get a
visual, look-'em-right-in-the-eye determination that, yes,
everybody was okay. But all the commentary from--I met with all
the crew immediately after they returned to Star City that day,
and they found that while it was an exciting trip, it was not,
nonetheless, something that they were untrained for. They knew
that was within the envelope of how that happens.
The Chairman. Ten Gs is a pretty----
Mr. O'Keefe. It was----
The Chairman.--interesting experience.
Mr. O'Keefe.--really exciting. Yes, sir. No doubt about it.
The Chairman. Senator Nelson has promised me that he will
take a maximum of ten minutes, realizing that you have already
been here for well over two hours, and I appreciate his
involvement, his experience, and what he brings to this
Committee on a variety of issues, but particularly on this one.
He is also a man of his word. Ten minutes.
Senator Nelson?
Senator Nelson (presiding). Mr. Chairman, as long as they
do not give ten-minute answers.
[Laughter.]
Senator Nelson. Mr. O'Keefe, were you aware of the piece of
debris that left the Shuttle on flight-day one?
Mr. O'Keefe. No, sir.
Senator Nelson. Who was aware? And would they have had a
responsibility of telling you about that debris?
Mr. O'Keefe. Let me give you a full list of all the people
who were aware of that particular incident.
Senator Nelson. Make it short, because I have got lots of
questions, and the Chairman wants to keep it short.
Mr. O'Keefe. Sure. We will provide that for the record,
sir.
Senator Nelson. Okay.
[The information referred to follows:]
In addition to the official in the Space Shuttle Program, the
Associate Administrator for Space Flight, the Deputy Associate
Administrator for International Space Station and Space Shuttle
Programs, and the Associate Administrator for Safety and Mission
Assurance were made aware of the debris hit and advised that the MMT
had determined the event not to be a safety of flight issue. The Space
Shuttle Program Manager was also notified that the no safety of flight
decision had been made.
The Administrator is kept informed of any critical aspects of any
NASA spaceflight mission. At this point in time during the mission
where the foam debris was not defined as a safety hazard for the STS-
107 crew, it was not necessary to notify the Administrator.
Admiral Gehman. Senator, the piece of debris orbiting the
Shuttle on flight-day two was not discovered until six days
after the accident. Nobody knew about this thing when the
flight----
Senator Nelson. Thank you for sharing that.
Well, given the fact of the multiple thousands of hits from
foam in the past, how far--did the safety people directly
engage in a discussion about the foam hits?
Mr. O'Keefe. I am advised they did, as recently as the STS-
113 mission, which was the one immediately preceding 107. There
was a discussion at the flight readiness review of the foam
strike--of significance, the bipod strike that had occurred on
112--and they had reviewed that particular matter.
Senator Nelson. Well, Admiral, of course, that will be a
main part of your investigation. Admiral, when do you expect
your commission to issue a report?
Admiral Gehman. We are event-driven. I would characterize
us as finishing up the investigation phase right now, and we
are beginning the deliberation. We are going to move here to DC
the first week in June and begin writing. It would be my goal,
assuming that the Board can move along with me, to have our
report delivered to you prior to the August recess. But I have
to caveat that. That is my goal.
Senator Nelson. Are you contemplating that you are going to
recommend that the vehicle should be fully recertified?
Admiral Gehman. I am afraid I am going to have to duck that
question, because we have not got to that point yet. Every time
we come to a conclusion about a recommendation, we issue it as
soon as we can. We have a number that are percolating up right
now, and that is not one of them.
Senator Nelson. And, of course, as I said at the outset, it
is enormously important to us that you are successful in this
and that we can get on and get the thing fixed and start flying
again. Now, in view of that, Mr. Administrator, I wanted to ask
you, What are you anticipating in the way of an impact on the
Shuttle workforce?
Mr. O'Keefe. We are looking to mitigate that as much as
possible right now. And, indeed, folks are very busy in
preparation in working through the issues on return to flight.
If anything, I think we are going to be short of folks that we
may need, because, again the nature of the recommendations that
Admiral Gehman and the Board have released thus far, as well as
those yet to come, will require a diligent, extremely vigorous
implementation of that effort, which will require everybody in
the space flight community turning to very, very hard.
Senator Nelson. By the way, Admiral, on the previous
answer, why did we not discover on flight-day two that piece of
debris trailing?
Admiral Gehman. Well, Senator----
Senator Nelson. Why was it only after the accident?
Admiral Gehman. Right. Senator, the United States does not
currently track the Shuttle. The United States Air Force Space
Command and the U.S. Strategic Command keep track of everything
that is in space. They keep track of all of our satellites,
including the Shuttle when it is on orbit, for the purpose of
making sure they do not run into each other. But we do not
track it in the sense--like a fire-controlled guidance system
or anything like that, that watches it.
After this accident, we asked the U.S. Strategic Command
and the Air Force Space Command to go back over all their
millions and millions of records and pull out all of their
observations of the Shuttle to see whether or not any damage
could be detected. They could not detect any damage, but they
found 3100 observations of the Shuttle, due course, and they
discovered, in their reconstruction, ``Oh, look at this. Here
is something that is orbiting alongside the Shuttle,'' which
was reported to us six days after the accident.
Senator Nelson. Thank you for clarifying that.
Mr. O'Keefe, there is always this gut-wrenching question
about whether the crew should have been told. What was the crew
told about the strike by the foam and the likelihood of the
damage?
Mr. O'Keefe. To my knowledge--again, I will clarify this
for the record if it needs further--they were not advised of
that and were not advised of any significant damage, because,
again, it was inside what was deemed, on every previous flight,
every time that it occurred, within the realm of acceptable and
not a safety-of-flight consideration. So, therefore, it was not
raised with them specifically.
Senator Nelson. And----
Mr. O'Keefe. Lots of other things were. Many other issues
were raised with the crew regularly. But this did not rise to
that level. That was a judgment call and one that was
determined not to be a safety-of-flight consideration.
Senator Nelson. And, Admiral, as you make your
recommendations, I would respectfully suggest that the old-
timers would say that they would definitely want the crew
involved.
Admiral Gehman. I think that if you will let us respond for
the record, Senator, I think that we can shed more light on
that subject. I think there is--I am not completely conversant
with every detail, but the crew was advised at some time, and I
do not know exactly when and what day it was or whether they
were consulted or not. But let us get that for the record for
you. There are some facts there.
Mr. O'Keefe. On that point, Admiral, and exactly right, I
guess the question, as I interpreted it, Senator--I apologize--
was, ``Were they specifically consulted and advised about it?''
They received the daily flight reports from the Mission
Management Team, and on those reports was the noted incident of
strike and a resolution of the question, I believe, on day 12,
in which, unambiguously, it says, ``We've analyzed this,
examined the issues, and determined it is not a safety-of-
flight consideration.'' So it was treated as another data
point. It was not something that was raised specifically.
So as you are well aware, the process during the course of
on-orbit is you receive lots of data, lots of information, lots
of reporting back and forth with mission control, and it comes
in many forms, some by voice, some by the notice and
requirements. But in this particular case, it was noted on the
Mission Management Team reports, and that will be provided for
the record, as I think it was on February 12th, at that
hearing. But there was not a specific dialogue that I am aware
of with the commander or the payload specialists--I am sorry--
the mission specialists aboard that were specifically engaged
in the activity. I do not believe that was the case, but I will
provide that for the record, as well.
[The information referred to follows:]
On January 23, 2003, Steven Stich, a NASA Space Shuttle Flight
Director who was working the Orbit 1 (first) shift in the Mission
Control Center during the STS-107 mission, sent an e-mail to Columbia
Commander Rick Husband, informing Col. Husband that NASA had observed
some debris striking the orbiter during launch.
In this e-mail, Mr. Stich indicated that initial engineering
analysis suggested that the debris did not pose a safety of flight
issue to Columbia. Col. Husband replied to the e-mail, acknowledging
its receipt and clearly indicating his understanding of the
notification provided. A few hours later, Mr. Jeff Hanley, another
Orbit 1 Mission Control member, transmitted a second e-mail to Col.
Husband containing video of the launch and showing what appeared to be
a piece of foam from the External Tank striking Columbia. No other
communication in any form occurred between NASA and the crew concerning
this matter.
The foregoing e-mail exchange used the ``personal'' e-mail channel,
and followed receipt of several media inquiries concerning the foam
debris visible during ascent. The Johnson Space Center newsroom
believed the information might prove useful if questions were posed
about it during a scheduled series of in-flight interviews on January
25. While the personal e-mail protocol was not created to provide
mission-related information to orbiter crews, such use is not unusual
or unprecedented. Although anticipated operational, media, and other
issues are normally provided to the crew as part of a standard daily
``package,'' NASA has reviewed each of these packages, and has
confirmed this exchange as the sole source of information on the debris
strike provided Columbia.
The STS-107 Mission Management Team (MMT) finished its evaluation
of the debris strike on January 27, four days after the Stich-Husband
e-mail exchange. Based on the findings of the debris assessment team,
the MMT concluded that the debris impact did not pose a safety of
flight issue; consequently, no additional information was provided to
the Columbia crew.
Copies of the MMT minutes, this e-mail exchange, and the daily
``packages'' will be available on the NASA web site at: http./
www.nasa.gov/columbia/foia/index.html
Senator Nelson. Well, I know that to cut the crew out, you
are eliminating a great resource, and I know that there have
been many occurrences where emergencies have arisen in the past
that the crew responded immediately and had the problem fixed
before mission control even knew about it. So you all will
deliberate that in due time.
Well, let me just wrap up here for the Chairman, and you
can provide these for the record.
What I want to do is what all of us want to do. I want us
to get the problem fixed and get flying and get back and
utilize these wonderful assets that we have out there,
including the Space Station. But we are going to have to attend
to safety in a way that we never have. And, of course, you have
heard me rail from this podium in the past about, over the past
decade, of the safety upgrades not being done on the Space
Shuttle, and delayed.
So if you, Mr. Administrator, will provide for the record,
How does NASA determine what Shuttle upgrades are required, and
how these upgrades will be selected and prioritized? And does
NASA have a 2020 plan to show when the Shuttle-upgrade
requirements will be completed? And then if you will round that
out as we are grappling to get the technologies for a follow-on
vehicle, why have we seen so many missteps in the development
of a second-generation technology in NASA's program?
Any comment now? And then, if you would, supply the rest of
it for the record.
Mr. O'Keefe. Yes, sir. I will be delighted to provide all
that for the record.
[The information referred to follows:]
General Michael Kostelnik, Deputy Associate Administrator for the
International Space Station and Space Shuttle Programs, initiated a new
Space Shuttle Service Life Extension Program (SLEP) during the past
year, which is responsible for providing a coordinated review of the
Space Shuttle upgrades by the entire space flight community. During the
annual SLEP Conference, the Chairmen of the seven SLEP panels--Safety,
Sustainability, Infrastructure, Resources, Industry, Performance, and
Operations--present the prioritized list of upgrades their panels
support for the coming year. The Integration Panel prioritizes these
seven sets of upgrades into a single set of requirements, which is
presented to the Space Flight Leadership Council. The Space Flight
Leadership Council approves the final upgrades requirements for
inclusion as part of NASA's annual budget cycle. As long as the Space
Shuttle is required to be available for flight, the SLEP process will
be conducted to ensure that the Space Shuttle is maintained at the
proper level for safe human space flight.
Mr. O'Keefe. We are moving ahead aggressively on the
orbital space plan to guarantee a crew-transfer vehicle
capacity between here and the International Space Station. That
is its mission, that is its objective. To use, then, the
Shuttle for the purpose of the heavy-lift cargo capacities, as
required. That is a mid-term kind of a requirement.
We are also developing the next-generation launch
technologies which will ultimately provide for a space-
exploration vehicle. Whether it is a replacement for Shuttle or
not is something that, really, we ought to think about long and
hard, because it is only capable of orbit within low-earth
orbit, it has minimal maneuverability, it has no power-
generation source of its own, all of which are things we need
to correct, from a technology standpoint, to look at anything
beyond low-earth orbit. I think you will see emerge from this
process an answer on that front for the longer term, ``What
replaces this capability for more expansive space-exploration
objectives,'' in very short order.
Senator Nelson. Gentlemen, thank you very much. The meeting
is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:50 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
Responses to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. John McCain to
Hon. Sean O'Keefe
Question 1. In the recently submitted NASA FY 2003 Operating Plan,
it was stated in the Congressional Increases section that $900,000 had
been provided for the ``Computing, Information, and Communication
Technology Program only for Mobile, Wireless, and Broadband Internet
Capability.'' It was indicated in the plan that this earmark had been
inadvertently dropped as an earmark from the final Conference
compilation. Can you explain how this process of adding ``inadvertent''
earmarks works within NASA?
Answer. The Congressional increase for the item in question was
included as part of total funding provided for Aerospace Technology
programs in House Report 107-740, accompanying H.R. 5604, the FY 2003
VA-HUD-Independent Agencies Appropriations Bill. Conference action
yielded a total for Aerospace Technology that was $900,000 greater than
all items listed in the Report. Committee staff subsequently notified
NASA that this item had been inadvertently omitted from the Conference
Report, and requested that NASA include it in the Operating Plan as a
technical correction.
Question 2. Based upon commercially available satellite imaging,
can you comment on the utility of having satellite images of the
Columbia's left wing on-orbit?
Answer. NASA has significantly enhanced procedures in place to
maximize available national assets to assess Shuttle orbiters during
human space flight missions. The memorandum of agreement between NASA
and NIMA was finalized on July 11, 2003.
Question 3. What lessons has NASA learned from its analysis of the
Columbia tragedy? What have you done to ensure that these ``lessons
learned'' are fully integrated into NASA's management and operations?
Is there a definitive ``lessons learned'' program at NASA to minimize
the repetition of past mistakes?
Answer. On February 1, 2003, NASA pledged to the Columbia families
that we would find the problems, fix them and return to the exploration
objectives to which they dedicated their lives. NASA has just received
the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) report, which fulfills
the first of NASA's commitments to the families. To fulfill the second
commitment--fixing the problems--the first important step is that NASA
has accepted the findings and recommendations of the CAIB report and
will comply with them. The CAIB report represents a valuable blueprint
and roadmap to achieving the second commitment, and the Board provided
NASA a head start by releasing information throughout their
deliberations. As of this time, NASA has developed a preliminary
Implementation Plan for the recommendations of the CAIB, and will
update it now to include all the findings and recommendations. The next
step involves wise choices by NASA to select the options necessary to
comply with the recommendations. In addition, all of the ``lessons
learned'' will be documented in the NASA Lessons Learned Information
System including information and recommendations provided by the CAIB.
Question 4. Questions have been raised by NASA's impact analysis
performed by Boeing of the foam strike on the left wing of the
Columbia. In response to post hearing questions from the Committee's
earlier hearing on the Columbia accident, NASA stated the results of
scenarios 5 and 6 from the impact analysis were ``discussed''. Is this
an acceptable practice of documenting results at NASA?
Answer. Results of the analysis were presented (discussed) during a
Mission Management Team (MMT) meeting during the STS-107 flight. This
MMT process is being strengthened to provide rigor and a requirement
for documented presentations.
Question 5. What role did the NASA Safety Office play in the
assessment of the impact analysis?
Answer. The safety community was actively engaged in the review and
assessment of the impact analysis that was prepared and presented by
Boeing. A safety representative (from the JSC safety organization) was
present at all the meetings during which this topic was discussed,
including the Mission Management Team briefings. The safety community
agreed with the conclusion that a safe return of the vehicle was
likely, provided that the suspected damage was bounded within the
limits of the damage assessment estimates and the analytical
capability. The safety community, based on input from the safety
representative on the team through status reporting up to the Associate
Administrator, Office of Safety and Mission Assurance, was aware of the
findings and recommendations of the analysis and concurred with the
Shuttle program's assessment that there was no significant re-entry
risk due to any anticipated tile damage. Further, a safety
representative was present at all of the Shuttle program manager's
weekly status teleconferences, where the topic was openly discussed
among all the team members.
Question 6. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board has already
made two recommendations. The first one was that NASA should develop
and implement a comprehensive inspection plan, using advanced non-
destructive inspection technology, to determine the structural
integrity of all Reinforced Carbon-Carbon (RCC) system components. The
second recommendation was that NASA should modify its Memorandum of
Agreement with the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) to make
on-orbit imaging for each Shuttle flight a standard requirement. What
steps have you taken to implement these recommendations, and how much
will they cost?
Answer. NASA is in the process of developing the comprehensive plan
for inspecting all RCC components. A technical interchange between NASA
and industry representatives was recently held to assess available
state-of-the-art methods of non-destructive inspection. Additional non-
destructive inspection methods, such as thermography and shearography,
are being evaluated to determine their effectiveness in determining
potential flaws in various materials used in the Shuttle program.
Additionally, NASA and the NIMA have finalized an updated agreement
for support of Space Shuttle missions.
Question 7. What type of inspections was NASA doing to the RCC
components on the leading edges of the Shuttle wings prior to the
Columbia accident?
Answer. As specified in the Orbiter maintenance document, the
following inspection were conducted on the wing leading edges of each
Orbiter:
Surface tactile inspection--every flight
Visual surface inspection--every flight
Pre/post-flight lower access panel micro inspections--every
flight
RCC pinhole inspection--every Orbiter maintenance and major
modification period
Detailed breakdown inspection including eddy current and
ultrasound--every Orbiter maintenance and major modification
period
Question 8. According to press reports, NASA has begun a widespread
review of critical design and safety features and management practices
to prepare for returning the Space Shuttle to flight. NASA officials
are reported to believe that it could take 18 to 24 months before the
Shuttle will fly again. Could you please describe what NASA is
reviewing, and NASA's ``return to flight'' strategy?
Answer. Return to Flight actions will consider, but not be limited
to:
Review the adequacy and robustness of key Space Shuttle
hardware systems.
Review the Certificate of Flight Readiness and MMT process
Quantify entry risk
Validate that controls are appropriate and implemented
properly for accepted risks
Review Failure Modes and Effects Analyses, Critical Items
Lists, Waivers, etc.
Review the identification and resolution of the in-flight
anomaly review process.
Redesign of External Tank Bi-Pod thermal protection system
to eliminate foam.
Improved vehicle inspection techniques and methods during
launch, ascent and on-orbit operations
Develop on-orbit thermal protection system repair
techniques.
Reaching specific milestones will drive NASA's Return to Flight
effort, not specific calendar dates. NASA is working toward a target
launch date for planning purposes, to keep Space Shuttle and Return to
Flight processing moving forward, but the Agency is not locked into any
particular date. NASA will launch STS-114 when the Agency determines
that the Shuttle is ``fit to fly'' and when we have safely achieved
specific milestones throughout the Return to Flight effort.
Question 9. The halt in Space Shuttle operations will delay the
construction of the International Space Station--a program that is
already well known for schedule delays and cost overruns. What effect
will the Columbia accident have on schedule and costs of construction
of the Space Station?
Answer. NASA has maintained the original delivery schedules for all
items of U.S.-provided Space Station flight hardware and is continuing
with the integration and test of all ISS launch packages as planned.
Additionally, the European-provided, U.S.-owned Node 2 was delivered to
NASA Kennedy Space Center in June 2003, completing the delivery of all
flight elements needed to complete the U.S. Core configuration.
However, delays to the ISS assembly sequence resulting from the
Columbia accident will require NASA to retain critical contractor
expertise longer than anticipated. NASA has just received the report of
the CAIB. We will not know the extent of overall delays or costs until
we have received and assessed the final recommendations of the CAIB and
progressed further into our return to flight planning.
Question 10. Last year NASA appointed a Mishap Investigation Board
to examine the loss of the CONTOUR mission, a satellite that broke
apart last August. Are the Columbia and CONTOUR accidents being treated
as isolated events or in context of NASA's long term plans?
Answer. The CONTOUR and Columbia accidents are both being addressed
in terms of NASA's long-term plans. While these accidents involved very
different kinds of spacecraft, there are nonetheless some important
common elements in both mishaps with regard to NASA's approach to
engineering rigor, processes, and instincts. These common elements are
among those addressed in ongoing improvements to NASA's engineering
culture, in part by the establishment of the NASA Engineering and
Safety
Question 11. Could you please expand upon the purpose of General
Stafford's independent assessment team and the role that it will play
in NASA's implementation on the Columbia Accident Investigation Board's
recommendations?
Answer. The Return to Flight Task Group, led by Gen. Tom Stafford,
has been tasked to perform an independent assessment of NASA's actions
to implement the recommendations of the CAIB, as they relate to the
safety and operational readiness. While the Task Group will not attempt
to assess the adequacy of the CAIB recommendations, it will report on
the progress of NASA's response to meet their intent.
Question 12. Can you update us on your consideration of crew escape
mechanisms on the Shuttle orbiters?
Answer. Crew survivability has been studied continuously since the
Challenger accident. Through the Shuttle Life Extension Program (SLEP),
additional studies are planned to further refine a number of crew
escape concepts that were developed in a 1999 study conducted by the
Orbiter Project together with United Space Alliance and Boeing Company.
Question 13. You testified during the hearing that you were
concerned by the ``normalization of deviation'' at NASA, especially the
toleration of foam insulation falling from the External Tank, because
it happened so many times it was considered an acceptable condition.
The recent return of Expedition 6 by Soyuz capsule was also considered
an ``outside-the-norm'' landing pattern, but NASA has claimed that it
was not a ``safety-of-flight'' issue, because similar landings had
occurred before. Are you concerned that NASA's response to the Soyuz
landing is yet another case of ``normalization of deviation?'' What do
you intend to do to ensure that the cause of this ``outside-the-norm''
landing is found and fixed, so that it doesn't happen again?
Answer. The ballistic mode of re-entry for the Soyuz TMA-1 (ISS
Flight 5S) descent module was one of four pre-programmed modes of re-
entry. Soyuz crews are trained for all four modes. The ballistic re-
entry was conducted safely and as designed and the Soyuz TMA-1 (ISS
Flight 5S) landed in the predicted ballistic descent landing zone. The
crew was never in danger.
Experts from Russia and the United States are making every effort
to fully understand and resolve the factors that contributed to the
Soyuz TMA-1 (ISS Flight 5S) spacecraft's return to Earth in the backup
ballistic mode. The Russian Aviation and Space Agency (Rosaviakosmos)
established a technical investigative Board, which it calls a
``Commission,'' led by RSC Energia the responsible organization for
Soyuz manufacturing, to determine the cause of this mode of re-entry
and provide specific recommendations. The Commission determined that
the Soyuz automatically switched to the ballistic mode shortly before
re-entry when the on-board computers received an indication of a
failure in the capsule's electronic attitude control system.
The NASA Advisory Council Task Force on International Space Station
Operational Readiness (the Stafford Task Force) will work with its
counterpart Russian organization, the Rosaviakosmos Advisory Expert
Council (together referred to together as the Stafford-Anfimov Joint
Commission), to conduct an assessment of the Commission's investigation
of the Soyuz TMA-1 (ISS Flight 5S) re-entry. This assessment occurred
during the week of July 21 in Moscow. The Deputy Associate
Administrator of NASA's Office of Safety and Mission Assurance is an
ex-officio member of the Stafford Task Force and will be integrally
involved in the Joint Commission's review of the Commission's
investigation.
NASA, which has been regularly briefed by the Commission throughout
its investigation, will review the Commission's investigation, and the
assessment of that investigation, by the Stafford-Anfimov Joint
Commission. NASA will continue to work with our Russian colleagues to
ensure that all necessary follow-up actions are implemented.
Question 14. I understand that the tiles are so sensitive that the
Shuttle will not launch in the rain, and touching them can cause
damage. If this is the case, why, when there was an image of debris
hitting the tiles, did not this result in the immediate classification
of this event as a serious emergency that threatened the loss of crew
and/or orbiter?
Answer. Given the information available at the time that the foam
hit the wing of Columbia, it was presumed that the impact was to the
tile-covered underside of the wing and not the leading edge. A tile
assessment and analysis concluded that the impact to tile was not a
safety of flight issue. If it had been known that the impact was to the
wing leading edge, a different analysis would have been conducted.
Question 15. NASA has stated that safety is a top priority for the
agency. What role did NASA's safety office play in the decision
concerning Columbia's re-entry?
Answer. The safety community was actively engaged in the review and
assessment of the impact analysis that was prepared and presented by
Boeing. The Shuttle's Mission Management Team includes a safety
representative. Safety personnel agreed with the conclusion that a safe
return of the vehicle was likely, provided the suspected damage was
bounded within the limits of the damage assessment estimates and the
analytical capability. The safety community, based on input from the
safety representative on the team through status reporting up to the
Associate Administrator, Office of Safety and Mission Assurance, was
aware of the findings and recommendations from the analysis and
concurred with the Shuttle program's assessment that there was no
significant re-entry risk due to any anticipated tile damage.
Question 16. Recently, the Soyuz, which is the only vehicle
currently being used to reach the International Space Station, missed
its landing target by 300 miles, and came in at the wrong angle,
subjecting its 3-man crew to high gravitational forces. What has NASA's
Safety office done to address concerns about Soyuz's safety and
reliability?
Answer. Russia's RSC Energia, which is responsible for Soyuz
manufacturing, established a technical review Board to conduct an
investigation into the possible causes of the Soyuz TMA-1 spacecraft's
return to Earth in the ``ballistic mode'' of re-entry. The Board
determined that the ballistic descent mode likely occurred due to the
failure of one of the descent control system instruments. The Board was
then tasked with detecting the failure location, specifying its origin,
and generating specific recommendations to prevent similar situations
from occurring during subsequent flights of the Soyuz TMA spacecraft.
It should be noted that the ballistic mode of re-entry for the
Soyuz TMA-1 descent module was one of four possible programmed modes
for re-entry. Soyuz crews are trained for all four-re-entry modes. The
Soyuz TMA-1 landed in the predicted ballistic descent-landing zone.
The NASA Advisory Council Task Force on International Space Station
Operational Readiness (the Stafford Task Force) will work with its
counterpart Russian organization, the Russian Aviation and Space Agency
(Rosaviakosmos) Advisory Expert Council (referred to together as the
Stafford-Anfimov Joint Commission), to conduct an assessment of the
Energia Board's investigation of the Soyuz TMA-1 re-entry. This
assessment occurred during the week of July 21, 2003 in Moscow.
NASA will review the Energia Board's investigation and the
assessment of that investigation by the Stafford-Anfimov Joint
Commission, and will continue to work with our Russian colleagues to
ensure that all necessary follow-up actions are implemented.
Question 17. Given the history of tile damage to the Shuttle
orbiters during a mission, do you have any thoughts as to whether or
not on-orbit contingency plans should address this problem?
Answer. NASA is currently assessing various new technologies that
could provide methods to inspect and repair damage to the Orbiter's
thermal protection system during flight. Previously, there were no
methods available that did not subject the crew or vehicle to
additional risk.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Bill Nelson to
Hon. Sean O'Keefe
Question 1. How does NASA determine what Shuttle upgrades are
required and how these upgrades will be selected and prioritized?
Answer. The new Space Shuttle Service Life Extension Program (SLEP)
addresses the critical investments that will ensure the Space Shuttle
can safely and effectively meet the requirements of the new Integrated
Space Transportation Plan. The Deputy Associate Administrator for
International Space Station and Space Shuttle Programs has created a
process--the SLEP Summit--that will meet annually to identify and frame
the immediate and long-range investment direction and strategy for
SLEP.
In preparation for the SLEP summit, eight panels were identified to
examine and prioritize potential investments. The panels focused on
Space Shuttle safety, sustainability, infrastructure, resources,
operations, and performance issues. In addition, an industry panel was
chartered to provide a unique industry perspective. With the exception
of the industry panel, each panel was lead by a senior NASA manager and
populated with a diverse membership across each space flight center and
relevant NASA Headquarters functional offices and Enterprises. The
panels were tasked with assessing the potential costs, risks, and
benefits of additional investments for their respective areas.
The first SLEP Summit was held on March 19-20, 2003 in Michoud, LA.
The Panels briefed those in attendance and the Space Flight Leadership
Council (SFLC) on their findings and recommendations for the strategic
investments needed to maintain and improve the long-term operational
capability of the Space Shuttle. On May 7, 2003, the SFLC selected its
top priorities for investment from among the panels' recommendations.
Additionally, recommendations from the Columbia Accident Investigation
Board requiring long-term investment are likely to be incorporated into
the SLEP process.
A SLEP Summit will be held annually to re-evaluate and update
Shuttle priorities and investment strategies.
Question 2. Does NASA have a 2020 plan to show when the Shuttle
upgrade requirements will be completed?
Answer. The 2020 plan was an internal study that provided a
foundation for identifying the resources required to maintain the
safety and sustain the viability of the Space Shuttle program through
2020. The Space Shuttle Service Life Extension Program (SLEP) is our
current process. SLEP will prioritize and implement immediate and long-
range investment direction and strategy for the Space Shuttle. This
includes many of the recommendations that were derived from the 2020
study. Since a SLEP Summit will be held annually to re-evaluate and
update Shuttle priorities and investment strategies, there is no
detailed long-range plan roadmap that describes exactly what upgrades
will be completed when.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. John McCain to
Admiral Harold W. Gehman
Question 1. Another issue that has been raised is about privileged
information that the Board has gained from confidential interviews with
witnesses. Could you please explain the importance of this privileged
information to your investigation, and what will become of this
``privileged'' testimony after the Board's work is done?
Answer. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) conducted
essentially two investigations in one. The first investigation was the
accident investigation, that is, an investigation to determine what
happened to the Columbia. This accident investigation was conducted
with full disclosure of all processes and evidence obtained in support
of the Board's findings and recommendations. The second investigation
could be described more accurately as a safety investigation. It used
procedures long established as effective by various government
agencies, including allowing individuals to express frank and honest
views and opinions in a manner that protects them from any threat, real
or perceived, of retaliation from their organization. The statements of
these individuals provide a very important view of organizational
practices that relate to safety. Experience has shown that
investigations frequently cannot obtain candid, truthful, or possibly
incriminating information any other way. Therefore, being able to grant
witnesses confidentiality is very important to the Board. The ultimate
disposition of these protected statements has not yet been determined.
If they are archived by the National Archives along with the rest of
the Board's documents, every effort will be made to ensure that the
Congress-CAIB agreement, regarding access and disclosure, will remain
in effect.
Question 2. In testimony before the Science, Technology, and Space
Subcommittee, Dr. Alex Roland, a former NASA historian, testified that
NASA originally planned for the fleet of Space Shuttles to be replaced
every five years. Many observers have warned that the Space Shuttle is
being used past its expected lifetime, and that it is becoming
obsolete. There have even been reports that NASA engineers have to use
the Internet site, E-Bay, to find sources for parts. Based on your
investigation, do you believe that the Space Shuttle has become ``worn
out'' and should be replaced?
Answer. The referenced incident involving an E-Bay parts search
involved an obsolete circuit card for a personal computer, part of a
shop test equipment set at the NASA Shuttle Logistics Depot (NSLD); it
was not flight hardware, which requires full certification in all
instances. NSLD personnel work very hard to either repair parts or have
spares available. From May 2, thru Apr 3, 18,213 parts were delivered
from stock with no orbiter cannibalizations, a testament to effective
repair and stocking efforts. For flight hardware as well as ground
systems equipment, one of the significant challenges to NSLD has been
what is referred to as ``Diminishing Manufacturing Sources,'' or DMS.
The availability of spare parts is an ongoing challenge for all
systems, not just the Shuttle, but has little to do with the Shuttles
being ``worn out.'' The Shuttle mission life capability is continually
updated by NASA, which has concluded that 100 missions are achievable.
Question 3. One area that the Board said it would investigate
concerns NASA's use of contractors. Specifically, the Board has
indicated that it will examine NASA's inspection and oversight of
contracts, and whether NASA is making high enough demands from private
companies in its contracts. Could you please discuss the work that the
Board has done in this area?
Answer. The CAIB has examined the relationship between NASA and its
contractors at various levels, starting at the top (Space Flight
Operations Contract) and including actual performance at the tactical
level (e.g. Government Mandatory Inspection Points/GMIPs, surveillance,
and Foreign Object Debris/FOD prevention). The final report will
include specific recommendations on modifying and improving the current
contract and government-contractor relationships at these various
levels.
The trend in government over the last 15 years has been toward
decreased government execution, with contractors performing more
execution and the government providing oversight.
NASA has also followed this trend, but as headcount NASA has been
reduced, there has also been a shift from NASA's intensive monitoring
to NASA's sampling and auditing, with an increased dependence on
partnering, moving NASA further from actual technical performance and
into performance monitoring. Prime contactor cuts have, in turn,
resulted in ``self oversight'' of critical suppliers. Emphasis on
partnering has blurred lines of responsibility and accountability
between NASA and its contractors.
Additionally, performance-based contracting has proven difficult in
terms of emphasizing and measuring the right things with the
appropriate benchmarks, such as outcomes, milestones, result, launches
and compliance at lower/intermediate levels. In general, award fee
scores are high, but it is important to understand what is being
measured, as well as what impact the scoring system itself has on
performance.
Question 4. At the Board's March 6 hearing, Henry MacDonald, a
former Director of the NASA Ames Research Center, stated that the
NASA's recordkeeping was poor and that its records cannot be searched
by modern tools like Web browsers. He said that there was no easy way
for managers to search NASA records for the four previous occasions
where pieces of foam insulation fell off of the external tank. Could
you please comment on this testimony, and the role that this database
and other inadequately designed management tools may have played in
NASA's decisions regarding the Columbia?
Answer. NASA's system for tracking problems and corrective actions
across the Space Shuttle Program (SSP) is cumbersome to use, not well-
integrated across various centers and program elements, and difficult
to search or use for analytical purposes. That said, it is difficult to
show that these shortcomings played a direct role in management
decisions relating to Columbia, or otherwise contributed to the
accident.
The Problem Reporting and Corrective Action (PRACA) System is the
SSP's system for reporting problems and tracking corrective actions on
Space Shuttle hardware and software. Throughout the investigation, the
CAIB heard repeatedly from NASA employees and contractors about
difficulties with this system, and experienced many of these same
problems during limited first-hand attempts to use it.
In an effort to integrate PRACA databases across different centers,
NASA initiated the Web Program Compliance and Status System (WEBCASS).
While it provides the user access to consolidated information with some
higher-level search capability, it is still reportedly difficult to
use.
Database shortcomings cannot be directly implicated in decisions
relating to foam. The history of falling foam was well known, and most
managers could recall from memory the major incidents, particularly
those involving bipod ramp foam. The fact that there was a well-known
history, without catastrophic consequences, is reflected in repeated
statements that foam has never been a safety of flight issue.
Question 5. You mentioned during the hearing the extensive use of
accelerometers on the Shuttle's exterior. What is the extent of
capability in temperature sensors on the exterior? Are they sensitive
enough to detect any abnormality due to damage tiles?
Answer. There were 94 temperature sensors on Columbia, 50 of which
were surface temperature sensors. Forty-one were mounted in tiles,
eight were structure temperature sensors, and one was on an insulation
blanket. All of these surface temperature measurements were recorded on
the Modular Auxiliary Data System, which was recovered in southeast
Texas.
Any disturbance in surface smoothness will manifest itself as a
downstream flow field disturbance. Thus, if the temperature sensor is
close enough to the damage and the damage is large enough, it is
possible that the sensor would detect a disturbance. However, the tiles
are very good insulators, so small damage in a tile that also has a
temperature sensor embedded in it may not sense the damage.
Observers have noted the many similarities and differences between
the Rogers Commission and the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.
Question 6. What lessons did you learn from the Rogers Commission
and apply to your investigation into the Columbia tragedy?
Answer. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board benefited
significantly from the Rogers Commission and even includes members who
participated in the Challenger accident investigation. All CAIB members
read the Rogers Report and spoke to people with knowledge regarding how
the Challenger investigation was organized. The lessons learned are
many, including:
Don't assume anything
Don't fall in love with the first plausible cause scenario
Break up into independent work groups
Independently verify certain matters
Crosscheck testimony
Public hearings are valuable
Question 6a. Based on your investigation, do you believe that NASA
is continuing to operate under the ``lessons learned'' from the
Challenger accident, or have these lessons been forgotten?
Answer. This issue is currently under review by the CAIB. It would
be premature to express what the Board might finally decide, however,
this is certainly a matter at which the Board is taking under
consideration.