[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 15]
[Senate]
[Pages 20818-20819]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, we have passed the supplemental 
appropriations bill. Because of the lateness of the hour last evening, 
and the fact that the House had already adjourned, having sent an 
emergency spending bill to us that basically included disaster relief 
money to FEMA, almost $1 billion, we were left with a choice of having 
to take it or leave it. It certainly was necessary for funding for FEMA 
for all kinds of emergencies. But, unfortunately, we did not have the 
opportunity to amend the bill to add additional items of very necessary 
funding.
  One of those is the ongoing investigation into what happened to the 
Space Shuttle Columbia. This commission was established by NASA and 
headed by retired Navy Admiral Gayman. I have personally visited with 
them several times, and I am quite impressed with the professionalism 
of the individual members of the Columbia commission.
  Certainly I am impressed with the professionalism and the dedication 
of Admiral Gayman as we anticipate the forthcoming report about what 
happened to the space shuttle. What was the cause? What is the fix? I 
think we can anticipate we are going to see them go much deeper into 
the organization of NASA itself as to what can be improved. I want to 
talk about that for a minute.
  Let me get to the point about my coming to the floor so I can address 
this issue. They did not get the money appropriated which they need to 
continue the investigation. The only place conceivably they could get 
it is to take it right out of the hide of NASA. Of course, NASA has 
been starved over the last 10 years, which is part of the reason we got 
to this point in the first place. Safety was not given the priority it 
should have been given. Often safety is a reflection of where the 
resources--the money--is going. Thus, over that decade, right up until 
recently, NASA was starved of funds and, therefore, they were taking 
money out of space shuttle safety upgrades and putting it into other 
areas. That is one of the problems I think the Gayman commission will 
identify as their report comes forward.
  But the supplemental appropriations bill that we passed last night 
did not provide the appropriation of $50 million for the Gayman 
commission when, in fact, it is ongoing and it will be reporting.
  The long and short of it is that when we come back in session in 
September, that is one of the items we will have to address 
immediately. I think the will is clearly here in the Senate. From 
talking to the leadership on both sides of the aisle, I think the will 
is clearly here, and that is an item that we will have to attend to.
  Let me say a couple of words about the investigation and what I think 
they might find. Clearly, the dramatic evidence they have is that this 
piece of foam that covered one of the support structures for the strut 
that attaches to the orbiter came off after launch during the ascent. 
It came off at such a rate and velocity, hitting the leading edge of 
the wing--that reinforced carbon--that it just blew a hole in it. Yet 
when the space shuttle got into orbit many engineers in the space 
agency were saying we ought to take photographs of it. That was denied. 
The capability of those high resolution photographs is well known, well 
established,

[[Page 20819]]

and well reported in the press. That would have shown the breach. The 
breach was estimated to be probably a half foot. With that kind of 
photography available, NASA managers would have been able to clearly 
see it.
  Then the question is, What would you do about it? They had the 
capability because we had another space shuttle already stacked. It was 
back in the vehicle assembly building. It could have been processed; it 
could have been done double time. They could have rolled it out to the 
pad. Unless there was a major hitch, they could have launched it. They 
could have gotten this launched as a rescue shuttle in time. Another 
option was they could have done an EVA--that is an acronym for space 
walk--from Columbia in orbit.
  The ingenuity of NASA in a time of peril is just incredible. What 
that space team, that space family can do to figure out how to take 
care of problems and how to meet emergencies is incredible.
  Let us not forget Apollo 13. On the way to the Moon, the major 
engines exploded. They were losing oxygen. They were losing air 
pressure. That team went into emergency mode and they figured out how 
to get those three Apollo astronauts back into the lunar lander. Then 
they figured out how to use the motor of the lunar lander. As the 
gravity of the Moon caught them and pulled them behind the Moon, they 
used that motor to kick them out of lunar orbit onto a trajectory back 
to Earth. All reasonable people thought we were going to have three 
dead astronauts. Yet the NASA team, the NASA family, even the astronaut 
who had been bumped from the flight because he had been exposed to the 
measles--he was on the ground--could go into the simulator and work it 
real time--figured out how to bring them back. That team, headed by 
astronaut Jim Lovell, who was in the spacecraft, came back home. They 
came back home safely. It was an incredible time. It is just another 
example of the ingenuity and the high-pressure decisionmaking that 
NASA's family and its team is capable of doing.
  Had they known that a hole was blown into the leading edge of the 
left wing of the Space Shuttle Columbia this past February, they, too, 
would have been able to figure out something that they could do in a 
space walk to stuff it in. That may not have saved them but we could 
have tried.
  I think the Gayman report will discuss these issues. But I think the 
Gayman report is also going to discuss some additional points.
  It has been well reported in the press that you can expect they are 
going to talk about the lack of communication and the culture of NASA 
that discourages communication from the bottom up. That is a culture 
that leads to intimidation of people coming forth into the open--a 
culture in which the managers are not encouraging that information. It 
is kind of like water. It is very easy for water to flow from the top 
down, but it is very difficult for water to flow from the bottom up. 
You have to encourage that communication for it to occur.
  Interestingly, this same kind of problem occurred 17 years ago in the 
destruction of the Space Shuttle Challenger. There were engineers in 
Provo, UT, at Morton Thiokol begging their management the night before 
to stop the countdown on the Space Shuttle Challenger because they 
feared the cold weather was going to stiffen those rubberized gaskets 
called O-rings which would on launch allow the hot gases to come 
through the joints of the solid rocket boosters, which is exactly what 
happened, and it caused the destruction of the Space Shuttle 
Challenger.
  There is a logical reason why it was destroyed, but there is also a 
culture reason why it was destroyed. That culture was a lack of 
communication. It was a culture in NASA that did not encourage 
communication, that was almost intimidation if you dared challenge the 
authority.
  When you are dealing in a research and development agency that is as 
good as NASA is, you can only expect the very best flow of information 
in all directions.
  So I am looking forward to Admiral Gayman's commission report, which 
I think will be very helpful as we try to get this problem fixed and 
get flying again so we can get on with America's space program. Once we 
address all these culture issues, it is going to be the responsibility 
of this Congress to help NASA develop a new goal, a new vision, a new 
mission, that will ignite again the imagination of the American people.
  I think in large part that is going to be either us going back to the 
moon with a lunar colony and/or the next major bold step of sending an 
international team from planet Earth to planet Mars. That will be an 
exciting day.
  In the meantime, however, we have to do what we did not do last 
night. We have to fund the investigation as to the destruction of 
Columbia. We have to fund that commission, and not out of the hide of 
NASA, so that those NASA moneys are not taken away from upgrades in 
safety. Instead, we have to fund that as we had promised we would fund 
it.
  Mr. President, there was another program we did not fund last night. 
It is clearly the majority opinion in this Senate that we want to fund 
AmeriCorps, that we want to continue to have young people have a 
financial incentive to help out their country, just like we do in the 
Peace Corps.
  We have been down to only 7,500 people in the Peace Corps. We need to 
at least get that up to 25,000. I have had foreign leaders over the 
course of the last two and a half decades tell me the Peace Corps is 
one of the best things America has going for it in our foreign 
relations.
  Also, young people who want to help their country, but not 
necessarily to do so abroad, ought to be able to do so at home. But, 
instead, what do we see? The House of Representatives cutting 
AmeriCorps.
  So one of the things we wanted to do last night was to add to the 
emergency supplemental appropriations bill an additional amount of 
money so AmeriCorps could stay at least at its present level so it was 
not cut. That was not done. I am sad it was not done. In the judgment 
of this Senator, that clearly was not in the best interests of the 
country.
  Indeed, I would like to see a day in which every young person in 
America would have an obligation to their country for 1 or 2 years. And 
that obligation could be their choice of national service. They could 
go into the military. They could go into the Peace Corps. They could go 
into AmeriCorps; part of that, the Job Corps. They could go in as 
teachers' aides. They could do innumerable tasks and, in return, have 
some financial incentives for their own education, something akin to 
what we did after the Great War, the GI Bill, where soldiers could come 
back and go to school.
  The politics is not right for that. It would be costly. But that is a 
goal I think we ought to work toward. Instead, what we are doing is 
exactly the opposite by cutting AmeriCorps.

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