Are U.S. officials tempting fate by giving the green-light to the accident-prone space shuttle? The answer: we’ll soon find out.
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has cleared the space shutting Discovery for launch on July 1, reports CBS News correspondent Bob Orr, over-riding warnings from his own chief engineer and top safety officials.
“If we’re going to fly, we need to accept some programmatic risk and get on with it,” Griffin said Saturday.
And, indeed, there are two ways to view that assertion: (1)A risky attitude, or (2)A fact that new frontiers have never been explored without undertaking an element of risk. And there is certainly some risk:
The risk involves foam on the shuttle’s huge external fuel tank. NASA safety officials are worried that foam could break off from brackets securing pressurization lines and damage the shuttle’s heat shield.
In their risk analysis, officials label that failure as “probable/catastrophic,” meaning it is “probable” that sometime in the final 17 shuttle flights, foam will be shed with “catastrophic results.”
Not exactly confidence inducing? But is it acceptable risk?
A large piece of foam doomed Columbia in 2003 when it punched a hole in the wing. Another large piece just missed Discovery when it took off last July.
Griffin insists this time there’s no risk to the crew, as only small pieces of foam can break off the brackets. Even if the shuttle is hit, cameras and sensors will spot the damage. If the astronauts can’t repair it, they’ll scramble to the International Space Station and await a rescue by Shuttle Atlantis.
NASA Chief of Safety and Mission Assurance Officer Bryan O’Connor and Chief Engineer Chris Scolese gave the following statement to CBS News:
“Crew safety is our first and most important concern. I believe, as does Chris, that our crew can safely return from this mission.
“Chris and I both feel that there remain issues with the orbiter — there is the potential that foam may come off at time of launch.
“That’s why we feel we should redesign the ice frost ramp. We do not feel, however, that these issues are a threat to safe return of the crew. We have openly discussed our position in the Flight Readiness Review — open communication is how we work at NASA. The administrator has heard all the different engineering positions, including ours, and has made an informed decision and the agency is accepting this risk with its eyes wide open.”
The Daily Tech reports:
Members of the crew, including Air Force Colonel Steve Lindsey, commander of the mission, arrived at the Kennedy Space Center last week for rehearsals. The decision to launch the spacecraft on July 1 did not come without controversy. Even though debris on the external fuel tank is still a cause for concern, NASA believes Discovery will be able to land safely after its 13-day mission. In case the shuttle is not able to safely return to Earth due to mechanical issues, the shuttle crew will conduct repairs and stay on the ISS until a rescue shuttle arrives.
You can be assured of one thing: the shuttle will be very closely watched…
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.