|
Nasa chief meets with cheney { August 28 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56281-2003Aug27.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56281-2003Aug27.html
NASA Chief Pledges He'll Make Changes
By Kathy Sawyer and Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, August 28, 2003; Page A01
NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe vowed yesterday that he will bring about the fundamental changes demanded by a blistering investigative report that pointed to pervasive management, communication and "culture" failures as the root cause of the loss of the space shuttle Columbia.
The space agency will address the "human failures," not just the hardware problems, that brought about the disaster, and will accept that "our culture needs to change to mitigate succumbing to those failings again. We get it, clearly got the point," the NASA chief told reporters a little more than 24 hours after receiving the 248-page report of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.
O'Keefe said he accepts personal responsibility for everything that happened on his watch, including the pressure his own policies placed on the shuttle program to meet a demanding construction schedule for the international space station. The investigators cited that pressure as a factor in the failure of NASA managers to fully address concerns about foam debris striking the orbiter.
In a later interview, O'Keefe said he will meet today with Vice President Cheney. His agency faces major funding and organizational issues amid the board's call for extensive short- and long-term steps, before and after shuttle flights resume -- including the creation of a large independent engineering department and the development of a much-needed successor to the aging shuttle fleet.
But O'Keefe added that he has consulted regularly with the White House since the accident. "There's no air gap there," he said.
To make the point that safety and other considerations had routinely trumped scheduling, O'Keefe noted, in an ironic sort of boast, that not a single shuttle flight in his almost 11/2-year tenure has been launched on its original target date. But he acknowledged that headquarters must have sent an unhealthy "mixed message," in which the workforce felt stressed over the deadline while top managers regarded it as more of a coordinating tool.
NASA will need the backing of Congress, which the board said had squeezed its funding. Appearing on CBS's "Early Show" yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said, "We wasted tens of millions of dollars on pork-barrel spending that should have gone to the shuttle, should have gone to safety and should have gone to other projects. I hope we can stop that practice."
McCain also said a debate on space policy is in order. "First, get rid of the unnecessary and wasteful spending, and then clearly define the mission of NASA and what we want it to do," he said.
NASA is engaged in multiple activities aimed at returning the shuttles to flight as soon as possible, conceivably within six to nine months, while meeting the board's recommendations. Because the board had kept NASA well informed of its thinking throughout the process, NASA had begun addressing some of the board's 29 recommendations well before the report came out. But O'Keefe said the agency is still working out how to achieve some of the more complex and fundamental changes in the agency "culture."
Amid the mountain of criticism, the board noted approvingly that, well before the Columbia accident, O'Keefe had begun a program that emulated the Navy's approach to safety, which in turn was inspired in part by the 1963 loss of the nuclear submarine USS Thresher with 129 people aboard.
"I kicked it off the day I got here," said O'Keefe, whose father was an engineer on a nuclear sub. "The fact is, it just hadn't matured enough on February 1."
O'Keefe said he has enlisted the help of a number of outside experts in managing high-risk programs.
Since the accident, he has also begun to assemble a new safety organization based at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., which could be up and running in about a month.
O'Keefe and retired Adm. Harold W. Gehman Jr., chairman of the investigating board, praised each other in interviews yesterday, and both men expressed optimism about NASA's prospects for changing the way it operates.
Gehman voiced confidence in O'Keefe's ability to guide the space agency and said it is reasonable to think the shuttles could be flying again within six to nine months.
"I don't view this as a mission impossible," Gehman said of the challenges NASA faces. "If they put their hearts and souls to it and if they get the money to do it, I think [return to flight in] six to nine months is reasonable."
He also said NASA officials must acknowledge that the space agency has a "blind spot" in its understanding of management of high-risk technologies such as the shuttle.
"My practical advice would be that NASA should assume that there's a blind spot in their makeup and that they ought to learn -- they ought to just take a clean sheet of paper" and start over, Gehman said in an interview with Washington Post editors and reporters. "They should just assume they're not the experts in this and there's much, much more to learn out there."
O'Keefe and Gehman will appear together at congressional hearings in September as the key committees take up the policy issues raised by the report.
The two men, along with several other members of the investigation board, met for several hours Tuesday night, O'Keefe said, because he wanted to fully understand the "texture" behind the unsparing words in the report.
In an address to employees after the report was issued, O'Keefe quoted Gene Kranz, a legendary NASA flight director, from an address to Kranz's own staff two days after a launch pad fire aboard Apollo 1 killed three astronauts on Jan. 27, 1967.
"Whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung-ho about the schedule. We locked out all the problems we saw each day in our work. Every element of the program was in trouble, and so were we," Kranz said. "We are the cause."
Asked whether he felt those words applied to the current case, O'Keefe said they reflected the need for NASA employees to look in the mirror and acknowledge their role.
"Kranz got it right. Your first step is you've got to recognize you're part of the solution, because you're part of the problem, and that includes me," he said.
At Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., the Associated Press reported, director David A. King acknowledged at a news conference that employees there had made errors that contributed to the accident. The center manages the construction of the shuttle's external tank, which is coated with the foam that led to the destruction of Columbia. A veteran top manager there, who had assured the shuttle team that the foam posed no threat to safety, has said he will retire at the end of the year.
"Anytime you're dealing with a system that's this complex, even competent people sometimes make mistakes," King said. "That's what happened here -- we made a mistake. We missed it."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
|
|
