N.A.S.A. future rides on shuttle’s next flight

Press, 28 September 1988, Page 51

N.A.S.A. future rides on shuttle’s next flight

NZPA-Reuter Cape Canaveral More than 2>/ 2 years after the Challenger disaster, the National Aeronautical and Space Agency has completely rebuilt the space shuttle and overhauled the United States space programme in preparation for a test flight on which the agency’s entire future rides. Managers of the space agency say SUS2.S billion ($4.05 billion) in technical modifications have made America’s shuttle fleet safer and more reliable, but they acknowledge that the use of new equipment and procedures never before tested in flight, introduces new risks. To minimise the threat, technicians are meticulously checking and rechecking shuttle systems on the ground during the countdown to the launching of Discovery and its crew of five veteran astronauts set for Septemhpr 99 “Some of my best friends are going to be flying this mission, and I >frwouldn’t want them to do

it if I don’t think it was safe enough,” said a former astronaut, Robert Crippen, deputy director of the shuttle programme at the Kennedy Space Centre. N.A.S.A. has overhauled not only the stub-winged spaceship but the entire United States manned space programme, shaking up shuttle management, revamping muchcriticised safety practices and beefing up quality control standards. Most of the changes resulted from a presidential investigation into the Challenger disaster, the worst accident in the history of space flight. All seven astronauts on board were killed when the spaceship exploded 74 seconds after liftoff on January 28, 1986. The shuttle fleet has been grounded since. Investigators blamed the accident on a faulty booster rocket joint, but they also concluded that work standards had become dangerously lax at the Kennedy Space Centre, the N.A.S.A. complex responsible foft, ser-

vicing and launching the shuttles. In an effort to put the space programme back on track, N.A.S.A. officials embarked on a massive redesign and reorganisation. More than 600 separate pieces of equipment were replaced. The shuttle’s twin booster rockets were almost completely rebuilt at a cost of SUS4SO million ($729 million). Big improvements were made on the main engines, brakes, external fuel tank, landing gear, wings, heat-resistant shield, steering system and even the launch pad. An emergency escape system was installed to allow the astronauts to bail out at high altitudes. About 38,000 changes were made in computer codes at the mission control centre in Houston. Workers at Kennedy Space Centre were retrained and about 100,000 pages of technical procedures were rewritten. "Nearly all the improvements make the shuttle more forgiving if something goes wrong,”

said the shuttle launch director, Robert Sieck. He acknowledged that the added complexity and the increased paperwork had also been largely responsible for a string of frustrating launch delays. Discovery’s liftoff, originally scheduled for last February, has been put off five times. N.A.S.A. officials said privately that frequent delays in the launch schedule could become routine because of the space agency’s new ultraconservative safety rules. Space analysts and N.A.S.A. ' managers said the changes also introduced a degree of risk for Discovery’s five-man crew, making the twentysixth United States shuttle mission in many ways a test flight of a new flying machine. The crew will deploy a SUSIOO million N.A.S.A. tracking satellite during a four-day voyage. John Pike, director of space policy at the Federation of American Scientists, said N.A.S.A. had made “so many changes that they are hajjjng to relearn how to

fly the shuttle.” Few doubt that the future of the United States-manned space programme rides on the outcome of Discovery’s mission. “We clearly cannot afford to lose another vehicle, much less another crew,” Navy Captain Frederick Hauck, the mission commander, recently told reporters. N.A.S.A. still faces questions about its ability to manage the shuttle programme. A national survey in July showed that nearly half of those questioned lost confidence in N.A.S.A. after the Challenger explosion. A research commission sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that N.A.S.A. is “no longer a strong technical organisation.” A panel of experts commissioned by N.A.S.A. warned in July that the-space agency had failed to adopt the latest weather forecasting technologies and was poorly organised to provide weather information for shuttle