CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., March 6 (UPI) -- Although NASA's space shuttle program managers are expert and accurate decision-makers given correct information, those managers are not being given the facts they require to assess risks properly, a key expert told the Columbia accident investigation board Thursday.
The testimony before the board appointed to find the cause of the Feb. 1 shuttle disaster was delivered calmly and professionally by a former NASA center director who chaired a panel that studied the shuttle program following a nearly catastrophic launch of Columbia in July 1999.
The findings of Harry McDonald, now a professor of computational engineering at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga, are "eerily prescient," said Columbia accident investigation board Chairman Harold Gehman, who led the first of what is expected to be dozens of public hearings about NASA and the Columbia accident.
The board heard from the director of the Johnson Space Center and the shuttle program manager before questioning a Boeing engineer about shuttle external tank foam insulation and similar materials used on the firm's Delta 4 expendable launch vehicles.
Though the Gehman commission has cast a wide net in its search for the cause of the Columbia accident, it clearly is focusing on whether foam that fell off the fuel tank and hit the shuttle's wing during launch on Jan. 16 played a key or contributing role in the ship's breakup over Texas on Feb. 1. Seven astronauts died in NASA's worst accident since the 1986 Challenger accident.
Keith Chong, a Boeing senior engineer and scientist, told the board about his firm's use of a cheap and reliable system to scrutinize foam adhesive on its Delta rockets. He suggested NASA adopt a similar tool to analyze the shuttle's external fuel tank.
Chong also spoke about NASA's switch from a Freon-based spraying agent to apply the foam to an environmentally safer, federally approved agent that was, in his opinion, "second best." Another environmentally friendly chemical made in Japan was ruled out due to cost considerations.
McDonald, however, delivered the most gripping narrative of the day, detailing how he and his board discovered NASA's underestimation of risks associated with the main engines. In addition to wiring problems, which led to the grounding of the fleet for inspections and repairs, McDonald's team looked into the breakage of a pin in the main engine which could have triggered a fire.
"Clearly everybody in the agency has this desire and sense of critical importance of safety. There's no issue about that," McDonald told the board. "The question is how do you translate that into a safe and effective program?"
He cautioned that "there's a basic flaw in the reasoning of many well-intentioned people. That is the concept that if you have a one-in-100 chance of a risk of an event occurring, the event can occur in the first or the last -- it's equal probability when the event would occur."
McDonald said there seemed to be the perception within NASA "that if I've flown 20 times, the risk is less than if I've just flown once. We were continually attempting to inform them that unless they've changed the risk, you still have the same issue even after 50 flights or 60 flights."
NASA engineers had noted several prior instances of foam coming off the fuel tanks during launch, but did not consider foam debris impacts to pose a serious flight risk. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board has not determined that the falling debris played any significant role in the loss of Columbia, but from their selection of experts called Thursday and their questions, they are clearly questioning that scenario.
McDonald told the panel that databases of prior incidences are not accessible to shuttle program managers and engineers. Suggestions that NASA implement a long-term upgrade to its database systems were left unheeded.
"Our board felt that a higher priority should be given to creating solutions where the opportunities for making mistakes were reduced," he said.
The panel's next hearing is scheduled for next week. Gehman has asked NASA to add three additional members to the board: former astronaut Sally Ride, who served on the presidential commission that investigated the Challenger accident; space policy expert John Logsdon with George Washington University; and Nobel Prize laureate and physicist Douglas Osheroff.
