Conference 7.286::space

896.0. "AP report via Clarinet: Shuttle Problems Raise Fears" by PRAGMA::GRIFFIN (Dave Griffin) Tue Mar 15 1994 18:03

From: [email protected] (AP)
Newsgroups: clari.tw.space
Subject: Shuttle Problems Raise Fears
Copyright: 1994 by The Associated Press, R
Date: Sun, 13 Mar 94 12:00:10 PST

	CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- NASA budget cuts and a string of
problems with crucial space shuttle parts -- including the engines
and booster rockets -- have raised fears of another Challenger
disaster.
	In the past few months, NASA has investigated one serious
shuttle issue after another: booster pressure spikes, glued engine
pumps, flawed engine welds.
	Daniel Mulville, director of NASA's engineering and quality
management division, said the problems are unrelated and in no way
suggest ``we have been lax in our standards or compromise our
standards.''
	But Alex Roland, a former NASA historian who now teaches at Duke
University, said he's worried and has been for years.
	``They're getting a little more comfortable, perhaps too
comfortable, and that's what happened with Challenger,'' Roland
said.
	John Pike, head of the Federation of American Scientists' space
policy project, also said he fears another accident -- perhaps
sooner than later.
	Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff on Jan. 28, 1986,
after combustible gas leaked from an O-ring joint on the right
solid rocket booster. All seven people aboard, including a high
school teacher, were killed.
	It was NASA's 25th shuttle flight. Columbia's two-week research
mission, due to end Friday, is No. 61.
	NASA estimates the odds of a catastrophic failure during the
shuttle's 8 1/2-minute climb to orbit -- considered the most dangerous
part of the flight -- at 1 in 75.
	But those estimates don't factor in recent cuts that have
trimmed NASA's budget by hundreds of millions of dollars and forced
the agency to delay some safety improvements.
	``The string of problems we've seen not only in the shuttle
program, but with the Hubble, the Mars Observer, is from squeezing
programs across the line and making them fit into an inadequate
budget,'' Roland said.
	Hubble was launched with a deformed mirror that required repairs
by spacewalking astronauts. The Mars Observer vanished last summer
as it neared Mars; program managers were criticized for design
flaws and poor operating procedures.
	NASA's proposed budget for the next fiscal year contains $3.3
billion for the shuttle program, down from $3.5 billion this year,
which was down from $3.9 billion last year.
	``This is it. We can't get any closer to the bone,'' NASA
Administrator Daniel Goldin warned when the proposed budget was
presented to Congress last month.
	The head of NASA's space flight program, Jeremiah Pearson III,
insists that safety is, and will remain, paramount. He wants to fly
at least six shuttle missions a year; anything less wouldn't save
much money, he said, and might cause proficiency to drop. The
current plan calls for eight flights a year.
	To save money, NASA has eliminated shuttle work deemed
redundant, deferred safety improvements and, since 1988, reduced
the production of main engines from five to two a year. Each engine
costs more than $40 million.
	``The real challenge for NASA is to cut the budget while
maintaining safety,'' Columbia's commander, John Casper, said from
space during a news conference Sunday.
	``There probably is a line out there. I'm not aware of where
that line is, but I know the program managers for the shuttle
program are, and I know that they won't let us go below that line
and they will not permit unsafe shuttle operations,'' Casper told
reporters.
	Problems continue to surface, however, particularly in the
components most critical to shuttle safety -- the three engines and
two booster rockets that propel the shuttle and its crew into
orbit.
	The latest problem involves one of the nearly 400 welds in the
high-pressure hydrogen fuel pump of the main engine -- Weld 51. An
anonymous report to NASA's Safety Reporting System late last year
said some of the welds were misaligned, and raised concern about
the manufacturing process.
	Pumps with seriously misaligned welds have been barred from
flight until a NASA materials review board can decide whether to
reduce the number of times the parts should fly.
	NASA had hoped to replace the high-pressure hydrogen fuel pumps
with pumps that have no welds, but budget cuts delayed those plans.
	``The pumps we are flying are pumps that were designed in the
early '70s,'' said NASA's engine chief, Otto Goetz. ``The
technology is 20 years old and in the meantime the country has
developed a lot of new things.''
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I wonder what generates these articles?  There is no obvious event that
triggered this report, yet it appeared in clarinet as well as both the Globe and
the Nashua Telegraph.  (I suppose if it shows on AP that gets it in lots of
papers).

Burns

The event:

>	``The real challenge for NASA is to cut the budget while
>maintaining safety,'' Columbia's commander, John Casper, said from
>space during a news conference Sunday.
>	``There probably is a line out there. I'm not aware of where
>that line is, but I know the program managers for the shuttle
>program are, and I know that they won't let us go below that line
>and they will not permit unsafe shuttle operations,'' Casper told
>reporters.

The rest would just cascade out...  Presumably somebody asked the question,
so this is what good news reporting is about: piecing together a story
where it doesn't come to the surface by itself.  All they needed was a forum
and a trigger.

- dave