A rchive Date
[ 01-03-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/1799849
What O'Keefe believes vs. sad reality
By CRAGG HINES
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle
Feb. 28, 2003, 7:10PM
WELL, that didn't take long, did it? The political end of NASA attempting to contradict the engineering folks. And on a very sore subject.
The day that Columbia disintegrated, shuttle program director Ron Dittemore said that even if damage to the heat-resistant tiles of the space shuttle had been confirmed, nothing could have been done to save the mission and rescue the seven astronauts who perished. It was a chilling, almost unbelievable announcement that made the always risky shuttle program look like far more of a gamble. But Dittemore's statement had a bracing ring of realism, even if the lack of precaution involved sounded staggeringly cavalier.
Perhaps too realistic, too cavalier for public consumption and NASA's reputation in these straitened times.
On Friday, one day short of a month after the accident, NASA chief Sean O'Keefe disavowed the idea that nothing could have been done in aid of the crippled spaceship. "I fundamentally, absolutely reject the premise that there was nothing that could have been done on orbit," O'Keefe said in a briefing for reporters at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration headquarters in Washington.
But O'Keefe didn't have anything in the way of concrete suggestions of what could have been done. Nor should we have expected him to, if he hadn't raised the touchy point again. O'Keefe is a politically well-connected numbers-cruncher and public policy professor who was sent by the Bush administration from the Office of Management and Budget (where he had been deputy director) to NASA to control spending.
As far as space science goes, O'Keefe conceded Friday, he is "the least competent individual in the agency."
So, minus some more detailed discourse from O'Keefe, the somber assessment of Dittemore, a 25-year veteran of the space agency, must unfortunately stand. And O'Keefe's comments can be chalked up as another in a long list of attempts over the years by NASA brass at public relations damage control.
Given the seeming callousness involved in the lack of contingency plans for the critical tiles, O'Keefe's bid to defend against the shortcoming is understandable. It's normal that O'Keefe would want to declare, as he did: "To suggest that we would have done nothing is positively fallacious. If there had been ... a clear indication (of problems) ... there would have been no end to the efforts. ... "
Effort is not the issue and never has been. Ability to monitor and repair the tiles in flight is the question at hand. In fact, David Wolf, chief of the astronauts' spacewalk team, told the Chronicle this week that NASA may not launch another shuttle until it has found a way to fix damaged tiles during orbit. Wolf said the task could take at least a year. (And it won't be cheap.)
Pointing to the sensitivity of what now seems a glaring omission in NASA's usually meticulous planning, Wolf said of the tile repair project: "It's how we're going to get back to flight, I believe."
That is the key for the shuttle program: returning to flight. And a year would be a long delay. But NASA is becoming increasingly aware that if it is to be able to defend manned shuttle flight it will need to answer not only the tile question but also ones about foam and any of the other issues that have arisen in the wake of Columbia's break-up.
When an Associated Press account of O'Keefe's briefing hit the wire, his words about Dittemore's statement must have looked a little strong to the administrator. A NASA spokeswoman later contended that O'Keefe was not contradicting Dittemore.
Nice try. But O'Keefe's words belie the attempt at spin control. O'Keefe began his comment by saying: "With all due respect to Ron, he is not speaking for the agency in this regard."
O'Keefe went into a riff about the in-orbit miracle NASA had achieved after an oxygen tank exploded aboard Apollo 13 during its 1970 flight toward the moon. The effort that saved the three astronauts, who splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean, was superhuman but seems to have had little to do with what appears to have been the problem aboard Columbia.
O'Keefe said he believed Dittemore had been "really badly misunderstood." On the contrary, Dittemore, in his cool precision, has been understood perfectly. The crew of Columbia, even if it had fully comprehended the problem, did not have the operational ability to repair the spacecraft. NASA almost certainly has to find a way to provide that ability if the shuttle is ever to fly again.
Hines is a Houston Chronicle columnist based in Washington, D.C. (cragg.hines@chron.com)
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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