THE COLUMBIA DISASTER
Top-Level Report Cited Safety Fears
Former NASA official who warned of faulty wiring, corrosion says agency didn't follow up.
By Ralph Vartabedian and Peter Pae
Times Staff Writers
February 4 2003
A top-level NASA report three years ago warned that the space shuttle fleet was facing serious safety problems, including faulty wiring on the ill-fated Columbia and corrosion on all the orbiters, but the agency failed to carry out many of the key recommendations, according to a former senior NASA official.
The recommendations raised alarms about crucial shuttle safety issues, such as sloppy workmanship, lost paperwork and reduced inspections of heat protection tiles, the component that is a focus of the Columbia crash investigation. The report also cited inadequate inspection staffs and the problem of physically strained workers reporting a high use of hypertension drugs.
Several studies critical of shuttle safety have come to light since Saturday's accident, but this March 2000 assessment contains the most detailed documentation of potential problems. It also was produced under the authority of one of NASA's highest-ranking officials.
The author of the report, Henry McDonald, former director of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., said Monday in an interview that the space agency let him go two months ago when top officials elected not to renew his employment contract. He has since returned to the engineering department faculty at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
It is unclear whether his advocacy on shuttle safety led to his dismissal, but the report's criticism of personnel cutbacks on the shuttle program and his advocacy for reforms in shuttle management contradicted the policies of NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, he said.
NASA officials said Monday that most of McDonald's findings were put into a so-called action plan, which they said was not immediately available. Nonetheless, they said this action plan has been carried out, though it is unclear to what extent recommended changes occurred.
NASA officials said plans include new training for employees to inspect wiring systems and improving the exchange of data with other government agencies. They declined to comment on the reasons for McDonald's departure. But McDonald said other NASA officials had downplayed his findings and acted on only a few of the more than 100 recommendations.
The report was sent to various NASA research centers and to the space shuttle office, where staffers argued they had already taken care of issues in McDonald's report or that he did not understand their processes.
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Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
