the cultural
THE CULTURAL TALE OF TWO SHUTTLES
NASA’s habit of relaxing safety standards to meet financial and time constraints set the stage for the Feb. 1 loss of the space shuttle Columbia and its seven astronauts, investigators said Tuesday. They warned that the agency’s “broken safety culture” would lead to tragedy again unless fundamental changes are made.
In a wide-ranging analysis of decades of NASA history, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board said the space agency’s attitude toward safety hasn’t changed much since the 1986 Challenger disaster, which also killed seven.
The space agency lacks “effective checks and balances, does not have an independent safety program and has not demonstrated the characteristics of a learning organization,” the board said in a stinging 248-page report.
“The board strongly believes that if these persistent, systemic flaws are not resolved, the scene is set for another accident,” the report said.
Retired Navy Adm. Harold Gehman, the board’s chairman, told reporters at a Washington briefing that NASA tends to follow safety procedures diligently at first, then “morph or migrate away” from that diligence as time goes on.
“The history of NASA indicates that they’ve done it before,” Gehman said. Some of the report’s recommendations were aimed at fixing that organizational flaw, he said.
Responding to the report, NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe noted that the board’s preliminary recommendations were already being adopted, and said the full report would serve as “NASA’s blueprint” for returning the three remaining space shuttles to flight operations.
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President Bush said NASA’s next steps “must be determined after a thorough review of the entire report, including its recommendations.”
“Our journey into space will go on,” he said during a stop in St. Paul, Minn. “The work of the crew of the Columbia and the heroic explorers who traveled before them will continue.”
Jonathan Clark, the husband of
NASA’s habit of relaxing safety standards to meet financial and time constraints set the stage for the Feb. 1 loss of the space shuttle Columbia and its seven astronauts, investigators said Tuesday. They warned that the agency’s “broken safety culture” would lead to tragedy again unless fundamental changes are made.
In a wide-ranging analysis of decades of NASA history, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board said the space agency’s attitude toward safety hasn’t changed much since the 1986 Challenger disaster, which also killed seven.
The space agency lacks “effective checks and balances, does not have an independent safety program and has not demonstrated the characteristics of a learning organization,” the board said in a stinging 248-page report.
“The board strongly believes that if these persistent, systemic flaws are not resolved, the scene is set for another accident,” the report said.
Retired Navy Adm. Harold Gehman, the board’s chairman, told reporters at a Washington briefing that NASA tends to follow safety procedures diligently at first, then “morph or migrate away” from that diligence as time goes on.
“The history of NASA indicates that they’ve done it before,” Gehman said. Some of the report’s recommendations were aimed at fixing that organizational flaw, he said.
Responding to the report, NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe noted that the board’s preliminary recommendations were already being adopted, and said the full report would serve as “NASA’s blueprint” for returning the three remaining space shuttles to flight operations.
Advertise
President Bush said NASA’s next steps “must be determined after a thorough review of the entire report, including its recommendations.”
“Our journey into space will go on,” he said during a stop in St. Paul, Minn. “The work of the crew of the Columbia and the heroic explorers who traveled before them will continue.”
Jonathan Clark, the husband of