A harsh critique of NASA's culture

The space shuttle Columbia was destroyed by events on Earth as much as by anything in flight.

That's the hard-hitting conclusion of a NASA investigation board, which released its final report on Tuesday.

While the proximate cause of the Columbia disaster was a breach in the heat shield of its left wing, the chain of events which led to this breach was the result of a NASA culture that grew used to accepting too much risk, according to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. NASA's bureaucracy was driven by its schedule, and tried to run a lackadaisical safety program on the cheap.

But NASA did not operate in a vacuum. Washington itself should bear part of this blame, say analysts. Congress and the White House have starved the space-shuttle program of funds, meddled in shuttle operations, and in general maintained an air of complacency about space programs.

"The blame does not lie just with NASA," says Brian Chase, executive director of the National Space Society, a point that the investigation board also acknowledges.

To NASA, the message from this exercise may be that untested assumptions and complacency over anomalies can have no part in human spaceflight. For Congress and the White House, the lesson may be that if human presence in space is a national priority, the shuttle program must have the money necessary to reduce risks. For the nation, the report serves as a reminder that spaceflight is never routine.

"The loss of Columbia and her crew represents a turning point, calling for renewed public-policy debate and commitment regarding human space exploration," wrote the Columbia Accident Investigation Board in its 248-page study.

In its report, the 13-member Columbia Accident Investigation Board identified what it saw as the technical and organizational factors that led to the loss of Columbia and the orbiter's crew.

Many of the panel's main recommendations had already been released during the course of the probe to help the agency prepare to return the orbiters to flight. Indeed, the panel has classified them as requirements for returning to flight. These include eliminating the sources of debris shed from the external fuel tank at launch, hardening the heat-resistant material on the wings' leading edges to resist debris impacts, and ensuring that astronauts on missions to the International Space Station (ISS) can make emergency repairs to an orbiter that fails to dock with the ISS or is damaged during docking.

One organizational issue it sees as mandatory before returning to flight is a detailed plan for setting up and running an independent technical engineering authority and an independent safety program. These groups would be funded through money straight from headquarters and not from the shuttle budget. They would independently verify that a vehicle is ready for launch, would have sole authority for waiving requirements, and would determine what glitches uncovered by ground crews and astronauts qualify as anomalies that need attention.

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