Cape Canaveral, May 20: NASA's efforts to return its aging space shuttles to service will siphon so many workers away from flight operations to work on safety that the program could be plagued by a worker shortage, an oversight group warned on Wednesday. Since the fatal Columbia crash in 2003, NASA has created three new departments focused on shuttle safety and engineering but made them independent of day-to-day shuttle operations so they could more freely assess new safety measures.

But those new departments are being staffed by workers drawn from mission operations and are not necessarily being replaced, said the Return to Flight Task Group, which is charged with verifying whether the U.S. space agency has complied with post-Columbia safety mandates.

"At some point, the ability of the space shuttle program to carry out its mission may be hampered by personnel shortages," the task force wrote in an interim report.

"It's not yet a problem, but it's a concern that we've observed," said Richard Covey, co-chairman of the group and a retired astronaut and shuttle commander.

He also warned that President Bush's space exploration initiative, with the goal of building moon bases and sending astronauts to Mars, "is going to be drawing on that same talent pool."


NASA's three remaining shuttles are scheduled to fly until construction of the International Space Station is complete, around the end of the decade. The job could require as many as 30 flights although that number is likely to be reduced.

The 28-member group also reported that NASA is still struggling with a way to inspect shuttle damage and repair it during flight. Efforts to extend the shuttle's robot arm with a boom long enough to reach the orbiter's underside "present enormous challenges," the report said.
Covey said inspection and repair present the greatest obstacles to NASA as it tries to make a March or April 2005 launch date.

The space agency's efforts at rebounding from the Columbia disaster generally got good marks from the task group. The report found that NASA has cleared three of 15 preflight requirements, while making "substantial progress" on the remaining 12.

But the report concluded that NASA may never be certain it has solved the problem that doomed Columbia, which was destroyed when foam debris broke off the external fuel tank and hit the orbiter with tremendous force. The debris gouged a large hole in the leading edge of the wing, as the space freighter broke apart as it re-entered the atmosphere.
The kind of statistical studies of in-flight accidents needed to complete a debris study may not be finished before the shuttles are retired, the report said.


Bureau Report