From Greg Kuperberg:
James Oberg wrote:
Criticism of NASA's Safety Culture in the late 1990's:
Chapter 8 // The Mir Safety Debate, from "Star Crossed Orbits: Inside the
US-Russian Space Alliance", James Oberg, 2002, McGraw-Hill, NY.

Criticizing MIR was a good start, but it was not the same as warning
about shuttle safety. For one, you could well read it as attributing
complacency to the Russians, or at least as a disease caught from the
Russians.

Excellent point. I would go so far as to say that the Russian
problems may have contributed to complacency within the NASA safety
mindset because those within shuttle operations could take solace in
knowing that fires and collisions weren't happening within their
program.

In fact it goes back to the very beginning of the shuttle
program, to the wishful thinking that manned spaceflight is operational
and not experimental. That is how Reagan described it in 1982, back
when the Russians were the evil empire.

After all, if NASA officials had fully grasped that the shuttle is
an experimental spacecraft, they would never have slated it for a
space station, and especially not for space station construction.
What construction workers, other than astronauts, commute to work in
test vehicles?

Another excellent point. Here's my take on it... As soon as you
decide to start flying passengers, you are implicitly stating that
your vehicle is past the critical developmental stage and is now safe
and reliable enough to carry such extra members on board. The
decision to carry people who were non-essential for flight development
was made for STS-5 which launched way back in 1982 (with Reagan's
announcement, as you point out).

I don't subscribe to the notion that the shuttle is an experimental
vehicle. It has been used as an operational workhorse for many years.
Chris Kraft, in his 1995 report, went so far as recommending to
freeze the design.

I do not subscribe to any 1-to-1 comparison of aircraft flights to
spaceflights, as some FAA officials might quote in their safety
analyses. Space rockets are *not* aircraft. Their maturity needs to
be measured in "dog years". I'd take a wag at an equivalence of 1
spaceflight to be on the order of 100 aircraft flights.

From the CAIB report, p100:

As the Shuttle returned to flight, NASA Associate Administrator
for Space
Flight
Richard Truly commented, "We will always have to treat it [the
Shuttle]
like an R&D test program, even many years into the future. I don't
think
calling it operational fooled anybody within the program... It was
a
signal to the public that shouldn't have been sent."

I have a problem with this. You can't have it both ways. It is
either experimental and should be flown as such, or it is operational
and then assigned to conduct operational missions with cargo and extra
crewmembers. The vast majority of DTOs got checked off in those first
four flights.

As perhaps the ultimate case in point of the
low-flight-rate-to-maturity status that spacecraft have over aircraft,
note how the last Moon landing - just the *eighth* piloted freeflight
of the lunar module - was de facto non-experimental: There were no
astronauts on the Apollo 17 mission with a test pilot background. Not
Gene Cernan. Certainly not Jack Schmidt. Not even Ron Evans.

If Gehman is trying to paint "EXPERIMENTAL" on the side of the three
remaining orbiters while saying that NASA should press on with using
it on operational missions to continue building the station, then I
see this as similar to all of those aircraft flying around with FAA
certification as "EXPERIMENTAL" while carrying around passengers and
such. It is used as a way to dodge liability. After it crashes, you
can tell the families of those on board, "So sorry, but it was an
experimental vehicle".

If the shuttle has not matured beyond its critical development stage,
then how can you possibly justify extending the size of a shuttle crew
beyond two?

The shuttle IS operational, and it has been for a long time. An
airline could not get away with dismissing a crash by saying that the
plane hadn't been fully tested. And I don't want this used as an
excuse for Columbia or any future problems with shuttle operations.
If you want to treat it like an R&D program as Dick Truly stated back
in the '80s, then leave the mission specialists, payload specialists
and *definitely* the school teachers back on the ground.

Own up to the safety requirements or stop flying.


~ CT