NEWS: Marshall director: Center to blame for foam loss

Marshall director: Center to blame for foam loss

By JAY REEVES
Associated Press Writer

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. --
The head of NASA's main propulsion center took responsibility
Wednesday for the root cause of the Columbia disaster - foam peeling
off the shuttle's huge external tank.

Dave King, director of the Marshall Space Flight Center, also said the
manager who oversaw the Columbia's tank had been removed in the latest
personnel change announced since the tragedy.

King, speaking during a news conference at the north Alabama center,
defended Marshall employees as competent but said they made errors
leading up to the loss of Columbia.

Investigators said NASA failed to realize the danger posed by pieces
of dense foam insulation coming off the tank and hitting the shuttle -
a problem that dates back to the spacecraft's earliest flights in the
'80s.

"Anytime you're dealing with a system that's this complex, even
competent people sometimes make mistakes," King said. "That's what
happened here - we made a mistake. We missed it."

King said external tank project manager Jerry Smelser, who
investigators said used erroneous information to advocate a shuttle
launch last year, had been removed from his position at Marshall and
will retire at the end of this year.

The bad information, presented at a meeting unrelated to the Columbia
launch, appeared to be an "honest mistake" and not a purposeful
attempt to make it appear the Marshall-managed tanks were safe despite
years of problems, said King.

Smelser, now serving as an adviser to the shuttle programs office at
Marshall, did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment. He
previously has declined comment on Columbia.

King was deputy director at Marshall during the Columbia mission and
later supervised the initial recovery of pieces of the orbiter. He
became director when Art Stephenson stepped down less than four months
after the accident killed seven astronauts.

Marshall took much of the blame for the Challenger disaster in 1986,
with investigators concluding the center's managers were isolated and
fail to pass along concerns critical to mission safety.

King said Marshall engineers were wrong to push for a shuttle launch
last year despite knowing foam had come off a particularly troublesome
area of the external tank. Managers believed they had solid criteria
for supporting the launch despite the problem, he said.

"Obviously, some of that was flawed," King said.

Investigators concluded foam came off the same spot during the
Columbia launch in January, hitting the shuttle's left wing and
causing damage that led to its breakup over Texas on Feb. 1.

"We bear the responsibility of the foam coming off the tank," said
King. "We also bear the responsibility now of doing everything we can
humanly do to make this vehicle as safe as we can."

Denny Kross, who is managing the return-to-flight work at Marshall, is
overseeing the external tank office, King said. Two other longtime
NASA managers, Alex McCool and Sandy Coleman, are its acting
directors.

As the NASA center managing the shuttle's main engines, solid rocket
boosters and external tank, Marshall will be in charge of much of the
work to get the nation's shuttle's fleet back in space.

King said the center already has approved plans to remove a small
section of the tank foam blamed for bringing down Columbia. The foam
prevents the buildup of ice on the tank, which holds super-cold fuel,
but it will be replaced with heaters meant to do the same thing, he
said.

King and NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said the tank could be
redesigned eventually, but the main job now is making the current
design safe to fly.

"We have a lot of work to do," said King.



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