NASA May Face Shuttle Worker Shortage, Report Says

NASA May Face Shuttle Worker Shortage, Report Says

May 19, 2004 By Broward Liston

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - NASA's efforts to return its aging
space shuttles to flight will siphon so many workers away from
operations to work on safety that the program could be plagued by a
worker shortage in the future, an oversight group warned on Wednesday.

Since the fatal Columbia crash in 2003, NASA has created three new
departments focused on safety and engineering, making them independent
of the shuttle program and its concerns about budget and on-time
flights.

But those new departments are being staffed by workers drawn from
other shuttle operations who are not necessarily being replaced, said
the Return to Flight Task Force, which is charged with verifying
whether the 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.

The new departments are still being organized and the report did not
identify the number of workers involved, nor did it offer a
recommendation.

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 space agency's efforts generally got good marks from the task
force, co-chaired by Apollo astronaut Thomas Stafford and retired
shuttle commander Richard Covey.

With the first post-Columbia flight now scheduled for March or April
2005, NASA has given itself time to actually implement some safety
measures where the Columbia Accident Investigation Board had only
required plans, the task force said.

NASA has cleared three of 15 preflight requirements, by task-force
estimates, 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 foam debris breaking off
the external fuel tank and striking the orbiter with tremendous force.

In Columbia's case, it gouged a large hole into the leading edge of
the wing that made the spacecraft break 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.

While President Bush's plan to mothball the fleet and shift NASA's
focus to exploration of the moon and Mars "has obvious implications
for the long-run use of the shuttle," the report concluded that "no
matter how long the shuttle is used in the future, it must first be
safely returned to flight."