Space Program Being Shorted- In More Ways Than One

NASA's new spaceship design skimps on safety, panel reports Sun Sentinel 08/12/2008
Author: Seth Borenstein / Associated Press

WASHINGTON - NASA is not properly emphasizing safety in its design of a new spaceship and its return-to-the-moon program faces money, morale and leadership problems, an agency safety panel found Monday.
The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel cited "surprising anxiety among NASA employees" about the Constellation moon program and said the project "lacks clear direction." Its 143-page annual report specifically faulted the agency's design of the Orion crew capsule for not putting safety features first.
Officials in charge of the program, defending the design safety at a news conference, wouldn't say whether astronauts are among the worried employees. Astronauts would have to fly in the Orion crew capsule, with a first launch planned by 2015.
Past NASA spaceships were built with enough backup safety systems "to ensure safety and reliability," from the start, the report said. But it said that because of weight problems with the Orion design, NASA has used a different approach, one "without all safeguards included" from the beginning. In the Orion project, any added safety feature would have to "earn its way in" to the design by justifying that the increased safety was worth the extra cost and weight.
That's not right, said the safety advisory panel, which includes two former space shuttle astronauts. It was created after the deadly 1967 Apollo 1 fire. The panel said it is "concerned that this process may not be capable of providing adequate protection against hazards that will only come to light once the spacecraft is in operation."
As the safety panel report came out, Constellation program officials announced that their own ambitious internal schedule for the first launch of the Orion capsule with astronauts aboard is being pushed back one year for lack of money.