Panel recommends installation of ejection systems in shuttles

WASHINGTON -- Unless NASA installs a crew ejection system in its space shuttles, it can expect to lose at least one more astronaut crew before 2020, a safety panel told the space agency's top officials Tuesday.

Sidney M. Gutierrez, a member of NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel who flew Columbia during a 1991 flight, said the agency's record of two shuttle disasters violates NASA's own safety margin requirements. The Feb. 1 Columbia accident reduced safety margins two magnitudes below NASA's minimums, he said.

"If we fly this vehicle until 2020, we can be assured we'll lose another vehicle and maybe two," he said.

Gutierrez said upgrades to other parts of the complex shuttle program would not bring the spacecraft in line with those safety requirements. Only a crew ejection system offered that promise.

"The gut feeling is, we're losing people too often in space," Gutierrez said.

The safety panel on Tuesday presented its latest report, which covered the months immediately preceding the Columbia shuttle accident. The 106-page report noted that it was finished before the Feb. 1 accident and that no changes were made because of Columbia.

The report also concluded that NASA should re-examine the way it certifies shuttles as safe to launch because of increasing problems discovered last year blamed on the shuttle fleet's age. But it concluded that safety for the shuttle program has been a priority "first and foremost" at the agency.

Request for options

Gutierrez challenged NASA to conduct new studies for designs of crew ejection systems, which could include individual ejection pods for astronauts or a reinforced, pressurized crew cabin designed to separate safely from a disaster. Gutierrez said the safety panel does not believe NASA must install crew ejection systems before the shuttle's next flight.

NASA's associate administrator for safety, former astronaut Bryan O'Connor, said he was anxious to see studies on whether improved ejection systems can be installed on the shuttle. O'Connor, who was pilot on a 1985 flight of Atlantis and crew commander with Gutierrez aboard Columbia's mission in June 1991, participates on the safety panel as an ex-officio member.

NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe noted that the agency is developing an orbital space plane that can be used to fly astronauts to the International Space Station.

Once that vehicle is flying, the shuttle could be used merely to haul cargo, O'Keefe said.

Gutierrez said that deferring the ejection system until the space plane is flying was "not acceptable."

The panel cited some minor problems during the five shuttle missions in 2002 that it blamed on the fleet's increasing age. It said cracks, leaks and other failures "provide evidence of this degradation and indicate the need for re-evaluation of the certification criteria" for shuttle parts.

The panel found that these flaws "escaped detection by standard preflight tests and were found late in the launch process," causing launch delays. The failed systems had adequate backups, and "no significant safety impacts resulted from these events."

The board investigating the Columbia accident already has indicated it is looking into whether Columbia's age played a role in the breakup. Admiral Harold Gehman, heading the investigation, declined to comment Tuesday on the safety panel's report, saying he had not yet read the findings.

"It's possible that you could do some damage to this orbiter that would have been as a result of a normal event which she could have survived at age 10, maybe she couldn't survive it at age 21," Gehman told reporters earlier this month.

Columbia, the oldest of NASA's four shuttles, was built in the late 1970s and made its first flight in 1981. But O'Keefe noted at a congressional hearing last month that Columbia just underwent an 18-month structural inspection, and that it returned safely from one flight in 2002 since that review.