Word: launching
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...President later this week. In unsparing detail, it will lay out, in the words of one commission member, "the awful failures and compromises that ended in that January disaster." Strict new safety procedures and accountability will be recommended, as well as increased astronaut involvement in the decision to launch a shuttle...
...expects to have the space program restored to at least minimal launch capacity this summer: NASA hopes to use an Atlas-Centaur rocket combination later this month to lift a Navy fleet communications satellite, although the similarity of the electronics in the Atlas engine to those in the failed Delta remains a concern. At the earliest, Delta and Titan could be back in the air in six months. On NASA's part, the agency's newly appointed administrator, James Fletcher, has said he expects to correct the flaws in the shuttle and resume flights by July...
...Reagan Administration has already started to reverse a disastrous decision made in 1972 by the Nixon Administration to develop the shuttle as the sole vehicle for putting both humans and payloads into orbit. Instead, the U.S. will move to a mixed launch fleet including both shuttles and expendable rockets. Ten new advanced Titan 34D7 rockets are already on order, and the Air Force wants at least ten more to provide an increased launching capability beginning in 1988. Within a week or so, a National Security Council-led Interagency Group on Space is expected to recommend that NASA severely restrict...
...develop, have been designed for shuttle deployment. Not only the Pentagon but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and numerous private communications companies are eager for NASA to resume shuttle operations. So is the agency, which has already lost some $200 million in fees it would have collected from launch contracts that it has been forced to cancel since the Challenger disaster...
...revive public confidence in the agency. The expected tone was indicated by one commission member, who told TIME, "The system suffered a breakdown under the people in charge." Confronted with tighter budgets and more demands, he said, "they skimped and made do in the wrong places--and that includes launch safety." Indeed, Tennessee Senator Albert Gore released a study showing that NASA had trimmed 70% of its safety and quality-control staff in recent years...