Word: nasa
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...lunar-walking buddies to fret about the clumsy, complex garments that protected them from the harsh vacuum of space. But some of today's astronauts are seriously worried about just how precarious s space suits can be. In a report as bluntly critical as any issued by NASA since its post-mortem on the disastrous 1967 launch-pad fire that killed three astronauts, the space agency has found alarmingly sloppy oversights on a key aspect of the shuttle program: the multimillion-dollar space suits that NASA hopes will let astronauts leave the shuttle's protective confines and work...
Determined to get the suits in working order for the maiden voyage of the new orbiter Challenger in January, the chief of the shuttle program, Air Force Lieut. General James Abrahamson, ordered a panel headed by NASA Engineer Richard Colonna to examine the suits, literally stitch by stitch. Its provisional finding: "Egregious oversights"-to use the words of one of the investigators-by the prime contractor, the Hamilton Standard division of United Technologies Corp., and by a key subcontractor, Carleton Controls Corp., a subsidiary of Moog Inc. By implication, the report also faulted the space agency...
...official's words, "horrifyingly simple." Two plastic pins, about as large as two matchsticks and not much more expensive, were missing from the pressure regulator. These allowed a locking ring to open, thereby creating a leak. Incredibly, a Carleton employee, who has since been barred from further NASA work, as well as his supervisor, signed an inspection sheet affirming the pins were in place...
...NASA investigators minimized the possibility of a fire hazard, and company spokesmen emphasized that there was no flaw in the basic design of the suits. But among the astronauts who will wear them on future missions, the inspection failures have triggered understandable concern. Said one of them: "That was a shoddy, dangerous failure in quality control...
...while last week, one of NASA's new customers, Telesat Canada, had some anxious moments. Both satellites were safely ejected and climbed swiftly to geostationary orbit, 22,300 miles above the equator, where they would travel in synch with the earth's rotation. But before Telesat's Anik 3-C reached its resting place over the Pacific, controllers discovered that they were unable to "talk" to the satellite on any of the programmed frequencies. The radio silence perplexed and panicked Telesat's control room on Guam. Unless Anik (Inuit for brother) accepted their commands, the controllers...