Word: nasa
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Robins claims she discovered a self-defeating Unisys procedure: instead of halting other operations while both the main and backup software were tested, the contractor permitted NASA to make additional changes in payload and other shuttle flight plans as the testing proceeded. While this saved a three-week hold for each test, she insists that it rendered the results meaningless, since the software could not be adjusted and tested simultaneously...
...hellish orange-and-white fireball that destroyed the space shuttle Challenger exploded over the Atlantic Ocean two years ago this week, killing seven crew members and shutting down the U.S. manned space program. Pressures to launch had led to what the Rogers commission later called NASA's "silent safety program," in which defects were overlooked and engineering cautions brushed aside. Yet as NASA and its many contractors now rush to correct the ! shuttle's potentially fatal weaknesses and resume launches by July, there are signs that the lesson of the Challenger tragedy has not been wholly heeded...
...blue-ribbon committee of eight experts commissioned by NASA to review the agency's safety procedures has warned that the "concern for safety that peaked after the Challenger accident appears to be waning." The investigators stated that when NASA rated its program managers, safety was "conspicuous by its absence" in the evaluation. There was also "disturbing" evidence that schedules were given priority over safety. The highly critical report was submitted to NASA, its contractors and key members of Congress last August, but was kept under wraps until this month...
...report also charges that those in NASA's contractor network who spoke up about lax safety practices sometimes ran into a "shoot-the-messen ger syndrome" in which their complaints were ignored and they were harshly criticized. Several such whistle-blowers have told TIME that when they pointed out glaring violations of safety procedures, nothing was done to correct the problems. Instead, they contend, they were harassed, demoted or fired. Some say they were even threatened by unidentified letter writers and telephone callers...
Morton Thiokol stopped its scheduled shipment of aft booster segments to Cape Canaveral, Fla., where an astronaut crew had hoped to resume flights on June 2. NASA estimated that the longest probable delay from the nozzle failure would be three months. But some of the agency's veterans speculated that the Administration will not want to risk a launch until after the November elections...