Word: shannons
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...making the decision Thursday night to fly Endeavour home as-is, skipping an untested-in-space repair job to the gouge on the shuttle's belly, NASA seems to have won the confidence of the whole shuttle engineering community. John Shannon, chairman of the Endeavour mission management team and the man who assessed the risk, made the call based on an abundance of testing and analysis over the past week, rather than from any rocket jockey arrogance, which was largely blamed for the last two shuttle losses. Among the 30 organizations from which scientists were called in for independent analyses...
...Station, which can't survive without a space truck capable of delivering heavy construction loads. The investigation's thoroughness is also a direct result of an overhaul of NASA policies following the 2003 Columbia disaster. Asked whether the agency may have gone too far this time in information overload, Shannon, who never broke a sweat making his announcement in a press briefing, said no: "I love it. It's outstanding...
...gouge in the Shuttle Endeavour. In-orbit repair options are limited and, since any fix would have to be made by robotic arms and astronauts in awkward space suits, the process would be fraught with the potential to make the problem worse. Still, Mission team chairman John Shannon said that, according to his team's analysis, the damage should pose no risk to the astronaut crew on the return home. There is, however, potential for more damage to the shuttle itself on re-entry into Earth's atmosphere when temperatures in the rear of the ship could reach 2300 degrees...
This time, the buck stops with mission team chairman and shuttle program deputy manager Shannon, 42, a 19-year NASA veteran who served as deputy manager of NASA's Columbia task force in regular communication with the investigative board. Initial internal resistance to the new management structure noted by the RTF task force is gone, Hartsfield says. "I think it is embraced by everyone. It improves with each flight. The more you do it, the more it becomes the culture that we follow...
...task force recognized that the shuttle remained physically vulnerable despite NASA's best efforts at redesign, but the decision to go on with the shuttle program hinged precisely on a new culture of management at NASA that is supposed to allow people like Shannon to make the right calls in the face of staggering consequences, and a determination to avoid backsliding into the old ways blamed equally with physical and mechanical problems for two shuttle catastrophes...