Sunday, February 09, 2003

Washington Post: Shuttle History Shows Upgrades Shortchanged This well-balanced account asks some trenchant questions about whether shuttle safety was compromised as a result of budget cuts. NASA disagrees, of course, but it's hard to defend their position. A 1995 budget side-step eliminated the shuttle program's exclusive category: ...suddenly it was being lumped in with the International Space Station under "Human Space Flight." With one deft stroke, NASA officials had linked the Columbia and three other aging space shuttles to the fate of the much larger, more expensive and highly troubled joint space station venture with the Russians. According to Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), "The net effect was less money for the shuttle," he said. "It allowed money to be transferred out of the old shuttle account and into the space station account to cover cost overruns without a requirement of notification to Congress." Changes made in the wake of the Challenger disaster may actually have hurt the agency. Perhaps the most prescient observation was this: ...it was not long before President George H.W. Bush decided that what NASA needed was an infusion of corporate thinking. Bush recruited a hard-headed California aerospace engineer and executive named Dan Goldin to take over the agency. Then, after the Clinton-Gore ticket swept to victory in 1992, Vice President Al Gore persuaded Clinton that Goldin should stay on. Charismatic and abrasive, Goldin boasted that he could do things "faster, better, cheaper," and that became his mantra during a stormy, nine-year tenure atop the space agency. As the last two years have proved, an infusion of corporate thinking is hardly a recipe for anything but perpetuating the comfortable cocoon in which executives operate - bottom line uber alles. From 1993 to 1997, Goldin proudly reduced the annual shuttle budget by $1 billion - - 25 percent. He also slashed spending on safety and performance upgrades by 50 percent, according to NASA's figures. At the same time, he insisted the agency service the space station's need for parts by maintaining six to eight launches a year. All the while, NASA claimed that safety was vastly improved -- from 1992 to 1999, it said, the risk of "catastrophic loss on ascent" dropped by precisely 82 percent. Again, the corporate parallels are unmistakable -- claiming safety actually "increased" in the face of a 50% budget cut. Creative accounting techniques aren't unique to more terrestrial companies. Only the most naive could argue NASA is not a wasteful bureaucracy. But only the most craven could argue that what NASA needs is a dose of trendy American business practices. 4:06:26 PM    Oh yeah? []