At the dawn of the 19th century, Thomas Jefferson was president of the United States, and the Mississippi River was the nation’s westernmost boundary. In the American spirit of exploration, Jefferson launched an expedition led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase and the uncharted continent.

At the turn of the 21st century, Americans still are as curious as Thomas Jefferson was 200 years ago. Today’s frontier is space, and we, too, are motivated to explore because we have a thirst for knowledge and want to know what is out there.

As we review the official account of the Columbia tragedy, we have an opportunity to improve the programs and procedures of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and to reaffirm our vision of Americans as adventurers.

Tuesday’s report details the human, technical and institutional flaws that led to the Columbia disaster. NASA already has acted on several key recommendations to ensure that astronauts and the public will be safe when they return to flight.

But a larger, long-term issue in the board’s report is a culture at NASA in which safety concerns are ignored and dissenting views are discouraged. Over the years, NASA’s managers have tolerated unacceptable levels of risk.

This is, regrettably, a case of deja vu. Seventeen years ago, the same culture was identified as a contributing factor in the Challenger accident. Sadly, the culture at NASA remains one where vigilance on safety has weakened and the concerns from the people at the bottom aren’t getting to those at the top. One thing is clear: Breakdowns in the communication and decision-making process must be fixed.

Changing culture is no easy task. It will take commitment at all levels of the NASA organization to foster trust, fairness, respect, flexibility and openness among employees and contractors, an uncompromising approach to safety and stronger government oversight of NASA’s relationship with its contractors. It also will take time.

But the board points out that two of the factors that led to the safety breakdown at NASA were severe budget cuts in the spaceflight program combined with schedule pressures.

In the past 10 years, essential safety upgrades have been deferred or delayed because of budget shortfalls. We must dramatically increase NASA’s human spaceflight budget to provide the safety upgrades, badly needed infrastructure improvements, and a shuttle replacement vehicle as soon as possible.

We can’t explore space on the cheap.

In the wake of the board’s report, NASA should immediately request supplemental funding to accelerate the shuttle’s replacement and adequately fund the shuttle’s return to flight. Without this money, NASA will continue to raid other parts of its budget to get the shuttle up again. The White House and Congress must help NASA make our return to space as safe as possible.

In our efforts to improve America’s space program, we also should define our goals for human space exploration. Like Jefferson’s backing of Lewis and Clark’s expedition, NASA’s vision will take a presidential initiative and leadership.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, flew aboard Columbia in 1986.

while a member of the House of Representatives. He wrote this commentary for the Orlando Sentinel.

—

(c) 2003, The Orlando Sentinel (Fla.).

Visit the Sentinel on the World Wide Web at http://www.orlandosentinel.com/. On America Online, use keyword: OSO.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

AP-NY-08-27-03 1018EDT

Copy the Story Link