The Orlando Sentinel

ORLANDO, Fla. – NASA set a launch date of July 1 for shuttle Discovery on Saturday despite objections from its chief engineer and top safety officer, who remain concerned that debris could fly off the external tank during launch and seriously damage the ship.

The agency’s administrator, Michael Griffin, said he approved the launch anyway after carefully considering key safety issues raised by the senior managers during a two-day technical review at Kennedy Space Center.

The men’s concerns focused on the potential for foam to break off the tank and cause the kind of damage that led to the shuttle Columbia tragedy in 2003.

This time, Griffin said, the crew would not be in danger because NASA knows about the potential problem and stands ready to bring the astronauts home safely by alternative means.

“I do not see the situation we’re in as being a crew-loss situation,” Griffin said at a news conference after the meeting. “If we are unlucky and (debris comes off the shuttle during launch), the crew will arrive safely on orbit and then we will begin to look at our options . . . We are not in the situation that we were in with Columbia, where we didn’t know that we had a problem.

“We know we have a problem, and we are electing to take a risk.”

NASA plans to do extensive photography and on-orbit inspections of Discovery, just as it did during the shuttle’s last mission in July 2005.

If problems were discovered, the agency could send astronauts on a space walk to make repairs. It could launch another shuttle on a rescue mission. Or it could keep crewmembers at the space station.

Discovery’s 12-day flight to the international space station is meant to take supplies to the outpost and test improvements on the shuttle, as well as drop off a German astronaut for an extended stay.

The mission is only the second shuttle flight since the Columbia accident that killed seven astronauts during the ship’s return to Earth in February 2003.

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During Columbia’s liftoff, an errant piece of foam broke off the tank and punched a hole inside the orbiter’s wing. The craft broke apart after hot gases seeped inside the hole during re-entry.

Before last year’s flight of Discovery, a safety review board determined that the agency had not sufficiently solved the foam risk, despite design changes and manufacturing improvements on the tank.

During Discovery’s launch, the tank shed more than dozen pieces of debris, including a one-pound chunk that narrowly missed hitting the shuttle. In the past year, NASA has re-designed the region of the tank where the larger piece came loose. But NASA acknowledges that other areas on the tank continue to pose a risk.

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The current worries focus on 34 structures on the tank called “ice-frost ramps” that prevent ice buildup on critical components. Some engineers are worried that in a worst-case scenario, matchbox-sized pieces of foam weighing up to three ounces could break off and cause critical damage.

NASA already is working to re-design the ramps, and it expects a solution to be in place in the near future, said Wayne Hale, the agency’s space shuttle program manager at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Griffin said he considers it an acceptable risk to fly with the current ramps – rather than rushing into a change that might prove more detrimental than helpful. He said the issue was discussed exhaustively during the “flight readiness review” at KSC that precedes every shuttle mission.

During the review session, the 250-seat meeting room was jam packed with managers, as others monitored discussions from overflow rooms.

Hale said many people came forward and spoke their minds on a variety of issues. And near the close of the meeting, about 25 senior managers were asked if they were “go” or “no go” for launch.

All but two of the managers agreed that the shuttle was ready for flight. The two dissenters were NASA’s chief engineer, Chris Scolese, and the head of NASA’s office of safety and mission assurance, Bryan O’Connor.

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“At the end of the day, some people still had reservations and they expressed those reservations,” Hale said. “I think that is a great step forward from where we were some time ago in the past.”

He was referring to a time before the doomed Columbia flight when NASA managers discouraged people from expressing dissenting viewpoints during such meetings.

Ultimately, Griffin said, the decision was his to make. In addition to being confident that the crew is not in danger, Griffin said he chose to set the launch date because he wants to avoid a schedule crunch in the future.

President Bush already has decided that the shuttle fleet will be retired in 2010, and NASA hopes to make 16 more voyages before then to complete construction of the international space station. Unless the shuttle fleet starts flying soon, NASA may find itself trying to squeeze in a bunch of launches in 2009 – something it wants to avoid, Griffin said.

“I don’t want to get us into a situation whereby being more cautious than I think technically necessary today, we end up having to execute six flights in the last year,” Griffin said. “That’s not smart. I’m willing as administrator . . . to take some programmatic risk now – and you’ll notice I did not say crew risk-in order to prevent an excessive build up of programmatic risk later on. This is, in fact, what you pay me to do.”

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(c) 2006, The Orlando Sentinel (Fla.).

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Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

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AP-NY-06-17-06 2039EDT

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