THE 1999 NASA REPORT CARD

The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) has recently released their report on the activities of NASA during 1999.  All employees and contractors deserve fine congratulations on their significant achievements throughout the year, especially under the conditions in which they were achieved.  The remarkable accomplishments of NASA will no doubt have many rewarding benefits for the advancement of technology and the safety of space flight activities in the future.  However this report will focus on the troubles that NASA is currently facing and possible severe consequences in the short term on NASAs safety record, or even the entire space program.

A constantly recurring concern found throughout the ASAP report is cutbacks.  Cutbacks are occurring within NASA on a variety of levels and have the potential to cause a disaster that could threaten the space program should something tragic occur.  The workforce has been essentially frozen for some time and is now being slowly reduced by a new hiring formula of one new hire for every two departures at the Office of Space Flight (OSF) centers - Johnson Space Center (JSC), Kennedy Space Center (KSC), and Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC).  The level of critical skills and on-the-job experience is also dropping at a significant rate.  As a result of these cutbacks there are three things that are actually increasing:  workload pressures, stress levels and the average age of workers. 

In some cases, critical decisions have become the responsibility of relatively junior NASA employees or contractors.  At MSFC, the Employee Assistance Program has reported an alarming increase from 400 to 700 stress-related cases between 1997 and 1999.  The ASAP states,

"...the increased danger of inadvertent human error in a stressful work environment cannot be ignored." 

At KSC there are twice as many scientists and engineers over 60 than there are under 30.  NASA is slowly digging their own grave.  As more of their senior employees retire they will be left high and dry of competent skilled employees to safely continue the work currently being conducted.

With construction activities for the one million pound International Space Station (ISS) set to increase, NASA will be required to safely handle 12 shuttle launches per year.  Current staffing problems have gone unnoticed because the number of previous launches per year has been low with long intervals between each launch.  Finding 6 of the ASAP report states that,

"...it is unrealistic to depend on the current staff to support higher flight rates...", especially an increase to one per month!

Assuming for a moment that NASA is able to recruit and sufficiently train enough people to satisfy the launch demands, the next big hurdle will be the construction of the ISS.  The construction relies on dangerous complex  mechanical operations conducted by tethered humans floating outside the space shuttle.  The Extravehicular Activity (EVA) Project Office handles these procedures.  The current outlook for the EVA is very good.  However NASA has once again made funding cuts to this very important program.  This time it is the EVA Research and Technology (R&T) program.  The ASAP states that,

"Extensive planned EVA activity for the ISS, associated wear-and-tear on the equipment and obsolescence render it unrealistic to expect the existing EVA assets to last the entire 15-year projected lifetime of the ISS." 

Finding 12 of the ASAP report says,

"The funding of the EVA R&T program is not adequate to provide the maximum safety benefit in terms of new equipment and procedures that lower the risk of extravehicular activities." 

Recommendation 12 states quite simply,

"Fund a robust EVA R&T program."

With the recent systematic loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander, it is clear that problems exist and are causing serious losses for the space exploration programs.  With the ISS construction phase set to accelerate EVA activities to levels never before reached, now is NOT the time for cutbacks.  Spacewalks are the most dangerous activities an astronaut can perform; safety is paramount when you are 250 miles above Earth.  Since 1964, NASA has only performed approximately 377 hours of spacewalk activities.  The ISS construction is going to call for about 160 spacewalks totalling approximately 1920 hours, an increase of over 500%! If another life were to be lost at the hands of NASA, all manned space flights could be terminated.  Just look at what happened with the Challenger disaster.  Despite assurances from the President of the United States that the program would continue, there were no shuttle flights for almost three years afterward.

There are already many hot debates emerging over the necessity and cost of manned space exploration to places like Mars or a much needed return to our Moon, now that robots can do all the exploring for us.  Should someone die in space, the debate will be over.  To those people in government who are withholding NASAs funding (you know who you are), may the blood be on your hands for jeopardising the safety of astronauts and the future of the manned exploration of the final frontier.