Transcript of NASA Press Conference with Bob Daugherty and Mark Shuart (Part 3)
MR. HENRY: Tracy Watson, USAToday.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Thanks to both of you for speaking with us.
I wanted to ask Mr. Daugherty about an e-mail dated January 28th. To a lay person’s eye, it certainly looks like you have some pretty serious doubts about what the outcome of the flight is going to be. It reads any more activity today on tile damage or people just relegated to crossing their fingers and hoping for the best. Can you tell me what you were thinking when you wrote that?
MR. DAUGHERTY: Well, this was the day after Carlyle and I had first spoken, and he had shown me some e-mail traffic and the video that you all have seen. Again, as two engineers just talking amongst their selves without technical expertise really in this area of tile damage and so forth, we were wondering what kind of other information might be gathered regarding the severity of the problem.
Really, being on the outside of that entire loop, this was simply, again, a question from a friend to a friend wondering if he had heard any more about EDAs or telescope views and so forth.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Just a follow-up, from what I understand, when you saw that video, you found it pretty dramatic. Is that right? Am I interpreting your e-mail correctly?
MR. DAUGHERTY: Yeah, Tracy. I think that is fair. I did say “Wow” was the first comment in the e-mail after I saw the video. As all of you saw that video, it was an impressive event, and I was sure that after seeing that, certainly would have the expert sitting up and going to work trying to figure out exactly what happened.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Thank you.
MR. HENRY: Deborah — let me try this, Deborah –Zebarinko [ph] —
TELEPHONE CALLER: Very good.
MR. HENRY: — from Reuters.
TELEPHONE CALLER: That would be me. Hi.
First, I will add my thanks to Tracy’s, and also, that if somebody was going through my old e-mails the way we are going through yours, I wouldn’t be too comfortable, but let’s go along with this.Tracy actually picked up the exact e-mail that I was looking at. They are all indicating a high level of frustration and discomfort, but throughout this stack of e-mails that we’ve all seen, there are references there, or not, to “I wouldn’t want my loved one to go through this,” “I wouldn’t want them to do this particular scenario,” fears not explicitly stated as a loss of crew, loss-of-vehicle incident. This just seems so extraordinary to me, and it doesn’t quite jive with what we have heard about this was typical engineers “what if-ing” during a flight. What is your take on that?
MR. DAUGHERTY: You know, if you — yeah. I don’t want you looking at e-mails from the last 20 years or anything, but, you know, I do use — when I am doing engineering and talking about “what ifs” — and we have done it before for various other things, not during missions — you know, that is — a lot of people say I wouldn’t do that if my mom was on it or something. You want to make the best engineering judgments you can, and I use that as my standard for what is the right thing to do engineering-wise. So it really was not as an extreme comment in my — it looks more extreme to you than it does to me, I guess.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Let me follow up and ask it this way. Can you think of — you have been there for 23 years. You are the expert’s expert. Can you think of any other shuttle flight during or after that you have looked at the data, looked the information that you have, and have this kind of “Well, man, I wouldn’t want my mom on this flight”?
MR. DAUGHERTY: Well, the answer is no, but I have to clarify. I didn’t — I wasn’t really making the statement, “I wouldn’t want my mom or loved one on this flight,” at all.
What I was saying is if you find yourself in a jam, you know, there are certain ways or certain avenues to try to get out of that jam, some of which may be better than others, and you pick the ones that are most viable to you. That is all.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Okay. Thanks.
MR. HENRY: Larry Wheeler, Gannett?
TELEPHONE CALLER: I will pass. Thank you.
MR. HENRY: And Frank Moring, Aviation Week?
TELEPHONE CALLER: Thank you.
Just to make sure I understand the context here, was this or was this not the first time you had ever — you two gentlemen had ever dealt with this kind of situation or been asked to during a mission?
MR. SHUART: This is Mark.
And this is the first time that as far as I know in Structures and Materials we have ever had to deal with a situation like this during a mission.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Okay. My question, then, is: What did you expect the results or the use of your work to be, or what were you told it would be?
MR. DAUGHERTY: Frank, this is Bob.
My intention and expectation was to ensure as part of the larger team that unusual events that might occur during the landing phase had been pre-thought out in this, albeit, unusual situation, where there was some amount of unknown damage, and those expectations were absolutely met by the guys at Mission Operations.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Did you expect it to go on up to the crew?
MR. DAUGHERTY: Absolutely not because these weren’t — they weren’t really concerns. They certainly weren’t warnings. They were simply “be ready for anything,” just like there are a myriad of other things that they have Plan B’s in their console books, and this is nothing more than some more extensive Plan B’s in this likely unusual situation. So they absolutely met my expectations and absolutely handled it at the level I intended.
MR. HENRY: Keith Cowling, NASA Watch.
TELEPHONE CALLER: This is Keith Cowling.
There was a time when only NASA Watch would publish internal NASA e-mails, and they would usually be anonymous. Now we see them on NASA. And for Bob, you have got a bunch of people you have never met or worked with who are putting everything you have said and wrote under a microscope. Has this now affected the way you write e-mails? Has it affected the way other people do? Do you think this is going to have a positive or a negative impact on the way that people communicate in the agency?
MR. DAUGHERTY: Keith, that is a great question, and, you know, I bet you are going to see, depending on who you talk to, a range of answers.
My answer is, as you can see, I am not afraid to say stuff, and I absolutely wouldn’t change a word, even after this storm of e-mail traffic out there to the world.
I feel very comfortable with what I have said and how I have said it. So it is certainly not going to affect my behavior in the future regarding e-mails.
MR. SHUART: This is Mark. I certainly hope it doesn’t affect his behavior or anybody else in our organization. We try and get folks to speak up when they see things, and it really was a surprise to us to see NASA putting something up before NASA Watch.
[Laughter.]
TELEPHONE CALLER: Well, a follow-up, then, to either of you guys. Now that you have got all these folks that are, quote, “getting in your knickers,” do you have any advice for reporters who are trying to get inside your head that might help them frame the questions better, perhaps get to answers that their readers can understand?
MR. SHUART: This is Mark.
And I think one of the things that we want to make sure we do is be as helpful as we can in answering questions.
This time, I know that many of you have been frustrated in your inability in the past, or ability, to get to talk with us, but we were trying to do what we thought was best in the context of an ongoing investigation, and once we got an okay from the investigation board, here we are to try and add a little context.
So I guess to answer your question, if you want to understand what we mean, it is probably good to ask.
MR. DAUGHERTY: This is Bob.
I would say that, you know, this is new to all of us, certainly. There may be a happy — hopefully is — a happy medium between not jeopardizing investigations if it was something else in the future and plainly not saying anything. That is sort of frustrating on everybody’s part, and we are feeling our way through perhaps to a happy medium there.
MR. HENRY: Okay. Has Andrew Lawler from Science dialed in?
[No response.]
MR. HENRY: If not, we will go to Frank Sitson with UPI and/or Space America.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Thanks, Keith.
Bob is an expert on landing systems. Can you tell me if an Orbiter belly landing on a hard-surface runway is a survivable event?
MR. DAUGHERTY: I can tell you what I have talked to some EMAX folks on. I am not an aerodynamics expert. I have some ideas, of course, on that sort of landing, and you saw in my e-mails that I wouldn’t want a loved one to be in that vehicle when it lands like that.
Subsequent talks with folks in Mission Operations pretty much confirm that. There are certainly bad things that can happen in such a landing, as you have seen in a lot of the e-mails, both with — particularly the ones from the guys at JSC. So it is a really bad day if you were to belly land that vehicle, apparently. It may not be survivable.
TELEPHONE CALLER: So my follow-up would be: For whatever reason, if a landing gear doesn’t come down, you are going to lose that vehicle?
MR. DAUGHERTY: I think it is treated that way. That is a much better question for the MOD folks at JSC, though.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Thank you.
MR. HENRY: Bill Glens, Washington Times.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Yeah, thanks. I have a question for each of you.
For Bob, does this represent all your e-mails on the subject?
Then for Mark, in light of all that has gone on here with the e-mails and the second-guessing, is there any reason to believe that you guys need to change the way that you handle the e-mails, or does the system work?
MR. DAUGHERTY: Believe me, I have lived a lot of times. I think all of my e-mails with regard to this — you know, the week of the 27th up through that Friday, I guess, I think — well, as far as I can tell, every single one of them has been released.
And I’m sorry. The second part of that question, again?
TELEPHONE CALLER: For Mark, is there any reason to believe that these were handled the right way, or does the system work and does it need to be fixed?
MR. SHUART: I think from my perspective, I don’t see any different way to handle these e-mails. It is all in the context of the e-mail. They were handled correctly.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Okay, thank you.
MR. HENRY: Richard Harris, NPR.
[No response.]
MR. HENRY: Richard Harris, are you there with us, from NPR?
[No response.]
MR. HENRY: I will try Richard again in a moment.
Let’s go on to Jeff Morris from — well, actually, we have already done — no, we haven’t either. Sorry, Jeff. Aerospace Daily, Jeff Morris?
[No response.]
MR. HENRY: And, Jeff, are you there?
[No response.]
MR. HENRY: Well, moving right along, earlier Tamara Sandana from Bloomberg did not respond. Is she on now?
[No response.]
MR. HENRY: Still no?
Okay. I think we are down to you, Mark, from Houston Chronicle.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Mark Karow.
My question is for either gentlemen. I wonder if you could tell us whether you think it would have been some value to have more of a firsthand knowledge of the Boeing report either through firsthand participation in the early days or through some other device, even some sort of Internet-accessible discussion or summary of how extensive the debate had been so that maybe you had even a wider notion of the whole issue, and would you think that that would be helpful in the future?
MR. SHUART: This is Mark.
It is easy to look in hindsight and think about how things might be done differently, but, in fact, I guess we thought that the experts had been engaged down at JSC and that they were on top of it.
MR. DAUGHERTY: And this is Bob.
You know, I think the answer for me is a definite no. It wouldn’t have changed anything I did because I am not a tile expert, and I could have looked at a chart for a year and I still won’t be a tile expert.
TELEPHONE CALLER: If I could follow on that, I guess, though, you know, this debate went on for several days after the flight. You might have had some sense of just how prolonged this discussion was, and I know that equates to thoroughness on your part, but I just wonder if it would have changed your perception of, one, what the problem was and, two, just a sense of how much they were wrestling with it, if you knew that there were kind of chapters to the final answer and that there were some discussions about a space walk or using a telescope of some kind to look at the space shuttle. I mean, it just sort of seemed like you guys might have chimed in with sort of the basic engineering observations that would have just widened the circle of debate.
MR. HENRY: And what is your question, then?
TELEPHONE CALLER: Do you not think that that would be helpful?
MR. SHUART: This is Mark.
And I guess the way that I would answer that is if we had — if they felt like there was an expertise — in this case, I don’t want to try and put you off too much, but they felt like that they had an expertise down there that they were relying on, and if they wanted to get a second opinion, as demonstrated, and the fact that they called Bob, they would have asked for it. So I feel like that they felt like things were under control.
It is not surprising when you have difficult engineering situations that it takes a little while to get everybody to discuss different sorts of points of view, and, clearly, this was one of those.
MR. DAUGHERTY: Let me just add — this is Bob — just a quick point. You know, we did apply our technical expertise to the technical question that was asked of us, and, you know, if we take our non-technical opinions and everybody did that and clogs up the system, there wouldn’t be a spot for the technical guys to get through. So we stuck with what we knew.
MR. HENRY: L.A. Times, will it be Nick Anderson or Ralph?
TELEPHONE CALLER: This is Nick. Can you hear me?
MR. HENRY: Yes.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Thank you both for taking the questions.
I am struck by the fact that we are all mostly talking here about e-mails, and I know that quite a bit of work goes on through e-mail, but this is a question for Bob and I guess also Mark. Were there other conversations that focused on these issues where you elaborated on these issues with your colleagues? In other words, did the debate have an oral dimension to it as well, and if so, have you shared any of that with either folks higher up at NASA or at Columbia Accident Investigation Board?
MR. DAUGHERTY: This is Bob.
There were a couple phone calls that I was involved in that I have written up in a timeline and provided to the board. They really are of the same nature and quality as the e-mails pretty much. So there isn’t any new information in the verbiage that discusses the phone calls, no.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Okay. Is that also true for Mark?
MR. SHUART: And this is Mark.
I guess when this all went through, I did have a discussion. It turned out Doug Dwoyer and Del Freeman both were off site when the initial e-mail started going on, and I did see Doug and Del, I believe, if it wasn’t on Thursday, it was on Friday. I think it was on Friday, and mentioned to them, “Hey, have you seen the e-mails?” There was a little discussion about that. That was before we had gotten the e-mail back from Lechner, and then I sent that on as soon as that came in as well, but other than that, there were no other discussions.
TELEPHONE CALLER: So your conversation was a brief one like “Hey, are you in the loop on this?”
MR. DAUGHERTY: Correct.
TELEPHONE CALLER: That is interesting.
Also, I wanted to ask a quick follow-up. A lot of the discussion has been about whether information went high enough up the food chain, and I am kind of curious about lateral sharing of information. Do you feel like there was enough information-sharing laterally? Might there have been thermal experts within NASA or other experts that I don’t know of that could have benefitted from seeing this traffic?
MR. SHUART: This is Mark.
Let me address that one. Certainly, there are a lot of different sorts of experts that could be brought to bear on an engineering problem, and the folks, thermal stress guys, I have a number of people like that in our Structures and Materials organization here, but that is not to say they don’t have them down at JSC. They do, and I am sure if they needed some help, I know the folks down there pretty well at the level that I am at. Just like Bob, I am sure that folks at the working level know each other as well. So, if they had questions that they needed some help on, I am sure they would have asked us.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Okay. So, just to be sure I understand, you don’t feel like this would have benefitted from more sideways information-sharing within NASA?
MR. SHUART: I don’t know that I would go quite that far. I would just say there wasn’t any more sideways information.
Again, as we look in 20/20 hindsight, we are going to think of a lot of things that we wished were different.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Thank you.
MR. HENRY: Jeremy Menyay, Chicago Tribune.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Thanks. Can you hear me?
MR. HENRY: Yes.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Thanks again for taking this call. I have one general question and one narrow one.
First, for Bob, but also Mark if he has some input on this, I think one of the reasons these e-mails have interested people is that it seems that you provoked a lot of interesting discussion both in Houston and among your colleagues. I am sort of wondering what in your background affected the way that you approached these issues and sort of frames the issues in general. You have spoken to a little bit of this. This is unique as far as your being involved in this process during a flight, but how did you approach this issue?
MR. DAUGHERTY: Boy, that is quite a — quite a question. It involves some thinking, I guess, but let me try it.
You know, I guess the longer you are an engineer, the more times you see that you miss something or things — you know, the physical world didn’t work exactly the way you had assumed it. So you, I think, get to the point where you kind of naturally play the “what if” game more and more often, and I think that is something that just experience brings along. So I don’t think there was anything special in this case.
On many, many other issues, that is sort of the way you evolve to look at issues. I think it is just sort of in our nature after working engineering problems for so long.
MR. SHUART: Jeremy, let me say that ever since Challenger, the entire agency had a profound change in that safety is the key consideration that people think about, and it is just as vibrant here at the Langley Research Center as it is at JFS or KFC when they are dealing with launch issues. So, when these things come up, we are paying attention to them. We have got safety in mind because it is part of our culture.
