Transcript of Press Event with Sean O’Keefe and Bill Readdy (Part 1)
NASA OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS
303 E STREET, S.W., #P
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20546
(202) 358-1600
“RETURN-TO-FLIGHT ROUNDTABLE”
MODERATED BY GLENN MAHONE, ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS
PRESENTATIONS BY: SEAN O’KEEFE, ADMINISTRATOR OF NASA AND BILL READDY, ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR FOR SPACE FLIGHT
Friday, March 14, 2003
[TRANSCRIPT PREPARED FROM AUDIOTAPE RECORDING.]
P R O C E E D I N G S
MR. MAHONE: Good morning, everyone. Thank you all for coming. Let me just make a quick announcement here. The Administrator has a commitment, and he is going to have to leave a little early, but hopefully we can keep Bill for a few moments to talk with us.
Hello, Eric. Good to see you back from Houston. How was your trip?
QUESTIONER: It was great.
MR. MAHONE: Good, good.
But Bill will stay around for a few moments and is going to have a couple of opening comments, if you will bear with us for just a few moments, to let him hit on a couple of topics that we feel are very important to us to hit on today. We appreciate you being here, and with that, Mr. O’Keefe. —
ADMINISTRATOR O’KEEFE: Thank you.
First and foremost, we all need to congratulate newest addition of a grandfather crowd as of last night, his first grandchild.
[Applause.]
MR. MAHONE: Thirteen ounces. It was a preemie.
ADMINISTRATOR O’KEEFE: So it was kind of harrowing evening for Glenn last night, who nonetheless spared a few moments to think about all of you in the course of what we are going to be involved in today, but, you know, a difficult last night, but everybody reported to be doing well.
I want to touch on two points very quickly, if you can indulge it. First of all, please observe and note that the last of the funerals was conducted on Wednesday for Captain David Brown. All seven of the astronauts who died in the Columbia accident have now been buried in a way that, quite frankly, our first responsibility we believed from the very beginning here was to assure that this be conducted with dignity and great respect, and I want to thank all of you for the manner in which you handled that.
It meant a lot to the families that it was handled with tremendous dignity, and respected their privacy, and to the press corps, we are extremely grateful to you for the diligence as well as responsibility that all of you exercised in that regard, and they really, really appreciated that because it is, in many cases, that extended family were involved, to include particularly David Brown’s service, and the reporting and coverage of each of those ceremonies was really nothing less than exemplary.
So we are grateful to you for a coverage of honoring and celebrating the lives of seven extraordinary people, and that having been accomplished was an important factor for the families as well as for all of us. So the manner in which that was handled was really quite exemplary.
Each of the families have reminded me at each of the five of the seven services that I attended and the four different memorial services that were conducted separately from those funeral services, so a total of at least nine that I had the opportunity to attend, but in each and every case, many family members consistently reminded me that the objective we ought to be after is to reiterate the same themes that we talked about on the very first day with them before we ever discuss this more publicly, which is to find the cause of what occurred here, make the fixes and corrections that are necessary, and get back to doing what their folks, the seven courageous folks who were aboard Columbia that day, had dedicated their lives to.
And I found that to be nothing short of inspiring at each and every step. As emotional and as difficult as each of these services and ceremonies and funerals have been I think for all of us, it nonetheless has been a source of tremendous inspiration to see the courage and the strength that each of the families have demonstrated in this regard, and they are really remarkable people who we are committed to assuring form this point forward, not just the 6 weeks that have passed, but from this point forward that all of their needs as well as privacy are protected as well. So we are going to continue that effort.
This is not a one-time circumstance for that first 6 weeks. It is something we will continue to quest for as well and to honor their intonement to us that we continue the exploration quest that their people have dedicated their lives to.
The second issue I wanted to touch on just a little bit as well is the recovery operations are continuing to pace, and a few have reported there is on the order of about 20 percent of the Orbiter by weight has been collected and has arrived at the Kennedy Space Center.
There are still 4,000 people in East Texas and West Louisiana who are searching for debris from 20 different Federal agencies, the U.S. Forest Service and the EPA probably the largest contingents there now, by virtue of the spreading activity that occurred, and just by comparison, let me give you a frame of reference.
I think the first time that Bill and I visited Lufkin and Shreveport, I guess about 2 weeks after the accident — 2-1/2 weeks roughly. There was a comment that I heard that I will never forget. It was on the order of about 95 percent of all of the debris at that point that had been collected was within 100 feet of a road. So, as a consequence, they really picked up all of the debris. It was easily accessible.
Everything since that time has been real tough, and again, literally, by bringing in several hundred Forest Service folks from the U.S. Forest Service as well as a lot of the environmental folks in the State of Texas as well as in the State of Louisiana, whoever has responsibility for this being forest area, have really helped out enormously in our efforts to continue to find pieces here that may give us further evidence, figures and facts in terms of what could have occurred, but it is much tougher to find.
So they have really been engaged in the activity much further away from all of the accessible road areas, and so having the expertise of the Forest Service and the EPA particularly have been really just extraordinary.
Again, that acquired 4,000 folks, Federal, State, and local activities, and a lot of volunteers that continue to show up, amazingly, folks that just have got other lives, other activities, and other pursuits that they are engaged, but have dedicated themselves to helping to find the evidence that would give us some idea of exactly what happened here. It is still nothing short of awe-inspiring to see the continued effort. Here it is, a month and a half after the fact.
That is going to continue a pace at least for the next few weeks. One of the challenges that we are about to confront here with the recovery effort is just the forces of nature. When the growth activity of spring begins to take hold, it is tougher and tougher to find debris that is on the ground.
So, under this circumstance, they have been able to not only collect the material and debris that was accessible within very convenient access areas, the public access roads and paths and so forth, but the next phase from there is even with the help of the Forest Service in delving further into the forest and into the Toledo Bend Reservoir area and helping the U.S. Navy and the scuba divers and all of the other folks who have been doing the excavation work out of the Toledo Bend Reservoir itself.
Nonetheless, it is going to get tougher and tougher because the growing season is on us, and as a result, in the next 30 days, it is going to be very difficult, given the coverage and the canopy that then unfolds, to find things.
So we are really intensifying, and the reason why we have kept this pace going and that the Forest Service, the EPA, the Navy, and, again, 17 other agencies joined with us in doing so, including those three, have continued to really work this extremely hard is because they see that particular inevitable natural circumstance taking hold, unless we really intensify our efforts now. So we are trying to collect as much as we can.
At date, as I gathered it from — to this date, as I understand it from the Gehman board, the further west piece that we have collected is, as previously reported, 10 days, 2 weeks ago, which is just west of the Lubbock, Texas, area, and there is no further debris that has been found in the path west of that area. And we are still anxiously looking for anything that may show up.
The area that the Orbiter progressed over, as all of you know from looking at the flight path and the very marginal amount of debris lost that occurred prior to breakup over Texas, is going to make it extremely difficult, but we are still endeavoring to do that.
We have got teams in New Mexico, Arizona, California, Utah, trying to run down every single reported lead from anybody who claims they pick up anything. So sometimes in running down those leads and reports, it turns out to be rusted bottle, cans, and stuff like that, or rusted pop cans, but nonetheless we are leaving absolutely no report unreviewed or examined in the effort, as Hal Gehman and all of the members of the board have reiterated.
Those earliest shedding of debris will tell us so much about where the origins and the original point of the breakup began at that time and may tell us a lot more than even some of the volume that we would collect in East Texas. So any reiteration of that point would be — as a matter of public statement and continuing appeal for would be most appreciated in that regard because anything you can find that is west of that debris path from the Texas border would be extremely illuminating in the view of the accident investigation folks as well.
A third tidbit I want to touch on quickly is — again, some of you may have noted and I hope that the — responded to Admiral Gehman’s request for a revision or change in the way that we are organizing ourselves to support the accident investigation process.
That letter that I wrote to him describing that, that I promised to him the better part of a week and a half ago, was put on the site I think this week sometime, sent late last week, which defines that we have reorganized our interface in support of their activities to match up exactly to the three subdivisions of their board that they have elected to organize under.
Again, as you all are aware, they have got a group that is really looking at materials and structures. Another group is looking at operations. Another group is looking at technology. And they have divided their membership, not exclusively, but more focused on these three areas, so, again, roughly two or three members per each of those three areas that are concentrating on that area, but they all are engaged in the entire investigative process. This is more of an intensity of focus in one area versus another. So we are now organizing exactly the same way.
Randy Stone, who is our deputy director of the Johnson Space Center, is leading one of those teams as a direct interface there.
Jim Kennedy, who is the deputy center director at the Marshall Space Flight Center — excuse me — at the Kennedy Space Flight Center — Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “Kennedy at Kennedy,” that was part of the madness. I really had an issue there. He had come from Marshall. So he has got a lot of experience understanding the activities that the Marshall Space Flight Center is engaged in, and now has been up at Kennedy for the better part of 6, 7 months, I guess, back in the fall who was sitting there as the deputy when Jim Jennings came here from that capacity. And he is involved in — leading one of the teams as well as Frank Benz, who is essentially the chief engineer at the Johnson Space Center, to look at the material structure side.
So all three of them are matched up exactly the same way the subdivisions of the board are working, and they are tasking the agency assets and capabilities around our organization in terms of support the analysis as well as continued testing and anything else that the board asks for. So it is that approach that is being worked through.
They are all coordinating through a task force that we announced the better part of about 3 weeks ago, I believe, that is the central point of contact in which Admiral Gehman, who can reach into any part of the agency he wants, but nonetheless in order to get some organization for the products and the analysis and the data or the information or whatever else that he requests or the board requests is vetted through the task force, and they work through that analysis in that regard.
So the interface we have is exacting now in terms of the approach that he had requested and that we believe is led by folks who have no direct association with the on-orbit activities of STS-107 or any of the prelaunch functions that led up to that. These are folks who were not actively engaged in a direct way in that regard. So the interfaces now are very, very clear.
Next, the last couple of points I would want to touch on quickly just as informational issues, next week there will be a get-together at the Nissho facility for a couple of days with all of the NASA experts as well as in the Shuttle program as well as throughout the contractor community to look at what we had announced some 6 months ago or planned some 6 months ago, which was in pursuit of the President’s amendment that he sent up on November 13th of last year which was to begin a process of looking at what it will take to fly the Shuttle Orbiters through the next decade.
So part of what we were engaged in last fall is reflected in the budget amendment the President forwarded at that time. It is in the budget request for ’04 as well; as a matter of fact, Congress having endorsed the Integrated Space Transportation Plan that was incorporated in the President’s amendment back in November and again still is part of the ’04 budget proposal that was made on February 3rd incorporating that in one of the assumptions in the Integrated Space Transportation Plan, in addition to the Orbital Space Plane, the next-generation launch technologies and all the aspects. It was also to look at what it will take in order to maintain safe flight operations for the Orbiter for an extended period, potentially through the next decade.
What had been planned, as some of you are well aware, and existed several years ago was a working assumption that the Shuttle would be retired in the early part of the next decade. So, as a consequence, the projected effort several years ago was to kind of phase down the activities progressively until retirement of the asset.
Having looked at that rather intensively over the course of the past year and particularly last summer, we elected as part of the Integrated Space Transportation Plan to not only not retire the Shuttle in that span of time, but to look a what it would take as a careful examination to look at all modifications, upgrades, improvements, structural and technology assets necessary in order to maintain that for as long through the next decade as we could. And that analysis and examination that we are about — and this is just the next phase of that, which is going to occur next week — is to assemble all the folks who are engaged in this activity.
Again, it had been planned for months. This was not something we laid on just in the last 6 weeks. It was scheduled well before the 1st of February with the intention of specifically looking at the full range of all of the different modifications, upgrades, improvement, technology enhancements, life extension efforts, all of those different things that would be necessary in order to safely fly the Shuttle Orbiters through the next decade.
We don’t have a notional date, but it has been talked about in terms of how long you would want it to last, but certainly through the next decade is the working proposition because we want to examine the full range of different improvements or capability enhancements or technology insertion or anything else that would be necessary for the Shuttle, and look at what point are you investing in an asset that is not going to have a service life necessary to justify that expense or investment over a course of time.
The working assumption that we developed over the course of the last several months, particularly back in the summer and fall, was that that doesn’t occur until well into the next decade, the middle of the decade at the earliest. So that justifies at least, as an opening proposition, examining all of the efforts that are necessary to maintain the safe operations for the Shuttle for at least the next 10 to 12 years minimum is the working assumption at this point.
Prepare to be disabused of that. There could be some “aha” that comes out of this down the road that may tell us something different, but as of right now, that is based on our best understanding, and certainly it was back in the summer and fall of last year when we laid on this idea.
So, if you look at the funding stream in the ’03 amendment as well as in ’04, what the President forwarded on February 3rd, for the out-years through ’08, the enhanced resource levels that you see was premeditated at that time. It stems from that period.
So part of what the effort is about, next week at Nissho and with the collection of all the folks who are in this community who are going to examine this, is to think about what is the process we are going to engage in, in prioritizing all of these different ideas, of how to modify, upgrade, insert technology, make enhancements, and extend the service life of this asset.
There was never any working assumption that I am aware of as to what the actual age of the Orbiter would be at point of retirement. It was based on a proposition at the time of design that it would be designed to last for 100 flights each. So that is the working proposition we are going with, but, again, I don’t know of any specific intention at the time that the design the original Orbiters were done.
So, as all of you are aware, too, the Orbiters go through a major modification effort, roughly, every 8 to 10 flights that goes for a period of, roughly, 18 to 24 months. What we are trying to do is look at what modifications, upgrade, insertion of technology, et cetera, would be the most appropriate thing to do during those industrial availabilities, if you will, at a time that the Orbiter is down and actually going through, as Discovery is right now, to assure that what we are doing during that time is to enhance the service life of the asset for as long as we can and to operate as safely as we know how to make it.
So this is part of that effort, part of the same quest. Again, it is a 2-day get-together. I think there is an open press day on the 19th of March that is available. So, by all means, we would be delighted to have you there and respond to any thoughts you may have or concerns you want to raise or issues or questions you have as we go through it, but the product that we hope to see coming out of this particular effort for the couple of days, again, is a very firm inventory of what we believe to be the range of things that could be considered and then, more importantly, a process by which we would go about prioritizing those particular modifications, upgrades, technology insertions, et cetera, that would be necessary in order to maintain the Orbiter safely for an extended period of time. So it would be efficiency improvements as well as safety improvements or any other range of activities. So it is part of that continuing planning process of being assured that we have an effort to do that.
Concurrent with this and as what is clearly an aftermath of February 1 that will help inform the debate as well is we have initiated a return-to-flight plan which Bill Readdy sent out a couple of days ago with the intent specifically of looking at not only a product of this shuttle confab that we are going to have next week in Nissho, but also a very specific understanding of all the other operational activities we may want to consider and examine and look at as we prepare to return to flight. So that we are not just sitting here waiting for a report from the Gehman board and then getting started as soon as we open up page 1 of the report.
So we are trying to anticipate and get ahead of the things that we see, not based on superior knowledge or even anecdotal knowledge we are getting from the Gehman Board, but instead to think in terms, very constructively, of the kinds of prelaunch, on-orbit, and after-landing kind of changes to not only process, but also the longer-term efforts necessary in order to get ourselves ready and ready to prepare to move ahead.
I hasten to add, though, that there is nothing in this particular procedure — and it is very firmly stated — to alter or to implement any particular effort to return to flight until such time as that report is released.
What we are doing is doing all of the appropriate planning and the program considerations and what are necessary in terms of how we think we want or at least examine what we think may be necessary changes in procedure as well as lead run-up to launch itself as well as on-orbit activities that we think are necessary in order to prepare ourselves to have thought through all those issues that we know of right now, that we are gaining more knowledge of as this investigation continues, to prepare for return to flight as quickly and as expeditiously as we can upon receipt of the Gehman board’s report and then make the determination at that time based on what they advise in terms of what we need to do in order to make such changes as may be necessary to return to flight expeditiously and safely.
I think that document as well is out or around and certainly available to the extent that anybody wants to examine that. We will be looking at what that planning horizon is by the beginning of next month and start down the road of doing that.
It is an effort we are also looking to do, just as a last aside, that is not only within the Office of Space Flight and the Space Flight community directly, but also an expression of looking across the full range of assets and capabilities and expertise that we have — and talent we have across the agency from the Aeronautics and Aerospace communities at large. And one of the key participants in that activity will also be, in addition to the Space Flight community, Michael Greenfield who is the deputy director for a number of years until he replaced and relieved Dan Mulville when he retired as the associate deputy administrator for Technical Activities. So he will be engaged in this as well. So it is a very strong team I think that Bill has assembled and that will be working through all the issues there.
The final thing is next Wednesday at Johnson Space Center, we will begin a series of open houses, if you will, at Johnson for any journalists who are interested in participating down there. They have set up a schedule of activities which is very loosely structured to kind of give you a sense of what the Shuttle program management as well as Shuttle operations and training efforts and all the other things that go into that may entail. So, to the extent that you want to avail yourself of that opportunity, we would welcome those who are interested.
It will be the first of a few. Jeff Howell, the center director there at Johnson, plans to at least set up a couple or three of those over the course of the next few weeks, so as to accommodate whatever interest may be there, in order to spend time talking to folks on engineering issues, the mission control, the training simulators, the astronaut corps who are engaged in the activities, whoever it is you want to talk to. So it is a fairly loosely structured program that will begin on the 19th of March, next week. It is a full-day activity, but, again, any part of that activity, of course, you are welcome to engage in and just see Glenn and his folks if you have an interest in pursuing the one next week or any thereafter, so we can follow up with that.
Thank you all for spending the time, and I appreciate you listening to the monologue here. I appreciate it.
Questions? Yes, sir. Eric?
QUESTIONER: Just a couple of follow-up questions. Beyond the task force that will interface with the Gehman commission on these three levels, do you know roughly what percent of the NASA work force is currently involved in the investigation or assisting in analysis?
Secondly, how does the Ron Diddimore letter of late last month asking a review of the five key areas of shuttle safety and trajectory and all that — how does that fit into what you folks are planning next year?
ADMINISTRATOR O’KEEFE: Sure. On the first one, that is a good question. I don’t know exactly what the total number of people throughout the agency are that are engaged in supporting the investigative activity.
QUESTIONER: Is it like a goodly number?
ADMINISTRATOR O’KEEFE: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. But I wouldn’t want to speculate. Let me go back and take a look.
There are some people who are doing this, you know, 24/7. There are some that are doing it half their time. There are others that, as you have seen from the anecdotal e-mail traffic and everything else, are engaged in it on topic-specific analyses. So they may be working like dogs for 2 or 3 weeks and then back to their day jobs.
You get a lot of this, and probably the safest way or the clearest way to give you a representation of that would be to tote up the number of folks from various disciplines across all the activities who are doing the fault tree analyses because they are really intensively involved in this.
Again, some of you may remember I described for you a scene that I saw just on the external tank for the fault tree analyses that was going on there, which they were examining. Gosh, they had started off with some 120 scenarios, and they literally were working through this analyses. This was several weeks ago now. They have narrowed it down to a smaller number than that. But there were, I would say, easily, 50, 60 people from across the agency, from Marshall, from Kennedy, from Johnson, certainly from right there at Nissho. I think there was a couple of folks from the Glenn Research Center, AIMS. It was across the aboard, and it had to be at least 50 to 60 people that I remember seeing there, physically sighted, that were in a room twice the size of this with wall art across, made-up wall art of all the fault trees working through every possible scenario and closing off branches of the fault tree just on the external tank.
If I had to multiply that number, it would be substantial. Let’s go back, and we will take a look at that very question and figure out what a good thumbnail might be of folks who are intensively doing this all day, every day, 24/7, working this kind of stuff as opposed to the people who are just being tasked as an aside to support some aspect of that.
To your second question, Ron’s memo, as I understand it — and I saw this — was very much in support of the same objectives we are after here. He was looking at it from the Shuttle program responsibilities, and so that was his effort to begin preparing for this larger return-to-flight objective that Bill offered up just a couple of days ago. So, indeed, a lot of what Ron was doing was getting out of the traces quickly in order to get his effort organized.
He will respond to that early-April objective that Bill has articulated. So the larger, over-arching return-to-flight effort will require participation not only from the Shuttle program office, but also from the full expanse of all the capabilities we have across the agency, which will include, again, the aeronautics kind of expertise like Langley brings, some of the propulsion expertise that a place like Glen Research Center will bring. Certainly the Marshall Space Flight Center, Kennedy, Johnson, and Stennis, which are the four primary space flight centers, will be engaged in this activity. So the full range of that is what is really the larger, over-arching effort that Bill and Michael Greenfield are sponsoring.
So Ron’s part of that, just from the program management perspective, was how do I get ahead of this stuff knowing that Bill had already forecast to him, “Yes, we are heading down this road. Start thinking in terms of what you need to do.” So he is just exercising prudent management activity in order to get himself ready to go.
Yes, sir.
