Transcript of NASA Press Conference with Bob Daugherty and Mark Shuart (Part 4)
TELEPHONE CALLER: Also, just as far as the landing gear in particular, there is that e-mail from Coca-Cola that somebody brought up about — that seemed to indicate that maybe there was more of a vulnerability around the perimeter of the landing gear than some other places. I know you are not a thermal expert, Bob, but can you tell us a little bit about whether there were special concerns as far as that goes that you were thinking about with the landing gear and doing your own input into this problem?
MR. DAUGHERTY: Yeah, that is a good question, and I am not an expert on the structure around the landing gear and why that that might be a more vulnerable place than others, but, of course, I did read that comment from that expert. Certainly, it colors how you think, even though I am not an expert. So it didn’t — it didn’t alarm me and it didn’t make what I said turn into a warning at all, but, obviously, I sat up and took note when I read that.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Thanks very much.
MR. HENRY: Florida Today, is it going to be Chris or John Kelly?
TELEPHONE CALLER: I will defer to John.
MR. HENRY: Okay, John, go ahead.
[No response.]
TELEPHONE CALLER: If John is silent, let me go ahead and ask a question.
MR. HENRY: Okay, good move.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Okay, thanks. And again, I appreciate you guys talking to us today.The question about the sideways information, I just want to explore that a little further, and maybe Bob can speak to this. Do you feel like — I mean, you said you felt like your comments were taken seriously, but do you wish that maybe there was more sort of cross-pollination as far as expertise is concerned?
We have been told over and over that people sort of stick to their area of expertise. Does there need to be more interaction?
MR. DAUGHERTY: Well, I would have to say that, certainly, in one sense, people do need to stick to their expertise. That is why I am not out there talking about tiles and thermal protection because I just don’t know it.
And again, my involvement with wanting to spark discussions on planning for anything bad that could happen, that discussion would not have changed, regardless of any sideways talking in my involvement with the thermal people.
MR. SHUART: Kelly, this is Mark. It is a very interesting sort of kind of balance that we think about. With very complex systems, you would like to have experts that are deep — have deep background in particular facets of perhaps a complex system like the shuttle. Then again, you would kind of like to have people that understand lots of the different disciplines and pieces of it, but then when you do that, that breadth that they would have, they are just as a matter of fact — they just can’t be as deep. So we always are kind of in one of these situations where you wished that some folks were a little broader, but when they are, they are not as deep, and when you get somebody that is real deep, sometimes you wish they were a little broader. Hopefully, from an engineering perspective, we try and balance that.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Thanks.
MR. HENRY: Okay. Thank you, Chris.
Bruce Nickels, Dallas Morning News?
TELEPHONE CALLER: Can you hear me?
MR. HENRY: Yes.
TELEPHONE CALLER: This is probably a question for Mark since Bob has said he is not an expert. Can you tell us anything about these wind tunnel tests that are showing the leading edge as the panel six specifically as a likely cause of this problem?
MR. SHUART: The quick answer, Bruce, is no because I am not a wind tunnel guy. I am a structures and material guy.
MR. HENRY: I will break my own rule and answer that question. This is Keith Henry.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Thanks.
MR. HENRY: The — well, actually the answer, you are not going to like the answer. We are considering the investigative team our client with those one-tunnel tests. So we are turning those results over to them. If you would like to see them and know what they mean, talk to those guys.TELEPHONE CALLER: Meaning the board?
MR. HENRY: Yes.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Okay, thanks.
MR. HENRY: You bet.
Irene Brown, Discovery Channel.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Thank you. The discussion that you had pretty much ended because it was time to bring the Orbiter home, and one of the last e-mails were exchanged like on the 31st and I think, Mark, you had passed along everything you had had and ended your comments with a sentence that you hoped that the folks at JSC were listening.
If this whole thing had happened earlier in the flight, if Carlyle Campbell had contacted you, Bob, earlier and this discussion had started earlier and there was more time to continue with it, where do you think it would have gone? What else could you have done with this, or how would you have wanted JSC to listen and use what you had determined through your analysis?
MR. DAUGHERTY: Thanks, Irene. This is Bob.
You formed the question that the discussion ended prior to the landing, but, you know, from my perspective, it was resolved. The intended purpose of the e-mail was resolved, and the guys in Mission Operations did have — in my opinion, did have a plan to handle landing issues. So I don’t think extra time would have changed anything. They had resolved it.
MR. HENRY: Is Deeann Dyvis or Deevis [ph] from UPI on the line with us?
[No response.]
MR. HENRY: Okay. Earl Lane from Newsday?
TELEPHONE CALLER: Hi. Again, just on this last day, the one telephone conversation that was mentioned in Bob Duramis’ summary for Ron Diddamore [ph] occurred late on Friday afternoon. Carlyle Campbell, Bob Duramis stated [inaudible] in Bob Daugherty. They did talk in there that Bob Duramis and David Patternostra [ph] had some skepticism about the accuracy of the AIM sim in light of other data, and I am wondering if you could discuss that.
Then, at the end, it says that everyone agreed that they expected a safe entry on Saturday, and does that reflect, Bob, your thoughts at that time?
MR. DAUGHERTY: Yeah, Earl. The conversation that afternoon regarding the results of the sim run, let me answer the last part first.
Yeah, we all absolutely agreed that there was no expectation of anything bad happening during the landing, and at the end of that conversation, we talked about, boy, it would be nice to see — you know, to see what the damage looks like once they are walking around the vehicle on the runway, no expectation of real problems at all.
The inaccuracies we are talking about gets into exactly what friction level you use on the rolling flat tires and it is on one side of the vehicle versus others and some technical things like that, but there were no disagreements about the results of the test — or the simulations, rather.
TELEPHONE CALLER: So you thought they were adequate for the purposes done?
MR. DAUGHERTY: Yeah, absolutely.
MR. HENRY: Anyone there now from Fox News?
[No response.]
MR. HENRY: Lisa Stark from ABC, you are up.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Thank you. Can you hear me?
MR. HENRY: Yes.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Thanks for all your time, guys. Just about everything in the world has been asked, but I will try one other thing here.
What strikes me from this e-mail traffic and others is two things. One is how late in the game you got engaged with the first phone call. I mean, it was pretty late after most of the analysis was already completed, and I am wondering if you could talk about that.
Also, just this whole thing of formal-versus-informal request, I mean, we know the request to take the picture from the military assets was, quote, “informal” and that it was canceled before a formal request. You talked, Bob, about frustration because there was a formal protocol for the simulators and how do you interrupt that. I mean, I am wondering if this was taken almost as too much as a sort of pro-format, matter-of-course discussion and no one had any sense of urgency, and do you think we only have a sense of urgency in hindsight or was there any kind of sense of urgency as this was all going on?
Sorry. I know it is a long question.
MR. DAUGHERTY: This is Bob.
I guess the way to answer that is, A, I can’t comment on when we were called, you know, to give an answer to a friend and a colleague on landing with flat tires and doing just some generic engineering and “what if-ing.” But I don’t think you want a landing-gear guy raising issues in the tile and impact damage arena. Just don’t have any expertise there, and, you know, I shouldn’t be getting into their act.
TELEPHONE CALLER: What about this issue, though, of everything seeming to have to go through channels and there doesn’t seem to me that there was this sense of, gee, this is something we have to get our hands around, either, you know, from the simulator point where you were frustrated you weren’t getting in quicker or — obviously, this was not in your e-mail traffic, but we saw that also perhaps in the debate over whether to use military assets.
MR. SHUART: This is Mark.
Let me say that normally if we feel like that things are being stonewalled very badly, this sort of thing comes through pretty quick. I think that if there was information that people like Bob felt like they really weren’t getting, we probably would have spoken up a little bit more, but as things kind of unfolded, it seemed like it was going — it eventually worked itself through.
I could understand that there are people that have a particular schedule that they are trying to run on a particular facility that they have waited to get into, and that is the simulator. So maybe initially there is a push back on, gee, you know, how important is this, but at some point in time, as has worked out in this case, people recognize that this is something that is pretty important. It is a flight that is up right at that point in time, and maybe we can try and move things around. In that sense, the folks in the agency do try to accommodate questions that people have without being so stuck by a process.
MR. DAUGHERTY: And remember, this is sort of sideline work that is not in response to a technical concern. This is some guys doing “what if-ing” on the side.
MR. HENRY: Okay. Either Bill Harwood or Bob Orr from CBS.
TELEPHONE CALLER: It is Bill Harwood. Can you hear me okay?
MR. HENRY: Yes.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Well, two quick ones, and they are both for Bob. They are just restating questions you have already answered in different ways. I just want to take another run at a couple of them.Just for the record, when you drove into work that Saturday morning, was there anything in the back of your mind about the possibility of either, you know, damage you might see when they are on the runway — is the first part of that, the second part is was there anything in your mind that had you worried that something really bad might happen. That is the first question.
MR. DAUGHERTY: Well, again, by all accounts, there was some ambiguity to this whole thing.You know, we had all seen the video. I had seen the video, and even though we were absolutely doing “what if-ing” during that week, you know, that is in my mind. So, you know, when you talk about buying a car, it is not very long before you go buy the car. So I had been absorbed in “what if-ing” all week. So, of course, there was, I think, some natural uneasiness on my part, but, again, nothing that I believed — you know, I certainly believed that everything was going to be perfectly fine, and, again, I expected to see pictures taken of the damaged area after they were walking around the vehicle on the runway which, you know, as an engineer would be very interesting.
TELEPHONE CALLER: I understand you said at the very top of your statement that you were frustrated in the way the e-mails have been, I guess, reported in the media. You have answered this question from another angle, but the question here is: What was it, the way these were portrayed, that you are disagreeing with?
MR. DAUGHERTY: Well, you know, I guess perhaps the biggest one is the — is where I meant the comment about “getting information is being treated like the plague,” that was very specific to, you know, a very small area of getting 10 minutes worth of work in a simulator, and, of course, that comment — and naturally so because you didn’t — you know, we weren’t talking about it. That sort of got imputed to Mission Operations and sort of all of NASA, and it was just so far off the mark that it was just frustrating.
MR. SHUART: Bill, this is Mark, and I guess I want to add to that.
Mr. O’Keefe came to the Langley Research Center not very long ago, and I am the guy that told him that this was not an engineer waving a red flag and nobody paying attention, and that this is the way it seems to be being portrayed in the press and that was far from the fact.
We did say to him at that meeting — or I will say I said to him at that meeting, it would be nice if we would have an opportunity to provide context.
MR. HENRY: Okay. CNN?
TELEPHONE CALLER: Hi. This is Jordan Legon.
I had a question for you about your reaction after the shuttle tragedy, and did you get any calls from the JSC to discuss your e-mails? And what was the nature of those calls?
MR. DAUGHERTY: I didn’t get — I did not get any calls, you know, let’s say that day or whatever from JSC, and I guess Mark and I talked after the accident and we thought, you know, it is a good idea to, just as everyone else was, put together a package of what e-mails we had and put together and received and so forth, but there were no calls from JSC wanting to discuss those e-mails at the time, on.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Did you get any calls at any point from anyone at NASA asking you to either, one, not discuss the e-mails or, two, to be careful about how you talked about the e-mails or anything regarding the e-mails?
MR. DAUGHERTY: Absolutely not. No, no real — no direction either to talk or not to talk.The NASA policy that you heard and I heard was to allow people to talk if they so chose, but I really did think the best thing was to try to save what little I knew for the investigation board.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Thank you.
MR. HENRY: Bob Hager, NBC.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Yeah. This is for Bob. Way back at the beginning here, you said you didn’t think the issues and concerns that you raised should have been passed to higher management and said later that the level of notice got passed up did meet your expectations, but you passed over the question about whether you wished they had. Given now that it is hindsight and all, do you now wish that the concerns you expressed in the e-mail had been passed up higher than they got?
MR. DAUGHERTY: Well, again, I do have to say, Bob, that they — I didn’t — I don’t see them as concerns. They — again, my intent was to provide what expertise I had to try to make sure that Plan B’s for anything bad that could happen during the landing phase were in place. Again, I feel like they did get put in place.
Since they weren’t concerns or predictions of a real problem, yeah, I did say that I didn’t think they should be passed forward. In that respect, I guess I would say no, I don’t wish they were passed forward because they would have — they would have simply clogged up the system because I didn’t have anything technical to add in terms of the tile damage and impact analysis.
MR. HENRY: Phil Chen, Earth News.
TELEPHONE CALLER: This is Phil. Can you hear me?
MR. HENRY: Yes.
TELEPHONE CALLER: For Bob, let me get you to put the engineer hat back on and think a hypothetical situation. There is less damage to Columbia. It does make it back through entry. Nevertheless, Jeff Kling gets his indicators from his MAX team that he has lost tire pressure in the left-hand side. What in your best estimate would be the possible scenario of that? How much stress damage could the landing gear take and still be able to land safely? At what point would it be so much damage that he or somebody on his team would have to recommend to do a bail-out and abandon the vehicle?
MR. DAUGHERTY: Well, I assume you read the e-mail traffic between the guys at EMAX and JSC in response to my e-mail.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Exactly.
MR. DAUGHERTY: You know, those are the experts on figuring out what to do, depending on what kind of data they see coming in real time. So I certainly couldn’t second-guess them. They are absolutely the experts there.
I would say that one of the parts we felt like we tried to add to the mix was if you can get to the runway and your gear is down, that that was a survivable situation, and we wanted to make sure that the guys at Mission Operations had the benefit of that simulation, and they did.
TELEPHONE CALLER: In your estimate, how much damage could the gear have taken and still been able to deploy? I assume if for some reason it didn’t deploy, then we would have had a bad day no matter what at that point.
MR. DAUGHERTY: Yeah. I think what you read in the JSC e-mails was if you think the gear isn’t going to come down, then I believe — and again, read their e-mail, but I believe their plan was to bail out.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Okay, thanks.
MR. HENRY: Jordan from CNN.COM.
TELEPHONE CALLER: I asked my question when you asked for CNN. Thank you.
MR. HENRY: Oh, okay. Very good.
All right. Is Richard Harris there now from NPR?
[No response.]
MR. HENRY: How about Jeff Morris from Aerospace Daily?
[No response.]
TELEPHONE CALLER: Keith, some of us would like to ask a question again, if we could.
MR. HENRY: All right. I will tell you what, let’s hope it isn’t tons and tons and we can do it in sort of an ordered way. Why don’t you go ahead and ask a question.
TELEPHONE CALLER: This is Jeff Smith at The Washington Post.
Bob, I wanted just to come back to your frame of mind on Friday night and Saturday morning, the last day of the flight and the morning of the landing. You said, “There was some natural uneasiness on my part.” Could you explain what you meant by that, please?
MR. DAUGHERTY: Well, again, I had spent the week talking about bad things, doing all of this “what if-ing.” Again, you know, I am an engineer, although I am not a tile expert. So I read the analysis, and just like all of you. The amount of damage was, in some respects, unknown, and that combined with talking these scenarios all week long to colleagues, you know, it sort of just gets your gain up a little bit. And again, that kind of naturally leaves some uneasiness there.
TELEPHONE CALLER: But your uneasiness was — it is that word that I would like you to define. What does that mean? Does that mean that you feared — what?
MR. DAUGHERTY: You know, I can’t say I feared anything. I thought that —
TELEPHONE CALLER: Or that you worried, whatever. I don’t want to take your words for you. Just explain what you mean by — what does this word “uneasiness” mean?
MR. DAUGHERTY: Yeah. It is just that there is some ambiguity to the whole situation. This was an event that we hadn’t — you know, none of us had seen that video, a video like that before, and so there is just some ambiguity to the situation, though. You know, everybody wants to be completely aware of what, you know —
TELEPHONE CALLER: But the ambiguity was you were unsure if what?
MR. DAUGHERTY: Again, I guess the — unsure of how much damage there was to the vehicle, and, of course, that is the premise by which we started all of this “what iffing.” So, again, we were — I was interested to see how much damage there would be after the landing.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Did you have any specific anxiety that it might not come in safely?
MR. DAUGHERTY: No, not at all.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Mark, if I could ask you a question. You said at one point in our conversation today — you said as we look in hindsight, we are going to wish that a lot of things were happened differently. You are looking in hindsight now. You don’t have that wish now?
MR. SHUART: All I am saying is that anybody that looked at Columbia, in hindsight they might have a recommendation on something to be done differently. Even you, I am sure.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Well, let me ask you, though. I mean, you are looking at it in hindsight now. What would you like to have done differently?
MR. HENRY: Jeff, this will be your last question, and then I will ask for a couple more, from someone else.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Thanks, Keith.
MR. SHUART: I really haven’t thought about it that much.
TELEPHONE CALLER: This is Dave Schlick, the Daily Press. Could I ask one more question about something that we haven’t touched on yet?
MR. HENRY: Go ahead, and then we will do one after this, Dave. Go ahead.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Bob, in one of your e-mails, you make reference — you are speaking of the crater and the size of the crater being 1,920 cubic inches. You said something to the effect of “I hope I am reading that wrong.” What did you mean by that? Did it seem like a large crater to you, or what did you mean by that comment, “I hope I am reading that wrong”?
MR. DAUGHERTY: Okay. It did turn out that I was reading that wrong, and, hence, I am not a tile expert.
The test data that as I understand it as a lay person reading some of the information — the test data made use of 3-cubic-inch specimens, and apparently the size — one estimate is the size of the original piece of foam was the 19, 20. So I had it somewhat wrong there.
The comment about reading it wrong was simply that, you know, there is an apparent disparity between 3 cubic inches and 1,900 cubic inches.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Okay, thank you.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Keith, it is Seth. Can I get a question in?
MR. HENRY: Yeah, go ahead. This will be the last one.
TELEPHONE CALLER: Okay. In terms of — for Bob — I know we have talked about getting it up to Bill Ready, but it also didn’t get on the other end in Houston past David Lechner up to the Linda Hamm up to the Diddamore, Milt Heflin [ph], Leroy Kane. Is there — do you have a feeling that — I mean, do you kind of wish at least on that end, it might have gone a little further up, even to a mission management team?
I guess the other part of that is I understand how you feel that you don’t — well, you know, in hindsight, there isn’t, I think, but I guess if I were in your position even with your feelings, I would still have some sleepless nights wondering “what if-ing” on the other end.
MR. DAUGHERTY: With respect to your first part of your question, you know, David Lechner passed it onto the EMAX folks with Bob Duramis. That is, again, my opinion, the exact right place for it, and they discussed it just like I was hoping. So, no, I don’t think it — I think it went exactly where it should have gone.
I’m sorry. The second half was sleepless nights. The sleepless nights aren’t because we felt we didn’t do enough. I think we did exactly what our technical expertise would bid us do here with regard to landing issues.
MR. HENRY: Both Bob Daugherty and Mark Shuart will be on the NASA Columbia website shortly, and thank you very much.
[End of press conference.]- – –
