- With the investigation into Saturday's Columbia space
shuttle disaster still in its initial stages, it is too early to draw definitive
conclusions as to the specific technological factors, or combination of
factors, that led to the tragedy. But the loss of the shuttle and death
of seven astronauts was not only a personal tragedy for the families and
a source of shock and grief for millions around the world, it was also
a significant political event.
-
- Whatever the outcome of the inquiries now under way,
the Columbia explosion holds important lessons. Properly considered within
its social and political context, it says a great deal about American society
and the forces that dominate it.
-
- Multiple Warnings Went Unheeded
-
- In the wake of the shuttle explosion, numerous reports
have already emerged of advance warnings of impending disaster received
by top NASA administrators, congressional committees that oversee the agency,
and President Bush himself.
-
- Those in positions of responsibility for the space program
had ample notification of mounting safety problems, but chose to do nothing.
Instead they retaliated against scientists and engineers who sought to
bring to the public's attention serious safety problems in the areas of
maintenance and training caused by years of budget cuts. Six scientists
were dismissed from the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel in March 2001 after
repeatedly complaining about deficiencies in NASA's operation of the shuttle
program.
-
- Less than two months ago, the Bush administration brushed
off the warnings of a retired NASA engineer who wrote to the White House
on several occasions urging a halt to all space shuttle launches. One such
letter said immediate action was needed "to prevent another catastrophic
shuttle accident."
-
- The writer, Don Nelson, a supervisor and mission planner
who retired from NASA in 1999 after a career going back to the first moon
missions, wrote to Bush last August saying the shuttle astronauts were
in imminent danger. He cited a series of malfunctions such as hydrogen
leaks, dented fuel lines, wiring problems and computer failures.
-
- John Marburger, director of the Office of Science and
Technology and Bush's chief science adviser, discussed Nelson's criticisms
with NASA officials. He then wrote back to the retired engineer, praising
NASA's safety practices and concluding, "Based on these discussions,
I do not think that it is appropriate for the President to issue a moratorium
on Space Shuttle launches at this time."
-
- Nelson made one last attempt, after a report of a propellant
leak on the shuttle, writing to the White House December 21, "I assume
that you are aware that there has never been a launch vehicle that has
not had multiple catastrophic failures. I assume you have informed the
president that the request for a moratorium has been denied and his administration
is accepting the responsibility for the fate of the space shuttle crews."
Nelson received no reply.
-
- Cutbacks In The Maintenance Workforce
-
- This exchange of letters was only the most explicit of
a series of warnings and expressions of concern over deteriorating conditions
at NASA in general and the space shuttle program in particular. The NASA
workforce devoted to safety and maintenance in the shuttle program was
slashed from 3,000 to 1,800 between 1995 and 1999. It now stands at just
under 2,000.
-
- According to a report submitted to the Senate Committee
on Commerce, Science and Transportation on August 15, 2000 by the General
Accounting Office, an agency of Congress, "Several internal NASA studies
have shown that the shuttle program's workforce has been affected negatively
by the downsizing."
-
- The report continued: "The shuttle program has identified
many areas that are not sufficiently staffed by qualified workers, and
the remaining work force shows signs of overwork and fatigue. Forfeited
leave, absences from training courses and stress-related employee assistance
visits are all on the rise."
-
- Nonetheless, that same year Congress imposed a $380 million
cost cap on each shuttle launch, leading NASA officials themselves to warn
that personnel cuts "pose significant shuttle program flight safety
risks."
-
- In March of 2001 NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel
issued a report highly critical of the agency's safety problems, focusing
especially on the aging fleet of four space shuttles. It warned that work
on long-term safety issues "had deteriorated" because of the
impact of budget cuts and the backlog of "more immediate problems."
-
- The response of the agency was to draft a new procedure
for selecting members of the advisory group, which resulted in the dismissal
of five of the panel members and two consultants. A sixth member, retired
admiral Bernard Kauderer, resigned in protest over the firings of colleagues.
-
- Dr. Seymour C. Himmel, one of those fired, told the New
York Times, "[W]e were telling it like it was and were disagreeing
with some of the agency's actions." Another fired panel member, Dr.
Norris D. Krone of the University of Maryland University Research Foundation,
said, "It's unusual to terminate people from a high-level group like
that in midterm. We all thought it was ill-advised."
-
- Despite the purging of NASA critics, the reshuffled advisory
panel continued to highlight safety problems. The chairman of the panel,
Dr. Richard D. Blomberg, told Congress last April, "I have never been
as worried for space shuttle safety as I am right now. One of the roots
of my concern is that nobody will know for sure when the safety margin
has been eroded too far. All of my instincts suggest that the current approach
is planting the seeds for future danger."
-
- Blomberg added that his concern was "not for the
present flight or the next or perhaps the one after that," but for
the medium term. Columbia was the fourth shuttle launch to occur after
his warning.
-
- Subsequent congressional action did not reflect these
heightened safety concerns. While NASA's funding has been cut 40 percent
over the last decade, in July 2002 the Senate reduced its manned space
flight budget another 10.3 percent.
-
- One senator who flew on the space shuttle and is very
familiar with the program, Bill Nelson (Democrat from Florida), complained
that the upgrading of shuttle safety standards was being delayed. He declared,
"We are starving the shuttle budget, greatly increasing the chances
of catastrophic loss." The White House response was to propose an
increase of barely 3 percent in the NASA budget for the coming fiscal year.
-
- The Impact Of Privatization
-
- The role of the Clinton administration underscores a
critical political fact: both bourgeois parties are culpable in the degrading
of the space shuttle program.
-
- Clinton ordered the privatization of shuttle maintenance
in 1996, and a joint venture, the United Space Alliance (USA), was established
by the two largest US aerospace corporations, Boeing and Lockheed-Martin,
to fulfill the lucrative contract with NASA. The vast majority of those
working on the space program are employed by USA, not by NASA-7,600 of
the 10,000 in Houston, Texas, where the Johnson Space Center is located,
and 12,600 of the 14,000 who work at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
-
- Some 92 percent of NASA's $3.2 billion in spending on
the shuttle program goes into the coffers of private contractors, making
the space shuttle the single most privatized federal program. Lockheed-Martin
clears $85 million a year in profits from its share of the partnership
and other space-related subcontracting. Boeing profits from both USA and
separate contracting work through its Rocketdyne subsidiary, which makes
the shuttle engines.
-
- According to a report by NASA's own inspector general,
the agency no longer attempts to exercise oversight of United Space Alliance,
preferring to monitor performance through what it calls "insight"-a
periodic testing of performance standards-as opposed to "traditional
intense oversight methods requiring the government's review and concurrence
of contractor processes and decisions."
-
- The Clinton administration boasted that the privatization
effort, a component part of Vice President Al Gore's much-touted "reinventing
government" initiative, was a great success. The decision to subcontract
shuttle maintenance cut one quarter of the combined government and contractor
workforce and reduced the average cost of each shuttle flight from $600
million to $400 million.
-
- A recent study by the Rand Corporation warned NASA that
it was losing control of shuttle maintenance at a critical point, when
the shuttle orbiters needed even greater attention because of their age.
Columbia itself was built 25 years ago, and first flew in orbit in 1981.
"NASA must focus on retaining the engineers and managerial staff needed
to ensure proper insight and oversight," Rand concluded.
-
- The Columbia disaster is thus the latest demonstration
of the destructive consequences of the right-wing nostrums of privatization
and the unbridled sway of the capitalist "free market." The US
aerospace industry has built a total of five shuttle vehicles. Two have
now been destroyed in catastrophic events, each with the loss of all on
board.
-
- The penny-pinching forced on NASA by a decade of budget
cuts is part of a larger process, in which a small and privileged elite
within the US has enriched itself while allowing the basic infrastructure
to decay. While tens of billions have been squandered on CEO salaries,
bonuses and stock options, the shuttle astronauts have been obliged to
fly in vehicles based on 1970s design and engineering.
-
- In the final analysis, the modernization of the manned
space program and the safety of the astronauts, like all other aspects
of American society, have been casualties of the subordination of social
needs to the demands of the capitalist market and the private accumulation
of wealth.
-
- The destructive and irrational impact of the underlying
economic system on the space program can be illustrated with many examples.
To cite one: During the telecom bubble of the late 1990s more than $300
billion was poured into the building of redundant fiber optic lines, resulting
in 20 times the capacity that can be used by the US population. Throughout
the same period the space shuttle orbiter was compelled to use 8086 computer
chips, like those which powered the first IBM personal computers more than
two decades ago.
-
- The Bush Administration, Space And War
-
- Press accounts note that Bush has shown little personal
interest in the space program, never visiting the Johnson Space Center
in Houston despite his six-year tenure as governor of Texas. Science adviser
Marburger said that he had never met with Bush on the space program, but
had spent time discussing possible technologies for a missile defense system.
-
- Bush reportedly delegated the space program, like much
else in his administration, to Vice President Richard Cheney. He chose
Sean O'Keefe, a Cheney crony, to run NASA. O'Keefe was an official of the
Office of Management and Budget with no space experience, indicating that
Bush's priority was to cut costs. O'Keefe accordingly proposed a budget
that would cut shuttle upgrade spending by 43 percent through 2006-in an
administration that was raising US military spending to a staggering $400
billion annually.
-
- There has always been an underlying tension in the US
space program between genuinely progressive scientific and technical achievements-the
moon landing, the unmanned missions to the planets, the Hubble space telescope-and
the drive by American imperialism to utilize these advances for national
prestige and military advantage.
-
- This contradiction has reached its height under Bush,
who has proclaimed a commitment to the militarization of space while seeking
to cancel the most important scientific missions proposed by NASA, including
the planned mission to Pluto and a flyby of Jupiter's moon Europa, one
of the few bodies in the solar system where water has been detected.
-
- Political Impact Of The Shuttle Disaster
-
- The space shuttle disaster is a tragedy for the astronauts
who died in the breakup of the spacecraft, for their families, for the
broader community of scientists, engineers and technicians who have dedicated
their lives to the space program, and for all those who share the conviction
that space exploration is an expression of humanity's progressive striving
to understand and master nature.
-
- For the Bush administration and for corporate America,
the loss of the Columbia is a blow of a different sort. It brings into
question the myth of technological invincibility that the United States
has cultivated through a series of military interventions from the Persian
Gulf War of 1991 through the invasion of Afghanistan, with one-sided defeats
of militarily inferior enemies and virtually no American casualties.
-
- Coming on the eve of a US military onslaught against
Iraq, it discredits the claims of Pentagon and White House spokesmen that
US technical prowess guarantees an easy victory, and that precision weaponry
will target only Saddam Hussein and his minions, while leaving the great
mass of the Iraqi people unharmed.
-
- The response of the Bush administration to the shuttle
disaster has highlighted its real priorities. The day after the tragedy,
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer declared that it would not interfere
with the accelerating drive towards war against Iraq. Secretary of State
Colin Powell would proceed with his speech to the UN Security Council February
5, Fleischer emphasized, initiating the final diplomatic flurry before
the onset of war.
-
- Bush's televised remarks on Saturday, several hours after
the shuttle disaster, were as perfunctory as they were banal. They reflected
concerns within the ruling elite that the Columbia disaster had damaged
US prestige and heightened the anxiety of broad sections of the American
population over his government's policies of militarism abroad and attacks
on democratic rights and social conditions at home.
-
- True to form, he gave what amounted to a sermon, complete
with invocations of god and a biblical quotation. This wallowing in religious
consolation has a definite political function. While commending the souls
of the departed astronauts to heaven, Bush seeks to offload the responsibility
for their deaths onto the deity as well.
-
- Capitalism, The Nation State And Space Exploration
-
- The roots of the Columbia disaster are not only earthly,
they are entirely comprehensible. A social order whose priorities condemn
millions to go without jobs, health care, proper housing or education,
which allows entire cities to decay and starves essential services like
public transport of desperately needed resources, in order to further enrich
a privileged few, is organically incapable of developing science and technology
in a socially progressive manner.
-
- Moreover, the development of space science and exploration,
like all other branches of human knowledge, is held back and distorted
by a social order that remains chained to the narrow confines of nationalism
and the nation state. Science can be developed for the benefit of mankind
only to the extent that its pursuit is reorganized consciously on an international
basis.
-
- The eruption of war and reaction in the US testifies
to the perversion of science and technology, when subordinated to private
profit and the nation state, to serve as instruments of military conquest
and repression. Science, including space science and exploration, will
flourish only when the international working class has freed it from the
hands of the financial oligarchies so that it can be developed on the basis
of a planned, democratically controlled socialist economy.
-
- Copyright 1998-2003 World Socialist Web Site All rights
reserved
-
- http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/feb2003/shut-f04.shtml
|
