- CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) -- NASA's shuttle program chief warned space
agency workers to focus on safety after "three close calls"
that could have led to a catastrophic accident -- one of them at the launch
of the mission taking John Glenn back into space in October.
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- In a memo to the shuttle work force,
space shuttle program manager Tommy Holloway said challenging times were
ahead as NASA begins construction of the International Space Station
and launches other important missions.
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- "It was just a reminder that safety
is No. 1," Holloway said Tuesday. "My motivation was to remind
the shuttle team that they really had it within their own power to significantly
improve the safety of shuttle flights."
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- In the memo, dated November 20, Holloway
wrote: "We have experienced three close calls that appeared to be
minor, but each could have been a contributing factor to a major incident
if not for other areas of system robustness."
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- One of them occurred when the shuttle
Discovery took off in October, carrying 77-year-old John Glenn on his
historic return to space, 36 years after he became the first American
to orbit the Earth.
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- A small door broke away and bounced off
an engine nozzle. Had the 11-pound door fallen differently or the engine
nozzle had been less resilient, it could have resulted in an engine explosion,
Holloway said. Shuttle managers believe a design problem was to blame.
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- The other two recent mishaps were: *
The shuttle Atlantis was not properly attached to its 747 carrier aircraft
for a cross-country trip in November 1997. A crucial washer was not installed
on one of three bolts holding the $2 billion orbiter. In a worst case
scenario, the shuttle could have broken loose and crashed to the ground,
bringing the 747 with it. * On a June flight of Endeavour, a pressure
sensor in one of the shuttle's three main engines failed 20 seconds after
liftoff because a broken piece of test equipment was left inside a cooling
pipe. Had the failure occurred later in flight, the engine would have
shut down, forcing an emergency landing fraught with danger.
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- NASA has not had a manned space accident
since the 1986 Challenger disaster, which took the lives of seven astronauts,
and in recent years the space shuttle fleet has been performing reliably
on lower budgets and reduced staffing.
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- "We always have to remember that
when things are going well is when we are most vulnerable," Holloway
said.
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- He made eight safety recommendations
to the work force, which included: continually honing skills; avoiding
decisions based on a "gut feeling"; sharing information with
colleagues; and learning from past mistakes.
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- He also used the explosions of Delta
and Titan rockets and the 1996 crash of an airliner in Florida as examples
of other safety lapses in the aerospace industry.
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- "It is amazing to me that in retrospect,
almost all the time, there was an opportunity for someone to step in and
prevent an incident," Holloway said.
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