“It’s going to be a challenge, no doubt about it,” O’Keefe said.
O’Keefe, speaking at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, said he expects the Columbia Accident Investigation Board to offer sweeping criticism of the agency when it delivers its report late next month. But the National Aeronautics and Space Administration needs to accept those findings and concentrate on how to fix the problems, he said, not argue the details.
“We’re going to get hammered, but we’re going to come out stronger. That has to be our mindset – if we take it personally and are defensive about it, it’s going to be really, really difficult to work with,” O’Keefe said. “Our history has always been that we confront those problems, we confront those challenges.”
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The agency chief’s comments echoed those made in a letter sent this month by William Readdy, a former astronaut and NASA’s top spaceflight official. In a letter to the group trying to return the three remaining shuttles to flight, Readdy noted, “We have a very long, tortuous, uphill climb ahead of us,” but he expressed confidence in the team.
Both men’s comments seem aimed at boosting agency morale in the last agonizing weeks before the Columbia board’s report is released.
O’Keefe updated employees on the work being done to return the shuttles to flight, sounding a note of optimism even as he said the process will not be governed by the calendar.
With the cooperation of every NASA employee, he said, the shuttle Atlantis could be headed for the International Space Station next spring.
“If we all participate in this – again, contributions large or small, direct or indirect will all matter a lot to defining who we are and how folks consider us,” O’Keefe said. “If we do that right, around the March time frame or shortly thereafter, we’ll have the opportunity to see the launch of STS-114.”
NASA officials working on the return-to-flight plan will have a working version ready very soon, O’Keefe said – before the board’s report is released. Internal documents from the shuttle program show the agency is targeting a date of no earlier than March 11 to launch Atlantis.
O’Keefe said there will be “no limit” to the effect the report will have on the agency, since he expects the panel to hit on a wide range of problems.
O’Keefe did not discuss the technical hurdles of flying the shuttles again, which are significant. But he did discuss a new, independent safety office, which will be located at Langley Research Center in Virginia and designed to strengthen processes expected to be criticized by the board.
He emphasized that NASA needs to redouble its efforts to ensure that anyone with even the smallest concern feels comfortable – compelled, even – to step forward and raise that issue.
“We need to make it easy for anyone to participate,” he said. “Because we really do need to know.”
The Orlando Sentinel is a Tribune Publishing newspaper.