Published February 3, 2003
WASHINGTON (AP) - Shortages of key experts, tight budgets and mounting safety concerns all plagued the nation's space program in recent years, according to a trail of reports by congressional auditors, outside panels and NASA retirees.
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How much of a forewarning they were to Saturday's space shuttle Columbia tragedy may be determined in the next several weeks.
NASA critics both in and outside the government and investigators into the accident are sure to comb the reports for anything that might explain the disintegration of the spacecraft nearly 40 miles above Texas as it screamed toward a landing in Florida at more than 12,000 miles per hour.
As President Bush took office, the investigative arm of Congress found in 2001 that NASA's shuttle work force over the years had declined significantly to the point of reducing the agency's ability to safely support the program.
Many key areas were not sufficiently staffed by qualified workers and the remaining work force showed signs of overwork and fatigue, the General Accounting Office stated.
There were other warnings, including a report to Congress last April on the shuttle program by a federally mandated safety panel of outside experts which expressed "the strongest safety concern" in 15 years.
"We just received a GAO report, I think last week, that looked at NASA's oversight of some of their private contractors and basically said it was inadequate," Sen. John Breaux (D-La.), said yesterday on CNN.
Breaux and other members of Congress made clear yesterday that safety and the NASA budget will come under intense scrutiny on Capitol Hill this year, beginning today when the White House sends lawmakers details of Bush's priorities for the agency next year.
"Inevitably, there will be a discussion out of this about how much NASA should be funded, should there be another orbiter built, and in fact, has it been so poorly funded in recent years that maybe, just maybe it wasn't as safe as it should be?" said Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), a former astronaut who flew aboard Columbia.
The House Science Committee will take the lead in Congress's investigation of the tragedy, focusing on how much money has been devoted to the safety of the shuttle and other space programs and whether the disaster could have been prevented with more resources.
