Columbia investigators focus on NASA contracting
NASA accomplishes more work through contractors than almost any other federal agency. The disintegration of the space shuttle Columbia earlier this year has brought new scrutiny of the deal under which United Space Alliance, a company owned by Lockheed and the Boeing Company, operates the shuttle.
Since 1997, Government Executive has closely monitored NASA's operations, especially its efforts to increase privatization and its struggles to effectively oversee contractors. As the Columbia investigation continues, and as the Bush administration redoubles its efforts to encourage contracting through its competitive sourcing initiative, we offer this compendium of coverage of NASA contracting.
Out of Orbit
March 1997
On Sept. 30, 1996, United Space Alliance, a private company, inked an unprecedented $6.9 billion deal with the government to gradually take over the day-to-day operations of America's space shuttle fleet. Three days later, on Oct. 3, a Kennedy Space Center technician flipped the wrong switch during a fire extinguisher system test, touching off a water deluge that drenched an irreplaceable shuttle component. The orbital maneuvering engine wasn't damaged, but 14 pieces of costly protective thermal covering were ruined.
Mere coincidence? Hardly, say NASA officials, a safety advisory panel and an outside consulting firm. Nearly all observers now agree worker anxiety over sweeping changes within the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is at least partly to blame for a rising rate of similar close calls.
Full article: http://www.govexec.com/features/0397s1.htm
Everything Must Go!
August 1999
Historically on the leading edge of technology, NASA now is on the leading edge of government privatization. The nation's premier research-and-development agency is rapidly selling itself off to the private sector, outsourcing everything from desktop computers to rocket science in its efforts to control or cut costs. Although the 40-year-old space agency has often been criticized for standing in the way of free enterprise, the pace, depth and theory of NASA's commercialization go far beyond what would be considered aggressive in other government agencies. This is a new frontier in privatized federal government, where almost anything is up for sale and little is considered sacrosanct-inherently governmental, that is.
Full article: http://www.govexec.com/features/0899s1.htm Mid-Course Correction
September 2000
Air Force Col. Eileen Collins and her crew successfully delivered to orbit a $1.5 billion X-ray telescope in July 1999, despite a short circuit that shut down backup computers on two of shuttle Columbia's three main engines during launch. If redundant computers had been needed but failed on just one engine, Collins would have been forced to attempt an unprecedented and questionably survivable emergency maneuver-turning the $2 billion shuttle around in midair and flying it back to Florida's Kennedy Space Center.
Only after Collins landed Columbia safely at the end of the five-day mission did inspectors discover the source of an unrelated low-fuel reading seen during liftoff: three dime-size holes in an engine nozzle. The punctures were made by a metal pin, not properly tested after it was used to fix a fuel injector plate, that jarred loose when the engine ignited. With Columbia back in its hangar, electricians hunting for the cause of the short circuit found a more serious problem. On all four shuttles, miles of wiring had been nicked and exposed for years by technicians careless about where they stepped or set up scaffolding during maintenance.
Two months later, a mix-up of English and metric navigation units by Lockheed Martin engineers sent the first Martian weather satellite, the Mars Climate Orbiter, on a suicide dive into the red planet's atmosphere. In December 1999, a machine was supposed to land on Mars, dig up soil, bake out any water that might be trapped in the dirt, and record natural sounds with a tiny microphone. Instead, the Mars Polar Lander crashed because a sensor not tested properly before launch signaled an early touchdown, causing the descent engines to stop prematurely. The combined price tag for the two failed Mars missions: $365 million.
The close calls with the shuttle and the back-to-back losses of the Mars probes weren't the only setbacks in a run of hard luck besetting the U.S. space industry in recent years. Suddenly, NASA seems to have lost its road map. Today, less than 36 months before the launch window for a new Mars mission, and in the midst of the most ambitious human mission ever attempted-building an international space station-the space agency is at a crossroads, wondering which way to go.
Full article: http://www.govexec.com/features/0900/0900s2.htm
The Few, The Tired
April 2001
Twice last October, Jorge Rivera's work delayed the launch of the space shuttle's 100th mission. But the NASA civil servant didn't get a reprimand. Instead, he got a medal.
Rivera works on the shuttle's fuel tanks at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. The 43-year-old mechanical engineer also happily volunteers for hazardous duty inspecting the rocket ships on launch day-after their bullet-shaped external tanks have been loaded full with a half-million gallons of liquid oxygen and hydrogen fuel. Inspecting is precisely what he was doing Oct. 10, when, looking through military field glasses, he spied a four inch, eight ounce pip pin lodged between the 4.5-million pound orbiter and its external fuel tank. With seven astronauts already aboard Discovery, Kennedy's controllers delayed liftoff 24 hours so workers could retrieve the pin.
"God only knows what could have happened" if he hadn't seen the pin, Rivera told reporters. It could have gotten loose and been sucked into an engine with catastrophic results. Only a week earlier, Discovery had been grounded for a day because the eagle-eyed Rivera spotted a spring-loaded bolt that might not retract as designed, to separate the shuttle from its tank once the fuel was gone.
If science could clone Rivera, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration could have the answer to its greatest dilemma: How to emphasize research and development, as intended in the act of Congress that gave birth to NASA in 1958, while continuing to operate its maturing technologies responsibly.
Full article: http://www.govexec.com/fpp/fpp01/nasa.htm