Aug 17 2005
From The Space Library
The Stafford-Covey Return to Flight Task Group (SCTG) released its final report on NASA's efforts to meet the CAIB's recommendations for resuming piloted Shuttle flights. Former NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe had established the task group to provide an independent assessment of NASA's implementation of the CAIB's 15 critical recommendations. In the final report, the CAIB concluded that NASA had met or exceeded 12 of the 15 recommendations and had made substantive progress on the remaining three. The task group explained that the final three recommendations were of a type that would be nearly impossible to complete. However, major media highlighted an appendix of the document in which seven of the 28-member task group provided a highly critical assessment of NASA's management. These seven task force members claimed that some of the same organizational behaviors of NASA managers that had contributed to the destruction of Space Shuttle Columbia had also jeopardized the July 2005 Space Shuttle Discovery mission. They stated further that NASA had failed to address the problem of Discovery's loss of foam insulation from its fuel tank and had failed to take steps to protect the Space Shuttles from the damage caused by such debris. (Return to Flight Task Group, Final Report of the Return to Flight Task Group (Washington, DC, July 2005); John Schwartz, “Minority Report Faults NASA as Compromising Safety,” New York Times, 18 August 2005. 831D. N. Burrows et al., “Bright X-ray Flares in Gamma-Ray Burst Afterglows,” Science 309, no. 5742 (16 September 2005): 1833-1835; NASA, “NASA's Swift Satellite Finds Newborn Black Holes,” news release 05-229, 18 August 2005.)
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