NASA prepares for new scrutiny
Michael Tackett
Issue date: 2/3/03 Section: News
Seemingly mindful of such sentiment, NASA immediately announced that the government would appoint an independent board to investigate the accident even as the agency conducts its own inquiry.
While there was no serious call to stop manned space flight, there were those who questioned whether the shuttle was any longer the appropriate means to achieve it. “I don’t believe we should build another shuttle,” Sensenbrenner said. “The shuttle is 1960s technology. If we spend a lot of money to build another orbiter, we will be moving backward.”
Clearly, the aging shuttle fleet — the Columbia was first launched in 1981 — has been a source of great concern for NASA and not just for budget reasons. The agency has been moving toward a new orbital space plane and other ventures, most of them related to the international space station.
However, the cost overruns connected to the space station have been a source of growing tension between the agency and appropriators on Capitol Hill, a conflict that will be more pronounced in an era of tight federal resources as spending shifts to homeland security priorities. Even before the terrorist attacks, NASA had been a frequent target from criticism from the General Accounting Office.
Internally, NASA’s greatest problem has been the control of its unwieldy budget, making it an easy mark for the criticisms of the General Accounting Office and congressional oversight committees. That is in part the reason that Sean O’Keefe, who came to NASA from the Office of Management and Budget, was selected to head the beleaguered agency.
“It’s still a very overblown agency,” Hotz said. “They never cut back.”
In many ways, NASA has thrived not on cutting back but on making ever grander promises about the benefits of space exploration, even if many of those promises remain unfulfilled. In December, for instance, NASA talked about how its research might better help public health officials track and predict the spread of West Nile Virus, and its role in the development of a sensor that would tell a parent when a child seated in a car seat had been left in the vehicle.
While there was no serious call to stop manned space flight, there were those who questioned whether the shuttle was any longer the appropriate means to achieve it. “I don’t believe we should build another shuttle,” Sensenbrenner said. “The shuttle is 1960s technology. If we spend a lot of money to build another orbiter, we will be moving backward.”
Clearly, the aging shuttle fleet — the Columbia was first launched in 1981 — has been a source of great concern for NASA and not just for budget reasons. The agency has been moving toward a new orbital space plane and other ventures, most of them related to the international space station.
However, the cost overruns connected to the space station have been a source of growing tension between the agency and appropriators on Capitol Hill, a conflict that will be more pronounced in an era of tight federal resources as spending shifts to homeland security priorities. Even before the terrorist attacks, NASA had been a frequent target from criticism from the General Accounting Office.
Internally, NASA’s greatest problem has been the control of its unwieldy budget, making it an easy mark for the criticisms of the General Accounting Office and congressional oversight committees. That is in part the reason that Sean O’Keefe, who came to NASA from the Office of Management and Budget, was selected to head the beleaguered agency.
“It’s still a very overblown agency,” Hotz said. “They never cut back.”
In many ways, NASA has thrived not on cutting back but on making ever grander promises about the benefits of space exploration, even if many of those promises remain unfulfilled. In December, for instance, NASA talked about how its research might better help public health officials track and predict the spread of West Nile Virus, and its role in the development of a sensor that would tell a parent when a child seated in a car seat had been left in the vehicle.