NASA's Procedures, Culture Under Fire: Striving for Accountability

Wayne Hale (left) and LeRoy Cain are photographed at their consoles in the shuttle flight control room in Houston’s Mission Control Center in support of the 2002 STS-113 mission, where they served as flight directors. CREDIT: NASA/JSC.

This story is Chapter 5 in an 11-part series by Florida Today.

Wayne Hale was 3 the day Sputnik's beep penetrated Americans' psyche. Forty-seven years later, Hale, deputy manager of the space shuttle program, doesn't remember any of it. But his mother never forgot.

The Hale home buzzed with the same breathless dinner-table chatter heard in hundreds of thousands of homes across the United States that October night in 1957: What might the Soviet Union do with the little metal ball they now had circling the globe? Spy on us? Drop bombs from space on our military bases and our cities? Take over the world?

The little boy, according to his mother's story, listened intently and was never the same. Wayne Hale was a space cadet.

Clovis, N.M., a dust-encrusted town west of the Texas border, might be in the middle of nowhere, but it was close enough to the space craze to turn a boy's curiosity to obsession. Robert Goddard and Wernher von Braun tested early American rockets at an Army range two hours west. The Apollo program later tested the crew escape systems there. Roswell sightings of secret test craft kept tales of spaceships and aliens hot in the news.

By the time Houston became home base for the campaign to land men on the moon, Hale was bent on finishing school, moving to Texas and finding work in the space program.

But Hale was a realist. He knew the thick eyeglasses he'd worn since boyhood would stop him from being an astronaut. Hale studied hard and picked Rice University because it was close by the Manned Spaceflight Center in Houston.

When NASA would not give him a job fresh out of college, he chased a master's degree at Purdue University because of its reputation for churning out astronauts and missile men.

It was the late 1970s. NASA won a hard-fought battle to get money for a reusable space shuttle that could carry people and cargo to orbit and then glide to an airplane-style landing on a runway.

After graduation, Hale landed a dream job in Mission Control, on a team of experts on shuttle thrusters. He spent eight years learning in that group, which included some bright young stars of the new shuttle program.

Together, they made history flying the world's first reusable spaceships, and then went their separate ways to promising careers.

Hale ultimately became "Flight," standing at the helm of the Mission Control Center, orchestrating more shuttle missions than anyone else ever has.

That's why he says he should have done things differently when everything was on the line.

JOHNSON SPACE CENTER: Request for spy photos denied by management

The images zipped from Kennedy Space Center across the country in the days after the Jan. 16, 2003, launch of Columbia.

Hale saw them while tying up loose ends before leaving Houston to take a new job at KSC. Something hit Columbia's wing, disintegrating into white powder, while the ship rocketed up at about twice the speed of sound.

The assumptions: The white stuff was a piece of super-light foam insulation from the external tank; there would be damage to repair, nothing else.

Not everyone agreed.

Some wanted more information than they could get from the fuzzy pictures taken by the ground cameras at the Cape.

No problem, Hale thought. He had top-secret security clearance. He knew the military could aim some of its classified spy satellites at the shuttle and snap some clearer images.

After two requests from colleagues, Hale made a call, and the Air Force sprung into action to get pictures.

Somewhere in NASA, engineers and managers made two similar requests. But the orders were made outside NASA's chain of command and, in a wave of confusion, mission manager Linda Ham nixed the pictures, saying NASA didn't want or need them.

Maybe it didn't matter.

Ham might have been right: Even if the pictures showed dramatic damage, there was nothing anyone could do. But after the accident, stories subtly cast Hale as an antagonist pressing Ham to act.

"Some people think Wayne was a hero in this," Hale said. "That is far from the truth. Please do not portray me as some kind of hero trying to do something extraordinary. I played a role in this. All of us involved in this effort have regrets."

In the end, the frustrated Columbia Accident Investigation Board blamed bureaucratic bungling and poor communication for many "missed opportunities" by managers to get satellite pictures or do anything to try to give the crew a better chance instead of letting Columbia make a doomed attempt to land.

The CAIB report, NASA records and the people involved still don't tell who, if anyone, objected directly to Ham. The reasons remain as foggy as the story of what happened. All Hale says is: "I have regrets."

NEW ORLEANS AIRPORT: A call between flights prompts change of job

Six months after the accident, Hale split time between KSC and his wife and home in Houston while helping with the accident probe.

Belinda hadn't moved to Florida yet. They hadn't put the house in Friendswood, a few miles from Johnson Space Center, on the market.

They were empty-nesters. Son Joshua was in the seminary and about to be married. Daughter Elissa was studying English at a private college out of state. Belinda didn't really want to go to Florida after living so long in suburban Houston.

Scurrying through the New Orleans airport on a flight home to Houston, Hale flipped on his cell phone and checked voice mail. One message. "It's Bill Parsons. Give me a call."

A few minutes to spare before his next flight, Hale dialed the new manager of the shuttle program.

"I need you to be my deputy," Parsons said.

Hale paused a bit, stuttered and accepted the job without portraying his astonishment.

"I was surprised," Hale said. "I didn't even know I was being considered for that kind of job."

HOUSTON: New deputy shakes up system, demands change

Despite being back in Texas, Hale wasn't spending as much time at home as he might like. There was little time for socializing with friends from church, or doing much of anything outside his small office at Johnson Space Center. Still, he was home.

"Our kids think we don't have a social life," Hale said.

Hale set out quickly on the work of being deputy manager of the shuttle program, a job with little definition when dreamed up but one that ended up entailing some of the most challenging reforms needed to safely return the shuttles to space.

Among his orders: Change NASA's culture; revitalize a safety system so gutted during the 1990s that investigators said "there was no 'there' there"; encourage people to overcome fears and speak up to top managers; wipe away years of ingrained apathy when requirements loosened and managers often let cost and schedule pressure guide decisions.

Rules for mission managers changed. Never again would top managers be out of town during a flight. Nor would the Mission Management Team take a weekend off, with a crew in harm's way, instead of meeting every day as required by the flight rules.

Hale set up practice sessions where engineers and managers alike were tossed fake problems in an environment where he demanded they raise concerns rather than keep quiet.

"I wake up every morning with a shiver, saying we've got to do this right and what can I do personally to make sure we do the very best job," Hale said.

PASADENA, CALIF.: E-mail from KSC sets agenda, accountability

Being portrayed as a hero stuck in Hale's craw. Then came the e-mail that pushed his buttons.

Hale was in California, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, watching flight controllers hoot, holler and high-five as the second of two robot rovers successfully bounced onto Mars.

The scene was inspiring. Hale was there to see how these people managed to pull off not one, but two landings on Mars on a short schedule packed with risk.

He drove back to his hotel the morning of the Mars landings, thinking about all that had happened during the past 12 months. It was almost one year since the accident.

A few weeks before, President Bush had made the speech the space community dreamed of: a clear, direct mandate to send humans deeper into space. They were going to the moon, then Mars.

Hale started typing a message to the troops, discussing the stakes ahead.

The president had entrusted them with a vision to spend billions of dollars to finish the space station, build new spaceships, and send humans to the moon and Mars.

Keeping that fragile dream alive meant perfection. They would bet the space program every time they lit the shuttle's solid rocket boosters.

It took Hale days to get the memo just right. Before he sent it, he recalled that nagging e-mail from some guy at KSC. He added a P.S.

"A final, personal note," Hale typed. "A worker at KSC told me that they haven't heard any NASA managers admit to being at fault for the loss of Columbia. I cannot speak for others, but let me set my record straight: I am at fault.

"If you need a scapegoat, start with me. I had the opportunity and the information and I failed to make use of it. I don't know what an inquest or a court of law would say, but I stand condemned in the court of my own conscience to be guilty of not preventing the Columbia disaster.

"We could discuss the particulars: inattention, incompetence, distraction, lack of conviction, lack of understanding, a lack of backbone, laziness.

"The bottom line is that I failed to understand what I was being told; I failed to stand up and be counted. Therefore look no further; I am guilty of allowing Columbia to crash.

"As you consider continuing in this program, or any other high-risk program, weigh the cost. You, too, could be convicted in the court of your conscience if you are ever party to cutting corners, believing something life and death is not your responsibility, or simply not paying attention. The penalty is heavy; you can never completely repay it."

Published under license from FLORIDA TODAY. Copyright ? 2005 FLORIDA TODAY. No portion of this material may be reproduced in any way without the written consent of FLORIDA TODAY.

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