CAPE CANAVERAL - NASA
Administrator Mike Griffin responded at length this weekend to questions about
his decision to go ahead with a July 1 shuttle launch despite the objections of
his chiefs of safety and engineering.
This is a sampling of his
explanation of the decision in his own words:
On foam debris risk: "I do not see this as being a crew loss situation. If
we are unlucky and we have a debris event on ascent, it will not impede the
ascent. The crew will arrive safely on orbit and then we will begin to look at
our options, whether those include repair, launch on need, extended safe haven
on the station, asking our Russian partners for help, or maybe some or all of
the above.
"We would have
decisions to make, but we would have time to make those decisions. We are not
in the situation that we were in with Columbia, where we did not know we had a
problem. We know we have a problem. We are electing to take the risk. We do not
believe we are risking crew. There is a programmatic risk without doubt.
"If we have another
major incident launching a space shuttle, I would not wish to continue with the
program. We are going to use this flight and the subsequent flights to complete
the space station . . . We believe it is possible to do so. But if it is going
to be possible to do so, we are going to have to take some programmatic risks
because the shuttle will be retired in 2010."
On his role in the
decision: "Advisers
advise. The administrator, whoever he is in whatever era, has the obligation to
decide. That's what I do. We get a lot of advice internally from NASA to the program.
The program and the mission director . . . have to at some level decide and . .
. if the issue gets big enough, it comes up to me. (Other NASA officials) have
the right, have the obligation and have the utter necessity to tell us exactly
what they think. But all of that is advice.
"No one else except
for the administrator is the administrator. And, fortunately or unfortunately,
in this particular time, that is me. I am not trying to persuade people. I am
trying to listen as carefully as I can to everything that is being said to me.
I try to integrate it all as best I can. I make a decision and then I explain
to people what the rationale for that decision was because if I have any holes
or flaws in my logic, I want to hear about them."
On dissent: "Some of the senior NASA
individuals responsible for particular technical areas, particular disciplines,
expressed that they would rather stand down until we had fixed the ice-frost
ramps with something better, whereas many others said, 'No, we should go ahead.'
"So we did not have
unanimity. Therefore, a decision had to be made. Now, one possible way of
making decisions is that unless everybody feels that we should go, then we will
stand down. In which case, I don't think for shuttle flights or any other flights,
we don't need an administrator. We don't actually make decisions. We just make
sure that no one is unhappy. That's not the method that were using."
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