CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Agreeing with comments made by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) earlier this week, NASA's top official on Thursday indicated that space shuttles could resume flying early next year if all goes well during the next six to nine months.
Much will depend, however, on the scope of the CAIB's report and suggestions for return to flight, as well as what amount of additional work the space agency determines for itself will need to be done before fire fills the flame trench once again at Kennedy Space Center.
"The effort we need to go through, the high bar we need to set for ourselves, ought to be higher than anything else anybody else would levy on us," NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe told reporters at the Florida launch site.
"We've got to not only focus on the findings and recommendations but, beyond that, to correct everything we think may stand in the way of flying as safely as humanly possible, the best we can do," O'Keefe said.
That will require the resources of the entire space agency, not just those NASA centers that are more directly involved with the shuttle program.
"There's no one out there that I can think of, within the agency, who should be thinking anything other than what they can do today to figure out how to return to flight," O'Keefe said.
Two people that includes is outgoing KSC Director Roy Bridges, who is being moved to head up the Langley Research Center in Virginia, and Jim Kennedy, who it was announced Thursday will replace Bridges at the helm of the spaceport.
Part of Bridges job at Langley will be to assist in the return to flight effort by concentrating on new safety initiatives for the shuttle program.
"We're going to try and take what we believe is a very good and robust system and put some more robustness and depth in that as we move forward," Bridges said.
Following up better on problems encountered in flight, examining whether or not engineering models that predict certain events still are correct and determining if enough or the right tests between flights are being done all are ideas up for additional study, Bridges said.
And when it come to safety inspections, both Bridges and O'Keefe agreed that experience has shown them it doesn't necessarily matter whether the work is being done by a NASA or contractor employee if the person has the authority to put a stop to things when a problem is detected.
The CAIB has heard testimony since the Feb. 1 tragedy that details how NASA has cut the number of safety workers and inspections it is responsible during the past few years, but shuttle program officials contend that doesn't necessarily mean safety is being compromised.
"To me it makes little difference whether it's a private or public sector professional," O'Keefe said.
The agency boss noted it was a young United Space Alliance technician who first spotted tiny cracks in some critical hardware that sits within the shuttle's fuel lines, which in turn led NASA to grounding the fleet for several months in 2002 while the problem was resolved.
"There was no question that as a result of that observation everybody said 'How did that happen and how do we go about the process of fixing that,'" O'Keefe said. "When we see things, we're all over it. It's the stuff that we don't see (that's more worrisome)."
Bridges said he hopes to employ more NASA resources in determining the "unknown unknowns" that CAIB chairman Harold Gehman often refers to and describes those things that are wrong with the shuttle now but no one has clearly identified.
In the meantime, relying on the contractor team to help maintain safety as the shuttles are being readied for flight continues to make sense.
"I think our experience is that our contractors here can be trusted to be safe, and does do a large number of things every launch that have proved to be very safe," Bridges said. "We have plenty of examples of them raising their hand and letting us know when there's something that looks wrong."
Bridges will continue at KSC for about another month before officially moving to Langley. A former shuttle astronaut and commander of what the Air Force now calls the 45th Space Wing, Bridges has served as KSC's top manager since 1997.
Kennedy -- who is now KSC's deputy director -- was previously deputy director of NASA's Marshal Space Flight Center in Alabama. He becomes the eighth person to lead KSC since the center was established in 1962.
Kennedy first joined NASA in 1968 in the Aerospace Engineering Cooperative Education program at KSC. He earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Auburn University, Ala., in 1972. After being called to active duty in the U.S. Air Force, he earned his master's degree in business administration from Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, in 1977.
He has served as project manager for programs such as the X-34 and the DC-XA, and for a time was manager of Marshall's shuttle office at KSC. Kennedy has also served as manager of the shuttle's Solid Rocket Booster Project office.
"He's a distinguished engineer and a devoted public servant. I know his colleagues at KSC will give Jim their full support, and I am confident, under his guidance, the center will meet and exceed all the objectives facing us in the coming months," O'Keefe said.
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