"You've got to get the people on board, trained and qualified to do the work," said Bob Sieck, retired chief of shuttle processing at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida and a consultant to the safety panel.
"The station is as complex a project as NASA has ever tried to pull off short of going to the moon," Sieck told SPACE.com. "The assembly flights are not all going to go as well as these first few missions went. The complexity's going to increaseand you can't do the job without adequate people."
Atlantis' astronauts who are flying to the station are confident in the abilities of the pared-back workforce.
"We're not really concerned at all," said mission commander Jim Halsell. "This is something that we've had some discussions about on the crew informallyand the answer is, yes, we feel absolutely and completely comfortable. There is no hesitation on our part."
Mission specialist Mary Ellen Weber also accepts the risks.
"It's an unbelievably challenging thing that our whole society is trying to do, and that's put human beings into space and there's a lot of challenges. You know, we're sitting on a rocket ship. We generate 7 million pounds of thrust as we lift off into space and there's always going to be a risk."
Personnel cuts at key spaceflight centers -- KSC, Johnson Space Center in Texas, Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama and Stennis Space Center in Mississippi -- have "produced critical skills deficits in some areas, growing work-load pressure and stress levels and a serious shortfall of younger scientists and engineers," the ASAP report said.
"Work-force issues remain among the most serious safety concerns of the panel," it said.
NASA is heeding the warning.
The agency this year plans to hire 751 engineers and quality control inspectors at the four centers to fill the gaps in what it calls "critical-skill" areas. Those include jobs that could mean life or death for station-bound astronauts.
This year's NASA budget request asks for $600 million to hire about 1,500 engineers and scientists over the next five years. The agency hopes to have a net gain of about 750 to 800 people by 2005 after normal attrition due to death or retirement.
NASA's work force now numbers about 17,700, down from 25,000 in 1993 when the hiring freeze began.
"We cut too far," said NASA Administrator Dan Goldin. "It is clear that we have overshot in (work-force) reductions."
The ASAP is not the only group waving a red flag about worker shortages. Six reports this year from special review boards that looked into everything from space shuttle maintenance to failed Mars missions also cited a critical lack of experienced workers.
It's more circumstance than anything (else) that all the reports should mention that, NASA says.
"We had been looking at this situation before then but certainly all the reports put even more emphasis on it, so we're all focusing in the same direction," said Dwayne Brown, a NASA spokesman.
For the station, the safety board is concerned with looming problems in several areas -- from labor-intensive assembly spacewalks to delays in developing the seven-member Crew Return Vehicle that would be used for an emergency escape.
NASA says it will pay attention to those and other recommendations, many of which can be fulfilled with a larger work force.
"Human resources are critical for us. It's crucial to maintaining the operation and safety aspect of the space station and the work associated with it," Brown said.
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