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CNN Live At Daybreak

Columbia Accident Investigation Board Will Hold Public Hearing

Aired March 06, 2003 - 05:12   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Now to the shuttle tragedy. In just a few hours from now, the Columbia accident investigation board will hold a public hearing on the disaster.
Our space correspondent Miles O'Brien got a preview from the man heading up the investigation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Thirty one days after he first got the call that put him in charge of the Columbia accident investigation, Hal Gehman is growing impatient.

(on camera): Did you really expect to know it by now?

ADM. HAL GEHMAN, COLUMBIA INVESTIGATION CHAIRMAN: We -- I expected to know more after 30 days than we do know. It's...

O'BRIEN: And why don't we know more, do you think?

GEHMAN: Well, because it's a real puzzle. We don't have any good, we don't have that golden nugget.

O'BRIEN (voice-over): The elusive golden nugget, that piece of debris that might unlock the deadly riddle of what happened to the shuttle may lie somewhere in a remote canyon in Nevada or Utah.

(on camera): Do you feel confident they're on the ground?

GEHMAN: Yes, we tracked them all the way to the ground.

The very issue that we try to frame things and they brainstorm...

O'BRIEN (voice-over): But Gehman and his 13 member board are not simply waiting for a lucky break. They're carefully assembling the pieces of the puzzle that they already have, generating a second by second time line of the minutes before Columbia disintegrated, killing her crew of seven. They are certain the left wing failed, probably because more than one heat shielding tile was damaged. They just don't know how.

GEHMAN: All six, all six main, left main landing gear temperature and pressure centers all failed at the same time.

O'BRIEN: In their warren of offices just outside the gates of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, the board and its staff of 50, some of the world's finest crash investigators, are still learning shuttle basics while devising ways to test theories.

GEHMAN: These are the guys that are doing the telemetry, the debris analysis, and these are experts. These are metallurgical experts right now that are -- what we're attempting to do right now is decide what tests we're going to order NASA to do.

O'BRIEN: They will do some testing of their own, as well, hiring a private firm to see what happens when foam from the shuttle's external fuel tank strikes tiles at 500 miles an hour, as it did 82 seconds after the launch of Columbia. Gehman is walking a tightrope between the need to remain independent of NASA while tapping its expertise.

GEHMAN: There is not a strong adversarial relationship either between us and NASA, nor is one brewing. They want to get to the bottom of this just as fast as we do.

O'BRIEN: But he freely admits that could change as the board delves deeper into the way the shuttle program was managed.

GEHMAN: It's possible that it, we could, it could get a little more, a little more less friendly when we get to that point. But I haven't seen it yet.

O'BRIEN (on camera): Admiral Gehman says he hopes to have a report delivered in as little as two months. He's keenly aware NASA is supporting a space station and its crew. It took the space agency 32 months to get back flying after the Challenger disaster.

Miles O'Brien, CNN, at the Johnson Space Center, Houston.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: And, of course, Miles will be following the accident investigation board's public hearing today and he'll be providing shuttle updates throughout the day right here on CNN.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com




Hearing>


Aired March 6, 2003 - 05:12   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Now to the shuttle tragedy. In just a few hours from now, the Columbia accident investigation board will hold a public hearing on the disaster.
Our space correspondent Miles O'Brien got a preview from the man heading up the investigation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Thirty one days after he first got the call that put him in charge of the Columbia accident investigation, Hal Gehman is growing impatient.

(on camera): Did you really expect to know it by now?

ADM. HAL GEHMAN, COLUMBIA INVESTIGATION CHAIRMAN: We -- I expected to know more after 30 days than we do know. It's...

O'BRIEN: And why don't we know more, do you think?

GEHMAN: Well, because it's a real puzzle. We don't have any good, we don't have that golden nugget.

O'BRIEN (voice-over): The elusive golden nugget, that piece of debris that might unlock the deadly riddle of what happened to the shuttle may lie somewhere in a remote canyon in Nevada or Utah.

(on camera): Do you feel confident they're on the ground?

GEHMAN: Yes, we tracked them all the way to the ground.

The very issue that we try to frame things and they brainstorm...

O'BRIEN (voice-over): But Gehman and his 13 member board are not simply waiting for a lucky break. They're carefully assembling the pieces of the puzzle that they already have, generating a second by second time line of the minutes before Columbia disintegrated, killing her crew of seven. They are certain the left wing failed, probably because more than one heat shielding tile was damaged. They just don't know how.

GEHMAN: All six, all six main, left main landing gear temperature and pressure centers all failed at the same time.

O'BRIEN: In their warren of offices just outside the gates of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, the board and its staff of 50, some of the world's finest crash investigators, are still learning shuttle basics while devising ways to test theories.

GEHMAN: These are the guys that are doing the telemetry, the debris analysis, and these are experts. These are metallurgical experts right now that are -- what we're attempting to do right now is decide what tests we're going to order NASA to do.

O'BRIEN: They will do some testing of their own, as well, hiring a private firm to see what happens when foam from the shuttle's external fuel tank strikes tiles at 500 miles an hour, as it did 82 seconds after the launch of Columbia. Gehman is walking a tightrope between the need to remain independent of NASA while tapping its expertise.

GEHMAN: There is not a strong adversarial relationship either between us and NASA, nor is one brewing. They want to get to the bottom of this just as fast as we do.

O'BRIEN: But he freely admits that could change as the board delves deeper into the way the shuttle program was managed.

GEHMAN: It's possible that it, we could, it could get a little more, a little more less friendly when we get to that point. But I haven't seen it yet.

O'BRIEN (on camera): Admiral Gehman says he hopes to have a report delivered in as little as two months. He's keenly aware NASA is supporting a space station and its crew. It took the space agency 32 months to get back flying after the Challenger disaster.

Miles O'Brien, CNN, at the Johnson Space Center, Houston.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: And, of course, Miles will be following the accident investigation board's public hearing today and he'll be providing shuttle updates throughout the day right here on CNN.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com




Hearing>