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Interview With Hal Gehman

Aired August 26, 2003 - 13:11   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.


MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: It was only, really, hours after the space shuttle Columbia had disintegrated over Texas that the person we're about to talk to got the call from NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe. He is retired Admiral Hall Gehman, and he has led the investigative report into the loss of the space shuttle Columbia, independent report. A very hard-hitting one at that.
Admiral Gehman, thanks for being with us. We appreciate it.

GEN. HAL GEHMAN (RET.), CAIB CHAIRMAN: My pleasure, Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right, when you set out to do this initially, did you know you'd come up with a document 250 pages thick with such a broad scope?

GEHMAN: Well, of course, we didn't. We started off this investigation without any preconceived ideas or any deadlines. We worked very hard. As you know we worked seven days a week. We started off in Houston, then moved up here to D.C. But, no, we didn't -- we didn't envision what the end product was going to look like.

O'BRIEN: Now you said very early at the briefing that the space shuttle, you believe, and the board believes is not inherently unsafe. Was there much consideration of that possibility, the idea of just grounding the fleet entirely?

GEHMAN: Yes. We were under no pressure whatsoever to make any kind of adjustment as to whether or not the shuttle should be continued in operation or just shut down. We reached that conclusion by ourselves after weeks and weeks of very intensive technical examination of the risks and an the management of the shuttle.

So we are quite strong in our opinion that there is nothing inherently unsafe about the shuttle, as we know it today.

O'BRIEN: And yet it has been described, I believe it was Neil Armstrong who once called it a very tender system, and requires a lot of diligence to things that might be going wrong. As one of your board members put it today, the machine was talking. How come it was missed? And when he says the machine was talking, all that foam falling off was saying something and yet NASA didn't hear it, did it?

GEHMAN: That's correct. And that brings us to the second part of our recommendations and that an is that the organization that we have in place right now to run this very complex program has morphed over the years due to pressures both internal and external to NASA.

But nevertheless, it has morphed into an organization which we feel is not up to managing this risky technology.

O'BRIEN: And so by having an independent safety organization, as you suggest, which reports to Congress and the White House, as opposed to NASA, do you think that will -- is that a silver bullet solution do you think?

GEHMAN: Well, Miles, that's not what our recommendation is. We have two recommendations having to do with engineering practices and safety.

The first one is that NASA needs to return to the way they used to do it in which a very robust engineering department owns the technical specifications and requirements and all waivers to those technical specifications and requirements.

The way it is organized right now is that the program manager, the shuttle program manager, he owns the manifest, the schedule, the costs, the personnel assignments, safety and technical requirements. And he can trade one of those factors against another. In other words, he could trade investments in shuttle upgrades against meeting the schedule.

We think that's a mistake. We think that the technical requirements and specifications and all waivers to those technical requirements and specifications ought to be owned by an independent set of engineers whose job it is to protect those specifications.

O'BRIEN: All right...

(CROSSTALK)

GEHMAN: His organization can be within NASA. This is not an independent organization we're talking about.

O'BRIEN: OK, thank you for clarifying that.

One final point here before we go. This point that there are echoes of Challenger here. That is such a haunting thing to say. And quite frankly, a sad thing to hear, 17 years after the loss of the space shuttle Challenger. What are your thoughts on that?

GEHMAN: My thoughts are that that's an apt description of what happened. The technical and engineering indications that something was going wrong with the Challenger system are very similar to the technical indications that something was going wrong with the Columbia.

O'BRIEN: All right, Admiral Hal Gehman, the head of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, talking to us just after the briefing today. Thanks very much for your time, we appreciate it.

GEHMAN: My pleasure.

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







Aired August 26, 2003 - 13:11   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: It was only, really, hours after the space shuttle Columbia had disintegrated over Texas that the person we're about to talk to got the call from NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe. He is retired Admiral Hall Gehman, and he has led the investigative report into the loss of the space shuttle Columbia, independent report. A very hard-hitting one at that.
Admiral Gehman, thanks for being with us. We appreciate it.

GEN. HAL GEHMAN (RET.), CAIB CHAIRMAN: My pleasure, Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right, when you set out to do this initially, did you know you'd come up with a document 250 pages thick with such a broad scope?

GEHMAN: Well, of course, we didn't. We started off this investigation without any preconceived ideas or any deadlines. We worked very hard. As you know we worked seven days a week. We started off in Houston, then moved up here to D.C. But, no, we didn't -- we didn't envision what the end product was going to look like.

O'BRIEN: Now you said very early at the briefing that the space shuttle, you believe, and the board believes is not inherently unsafe. Was there much consideration of that possibility, the idea of just grounding the fleet entirely?

GEHMAN: Yes. We were under no pressure whatsoever to make any kind of adjustment as to whether or not the shuttle should be continued in operation or just shut down. We reached that conclusion by ourselves after weeks and weeks of very intensive technical examination of the risks and an the management of the shuttle.

So we are quite strong in our opinion that there is nothing inherently unsafe about the shuttle, as we know it today.

O'BRIEN: And yet it has been described, I believe it was Neil Armstrong who once called it a very tender system, and requires a lot of diligence to things that might be going wrong. As one of your board members put it today, the machine was talking. How come it was missed? And when he says the machine was talking, all that foam falling off was saying something and yet NASA didn't hear it, did it?

GEHMAN: That's correct. And that brings us to the second part of our recommendations and that an is that the organization that we have in place right now to run this very complex program has morphed over the years due to pressures both internal and external to NASA.

But nevertheless, it has morphed into an organization which we feel is not up to managing this risky technology.

O'BRIEN: And so by having an independent safety organization, as you suggest, which reports to Congress and the White House, as opposed to NASA, do you think that will -- is that a silver bullet solution do you think?

GEHMAN: Well, Miles, that's not what our recommendation is. We have two recommendations having to do with engineering practices and safety.

The first one is that NASA needs to return to the way they used to do it in which a very robust engineering department owns the technical specifications and requirements and all waivers to those technical specifications and requirements.

The way it is organized right now is that the program manager, the shuttle program manager, he owns the manifest, the schedule, the costs, the personnel assignments, safety and technical requirements. And he can trade one of those factors against another. In other words, he could trade investments in shuttle upgrades against meeting the schedule.

We think that's a mistake. We think that the technical requirements and specifications and all waivers to those technical requirements and specifications ought to be owned by an independent set of engineers whose job it is to protect those specifications.

O'BRIEN: All right...

(CROSSTALK)

GEHMAN: His organization can be within NASA. This is not an independent organization we're talking about.

O'BRIEN: OK, thank you for clarifying that.

One final point here before we go. This point that there are echoes of Challenger here. That is such a haunting thing to say. And quite frankly, a sad thing to hear, 17 years after the loss of the space shuttle Challenger. What are your thoughts on that?

GEHMAN: My thoughts are that that's an apt description of what happened. The technical and engineering indications that something was going wrong with the Challenger system are very similar to the technical indications that something was going wrong with the Columbia.

O'BRIEN: All right, Admiral Hal Gehman, the head of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, talking to us just after the briefing today. Thanks very much for your time, we appreciate it.

GEHMAN: My pleasure.

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