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Columbia Accident Investigation

Aired August 26, 2003 - 13:44   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: In the 250-page report on the Columbia accident investigation, now seven months old, this report goes into deep, root causes, including some of the history of NASA, which dates back all the way to the Challenger. There is an entire chapter here which draws some parallels between the challenger accident in 1986 and the Columbia accident at the first part of this year.
Joining us now to talk a little bit more about this is sociologist Diane Vaughan, who wrote extensively about the Challenger accident. "The Challenger Launch Decision" is her books, where she looked at how organizations worked, or, in some cases, don't work so well, to assure a certain degree of safety.

Professor, good to have you with us. You had a chance to see the briefing. Was it an echo to Challenger in some respects?

PROF. DIANE VAUGHAN, SOCIOLOGIST, BOSTON COLLEGE: Very much. I think one of the biggest surprises out of this morning's briefing was the regulation of schedule pressures. This has not been discussed any place by the board before in pre-report release statements, and that was definitely an operation during Challenger.

O'BRIEN: And of course, during Challenger, it was a different era. At that time, NASA was trying to prove to the world the space shuttle could be a commercially viable space truck, if you will. There was no such notion that existed in the case of Columbia, and yet this whole idea of meeting a manifest, meeting a schedule, is there. Do you think it's as much pressure as there was?

VAUGHAN: I think that schedule pressures built into the system now, because of the International Space Station. As you know, there are two astronauts located in the space station right now. And NASA is eager to get back in to launching missions again in order to take care of the needs of the space station.

So whether it's greater pressure now or less, I don't know. But one part of that is the fact that NASA has continued to operate under declining budgets, which was the situation at the time of Challenger as well. So that's another parallel. And what that means is their performance is based on meeting these deadlines. And, therefore, their rewards as well, from Congress.

O'BRIEN: Now, of course, as you well know in the case of Challenger, there was a lot of high-level concern about those O-rings, which ultimately were the cause of the problem in space shuttle Challenger. Memos circulated on higher levels indicating that they had a real concern. In the case of the foam falling off and striking the leading edge of the wing, we've seen no such evidence of memos like that. Does that separate these two incidents in your mind, in any way?

VAUGHAN: It does. In -- what is in common about the two of them is that, in fact, both of them were anomalies that were not expected and then came to be routine and accepted. What it indicates to me is that the foam debris problem was even a lower level problem then the O-ring erosion problem. Foam ring debris was defined as a maintenance problem from the beginning, and, clearly, no one was concerned about it. Otherwise, there would have been some sort of a paper trail.

O'BRIEN: What is your thought there when Admiral Gehman talked about this whole issue of backsliding and atrophy? In other words, the next shuttle mission, whenever it gets to be there, he feels very confident that every bit of diligence will be taken. His point was, the shuttle mission a year later, even a year beyond, will be the time concern sets in. Is that an inevitable concern, do you think?

VAUGHAN: I think it's a systematic problem with NASA that they've evidenced in the past, and that's the reason the admiral expressed that concern about the future, because the lessons from Challenger certainly weren't learned, because you have repeated problems. You have management not listening to engineers, as is told in the history of the imagery request. You have highly bureaucratized organization, where it's really hard for information to get transferred, and then you have the recurrence of budgeting and scheduling problem, along with the weakened safety system. And those were the exact conditions that existed at the time of Challenger. If they made changes, and I know they made many changes, those changes didn't fix the original problem, and that is a worry.

O'BRIEN: Now you were an adviser to the board, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, but you haven't had any formal advisory role to NASA. Have you been asked to help NASA make its organization work better?

VAUGHAN: When my book was first published, which was 1996, I didn't hear anything from them, but I did recently hear something from Johnson Spaceflight Center.

O'BRIEN: And?

VAUGHAN: This just happened this week. So nothing has been resolved yet.

O'BRIEN: All right, perhaps...

VAUGHAN: But clearly -- one of the things that's significant is that NASA in the past has never reached out to outsiders for insights into their organization. When they have, they haven't listened. So what needs to happen here is that they need to pay attention to outsiders, and I don't mean myself, but the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, Congress, the board's recommendations in particular.

O'BRIEN: All right, Diane Vaughan, professor of sociology at Boston College, author of the book "The Challenger Launch Decision." Thanks very much for being with us. We appreciate your insights on all of this.

VAUGHAN: 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 - 13:44   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: In the 250-page report on the Columbia accident investigation, now seven months old, this report goes into deep, root causes, including some of the history of NASA, which dates back all the way to the Challenger. There is an entire chapter here which draws some parallels between the challenger accident in 1986 and the Columbia accident at the first part of this year.
Joining us now to talk a little bit more about this is sociologist Diane Vaughan, who wrote extensively about the Challenger accident. "The Challenger Launch Decision" is her books, where she looked at how organizations worked, or, in some cases, don't work so well, to assure a certain degree of safety.

Professor, good to have you with us. You had a chance to see the briefing. Was it an echo to Challenger in some respects?

PROF. DIANE VAUGHAN, SOCIOLOGIST, BOSTON COLLEGE: Very much. I think one of the biggest surprises out of this morning's briefing was the regulation of schedule pressures. This has not been discussed any place by the board before in pre-report release statements, and that was definitely an operation during Challenger.

O'BRIEN: And of course, during Challenger, it was a different era. At that time, NASA was trying to prove to the world the space shuttle could be a commercially viable space truck, if you will. There was no such notion that existed in the case of Columbia, and yet this whole idea of meeting a manifest, meeting a schedule, is there. Do you think it's as much pressure as there was?

VAUGHAN: I think that schedule pressures built into the system now, because of the International Space Station. As you know, there are two astronauts located in the space station right now. And NASA is eager to get back in to launching missions again in order to take care of the needs of the space station.

So whether it's greater pressure now or less, I don't know. But one part of that is the fact that NASA has continued to operate under declining budgets, which was the situation at the time of Challenger as well. So that's another parallel. And what that means is their performance is based on meeting these deadlines. And, therefore, their rewards as well, from Congress.

O'BRIEN: Now, of course, as you well know in the case of Challenger, there was a lot of high-level concern about those O-rings, which ultimately were the cause of the problem in space shuttle Challenger. Memos circulated on higher levels indicating that they had a real concern. In the case of the foam falling off and striking the leading edge of the wing, we've seen no such evidence of memos like that. Does that separate these two incidents in your mind, in any way?

VAUGHAN: It does. In -- what is in common about the two of them is that, in fact, both of them were anomalies that were not expected and then came to be routine and accepted. What it indicates to me is that the foam debris problem was even a lower level problem then the O-ring erosion problem. Foam ring debris was defined as a maintenance problem from the beginning, and, clearly, no one was concerned about it. Otherwise, there would have been some sort of a paper trail.

O'BRIEN: What is your thought there when Admiral Gehman talked about this whole issue of backsliding and atrophy? In other words, the next shuttle mission, whenever it gets to be there, he feels very confident that every bit of diligence will be taken. His point was, the shuttle mission a year later, even a year beyond, will be the time concern sets in. Is that an inevitable concern, do you think?

VAUGHAN: I think it's a systematic problem with NASA that they've evidenced in the past, and that's the reason the admiral expressed that concern about the future, because the lessons from Challenger certainly weren't learned, because you have repeated problems. You have management not listening to engineers, as is told in the history of the imagery request. You have highly bureaucratized organization, where it's really hard for information to get transferred, and then you have the recurrence of budgeting and scheduling problem, along with the weakened safety system. And those were the exact conditions that existed at the time of Challenger. If they made changes, and I know they made many changes, those changes didn't fix the original problem, and that is a worry.

O'BRIEN: Now you were an adviser to the board, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, but you haven't had any formal advisory role to NASA. Have you been asked to help NASA make its organization work better?

VAUGHAN: When my book was first published, which was 1996, I didn't hear anything from them, but I did recently hear something from Johnson Spaceflight Center.

O'BRIEN: And?

VAUGHAN: This just happened this week. So nothing has been resolved yet.

O'BRIEN: All right, perhaps...

VAUGHAN: But clearly -- one of the things that's significant is that NASA in the past has never reached out to outsiders for insights into their organization. When they have, they haven't listened. So what needs to happen here is that they need to pay attention to outsiders, and I don't mean myself, but the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, Congress, the board's recommendations in particular.

O'BRIEN: All right, Diane Vaughan, professor of sociology at Boston College, author of the book "The Challenger Launch Decision." Thanks very much for being with us. We appreciate your insights on all of this.

VAUGHAN: 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