Space Forum / Shuttle / January 2004

msnbc.com (Oberg): "Shuttle manager reflects on mistakes"
In letter to employees, Hale reviews shortcomings and vision
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4086918
By James Oberg, NBC News space analyst
Special to MSNBC // Updated: 12:45 p.m. ET Jan. 28, 2004
[Spaceref has the text of the letter at
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=11675]

HOUSTON - Marking the first anniversary of the loss of the shuttle Columbia
shuttle and its seven astronauts, a newly promoted NASA shuttle official has
called on all space workers to adjust their thinking in preparation for
resuming shuttle missions and going beyond them to meet the new goals
recently set by the White House. And in a break with past NASA practices, he
explicitly listed the mistakes he personally made that contributed to last
year's disaster.

Wayne Hale, now the deputy space shuttle program manager at NASA's Johnson
Space Center in Houston, previously served for more than two decades in
Mission Control. He rose to the post of flight director, specializing in the
hazardous launch and landing operations.

On Tuesday, the 37th anniversary of the 1967 fire that killed three Apollo
astronauts, he issued a three-page letter for NASA employees. Titled
"Adjusting Our Thinking," the letter placed the disaster in a historical and
philosophical context and addressed the question of leadership failure
head-on.

"I don't know what an inquest or a court of law would say," his letter
stated starkly, "but I stand condemned in the court of my own conscience to
be guilty of not preventing the Columbia disaster."

etc