OUT IN SPACE

NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe used a lot of adjectives in media interviews last week to describe the future of American space flight. Pragmatic and realistic were among his favorites. One important adjective, however, has been missing from these discussions – safe.

Less than a year after the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated while re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere, killing the seven astronauts, and just months after a scathing report about NASA’s lack of commitment to safety, the fact that this word wasn’t emphasized more is troubling. When the board investigating the Columbia accident released its report in August, some members worried that their report would be filed away. It is too early to tell if this has happened, but it appears that the report is no longer at the top of the pile of documents for NASA.

While Mr. Keefe’s points about cost, feasibility and practicality are well stated, the agency must still prove its ability to learn from past mistakes. This is all the more important as NASA fights to prove to lawmakers and the American public that space flight has a place in America’s future. In recent weeks, there has been talk of renewed flights to the moon and a manned mission to Mars. Neither of these will happen if NASA does not show it has changed the culture of denial and downplaying of adverse events that led to the Columbia disaster.

The agency’s reputation was further tarnished last week with the publication of the results of an internal survey of NASA employees. “The focus is still schedule and budget over people, lives, doing the right thing, safety, quality and sound engineering judgment,” one employee wrote. “NASA does not hold its leadership accountable for failure. … The more spectacularly they screw up, the higher up the food chain they go,” said another.

The survey was done before the Feb. 1 Columbia disaster, but from the way NASA officials are now talking, it seems that not much has changed.

Mr. O’Keefe is right that his agency needs more “clarity.” While NASA blames budget cuts for many of its woes, the space agency’s mission needs to be reviewed, and perhaps revised, before lawmakers can consider beefing up its funding. As Mr. O’Keefe notes this era is much different from the space race during the Kennedy administration that led to the United States putting the first man on the moon. Now there is no one to race against and there is no articulated national commitment to space exploration.

That’s why this is the proper time to reexamine the place of space travel among our national priorities. Is space exploration important for military, business or purely scientific reasons? How does the desire to know more about the universe stack up against other government missions, such as providing health care and education to citizens in a time of growing budget deficits?

If space missions remain important then members of the Senate Commerce Committee members, including Sen. Olympia Snowe, must maintain close oversight to make sure that NASA takes the safety message to heart while focusing on missions that are, as Mr. O’Keefe put it, responsible, achievable and plausible.