NYT: Shuttle Crew Seeks Assurance Before Flight

Shuttle Crew Seeks Assurance Before Flight
By WARREN E. LEARY and JOHN SCHWARTZ

Published: April 8, 2005


HOUSTON, April 7 - The seven astronauts of the Discovery, which is to lift off next month on the first space shuttle mission since the loss of the Columbia two years ago, said Thursday that they were ready to fly. But they said they wanted assurance that all recommendations of the Columbia investigators had been satisfied.

"If we ever get to the point where a recommendation is not fulfilled in anyone's mind, we are not going to fly until we are ready to fly," the mission commander, Eileen M. Collins, said at a news conference at the Johnson Space Center here.

Colonel Collins, who recently retired from the Air Force, said she was confident that the shuttle had been upgraded since the Columbia disaster and that NASA was committed to a renewed emphasis on safety. "I think that we are O.K.," she said.

But she added that the crew was counting on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to comply with all 15 of the changes that the Columbia Accident Investigation Board said must be carried out before the Discovery mission.

A task force appointed by the space agency, and led by the former astronauts Thomas Stafford and Richard Covey, has fully approved NASA's compliance with about half of the recommendations. On Thursday, in their final news conference before the mission, Colonel Collins and other crew members said they would fly only if the Stafford-Covey group and the agency's leadership agreed that the conditions had been met....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/08/national/08shuttle.html

No freezing temperatures in or around Cocoa Beach, check. It's not like it's rocket science or anything.

Er, ah, yeah, I guess it is rocket science.

Getting up into space always seemed like the most dangerous part, as we tragically witnessed with Challenger. I'm sure the crew of Columbia thought they were pretty much safe once they started their journey home.

I worry about this flight...that is all I can say.

detected. The shuttles are old aircraft. I'm concerned about as yet undiscovered hazards relating to material age. Further, it's been so long since the previous flight, NASA must be running short of flight engineer veterans.

This NASA isn't the NASA of the 1960's. They could be but it now has too many conflicts of interest. Not much different then the FAA right now. NASA should be autonomous.

we could have done with the money spent killing innocent Iraqis.