Putting Schedule over Safety

By Ed Magnuson

The hellish orange-and-white fireball that destroyed the space shuttle Challenger exploded over the Atlantic Ocean two years ago this week, killing seven crew members and shutting down the U.S. manned space program. Pressures to launch had led to what the Rogers commission later called NASA's "silent safety program," in which defects were overlooked and engineering cautions brushed aside. Yet as NASA and its many contractors now rush to correct the ! shuttle's potentially fatal weaknesses and resume launches by July, there are signs that the lesson of the Challenger tragedy has not been wholly heeded.

A blue-ribbon committee of eight experts commissioned by NASA to review the agency's safety procedures has warned that the "concern for safety that peaked after the Challenger accident appears to be waning." The investigators stated that when NASA rated its program managers, safety was "conspicuous by its absence" in the evaluation. There was also "disturbing" evidence that schedules were given priority over safety. The highly critical report was submitted to NASA, its contractors and key members of Congress last August, but was kept under wraps until this month.

The report also charges that those in NASA's contractor network who spoke up about lax safety practices sometimes ran into a "shoot-the-messen ger syndrome" in which their complaints were ignored and they were harshly criticized. Several such whistle-blowers have told TIME that when they pointed out glaring violations of safety procedures, nothing was done to correct the problems. Instead, they contend, they were harassed, demoted or fired. Some say they were even threatened by unidentified letter writers and telephone callers.

Sylvia Robins is a former systems engineer for Unisys, a subcontractor that develops much of the computer software in Houston used to control virtually every switch and nozzle on the complex space vehicle. Two years ago, she was a highly rated section supervisor in charge of managing the software that had been updated to reflect changes in the shuttle's mission and design. In March 1986, two months after the Challenger tragedy, she was approached for help by software experts at Rockwell International, the shuttle's prime contractor. They asked her to find out whether Unisys had an adequate system for testing the shuttle's backup software, which would be vital if the basic computer programming failed.

Robins claims she discovered a self-defeating Unisys procedure: instead of halting other operations while both the main and backup software were tested, the contractor permitted NASA to make additional changes in payload and other shuttle flight plans as the testing proceeded. While this saved a three-week hold for each test, she insists that it rendered the results meaningless, since the software could not be adjusted and tested simultaneously.

When Robins informed her Unisys supervisors about this in June 1986, she + maintains she was told to drop the matter and not tell Rockwell about it. Her bosses considered her a trouble maker, she says, because she had complained earlier that Unisys did not have the proper facilities for protecting the software for secret Defense Department missions assigned to shuttle flights.

Robins says that in September 1986 her supervisor met with several employees in her section and asked them to claim that she had called staff meetings after work hours without authorizing overtime pay. They were told at a second meeting, she says, to submit slips to document the alleged overtime. One employee, Ria Solomon, refused, protesting that there had been no unauthorized late meetings. Solomon contends that she was then harassed by her supervisors and was fired last May.

After Robins was demoted in September 1986, she transferred from Unisys to a Rockwell subsidiary, Rockwell Shuttle Operations Co. There she repeated her complaints about Unisys to her new bosses as well as to the FBI and NASA's inspector general. As a result, she states, she was isolated and continually harassed at work. She says that she received three unsigned letters containing threats such as "whistle-blowers face loss of home, family and life." Two of the other whistle-blowers also charge that anonymous telephone threats have been made against their children; they do not accuse the companies of being responsible.

Last September, Robins and Solomon filed a $5.2 million suit against Rockwell Shuttle Operations Co. and Unisys, claiming they were the victims of company retaliation.

Other shuttle engineers have expressed similar concerns. A former Rockwell quality-assurance engineer says that an audit he conducted of Rockwell's shuttle hardware and software last July revealed that only 12% met NASA's contract specifications. The day after submitting his report, he contends, his supervisor told him that "we had to change the figure to 96% or better." He refused. Five weeks later he was suspended and then later fired.

A current Rockwell engineer also told TIME that the company last June failed to place a protective password on at least one shipment of shuttle software tapes. That meant that almost anyone at the company with computer access could call up the tapes, punch in changes at will and leave no record of who had made the alteration or precisely what had been done. In fact, she produced a record showing that one such anonymous change actually had been made.

The whistle-blowers charge that employees at Rockwell are falsely promised confidentiality when making complaints to an ombudsman appointed by the company. A corporate security source confirms that within 24 hours of a complaint, the ombudsman relays the information to James Roberts, who is head of both the Rockwell subsidiary's ethics committee and its security force. The whistle-blowers allege that since they filed their suit, they have often been followed at night by vehicles, some of whose license plates have been traced to the security force. One was a private truck owned by Roberts.

Shuttle contractors have an incentive to emphasize schedule over safety, according to one Rockwell engineer, because they are paid bonuses on an increasing scale according to "how quickly a job is completed. Thus, managers pressure their employees even when work is on schedule." All the shortcuts in safety and security are taken, according to this source, because the environment remains "meet the schedule or else. And the schedules are tighter than before the Challenger accident."

In a statement, Rockwell called the allegations by the whistle-blowers "totally without merit." Because of litigation, the company commented on only one specific point, maintaining that its ombudsman fully respects the confidentiality of employees who complain. Rockwell insisted that it "has always been and continues to be committed to taking every precaution humanly possible to ensure that concern for safety governs all activities."

Apparently shaken by the growing attention to the safety experts' report, NASA called a press conference last week at which George Rodney, the agency's top safety official, said he had thoroughly reorganized safety and quality- control operations. This included a 30% increase in personnel assigned to these watchdog duties. A tough former test pilot and Martin Marietta official, Rodney declared that anyone with a safety complaint could now readily get the attention of key project managers.

According to Rodney, NASA has established closer communication with the astronauts on safety issues, correcting one of the Rogers commission's major criticisms. But two of the astronauts scheduled for the next launch said they had not even been given the safety-review committee's stern report.

The space agency claims that nearly all the 72 recommendations made in the report have been followed. In fact, NASA contends, many of the steps had been taken by the time it received the report. Rodney announced that experts will be asked to take another, updated look at NASA's safety controls. Declared NASA Administrator James Fletcher: "We will fly only when we are ready. And readiness means that the shuttle will fly only when it's as safe as we can make it."

With reporting by Jay Peterzell/Houston