After Columbia: NASA and its Contractors Under Microscope The investigation of the Columbia tragedy will bring new scrutiny to NASA’s principal shuttle contractors, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, and their 100-plus subcontractors. Investigations by both NASA and an outside panel are getting under way. The chairman of the House Science Committee, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), said his panel will also investigate. A key question is whether budget and personnel cuts had undermined safety. NASA’s budget has been essentially flat for the past decade, but the International Space Station has been eating up an ever-growing share of the funds. With tight budgets forcing tradeoffs among programs, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) said on “Fox News Sunday,” “you’re going to suffer consequences.” United Space Alliance, which handles space shuttle operations on the ground, is a joint venture established by Boeing and Lockheed Martin in 1996. USA’s contract was just renewed for an additional two years and $2.5 billion. In addition, both aerospace giants have a number of separate shuttle-related contracts. In a report last June, NASA’s inspector general rapped the Kennedy Space Center’s oversight of USA’s safety procedures: “Kennedy did not provide direct safety oversight of USA’s ground operations but rather obtained insight into USA’s safety operations through surveillance and audits (Finding A). Further, Kennedy did not perform any level of safety oversight for integrated logistics, a high-risk area for injuries and mishaps (Finding B).” Just two days before the loss of Columbia, the General Accounting Office announced that it continues to rate NASA’s contract management as “high risk,” as it has since 1990. GAO said, “NASA lacked effective systems and processes for overseeing contractor activities and did not emphasize controlling costs.” Last year NASA acknowledged problems with Lockheed Martin’s $3.4 billion Consolidated Space Operations Contract, which provides spacecraft tracking, communications and data services. NASA is breaking up the contract and plans to re-compete it in smaller pieces this spring. (SAA, 1/10) Overall, NASA’s contracts account for about 90% of its $15 billion budget. The inspector general listed more than a dozen contractors or contractor employees who have been accused of or convicted of various kinds of fraud in the past five months alone. Sean O’Keefe, who became NASA administrator a year ago, described himself as a “budgeteer, not a rocketeer.” He moved over from the Office of Management and Budget with a mandate to bring NASA spending under control, especially the escalating cost of the space station. NASA had earlier commissioned a Rand Corp. study on whether to put the entire shuttle program up for competitive sourcing. In its December report, “Alternate Trajectories,” Rand said, “the Task Force concludes that NASA must pursue competitive sourcing in one form or another.” But the report pointed out that it could be difficult to interest contractors in competing, since Boeing and Lockheed Martin already control the largest shuttle contracts. The report also concluded that it was “unlikely” that a commercial market for shuttle flights could be developed. President Bush’s 2004 budget proposal, prepared before the Columbia disaster, would increase the NASA budget by nearly $500 million from this year’s $15 billion. That proposal is likely to be rendered meaningless by the tragedy. The General Accounting Office report, GAO-03-114, is available at www.gao.gov. The NASA inspector general’s June 24, 2002 report, IG-02-018, is available at www.hq.nasa.gov/office/oig/hq/. The Rand study is posted at http://www.rand.org/scitech/stpi/NASA/nasaExecSum_final.pdf.