NASA Dismissed Advisers Who Warned About Safety
When an expert NASA panel warned last year that safety troubles loomed for the fleet of shuttles if the agency's budget was not increased, NASA removed five of the panel's nine members and two of its consultants. Some of them now say the agency was trying to suppress their criticisms.

A sixth member, a retired three-star admiral, Bernard M. Kauderer, was so upset at the firings that he quit the group, NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, a group of industry and academic experts charged with monitoring safety at the space agency.

Dr. Seymour C. Himmel, who was fired from the advisory panel, said yesterday that "we were telling it like it was and were disagreeing with some of the agency's actions."

The eight departed panel members and consultants had long experience with the shuttles' systems and their troubles. In interviews yesterday, some said NASA had developed an institutional myopia about the panel's warnings, advice and observations, however pointed.

The panel's most recent report, which came out last March and included analyses by the six departed members, warned that work on long-term shuttle safety "had deteriorated." Tight budgets, it said, were forcing an emphasis on short-term planning and adding to a backlog of planned improvements. The report called for sweeping change.

"I have never been as worried for space shuttle safety as I am right now," Dr. Richard D. Blomberg, the panel's chairman, told Congress in April. "All of my instincts suggest that the current approach is planting the seeds for future danger."

His worry, he continued, "is not for the present flight or the next or perhaps the one after that." He added, "One of the roots of my concern is that nobody will know for sure when the safety margin has been eroded too far." He could not be reached for comment yesterday.
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