Space Shuttle Program Essay Example

Space Shuttle Program Essay This is an edited version of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board report released in August, 2003. It provides a comprehensive and often sobering example of management lapses that have severe consequences. The original report was over 280 pages. This edited version eliminates the much of the technical discussion and focuses instead on the organizational factors that lead to the accident. You may obtain the entire report from http://www. caib. us/news/report/default. html I have included some sections for background. Read these sections to gain an overview of the accident and the report. I have included some pages simply to provide context for sections that relate to questions below. I have placed arrows in the text to indicate those sections that are most important. Here Questions to Consider: 1. According to the report, what were the causes of the Columbia accident? 2. What were the essential features of the culture at NASA? 3. Which factors played the greatest role in the events leading up to the accident: logical factors, such as schedule, technicalities of the shuttle design, testing, or psychological, such as politics, the perspective of deadlines? 4. What was the meaning of February 19, 2004? . How did February 19, 2004 contribute to the Columbia accident? 6. How did management and workforce differ in their perspective on the pressure to meet 2/19/04? Why did they differ? 7. What types of schedule management tools did NASA use? Were they effective? 8. What were the de facto priorities of the shuttle program leading up to the accident? 9. How did these prioriti es shape management’s perspective on â€Å"facts† presented by engineering after the launch of ST-107? 10. Which perspective on communication best explains the findings in the report: communication as information flow or communication as influence? 1. Which was most important in explaining the cultural factors leading up to the accident: a lack of management or a lack of leadership? Why? 12. What role did the management’s perception of NASA’s history play in the events leading up to the accident? 13. What role did a willingness to learn from mistakes play in the events leading up to the accident? 14. Given the example of the Navy’s reactor safety program, how could NASA correct these organizational deficiencies? 15. Could NASA managers have done a better job if they had followed Descartes’ four rules for thinking? Why? 6. What role did PowerPoint play in management’s failures? 17. How do the reports conclusions about leadership, cultu re, change, structure and risk apply to the management of everyday projects? COLUMBIA ACCIDENT INVESTIGATION BOARD Report Volume I August 2003 ACCIDENT INVESTIGATION BOARD COLUMBIA On the Front Cover This was the crew patch for STS-107. The central element of the patch was the microgravity symbol,  µg, flowing into the rays of the Astronaut symbol. The orbital inclination was portrayed by the 39-degree angle of the Earth? s horizon to the Astronaut symbol. We will write a custom essay sample on Space Shuttle Program specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Space Shuttle Program specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Space Shuttle Program specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer The sunrise was representative of the numerous science experiments that were the dawn of a new era for continued microgravity research on the International Space Station and beyond. The breadth of science conducted on this mission had widespread benefits to life on Earth and the continued exploration of space, illustrated by the Earth and stars. The constellation Columba (the dove) was chosen to symbolize peace on Earth and the Space Shuttle Columbia. In addition, the seven stars represent the STS-107 crew members, as well as honoring the original Mercury 7 astronauts who paved the way to make research in space possible. The Israeli flag represented the first person from that country to fly on the Space Shuttle. On the Back Cover This emblem memorializes the three U. S. human space flight accidents – Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia. The words across the top translate to: â€Å"To The Stars, Despite Adversity – Always Exploreâ€Å" Limited First Printing, August 2003, by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board Subsequent Printing and Distribution by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Government Printing Office Washington, D. C. 2 Report Volume I August 2003 ACCIDENT INVESTIGATION BOARD COLUMBIA EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Columbia Accident Investigation Board? s independent investigation into the February 1, 2003, loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia and its seven-member crew lasted nearly seven months. A staff of more than 120, along with some 400 NASA engineers, supported the Board? s 13 members. Investigators examined more than 30,000 documents, conducted more than 200 formal interviews, heard testimony from dozens of expert witnesses, and reviewed more than 3,000 inputs from the general public. In addition, more than 25,000 searchers combed vast stretches of the Western United States to retrieve the spacecraft? s debris. In the process, Columbia? s tragedy was compounded when two debris searchers with the U. S. Forest Service perished in a helicopter accident. The Board recognized early on that the accident was probably not an anomalous, random event, but rather likely rooted to some degree in NASA? s history and the human space flight program? s culture. Accordingly, the Board broadened its mandate at the outset to include an investigation of a wide range of historical and organizational issues, including political and budgetary considerations, compromises, and changing priorities over the life of the Space Shuttle Program. The Board? s conviction regarding the importance of these factors strengthened as the investigation progressed, with the result that this report, in its findings, conclusions, and recommendations, places as much weight on these causal factors as on the more easily understood and corrected physical cause of the accident. The physical cause of the loss of Columbia and its crew was a breach in the Thermal Protection System on the leading edge of the left wing, caused by a piece of insulating foam which separated from the left bipod ramp section of the External Tank at 81. seconds after launch, and struck the wing in the vicinity of the lower half of Reinforced CarbonCarbon panel number 8. During re-entry this breach in the Thermal Protection System allowed superheated air to penetrate through the leading edge insulation and progressively melt the aluminum structure of the left wing, resulting in a weakening of the structure until increasing aerodynamic forces caused loss of control, fai lure of the wing, and breakup of the Orbiter. This breakup occurred in a flight regime in which, given the current design of the Orbiter, there was no possibility for the crew to survive. The organizational causes of this accident are rooted in the Space Shuttle Program? s history and culture, including the original compromises that were required to gain approval for the Shuttle, subsequent years of resource constraints, fluctuating priorities, schedule pressures, mischaracterization of the Shuttle as operational rather than developmental, and lack of an agreed national vision for human space flight. Cultural traits and organizational practices detrimental to safety were allowed to develop, including: reliance on past success as a substitute for sound engineering practices (such as testing to understand why systems were not performing in accordance with requirements); organizational barriers that prevented effective communication of critical safety information and Report Volume I d Here stifled professional differences of opinion; lack of integrated management across program elements; and the evolution of an informal chain of command and decision-making processes that operated outside the organization? rules. This report discusses the attributes of an organization that could more safely and reliably operate the inherently risky Space Shuttle, but does not provide a detailed organizational prescription. Among those attributes are: a robust and independent program technical authority that has complete control over specifications and requirements, and waivers to them; an independent safety assurance organization with line authority over all levels of safety oversight; and an organizational culture that reflects the best characteristics of a learning organization. This report concludes with recommendations, some of which are specifically identified and prefaced as â€Å"before return to flight. † These recommendations are largely related to the physical cause of the accident, and include preventing the loss of foam, improved imaging of the Space Shuttle stack from liftoff through separation of the External Tank, and on-orbit inspection and repair of the Thermal Protection System. The remaining recommendations, for the most part, stem from the Board? s findings on organizational cause factors. While they are not â€Å"before return to flight† recommendations, they can be viewed as â€Å"continuing to fly† recommendations, as they capture the Board? s thinking on what changes are necessary to operate the Shuttle and future spacecraft safely in the mid- to long-term. These recommendations reflect both the Board? s strong support for return to flight at the earliest date consistent with the overriding objective of safety, and the Board? s conviction that operation of the Space Shuttle, and all human spaceflight, is a developmental activity with high inherent risks. A view from inside the Launch Control Center as Columbia rolls out to Launch Complex 39-A on December 9, 2002. August 2003 9 ACCIDENT INVESTIGATION BOARD COLUMBIA CHAPTER 5 From Challenger to Columbia The Board is convinced that the factors that led to the Columbia accident go well beyond the physical mechanisms discussed in Chapter 3. The causal roots of the accident can also be traced, in part, to the turbulent post-Cold War policy environment in which NASA functioned during most of the years between the destruction of Challenger and the loss of Columbia. The end of the Cold War in the late 1980s meant that the most important political underpinning of NASA? s Human Space Flight Program – U. S. -Soviet space competition – was lost, with no equally strong political objective to replace it. No longer able to justify its projects with the kind of urgency that the superpower struggle had provided, the agency could not obtain budget increases through the 1990s. Rather than adjust its ambitions to this new state of affairs, NASA continued to push an ambitious agenda of space science and exploration, including a costly Space Station Program. If NASA wanted to carry out that agenda, its only recourse, given its budget allocation, was to become more efficient, accomplishing more at less cost. The search for cost reductions led top NASA leaders over the past decade to downsize the Shuttle workforce, outsource various Shuttle Program responsibilities – including safety oversight – and consider eventual privatization of the Space Shuttle Program. The program? budget was reduced by 40 percent in purchasing power over the past decade and repeatedly raided to make up for Space Station cost overruns, even as the Program maintained a launch schedule in which the Shuttle, a developmental vehicle, was used in an operational mode. In addition, the uncertainty of top policymakers in the White House, Congress, and NASA as to how long the Shuttle would fly before being replaced resulted in the delay of upgrades needed to make the Shuttle safer and to extend its service life. The Space Shuttle Program has been transformed since the late 1980s implementation of post-Challenger management changes in ways that raise questions, addressed here and in later chapters of Part Two, about NASA? s ability to safely Report Volume I operate the Space Shuttle. While it would be inaccurate to say that NASA managed the Space Shuttle Program at the time of the Columbia accident in the same manner it did prior to Challenger, there are unfortunate similarities between the agency? s performance and safety practices in both periods. . 1 THE CHALLENGER ACCIDENT AND ITS AFTERMATH The inherently vulnerable design of the Space Shuttle, described in Chapter 1, was a product of policy and technological compromises made at the time of its approval in 1972. That approval process also produced unreasonable expectations, even myths, about the Shuttle? s future performance that NASA tried futilely to fulfill as the Shuttle became â€Å"operational† in 1982. At first, NASA was abl e to maintain the image of the Shuttle as an operational vehicle. During its early years of operation, the Shuttle launched satellites, performed on-orbit research, and even took members of Congress into orbit. At the beginning of 1986, the goal of â€Å"routine access to space† established by President Ronald Reagan in 1982 was ostensibly being achieved. That appearance soon proved illusory. On the cold morning of January 28, 1986, the Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its climb towards orbit. On board were Francis R. Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Ellison S. Onizuka, Judith A. Resnick, Ronald E. McNair, Sharon Christa McAuliffe, and Gregory B. Jarvis. All perished. Rogers Commission On February 3, 1986, President Reagan created the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, which soon became known as the Rogers Commission after its chairman, former Secretary of State William Rogers. The Commission? s report, issued on June 6, 1986, concluded that the loss of Challenger was caused by a failure of the joint and seal between the two lower segments of the right Solid Rocket Booster. Hot gases blew past a rubber O-ring in the joint, leading to a structural failure and the explosive burnAugust 2003 99 ACCIDENT INVESTIGATION BOARD COLUMBIA ing of the Shuttle? s hydrogen fuel. While the Rogers Commission identified the failure of the Solid Rocket Booster joint and seal as the physical cause of the accident, it also noted a number of NASA management failures that contributed to the catastrophe. The Rogers Commission concluded â€Å"the decision to launch the Challenger was flawed. Communication failures, incomplete and misleading information, and poor management judgments all figured in a decision-making process that permitted, in the words of the Commission, â€Å"internal flight safety problems to bypass key Shuttle managers. † As a result, if those making the launch decision â€Å"had known all the facts, it is highly unlikely that they would have decided to launch. † Far from meticulously guarding against potential problems, the Commission found th at NASA had required â€Å"a contractor to prove that it was not safe to launch, rather than proving it was safe. 1 The Commission also found that NASA had missed warning signs of the impending accident. When the joint began behaving in unexpected ways, neither NASA nor the Solid Rocket Motor manufacturer Morton-Thiokol adequately tested the joint to determine the source of the deviations from specifications or developed a solution to them, even though the problems frequently recurred. Nor did they respond to internal warnings about the faulty seal. Instead, Morton-Thiokol and NASA management came to see the problems as an acceptable flight risk – a violation of a design requirement that could be tolerated. During this period of increasing uncertainty about the joint? s performance, the Commission found that NASA? s safety system had been â€Å"silent. † Of the management, organizational, and communication failures that contributed to the accident, four related to fau lts within the safety system, including â€Å"a lack of problem reporting requirements, inadequate trend analysis, misrepresentation of criticality, and lack of involvement in critical discussions. †3 The checks and balances the safety system was meant to provide were not working. Still another factor influenced the decisions that led to the accident. The Rogers Commission noted that the Shuttle? s increasing flight rate in the mid-1980s created schedule pressure, including the compression of training schedules, a shortage of spare parts, and the focusing of resources on near-term problems. NASA managers â€Å"may have forgotten–partly because of past success, partly because of their own well-nurtured image of the program–that the Shuttle was still in a research and development phase. †4 The Challenger accident had profound effects on the U. S. pace program. On August 15, 1986, President Reagan announced that â€Å"NASA will no longer be in the business of launching private satellites. † The accident ended Air Force and intelligence community reliance on the Shuttle to launch national security payloads, prompted the decision to abandon the yet-to-be-opened Shuttle launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base, and forced the development of improved expendable launch vehicles. 6 A 1992 White House advisory committee concluded that the recovery from the Challenger 100 Report Volume I SELECTED ROGERS COMMISSION RECOMMENDATIONS â€Å"The faulty Solid Rocket Motor joint and seal must be changed. This could be a new design eliminating the joint or a redesign of the current joint and seal. No design options should be prematurely precluded because of schedule, cost or reliance on existing hardware. All Solid Rocket Motor joints should satisfy the following: †¢ â€Å"The joints should be fully understood, tested and verified. † †¢ â€Å"The certification of the new design should include: †¢ Tests which duplicate the actual launch configuration as closely as possible. †¢ Tests over the full range of operating conditions, including temperature. †¢ â€Å"Full consideration should be given to conducting static firings of the exact flight configuration in a vertical attitude. † †¢ â €Å"The Shuttle Program Structure should be reviewed. The project managers for the various elements of the Shuttle program felt more accountable to their center management than to the Shuttle program organization. † †¢ â€Å"NASA should encourage the transition of qualified astronauts into agency management positions. † †¢ â€Å"NASA should establish an Office of Safety, Reliability and Quality Assurance to be headed by an Associate Administrator, reporting directly to the NASA Administrator. It would have direct authority for safety, reliability, and quality assurance throughout the agency. The office should be assigned the work force to ensure adequate oversight of its functions and should be independent of other NASA functional and program responsibilities. † †¢ â€Å"NASA should establish an STS Safety Advisory Panel reporting to the STS Program Manager. The charter of this panel should include Shuttle operational issues, launch commit criteria, flight rules, flight readiness and risk management. †¢ â€Å"The Commission found that Marshall Space Flight Center project managers, because of a tendency at Marshall to management isolation, failed to provide full and timely information bearing on the safety of flight 51-L [the Challenger mission] to other vital elements of Shuttle program management †¦ NASA should take energetic steps to eliminate this tendency at Marshall Space Flight Center, whether by changes of personnel, organization, indoctrinat ion or all three. † †¢ â€Å"The nation? s reliance on the Shuttle as its principal space launch capability created a relentless pressure on NASA to increase the flight rate †¦ NASA must stablish a flight rate that is consistent with its resources. †5 disaster cost the country $12 billion, which included the cost of building the replacement Orbiter Endeavour. 7 It took NASA 32 months after the Challenger accident to redesign and requalify the Solid Rocket Booster and to return the Shuttle to flight. The first post-accident flight was launched on September 29, 1988. As the Shuttle returned to flight, NASA Associate Administrator for Space Flight August 2003 ACCIDENT INVESTIGATION BOARD COLUMBIA Richard Truly commented, â€Å"We will always have to treat it [the Shuttle] like an RD test program, even many years into the future. I don? t think calling it operational fooled anybody within the program †¦ It was a signal to the public that shouldn? t have been sent. †8 The Shuttle Program After Return to Flight After the Rogers Commission report was issued, NASA made many of the organizational changes the Commission recommended. The space agency moved management of the Space Shuttle Program from the Johnson Space Center to NASA Headquarters in Washington, D. C. The intent of this change was to create a management structure â€Å"resembling that of the Apollo program, with the aim of preventing communication Read Here deficiencies that contributed to the Challenger accident. 9 NASA also established an Office of Safety, Reliability, and Quality Assurance at its Headquarters, though that office was not given the â€Å"direct authority† over all of NASA? s safety operations as the Rogers Commission had recommended. Rather, NASA human space flight centers each retained their own safety organizatio n reporting to the Center Director. In the almost 15 years between the return to flight and the loss of Columbia, the Shuttle was again being used on a regular basis to conduct space-based research, and, in line with NASA? original 1969 vision, to build and service a space station. The Shuttle flew 87 missions during this period, compared to 24 before Challenger. Highlights from these missions include the 1990 launch, 1993 repair, and 1999 and 2002 servicing of the Hubble Space Telescope; the launch of several major planetary probes; a number of Shuttle-Spacelab missions devoted to scientific research; nine missions to rendezvous with the Russian space station Mir; the return of former Mercury astronaut Senator John Glenn to orbit in October 1998; and the launch of the first U. S. elements of the International Space Station. After the Challenger accident, the Shuttle was no longer described as â€Å"operational† in the same sense as commercial aircraft. Nevertheless, NASA continued planning as if the Shuttle could be readied for launch at or near whatever date was set. Tying the Shuttle closely to International Space Station needs, such as crew rotation, added to the urgency of maintaining a predictable launch schedule. The Shuttle is currently the only means to launch the already-built European, Japanese, and remaining U. S. odules needed to complete Station assembly and to carry and return most experiments and on-orbit supplies. 10 Even after three occasions when technical problems grounded the Shuttle fleet for a month or more, NASA continued to assume that the Shuttle could regularly and predictably service the Station. In recent years, this coupling between the Station and Shuttle has become the primary driver of the Shuttle launch schedule. Whe never a Shuttle launch is delayed, it impacts Station assembly and operations. In September 2001, testimony on the Shuttle? achievements during the preceding decade by NASA? s then-Deputy Associate Administrator for Space Flight William Readdy indicated the assumptions under which NASA was operating during that period: Report Volume I The Space Shuttle has made dramatic improvements in the capabilities, operations and safety of the system. The payload-to-orbit performance of the Space Shuttle has been significantly improved – by over 70 percent to the Space Station. The safety of the Space Shuttle has also been dramatically improved by reducing risk by more than a factor of five. In addition, the operability of the system has been significantly improved, with five minute launch windows – which would not have been attempted a decade ago – now becoming routine. This record of success is a testament to the quality and dedication of the Space Shuttle management team and workforce, both civil servants and contractors. 11 5. 2 THE NASA HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT CULTURE Though NASA underwent many management reforms in the wake of the Challenger accident and appointed new directors at the Johnson, Marshall, and Kennedy centers, the agency? powerful human space flight culture remained intact, as did many institutional practices, even if in a modified form. As a close observer of NASA? s organizational culture has observed, â€Å"Cultural norms tend to be fairly resilient †¦ The norms bounce back into shape after being stretched or bent. Beliefs held in common throughout the organization resist alteration. †12 This culture, as will become clear acros s the chapters of Part Two of this report, acted over time to resist externally imposed change. By the eve of the Columbia accident, institutional practices that were in effect at the time of the Challenger accident – such as inadequate concern over deviations from expected performance, a silent safety program, and schedule pressure – had returned to NASA. ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE Organizational culture refers to the basic values, norms, beliefs, and practices that characterize the functioning of a particular institution. At the most basic level, organizational culture defines the assumptions that employees make as they carry out their work; it defines â€Å"the way we do things here. † An organization? culture is a powerful force that persists through reorganizations and the departure of key personnel. The human space flight culture within NASA originated in the Cold War environment. The space agency itself was created in 1958 as a response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik, the first artificial Earth satellite. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy charged the n ew space agency with the task of reaching the moon before the end of the decade, and asked Congress and the American people to commit the immense resources for doing so, even though at the time NASA had only accumulated 15 minutes of human space flight experience. With its efforts linked to U. S. -Soviet competition for global leadership, there was a sense in the NASA workforce that the agency was engaged in a historic struggle central to the nation? s agenda. The Apollo era created at NASA an exceptional â€Å"can-do† culture marked by tenacity in the face of seemingly impossible challenges. This culture valued the interaction among August 2003 101 ACCIDENT INVESTIGATION BOARD COLUMBIA research and testing, hands-on engineering experience, and a dependence on the exceptional quality of the its workforce and leadership that provided in-house technical capability to oversee the work of contractors. The culture also accepted risk and failure as inevitable aspects of operating in space, even as it held as its highest value attention to detail in order to lower the chances of failure. The dramatic Apollo 11 lunar landing in July 1969 fixed NASA? s achievements in the national consciousness, and in history. However, the numerous accolades in the wake of the moon landing also helped reinforce the NASA staff? s faith in their organizational culture. Apollo successes created the powerful image of the space agency as a â€Å"perfect place,† as â€Å"the best organization that human beings could create to accomplish selected goals. †13 During Apollo, NASA was in many respects a highly successful organization capable of achieving seemingly impossible feats. The continuing image of NASA as a â€Å"perfect place† in the years after Apollo left NASA employees unable to recognize that NASA never had been, and still was not, perfect, nor was it as symbolically important in the continuing Cold War struggle as it had been for its first decade of existence. NASA personnel maintained a vision of their agency that was rooted in the glories of an earlier time, even as the world, and thus the context within which the space agency operated, changed around them. As a result, NASA? s human space flight culture never fully adapted to the Space Shuttle Program, with its goal of routine access to space rather than further exploration beyond low-Earth orbit. The Apollo-era organizational culture came to be in tension with the more bureaucratic space agency of the 1970s, whose focus turned from designing new spacecraft at any expense to repetitively flying a reusable vehicle on an ever-tightening budget. This trend toward bureaucracy and the associated increased reliance on contracting necessitated more effective communications and more extensive safety oversight processes than had been in place during the Apollo era, but the Rogers Commission found that such features were lacking. In the aftermath of the Challenger accident, these contradictory forces prompted a resistance to externally imposed changes and an attempt to maintain the internal belief that NASA was still a â€Å"perfect place,† alone in its ability to execute a program of human space flight. Within NASA centers, as Human Space Flight Program managers strove to maintain their view of the organization, they lost their ability to accept criticism, leading them to reject the recommendations of many boards and blue-ribbon panels, the Rogers Commission among them. External criticism and doubt, rather than spurring NASA to change for the better, instead reinforced the will to â€Å"impose the party line vision on the environment, not to reconsider it,† according to one authority on organizational behavior. This in turn led to â€Å"flawed decision making, self deception, introversion and a diminished curiosity about the world outside the perfect place. †14 The NASA human space flight culture the Board found during its investigation manifested many of these characteristics, in particular a self-confidence about NASA possessing unique knowledge about how to 102 Report Volume I safely launch people into space. 15 As will be discussed later in this chapter, as well as in Chapters 6, 7, and 8, the Board views this cultural resistance as a fundamental impediment to NASA? s effective organizational performance. 5. AN AGENCY TRYING TO DO TOO MUCH WITH TOO LITTLE A strong indicator of the priority the national political leadership assigns to a federally funded activity is its budget. By that criterion, NASA? s space activities have not been high on the list of national priorities over the past three decades (see Figure 5. 3-1). After a peak during the Apollo program, when NASA? s budget was almost four percent of the federal budget, NASA? s budget since the early 1970s has hovered at one percent of federal spending or less. 4. 0 3. 5 Percent of Federal Budget 3. 0 2. 5 2. 0 1. 5 1. 0 0. 5 0. 0 1959 1962 1965 1968 1971 1974 1977 1980 983 1986 1989 1992 1995 1998 Figure 5. 3-1. NASA budget as a percentage of the Federal budget. (Source: NASA History Office) Particularly in recent years, as the national leadership has confronted the challenging task of allocating scarce public resources across many competing demands, NASA has had difficulty obtaining a budget allocation adequate to its continuing ambitions. In 1990, the White House chartered a blue-ribbon committee chaired by aerospace executive Norman Augustine to conduct a sweeping review of NASA and its programs in response to Shuttle problems and the flawed mirror on the Hubble Space Telescope. 6 The review found that NASA? s budget was inadequate for all the programs the agency was executing, saying that â€Å"N ASA is currently over committed in terms of program obligations relative to resources available–in short, it is trying to do too much, and allowing too little margin for the unexpected. †17 â€Å"A reinvigorated space program,† the Augustine committee went on to say, â€Å"will require real growth in the NASA budget of approximately 10 percent per year (through the year 2000) reaching a peak spending level of about $30 billion per year (in constant 1990 dollars) by about the year 2000. Translated into the actual dollars of Fiscal Year 2000, that recommendation would have meant a NASA budget of over $40 billion; the actual NASA budget for that year was $13. 6 billion. 18 During the past decade, neither the White House nor Congress has been interested in â€Å"a reinvigorated space program. † Instead, the goal has been a program that would continue to August 2003 2001 ACCIDENT INVESTIGATION BOARD COLUMBIA produce valuable scientific and symbolic payoffs for the nation without a need for increased budgets. Recent budget allocations reflect this continuing policy reality. Between 1993 and 2002, the government? s discretionary spending grew in purchasing power by more than 25 percent, defense spending by 15 percent, and non-defense spending by 40 percent (see Figure 5. 3-2). NASA? s budget, in comparison, showed little change, going from $14. 31 billion in Fiscal Year 1993 to a low of $13. 6 billion in Fiscal Year 2000, and increasing to $14. 87 billion in Fiscal Year 2002. This represented a loss of 13 percent in purchasing power over the decade (see Figure 5. -3). 19 1. 50 The lack of top-level interest in the space program led a 2002 review of the U. S. aeros