Determinations and Findings for the Space Shuttle Program (Classic Reprint) by United States; Congress; Ho Aeronautics

by U.S. Government

Excerpt from Determinations and Findings for the Space Shuttle Program The subcommittee met at 10:00 a.m. in Room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable F. James Sensenbrenner, chairman of the subcommittee, presiding. Mr. Sensenbrenner. The Subcommittee will be in order. Earlier this year, NASA's Space Shuttle Independent Management Review Team, led by Dr. Christopher Kraft, recommended consolidating shuttle contracts in order to reduce costs. More importantly, the Kraft report indicated that contract consolidation would improve accountability and help increase shuttle safety. For these reasons, this Committee has supported consolidation of shuttle operations under a single prime contract and I still support the concept. However, the process NASA is using to transition into a single prime contract does raise some significant concerns. On August 21, 1995, NASA held an extensive briefing for industry representatives to discuss the process of consolidating 85 space shuttle contracts under a single prime contractor. Four firms submitted letters of intent to NASA, reporting their desire to on NASA's proposal to be the single prime contractor. These included some of the most well-known aerospace and management companies in the United States, including Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, the Bamsi Corporation, and the United Space Alliance formed by Lockheed-Martin and Rockwell. On September 27th, we held a shuttle safety hearing in which NASA delivered a single page of testimony which said nothing more than "trust us." The paucity of information available from NASA in that hearing was shocking, especially since NASA was in the process of studying safety in the context of contract consolidation. That raised concerns that NASA might not have adequately planned to preserve safety. So we decided to have a second hearing. On November 7th, the NASA Administrator, who is here with us today, gave this Committee just a few hour's notice that NASA was suspending the competition for a single prime contract and would make the award on a non-competitive basis to the United Space Alliance. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Paperback

First published September 27, 2015