Fixing NASA may be harder than fixing the space shuttle.
The Columbia Accident Investigation Board included in its 29 recommendations a call for fundamental changes in the "culture" of NASA, a way of doing business that has resisted change for more than two decades.
In the report, the board found a continuation in the modern NASA of characteristics that were blamed 17 years ago for the accident that destroyed Challenger and killed seven astronauts.
NASA had pledged to change, and did for a while, but eventually drifted back to its old ways, the report found.
By the time Columbia was launched last January, "NASA retained too many negative ... aspects of its traditional culture," according to the report, which was released Tuesday.
Columbia broke apart while returning to Earth on Feb. 1 following a 16-day mission. All seven astronauts were killed.
The report said some of the negative aspects included flawed decision making and a tolerance by managers of abnormal events, such as the shedding of foam insulation from the shuttle's external fuel tank during launch.
Members of the board also found that communication was stifled in NASA and that engineers with safety concerns were intimidated into silence.
The board's chairman, retired Navy admiral Harold Gehman Jr, said the panel was confident that NASA would make sure that the next few space shuttles that fly will be among the safest ever.
But Gehman and others said they were worried that that enthusiasm will fade with time and NASA will slip into its old culture, setting the stage for another accident.
"Over a period of a year or two, the natural tendency of all bureaucracies, not just NASA, [to] morph and migrate away from that diligent attitude is a great concern to the board," Gehman said. "The history of NASA indicates that they've done it before."
To guard against this, Gehman said the board included in its report recommendations designed to prevent the "atrophy of energy and zeal."
The recommendations calling for culture changes in NASA, he said, "are more fundamental and harder to do" than the repairs that have to be made on the space shuttle.
After the Columbia tragedy, the space shuttle fleet was grounded. But the board said the shuttle was "not inherently unsafe," and NASA officials have a goal of resuming flights sometime between March 11 and April 6 next year. However, they acknowledge that may be too optimistic, given the board's recommendations.
Gehman said NASA leaders at all levels will have to "actively drive the bad cultural traits out of the organization" and inspire workers to "accept it in their gut, in their daily reactions."
Because such changes would be so difficult, Gehman said the board was not insisting that they be made before the shuttle was cleared to fly again.
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