Boeing Engineers Lament Company's Move To Houston

When Boeing decided to move 1100 engineers from its facility at Huntington Beach (CA) to Houston (TX), a move designed to cut costs, a lot of Huntington Beach engineers were less than thrilled. In fact, fewer than 20% of them opted to relocate to the new facility. As a result, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board is now looking into whether a lack of experience in the shuttle's thermal assessment team contributed to the destruction of Columbia on February 1st (ANN: "STS-107: Boeing Ignored Shuttle Warnings" -- March 10, 2003).

Columbia's January 16th launch marked the first time that the engineers in Texas had actual responsibility for providing NASA with technical help. After it appeared that a sizeable chunk of insulating foam broak away from the shuttle's external fuel tank and impacted the leading edge of the left wing, NASA asked the rookies their professional opinion: Had the wing been damaged by the debris? The engineering team responded -- in writing -- that the shuttle was safe to land.

The Los Angeles Times quotes Maj. Gen. John Barry, a member of the board, as saying a broad range of questions is being asked about the capability and training of the Boeing engineers who advised NASA during the Columbia mission. The board has asked Boeing and NASA to produce all the documents involved in the relocation. "The reason we are looking at Huntington Beach and Palmdale is to see if there were any factors involved there that may have contributed to this mishap," Barry said. "We have a lot more work to do."

The Huntington Beach engineers were among the first to raise the possibility of a bad diagnosis on the wing damage conducted by the Texas engineering team. Today, six months later, they haven't toned down their angst toward Boeing for trying to force the new team to perform on its own during the STS-107 mission. "The feeling is we had better technical expertise here, particularly in the area of the shuttle's thermal protection system," said one veteran space shuttle engineer, who asked that his name not be used. "But they ignored us. It's a pretty universal feeling among the California employees."

But NASA officials didn't seem to have any problems with the Boeing move. When NASA shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore was questioned about the reasons for Boeing's move at an accident board hearing March 6, he called the transition "very successful."

"We have very high confidence in the technical leadership we were able to capture," Dittemore said.

But there are other factors for the CAIB to consider, the least of which is politics. Did NASA encourage the Boeing move to put more of the space program in President Bush's home state? The CAIB report is due out before the end of next month.

FMI: www.caib.gov