spacetoday.net: Gehman: shuttle can fly again

Posted: Sun, May 18, 2003, 3:05 PM ET (1905 GMT)
STS-107: launch (NASA/KSC)

The chairman of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) said Saturday that he believed that the shuttle could be made safe enough to fly again. Harold Gehman, visiting the Kennedy Space Center with several other members of the CAIB to review debris recovered from Columbia, said that he was not aware of any "showstoppers" that could keep the shuttle from returning to flight. However, he didn't attempt to estimate when the shuttle could start flying again, only that the "stack of return-to-flight items" would be "manageable". Gehman also said that NASA officials may have spoken too soon when they concluded that there was nothing they could have done to save the Columbia's crew had they known about the damage to the leading edge of the wing while the shuttle was still in orbit.