spacetoday.net: NASA report: agency has too many astronauts

Posted: Fri, Jul 11, 2003, 10:48 AM ET (1448 GMT)
NASA

An internal report by NASA's Inspector General published Thursday concludes that the space agency has hired far more astronauts than it needs. The report, which was completed prior to the Columbia accident and thus does not take into account the loss of the shuttle and its crew, found that NASA overestimated the number of shuttle flights it would conduct in the coming decade when estimating the number of astronauts it needed to have on its staff. The report also said that minimal supervision of the astronaut selection process and the need to staff engineering positions at the Johnson Space Center also played a role in the overstaffing. The report noted that, as of December 2002, 53 of the 116 members of the astronaut corps has not yet flown, and at flight rates projected at that time, the final member of the astronaut class of 2000, the latest to be selected, would not fly until the end of the decade. The report did not recommend that NASA lay off any of its astronauts, but did recommend that NASA improve its guidelines and procedures for determining the number of astronauts it needs and how it will select them.