PRCB Update: Looking Ahead to Future Natural Disasters

Editor’s note: Yesterday’s 1 December 2005 PRCB (Program Requirements Control Board) was rather routine.

At one point, Wayne Hale returned late from a break in the proceedings and apologized, explaining, “I was stopped in the hall by PAO. Someone kindly forwarded one of my emails to the Washington Post [article] and I have to talk to them today. I don’t mind but this is kind of a busy day.”

The morning was taken up with quarterly risk reports. At the end, Hale said words, paraphrased by an attendee as “I want you to think of something and this is not an action, just something to think about.How do we mitigate natural disasters. Katrina has shown us it’s a5X5 risk. I don’t know about an earthquake in CA. We shouldbe looking at this and how to mitigate.”

The afternoon session produced responses to External Tank actionsactions that were given in the previous PRCB. ET foam testing, still cloaked in ITAR issues, is ongoing. The ET team is still saying that they’ll ship an ET so as to meet a May launch date.

KSC responded to Hale’s previous action to review the ET processing with the request to see if it could be shortened. The short answer was no. KSC said that they scrubbed the process in 1994 and again in 1998. Hale listened and then accepted their response.

Earlier PRCB updates:

PRCB Update: ET Folks Not Ready For Prime Time, 21 November 2005

PRCB: Shuttle Launch Dates Are Still TBD, 14 Nov 2005

Shuttle Scheduling Update, 4 Nov 2005

PRCB Tackles STS-121 Launch Date, 14 Oct 2005