Challenger still taints NASA's future

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — After 20 years, the images remain seared into the nation's consciousness like the Twin Towers on 9/11 and President Kennedy's motorcade through Dallas.

A smiling, waving schoolteacher and her six astronaut crewmates leave their quarters on a frigid morning at Cape Canaveral.

Two booster rockets arc uncontrollably away from a giant fireball.

Family members stare skyward, not fully comprehending the awful truth of what they are witnessing.

The Challenger accident shattered forever the myth of invincibility that surrounded NASA after landing men on the moon. Now, two decades after the Jan. 28, 1986 catastrophe, the space shuttle faces a bleaker future than it did even in the wake of that stunning disaster. A second shuttle accident, the loss of Columbia three years ago this Wednesday, prompted a fundamental rethinking of the program and a presidential decision to end it by 2010.

"People tend to get complacent and never recognized the shuttle as the high-risk flight test program it is," said Eugene Covert, professor emeritus of engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the Rogers Commission that investigated the Challenger accident. "If you're going to undertake high-risk activities, you have to expect tragedies."

As NASA approaches the program's retirement date, there are many questions about how the agency will safely close out the shuttle era.

Some of the answers could be forthcoming on Feb. 6, when the White House releases its 2007 budget request for NASA. There is widespread speculation that the number of remaining shuttle flights could be cut back from about 18 to a dozen or so as the costly program competes for funding against new priorities that include returning astronauts to the moon.

Any cuts must be balanced against the administration's promise to finish assembly of the international space station. But there is debate on how many more pieces must be added for the $100 billion station to be considered "complete."

"The administration remains committed to the vision for space exploration it has announced," NASA administrator Michael Griffin said in an interview. "That included a number of components, one of which addressed the fly out of the shuttle and the building of the station. We aren't departing from that."