Sacked safety experts turn on Nasa over cuts

Recriminations mounted yesterday after it was revealed that Nasa ignored repeated warnings about the safety of the shuttle programme from its own advisers and tried to suppress their criticisms by sacking some of them.

In the 12 months before Saturday's disaster, Nasa's Aerospace Safety Advisory Board warned several times that budget pressures meant safety upgrades and improvements were not being done. Nasa responded by firing five of the nine-member panel and another resigned in disgust.

Richard Blomberg, chairman of the panel which is made of experts from industry and academia, told Congress last April: "I have never been as worried for space shuttle safety as I am right now. All of my instincts suggest that the current approach is planting the seeds for future danger."

The revelation about the firing of the panel members has added to growing disquiet among experts and former Nasa engineers that the organisation was not doing enough to ensure the safety of its astronauts. As America continues to mourn the seven who died there are signs that the public is demanding answers about what went wrong and whether the disaster could have been avoided.

The Nasa administrator Sean O'Keefe flew to Washington yesterday to try to answer some of those questions for President George Bush, briefing him on the state of the investigation and on efforts to recover debris and human remains scattered across east Texas and Louisiana.

But as the recovery efforts continue there is growing concern that the disaster could have been avoided. Last week, the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said Nasa faced shortages of trained staff members.

Nasa's advisory panel's most recent report, published last March, warned that work on long-term shuttle safety had "deteriorated". It said lack of funds was forcing Nasa to concentrate too much on short-term planning and ignore a series of planned improvements. The report called for sweeping changes.

In an interview with The New York Times, Seymour Himmel, one of the sacked panel members, said: "We were telling it like it was and were disagreeing with some of the agency's actions."

Senator Bill Nelson, who himself flew on a shuttle mission, has been vocal since Saturday in highlighting the need for greater funding. He pointed out that in September 2001 he told a Senate hearing into shuttle safety that budget plans for the space programme abandoned "some of the most critical safety upgrades for our ageing fleet".

Senator Kay Hutchison of Texas said she was "concerned we were diluting our mission with budget cuts".

Jose Garcia, a retired Nasa technical assistant, said budget cuts throughout the 1990s had resulted in the elimination of many safety checks during launch preparations. He went public with his concerns – even ensuring his message was received by President Clinton – but he said nothing changed.

Nasa denied it ignored safety issues. Ron Dittemore, manager of the shuttle programme, has repeatedly said that ensuring the safe return of astronauts has always been his chief concern.

A Nasa spokeswoman, Sonja Alexander, denied the the advisory panel members had been sacked because of their criticisms. She said Nasa had changed the group's charter so that "new members, younger and more skilled, could be added".

The space administration stressed its determination yesterday to do everything it could to discover what caused Columbia to tear apart just 16 minutes before it was due to land at Cape Canaveral.