Truly Spoken

From the day the space shuttle Challenger exploded two months ago, NASA has hunkered down protectively, trying to justify its decision to launch the shuttle in spite of warnings from engineers about the cold weather. Last week NASA's new shuttle chief, Rear Admiral Richard Truly, took a refreshingly different stance. The agency had been wrong, Truly candidly conceded, on that fateful day. Before another mission blasts off, he vowed, NASA would reshape not just the shuttle's faulty booster rockets but also the process for deciding when to launch. Declared the admiral: "To defend the indefensible and pretend we didn't lose the Challenger and crew would be ludicrous."

Truly, appointed to his job in February, carries considerable credibility in the agency, especially among its restive 96-member astronaut corps. He piloted the pioneering second shuttle launch in 1981, when the test missions were so hazardous that they were equipped with ejection seats. He also commanded a 1983 flight of the doomed Challenger. In a speech televised from Houston's Johnson Space Center to NASA employees around the nation, Truly promised that future shuttle launches would provide "an acceptable margin of safety to the vehicle and crew."

The admiral said he would enlist "this nation's best talent" in redesigning the joints on the rocket boosters, one of which obviously failed on the Jan. 28 Challenger flight. Re-evaluations and, if necessary, redesigns would be ordered for all 748 shuttle parts designated "criticality 1," meaning that if they failed the mission would be lost, since these parts had no backup performing the same vital function. When any qualified person "raises his hand" to oppose a launch-go, Truly pledged, "he will be listened to." Truly insisted that his "conservative" flight philosophy would not mean "a namby-pamby program." Said he: "The business of flying in space is bold business. We cannot print enough money to make it totally risk- free."

The dangers of space flight may soon be impressed on the nation once more. Military pathologists have identified the remains of all seven astronauts recovered from the Challenger's crew compartment. Burial and memorial services are being planned, with Arlington National Cemetery as one of the likely sites.