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Laboratory where software development and verification testing is accomplished, and to various engineering design and development simulations.  They participate in mission development activities and serve as CAPCOM's in the Mission Control Center.  In addition, the flightcrew is represented at all the various boards and groups that provide input to the Space Shuttle Program Management.  The Astronaut Office plays a significant roll in all activities associated with development, flight preparation, and flight execution, and they, or their management, are members of all major decision-making boards and panels.  For a more comprehensive discussion of this subject, see appendix F.

7.  Findings

     1. The operations capability demonstrated to date is satisfactory, although it falls short of the mature operations goals previously established.

     2. The flight support process at JSC in January 1986 was one of reduced capability in terms of qualified personnel, trying to deal with an increasing flight rate, a conversion to a production oriented system, and a transition to an operations support contractor.

     3. The existing program commitment in January 1986 precluded devoting adequate resources to developing the capability to support an increasing flight rate.

    4. A high level of operations preparedness was demonstrated by repeated ability of the Mission Operations Team to conduct successful flights in spite of periodic major anomalies (STS-9, STS 41-C, STS 41-D, STS 51-F).

     5. The most fundamental RSS issue remaining is the philosophical decision of whether to put a destruct system on a manned vehicle.  This issue is out of the scope of this report and will be addressed by NASA/DOD in the future.

     6.  Both launch weather and launch commit criteria and landing site weather criteria have been developed through an interative process over the years and appear to be well-founded.

     7. KSC weather is dynamic and subject to rapid changes; therefore, conservative weather decisions must continue to be made.

     8. The program considered crew escape numerous times but, because of limited utility, technical complexity, cost, schedule, and performance impacts, no systems were implemented.

     9. At the time of the STS 51-L launch, KSC landings did non constitute an unreasonable safety or flight risk based on known, credible failures.

Transcription Notes:
In Findings section 7, in sub-point number 6 there appears to be a typo in the original document. "Interative" should most likely be interactive