O'Keefe appeared before the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board's special committee on assessing options to extend the life of the aging and ailing Hubble. His appearance, at the committee's request, was intended to explain the rationale for his Jan. 16 decision to cancel a scheduled Hubble repair mission sometime after the shuttle fleet -- which was grounded Feb. 1, 2003, following the Columbia disaster -- returns to flight.

O'Keefe said the decision was "among the toughest I've had to make," effectively condemning the Hubble, "an extraordinary instrument that has captured the imagination of the public around the world."

Still, he told committee members in a passionate presentation, sending up a new shuttle mission under circumstances that create avoidable dangers to the crew is no longer an option.

"I've done that once," he said, "and it was emblazoned in my memory like it was yesterday." He added he is unwilling to live with "the consequences of getting this wrong."

The issue, O'Keefe explained, is that sending a shuttle mission to the Hubble would deprive the crew of the possible safe haven of the International Space Station because the telescope follows a separate and incompatible orbital path with a station rendezvous.

In addition, O'Keefe said, the report of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, issued last summer and fall in six volumes, drove home to him a single major point: to approve a return to flight only when everyone at NASA involved in the shuttle program can say they have done everything to ensure against a repeat of Columb ia.

"We must own that answer," he told the committee. "On STS 114 (the next numerical shuttle mission) and thereafter, we will know we've done our level best."

Based on O'Keefe's description of this process, NASA seems to be embarking on a super-cautious strategy of monitoring the condition of the shuttles at virtually every stage of their flights.

For example, he described plans to use "imaging from all national assets" to watch shuttles for possible damage and debris. He did not specify, but this probably was a reference to the Air Force's radar facilities on Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific Ocean.

Those instruments, Air Force officials told United Press International, are powerful enough to have detected damage to the Columbia, but their help was not enlisted by NASA.

O'Keefe said the space station would be an invaluable asset in protecting the safety of the shuttle, both in the ability of station crews to insp ect incoming shuttles and in providing an escape haven if the spacecraft is damaged and deemed too dangerous to attempt re-entry.

At present, he said, NASA foresees somewhere between 25 and 30 more shuttle missions to the station to complete its construction and fulfill the U.S. commitment to its international partners.

Each mission to the station will afford shuttle crewmembers up to 45 days of safe haven aboard the station, O'Keefe said, which would give NASA -- or possibly the Russians -- time to launch a rescue mission.

In contrast, the longest comparable time aboard a shuttle mission to the Hubble would be 20 days. Also, NASA has never attempted -- or even practiced -- a shuttle-to-shuttle rendezvous or rescue.

The point is, he told committee members -- several of whom seemed visibly disappointed -- returning the shuttle to flight cannot be undertaken and accommodate current safety concerns if the mission destination is the Hubble.

It makes more sense to prepare a robotic repair flight, he said, and added that is the only responsible decision.

"There will never be a time when we launch the shuttle again when we can say there are no risks," O'Keefe said. "If we were risk-averse, we would de-orbit the space station, stop flying the shuttle and everybody would go find another line of work."

The challenge, he said, is to lower the risk as much as possible. In this context, a robotic mission to the shuttle makes more sense. It also will be full of risks, according to O'Keefe, but not compared to the risk of losing another shuttle crew.

"If we fail" on a robotic mission, "we fail to extend the service life" of the instrument, he said.

If NASA fails with a shuttle flight to the Hubble, he said, the prospect makes it "not a close call."

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