Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 25, 1995 TAG: 9506260108
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARLA CONE LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. LENGTH: Medium
For NASA test director Steve Altemus, walking into a Wal-Mart and plunking down cash to buy six plastic owls was his oddest mission yet for the nation's space program.
Unless you count the festive red and silver streamers that he ordered tied to the shuttle Discovery's colossal launch platform. Or his ruminations about which of the $40 painted Mylar balloons - the ``Predator Eyes'' or the ``Terror Eyes'' - would be scariest to birds and the hardiest in Florida's tropical winds.
At Kennedy Space Center, some of the world's most skilled engineers have found themselves relying on admittedly desperate schemes to ward off space shuttle saboteurs of the natural kind.
When one or two woodpeckers gouged 195 holes - some as large as baseballs - in the outer insulation of the Discovery's external fuel tank, forcing the June 8 launch to be scrubbed, it was the most costly conflict yet between wildlife and operations at the sprawling facility. But it was nowhere near the first time National Aeronautics and Space Administration engineers had to cope with wild animals.
Florida's spaceport is home to more endangered and threatened species than any wildlife sanctuary in the United States. In 1963, when the agency acquired the barrier island the world knows as ``The Cape,'' land nonessential to NASA operations was set aside as the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and the Canaveral National Seashore.
With its unusual blend of salt marshes, mangrove-lined shorelines and woodlands of scrub oak and old-growth pine, the 220-square-mile preserve harbors more than 500 varieties of animals.
Many of the rarest creatures live in harmony with the space age, even in the ``blast danger area'' within three miles of the twin launch pads. Rare loggerhead turtles lay their eggs on beaches a half-mile from the blastoff points. For more than 25 years, bald eagles have raised chicks in an old pine tree a few miles away, so close the ground shakes during launches.
Still, in the past three months alone, wildlife and space center operations have clashed 62 times, according to the refuge's logs.
In NASA jargon, wild animals often become FOD, ``foreign object debris.'' A bat invades the operations building. An alligator suns itself on the road where shuttles are hauled to the launch pads. An osprey builds a nest on a crane. One wildlife biologist had to don a special suit and crawl into the shuttle Columbia's mid-level crew deck to hunt for a wayward bird.
Most of the encounters are minor nuisances, frequently involving alligators. But the severity of the Discovery's damage shows that if a creature as elusive as a woodpecker wants to disable a shuttle on its launch pad, there may be no reasonable way that NASA, with all its space-age technology, can stop it.
But it's more common for NASA operations to jeopardize wildlife than the other way around. A great horned owl and three chicks were killed in March by the shuttle Endeavour's takeoff. After each launch, small numbers of minnow-like fish in ponds a half-mile from the pad die from acidic shuttle exhaust, and whenever the spaceport adds or expands a building, it often chews up habitat of the endangered Florida scrub jay.
In the base's 32 years - including 69 shuttle launches - the death of the owls was the worst reported damage to the refuge's wildlife. The mother owl had built its nest on a tray holding a cable on the launch platform. Workers had seen the owl, but not the nest.
Scrub jays - friendly, fearless blue-and-gray birds that eat peanuts from people's hands - live a mile from a launch pad and landing strip. They rely on head-high oak scrub that Whaley called ``high, dry and easy to develop.'' If it weren't for Kennedy Space Center, she said, the birds could be extinct.
When it comes to environmental sensitivity, especially about endangered species, several Fish and Wildlife Service officials said they prefer to work with Kennedy Space Center than with many private landowners and industries.
Mounting a high-priority search for solutions, Altemus and his colleagues - satirizing NASA's flair for acronyms - dubbed their mission BIRD: Bird Investigation, Review and Deterrent team.
``You have to have a sense of humor about this, despite the seriousness of it,'' he said. ``I'll tell you this, we are very serious about making sure it doesn't happen again.''
by CNB