An outside panel blamed quality control and poor internal communication at Boeing Co. to have caused a string of costly satellite launch failures. The panel ruled out cost and time pressures as causes for three mishaps--two failed Delta 3 rocket launches and a misfired Boeing booster engine that spoiled a Lockheed Martin Corp. Titan 4B mission.

The report says poor analytic assumptions and communication between engineers led to the explosion of a Delta 3 in August 1998. A panel member noted, "we felt Boeing underestimated the design challenge of developing the new Delta 3 from the mature Delta 2." Same goes for the next Delta 3 failure in May 1999 and the failure of Boeing's Inertial Upper Stage on a Titan IV-B in April 1999.

"Some of these comments could have been made about a lot of similar companies. The focus in the last few years at all the primes has been cost reduction and consolidation. We haven't been pushing the envelope as much on technology," a panel member was quoted as saying.

In response, Boeing said it would boost "horizontal integration" among engineers and create a new group called "responsible engineers" charged with checking quality on subsystems and components throughout the production process.

Launch failures chronology