In 1994, Kraft was appointed chairman of the space shuttle management independent review team, a panel made up of leading aerospace experts, whose remit was to investigate ways in which NASA could make its Space Shuttle program more cost effective. The panel's report, known as the "Kraft report", was published in February 1995. It recommended that NASA's Space Shuttle operations should be outsourced to a single private contractor, and that "NASA should consider ... progression towards the privatization of the space shuttle." It also criticized the effect of safety changes made by NASA after the "Challenger" accident, saying that they had "created a safety environment that is duplicative and expensive." Fundamental to the report was the idea that the Space Shuttle had become "a mature and reliable system ... about as safe as today's technology will provide."