York@SAPSUCKER.SCRC.SYMBOLICS.COM (William M. York) (10/30/86)
This message includes a transcription of an article by William V.
Shannon, entitled "The questions linger after Challenger disaster -- and
need answers". The article appears on the editorial page of October
29th's Boston Globe. It is long, but I thought that it would be of
interest.
================ Beginning of article ================
President Reagan several days ago swore in William Graham as his
science adviser. The theme for the occasion should have been, "Nothing
succeeds like failure."
Graham was acting administrator of NASA when the space shuttle
Challenger ended in disaster on Jan. 28. According to a powerful new
article by Richard C. Cook, formerly on the NASA staff, Graham made the
critical decisions on scheduling on the weekend of Jan. 25-26 that led
to Challenger's fatal flight.
Cook is the man who wrote a memorandum to higher officials in NASA in
July 1985 reporting how deeply concerned the agency's engineers were by
the unreliability of the shuttle's O-rings. he was an early witness
before the commission of inquiry headed by former Secretary of State
William P. Rogers.
In an article for the November issue of The Washington Monthly, Cook
again blows the whistle, this time on the Rogers Commission and its
elaborate avoidance of the question of responsibility, particularly with
regard to acting administrator Graham.
The commission's report correctly cited the O-ring failure as the
cause of the disaster but it stated an outright falsehood in assessing
responsibility. It declared that top-level officials who made the
decision to launch on that January day "were unaware of the recent
history of problems concerning the O-rings and the joint."
The truth is the exact opposite. Testimony before the commission --
and NASA's own records -- proved that knowledge of the O-ring erosion
danger was widespread in NASA and known at every administrative level.
There was not, as the commission report suggests, a failure of
communication.
The commission's second major failure was not finding out why the
launch was ordered over the strong protests of the engineers at Morton
Thiokol, the contractor in charge of the solid rocket booster. The
commission's report falls back on the assertion that these protests
never came to the attention of top officials. The sequence of meetings
in the 24 hours preceding the launch makes this explanation totally
implausible.
For the first time in the history of the shuttle, Thiokol had to
prove why NASA should not launch, rather that why it should. Thiokol
engineer Allan McDonald testified: "I've been in many flight-readiness
reviews, and I've had a very critical audience...justifying why our
hardware was ready to fly. I was surprised that the tone of the
[pre-launch] meeting was just the opposite of that. I didn't have to
prove I was ready to fly... We had to prove it wasn't ready, and that's
a big difference." Why the pressure to launch?
The question comes back to the timing of President Reagan's State of
the Union address, which was scheduled for Jan. 28. The
teacher-in-space flight featuring Christa McAuliffe was originally
scheduled to end on that day. A series of delays for technical reasons
pushed the tentative date for launching to Sunday, Jan. 26. Vice
President George Bush was scheduled to attend the launch. (It was no
accident that the school teacher chosen was from New Hampshire, where
Bush will be running in the first primary of 1988.)
In his article, Cook points out that on Saturday evening the 25th,
Graham "followed a procedure unprecedented in [NASA] history." Because
the weather at Cape Canaveral is unpredictable, astronauts normally
board the shuttle even though bad weather is predicted because the
weather might suddenly change. But Graham canceled the Sunday flight on
Saturday evening because bad weather was predicted.
Cook hypothesizes that Graham did so because of a safety rule that
forbids loading and unloading the shuttle more than twice in a 48-hour
period. If it had been fueled up Sunday morning and canceled, it could
be tried again on Monday, but if that failed, the next attempt could not
be until Wednesday -- too late for the president's speech.
By canceling Saturday night, Graham made it possible to try either
Monday or Tuesday. A Monday flight proved impossible because of icy
conditions. A Tuesday flight was definitely hazardous, but NASA sent
the astronauts up -- to their deaths.
Did the flight go off because Donald Regan, the White House chief of
staff, gave the order. {sic} There are rumors that they command was,
"Tell them to get that thing up." Is that why the protests of the
Thiokol engineers were overruled? Did Graham, who has no visible
qualifications to be the government's top scientist, get his new job as
a payoff for keeping his mouth shut and protecting his bosses in the
White House? A thoroughgoing Senate investigation is required.
================ end of article ================
The author clearly has a stong political position and would probably
like to see the Challenger disaster damage the Reagan administration (I can't
deny having some similar feelings). However, political rhetoric aside,
some interesting issues are raised. Anyone care to transcribe Cook's
article from The Washington Monthly?