Re: Thiokol seletion politically motivated?

[Charleston]

"Jon Berndt" > wrote in message
...
> This is interesting:
>
> http://www.astronautix.com/engines/srb.htm
>
> Can anyone vouch for its accuracy?


It's true except it fails to mention the NASA Administrator at the time of
the SEB was James Fletcher, the same guy who came back to clean up his mess
afterwards. Fletcher actually singled out the Thiokol joint design as part
of the reason they were selected. The Utah and religious connections were
pounded home pretty well. The best source on the story of which I am aware
is "A Major Malfunctiom..." by Malcom McConnell.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/offering/list/-/0385238770/all/ref=dp_pb_a/104-0039473-0803950

It's a well researched story that got some attention shortly after it was
published.

--

Daniel
Mount Charleston, not Charleston, SC

[Charleston]

"rk" > wrote in message
...
> Jon Berndt wrote:

> > This is interesting:
> >
> > http://www.astronautix.com/engines/srb.htm
> >
> > Can anyone vouch for its accuracy?

Yes, two of us can, and only hours apart.

> I think you may wish to read the following book which covers that
> subject in detail. From what I know, for the most part, the book is
> quite accurate, aside from some minor quibbles, and goes into good
> depth.

Yep.

> Challenger A Major Malfunction
> A True Story of Politics, Greed, And the Wrong Stuff
>
> Malcolm McConnell
> Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, NY 1987
> ISBN 0-385-23877-0
> © 1987 by Malcolm McConnell
>
> Preface (excerpt)
> ...
> This book's goal is to dissect a tragic policy failure, to
> reveal the political intrigue and compromise, the venality and
> hidden agendas that combined over almost twenty years to produce
> the disaster.

> It's a must read, in my opinion. I had the book, lent it out to a
> number of people over the years, and finally it was "lost." It's long
> out of print but fairly recently I was able to get a good copy through
> amazon.com.

At first I thought rk was posting as a joke but then I realized no, he has
me plonked. Finally I realized, no Daniel, the book was published by
Doubleday so it gets double the number of comments to which it would
normally be entitled;-)

Great minds think alike, some in more detail than others and some from
memory.

--

Daniel
Mount Charleston, not Charleston, SC

[Mary Shafer]

On 27 Jul 2003 11:33:42 GMT, rk >
wrote:

> It's a must read, in my opinion. I had the book, lent it out to a
> number of people over the years, and finally it was "lost." It's long
> out of print but fairly recently I was able to get a good copy through
> amazon.com.

Not to knock amazon.com, but abebooks.com is much superior for used
books. I've tried both and I use only abebooks now. I can even get
books that weren't distributed in the US through abebooks, which
amazon can't manage. (A lot of aviation books are published in the UK
and distributed there only.) I manage to keep my Footrot Flats
collection up to day through Australian and New Zealand sources, for
example.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer

"A MiG at your six is better than no MiG at all."
Anonymous US fighter pilot

[LooseChanj]

On or about Sat, 26 Jul 2003 23:38:28 -0500, Jon Berndt >
made the sensational claim that:
> This is interesting:
>
> http://www.astronautix.com/engines/srb.htm
>
> Can anyone vouch for its accuracy?

With all due respect, this is a "No ****, Sherlock".
--
This is a siggy | To E-mail, do note | This space is for rent
It's properly formatted | who you mean to reply-to | Inquire within if you
No person, none, care | and it will reach me | Would like your ad here

[Allen Thomson]

Mary Shafer > wrote

> Not to knock amazon.com, but abebooks.com is much superior for used
> books.

Buy.com is also worth checking. I hit all three when looking for
books. Takes a couple of minutes and sometimes finds good bargains in
one site but not the others.

But yes, abebooks is good -- I just got one of those hideously
expensive European technical books for $12.50 from a Ft.Worth
liquidator, new, via abe.

[Charleston]

"LooseChanj" > wrote in message
om...
> On or about Sat, 26 Jul 2003 23:38:28 -0500, Jon Berndt
>
> made the sensational claim that:
> > This is interesting:
> >
> > http://www.astronautix.com/engines/srb.htm
> >
> > Can anyone vouch for its accuracy?
>
> With all due respect, this is a "No ****, Sherlock".

Okay.

--

Daniel
Mount Charleston, not Charleston, SC

[rschmitt23]

I covered this flap in Chapter 34 of my new book "U.S. Manned Spaceflight in
the 20th Century: The Successes. The Failures. The Options." Here're the
relevant paragraphs:

The Protest

NASA had the misfortune to encounter another protest over a shuttle contract
award. Previously, the SSME development work, awarded to Rocketdyne, had
been stalled for nearly nine months while the General Accounting Office
(GAO) ruled on a protest by Pratt & Whitney. This time Lockheed asked the
GAO to overthrow the SRM award to Thiokol, citing what it believed were
improper increases to its (Lockheed's) bid price by the NASA evaluators in
order to make the Thiokol price appear to be the lowest [AWST 1974a]. The
NASA evaluators had awarded Lockheed 714 points in overall mission
suitability compared to Thiokol's 710 points. However, Thiokol was selected
because of lower overall projected cost.
While the protest was being reviewed, NASA awarded Thiokol a $846,000
($FY74, $2.53M $Y2K), 90-day study contract on 13 February 1975 in order to
keep the Thiokol SRM team together. The contract was extended on 20 May for
45 days and $500,000 ($FY74, $1.5M $Y2K) was added [Ezell 1988, 49].
On 24 June 1974 the GAO released a 98-page document evaluating the SRM
contract award. The GAO recommended that NASA reconsider the SRM award to
Thiokol because of a substantial decrease in the cost differences between
Thiokol and Lockheed. GAO estimated that the cost differential between the
two contractors was about $48-63M ($FY74, $144-$188M $Y2K) in favor of
Thiokol. This was considerably less than NASA's original estimate of $122M
($FY74, $365M $Y2K) in favor of Thiokol. Part of the difference between the
Thiokol and Lockheed numbers involved cost escalation factors applied to SRM
hardware. The GAO believed that NASA should have provided a common set of
estimated annual inflation factors for the FY 1973-79 period to be used by
all of the bidders. The GAO had difficulty converting the Thiokol and
Lockheed costs in 1972 dollars to real year dollars because of the problems
with the inflation factors.
The other cost issue involved ammonium perchlorate (AP), the oxidizer in the
solid rocket propellant. The AP oxidizer accounts for about 70% of the
weight of the solid propellant and the propellant load for each SRM
contained about 777,000 pounds of AP. NASA required the bidders to estimate
the cost of AP over the six-year contract period. However, in order to do
this, the bidders had to estimate the total size of the AP market during the
contract period and determine if the AP industry would have to add
production capacity to handle the new demand from the shuttle SRMs. Lockheed
believed that the AP demand would increase to 24,000,000 pounds per year and
that substantial new manufacturing capacity would have to be added. Thiokol'
s estimated non-shuttle demand for AP was only 20% of the Lockheed estimate.
Consequently, Lockheed's estimated AP cost for the shuttle SRMs was $76M
($FY74, $227M $Y2K) higher than Thiokol's.
The GAO believed that NASA should have specified the expected AP cost for
the six-year contract period and should have directed the bidders to use
this cost instead of allowing the bidders to estimate these costs
independently. The GAO noted that neither NASA nor the SRB contractors had
any control over propellant costs or overall annual demand for AP oxidizer.
Except for its evaluation of AP propellant cost, the GAO agreed with the
conclusions of the NASA evaluation board in awarding the SRM contract to
Thiokol [AWST 1974b].
NASA was surprised and distressed by the GAO's inability to decide between
the two competitors. The SRM Phase C development effort had already been
delayed by more than six months due to the protest and NASA Administrator
James C. Fletcher was anxious to begin the SRM Phase C development work as
soon as possible. On 26 June, only two days after release of the GAO report,
Fletcher reaffirmed the initial decision of the source selection board to
award the contract to Thiokol. He restated his belief that the conclusions o
f the source evaluation board and the source selection board were correct.
Fletcher would not concede that the GAO's position on the AP propellant cost
estimates was valid. Lockheed decided to accept the inevitable and did not
pursue the protest further. NASA awarded a $5.5M ($FY75, $15M $Y2K) letter
contract to Thiokol to cover the next 180 days (through June 1975) while a
definitive SRM contract was negotiated [AWST 1974c].
Fletcher was accused of favoritism in awarding the contract to Thiokol, a
Utah company. Fletcher had been President of the University of Utah before
his appointment as NASA Administrator and he had numerous business and
professional ties to that state. In the wake of the Challenger loss in
January 1986 due to failure of the Thiokol SRM, Senator Albert Gore, Jr.,
(b. 1948, D-TN) requested the GAO to review the November 1973 SRM contract
award to Thiokol for favoritism and conflict-of-interest. The GAO found than
none of the members of the SRM source selection board, including Fletcher,
had violated federal rules and regulations regarding conflict-of-interest,
financial interest or other interest [GAO 1987].

Note: the [GAO 1987] reference is:

The Government Accounting Office. Report to the Honorable Albert Gore, Jr.
U.S. Senate, on NASA Procurement: The 1973 Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Motor
Contractor Selection. GAO/NSAID 87-215, 23 Sep 1987.

Mark Wade is almost always a reliable source, but he's human like all of us.
Maybe he knows something that the GAO doesn't. Maybe the GAO whitewashed
some dirty business back in 1973, but if so, I wasn't able to find a trace
of it in researching my book.

Later
Ray Schmitt








"Jon Berndt" > wrote in message
...
> This is interesting:
>
> http://www.astronautix.com/engines/srb.htm
>
> Can anyone vouch for its accuracy?
>
> Jon
>
>

[Derek Lyons]

rk > wrote:
>Actually amazon.com has electronic searches and ordering to a number of
>other bookstores. I don't recall which one I picked although I do
>recall that my interface was amazon.com. I'll take a look at
>abebooks.com. Thanks,

Even better, go to bookfinder.com which searches multiple used book
databases in parallel.

D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
at the following URLs:

Text-Only Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html

Enhanced HTML Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html

Corrections, comments, and additions should be
e-mailed to , as well as posted to
sci.space.history and sci.space.shuttle for
discussion.

[Derek Lyons]

Dan Foster > wrote:
>Therefore, I believe that Amazon's strength is more along the lines of
>easily available books; if it's the harder to find stuff, others are far
>more likely to have it. abebooks.com looks like a very nicely done place,

Amazon is a central single bureaucracy; ABE is a massively parallel
organization of thousands of booksellers... :)

>and presumably, bookfinder.com. (bookfinder.com does seem to sell used
>copies of both hardcover and softcopy versions of that book. Not bad!)

Bookfinder.com sells nothing, it's merely a search engine.

D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
at the following URLs:

Text-Only Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html

Enhanced HTML Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html

Corrections, comments, and additions should be
e-mailed to , as well as posted to
sci.space.history and sci.space.shuttle for
discussion.