From Jeff Findley:
In article ,
says...

Congress performed a separate investigation of Challenger. Senator
Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, a noted Reagan nemesis, spearheaded the
investigation, specifically looking for White House pressure to
launch. They found none. Among other things, no equipment had been
installed and no communications plans had been established to allow
Reagan in the US Capitol to speak to the Challenger crew live.

"In one heated exchange, Hollings grilled Rogers with questions about
whether the Reagan administration put pressure on NASA to launch
Challenger with New Hampshire school teacher Christa McAuliffe on
board to coincide with the president's State of the Union address.

'There just wasn't anything like that happening,' Rogers said.
'There's no evidence in this case.'

Later Rogers angrily snapped: 'If you can prove it, I'll come back
here and apologize!'"

- United Press Int'l, June 10, 1986

The investigation's report was quietly released later in 1986.

Thanks for reiterating this. The pressure to launch was all internal to
NASA.

The fact that evidence has not been brought to light does *not* eliminate the possibility that it happened.

An unanswered question...
If there was no external pressure, then why would NASA have done something so stupid?

Operations bent over backwards to get that shuttle in the air that morning. It is difficult to imagine that the pressure to do so came from within (NASA Administrator or below). Why would the NASA Administrator, or anyone below him, be willing to hang it out so far if there wasn't someone above that pay grade putting pressure on them to do so?

And who was running NASA in Jan 86?
Here are some quotes from Wikipedia:
"William Robert Graham...was Chairman of President Reagan's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control from 1982 to 1985"
"In 1980, Graham served as an adviser to presidential candidate Ronald Reagan and was a member of the President-elect's Transition Team."

After Challenger, Graham got fired from his job. And where did he go when he left NASA? Reagan took him back under his wing. Quote:
"Graham left NASA on October 1, 1986 to become Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). On October 16, 1986, he was sworn in as Director of OSTP and concurrently as Science Adviser to President Reagan..."

If the Challenger tragedy was the responsibility of NASA alone, then why would Reagan protect the top NASA person after making such a HUGE blunder? ....if Reagan himself had nothing to do with it. Anyone who dismisses the possibility (let alone probability) that Reagan had direct input is either ignorant of the situation, or willfully ignorant.

The most plausible scenario to me is that Reagan told his buddy Bill something to the effect of, "Hey, it would sure be nice if that teacher was in orbit when I make my State of the Union speech."

There need not be any evidence that such a communication ever happened. It could have been on a sunny afternoon stroll through the Rose Garden, or whatever. And it doesn't even need to have been person-to-person. It could have been aide-to-aide, or any channel of communication.

Now I am not saying that this did happen. The above is all to reiterate the point that just because you are lacking evidence does not mean that the proper next step is to throw out the theory.

And if anyone would like to present a plausible scenario where NASA is for some reason internally-only hyper motivated to launch ...in the face of huge icicles, cold-soaked temps way beyond any test data that would give you any reason to expect a launch success, etc, I'd be glad to consider it.


In other news...
Scobee's son was with Wolverine two weeks ago. Gave him a fam flt in one of his Vipers. I didn't see anyone mention him by name, which was odd considering how close this was to the anniversary of his dad's mess. The actor said,
"That was about the most incredible 1 hour of my life".

~ CT