"Stuf4" wrote in message
...

From Greg Moo
"Stuf4" wrote in message
...

From Jeff Findley:
snip
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.

It also doesn't eliminate the possibility of an invisible pink elephant
living in your basement. But, I wouldn't bet on it.
We deal with evidence and facts I a sci.* group not just pure
speculation.

If you had read what I wrote, you will have seen that I supported my
statement with solid facts, showing how tight the leader of NASA was with
Reagan.

The specific heat of water is 4.179 J/g OC.
The specific heat of Aluminum is 0.140.
That of Mercury 0.140

There I've included facts that have no real use. The leadership of Reagan
may have been tight, but as multiple investigations showed, it didn't have
any influence. Did some NASA manager somewhere probably think, "It would be
great if the President could mention this in the SOTU". Maybe. Who knows.
But that wasn't a driving factor.



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

Because there was a LOT of pressure to treat the shuttle as an
operational
system AND to launch a record 12 or so flights in 1986. Every day of
delay
with Challenger threatened this schedule.

So there was absolutely no need to have pressure from the White House for
a
SOTU talk. There already was extreme pressure internally.


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?

Might be hard for YOU to imagine, but not for anyone else who has
objectively look at the shuttle schedule and program ad that time.



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.

Actually it is. If you have looked and looked and find no evidence and
there are better theories, your best bet is generally to move on.

The statements I posted and you've quoted above are hardly "no evidence".
It clearly shows a close bond between the top person at NASA with the White
House. You might be willing to dismiss these facts. I don't.

Yes, they are no evidence. As they say, correlation is NOT causation. For
actual causation you'd have to find actual evidence of a memo, phone call,
fax, carrier pigeon actually showing the WH applied direct pressure on this
specific launch. So far there is none.



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.

No you wouldn't. It's obvious you won't because the plausible scenario
has
been there for 40 years and anyone who claims to study the shuttle
program
is familiar with it.

This is now starting to feel like a Doctor Who episode...
Welcome to the year 2026.

There are books written on Challenger. There are movies made (as recently
as this year). I've yet to read or watch *a single one* that nails the
actual cause, let alone the story of motivations behind that cause
(external/internal pressures). They all fall well short.

If I were to write a book that covered the motivations, I would present
both scenarios: pressure was internal only, or pressure came from outside.
And then I would give the facts that weigh on both sides of those cases.
After doing that, I might choose to enter into speculation with my own
opinions on the matter. But just the facts speak strongly. To me, at
least.

Obviously they speak strongly to you. Since you continue to spout a
conclusion that there's no evidence for.


~ CT

--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net