From Jeff Findley:
In article ,
says...

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.

Bull****. It's up to the person with the assertion to support that
assertion with evidence. This assertion *was* investigated at the time
and there was *zero* evidence to back it up. The assertion is false.

- I am aware of zero evidence,
- Therefore the assertion is false

The above is not a sound conclusion.
Quite to the contrary, you can have loads of evidence point to one conclusion, and decades after a case has been closed, they can learn that everyone was mistaken. The assertion that was discarded as false turned out to be true.

I could just as easily assert that the devil did it by taking a bite out
of the o-ring. Since there is no evidence to the contrary (the blow-by
would have burned away the bite marks), the devil surely did it, right?
You can't prove me wrong, so I *must* be right! Note that my assertion
is clear b.s. The same can be said for the assertion that the White
House had any direct influence on the decision for Challenger to fly
because there is zero evidence to back it up.

This is also known as a "conspiracy theory" because if it were true,
everyone "involved" would simply deny it under oath. That's great, in
fantasy land, but when the organization is as big as NASA, "cover-ups"
are very hard to do. Someone, somewhere, would want to tell the truth
and would do so. But that never happened because there was no direct
pressure from the White House.

Another huge failure of this forum over many years has been the attitude toward conspiracy theories. Instead of me repeating what I've shared here about that in the past, I will offer this from comedian Bill Burr:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIZOHa2kgPo&t=63

Quote: "Conspiracy theory has gotten a bad name..."
"This country [USofA] started with a conspiracy."

In the case of the 51-L launch decision, it does not have to be dozens of people involved. All it takes to have external pressure is *one* person. And I've already explained that scenario. The top NASA person does not have to share his reasons why he needs to have the shuttle launched right now.

As far as everyone else within NASA is concerned, the situation would look *indistinguishable* from internal-only pressure.

Reagan is dead. So this scenario requires *one person* to keep his mouth shut.


And let's be clear that I did not jump into this thread for the purpose of promoting any theory that there was external pressure to launch. I entered this discussion to voice my view on how it is not smart to eliminate any such theory just because conclusive evidence has not come to light.

The White House never really cared about manned spaceflight, except
during the 60's when the Space Race was a proxy war with the Soviet
Union. During the shuttle program, the Russians were flying their Mir
space station, so comparing the two programs was apples and oranges. We
could always say ours was better because of the shuttle, while they
could always say theirs was better because of Mir.

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

This is *not* an unanswered question. The CAIB did a good job covering
this.

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?

They were "bending over backwards" on every flight leading up to it.

On many flights, NASA was cannibalizing parts off other orbiters to get
the next orbiter ready for flight. There was a clear lack of spare
(flightpath) parts. Since the program was "operational" and the goal
was to ramp up the flight rate, there was a systematic problem with
ignoring trends in data which indicated areas which needed improvement.

Just look at *all* of the systems which were upgraded and changed after
Challenger. It wasn't just the SRBs which needed attention. If the SRB
had not caused loss of life, other problem areas could just as easily
caused injuries or death. For example, brakes were a huge issue. Data
from actual flights, including the condition of the brakes after each
flight, showed a problem. But this was largely ignored before
Challenger. The solution was changes to the brakes, the addition of
nose wheel steering, and the addition of the "drag chute". This added
weight to the orbiter, reducing payload, but it was the right call for
safety.

The entire CAIB report points to the fact that the flight rate was
unsustainable at the staffing levels and funding levels NASA was
getting. Too much resource was focused on flight rate and too little on
safety. This led to a culture of "go fever" in NASA management where
engineers were being asked to "prove it isn't safe to fly" since the
default was "go". The correct safety culture is to default to *not*
flying when there are questions, so that the engineers have to "prove
that it is safe to fly".

Contrary to popular opinion...
The SRB design was actually adequate. They worked successfully on 24 flights. That's 48 successful SRB burns in flight. What proved fatal was not the o-ring design. What killed the astronauts was failure to respect the design limits.

I've stated this long ago...
If you hop into your car, start the engine, and then stomp on the gas so that the revs go well beyond the redline, it is not a big surprise that your engine will subsequently blow. And then if an investigation is done and determines that the o-rings on the pistons failed, you are blowing smoke to tell the world that the reason why your car got destroyed was because of the o-ring failure. Blaming the destruction on o-rings is a diversion from the actual cause:

Your wanton decision to disregard design limits.


As for what you are attributing to CAIB, you appear to be mixing up mishap reports - Gehman v Rogers.

~ CT