Late Jan/Early Feb NASA Disasters

I was just reading an article on the anniversaries of the three major
tragedies in American spaceflight. I never paid much attention to the dates
of the tragedies before. The article had the dates listed -
January 27 - Apollo 1 fire. January 28 -Challenger explosion, and February
1 - Columbia accident.

Isn't it strange that all three accidents have taken place in late
January/early February? I find this very strange. Has NASA ever considered
not launched at all in January and February? Instead of scrapping the space
shuttle just stop all missions during January thru March and they should be
safe. Maybe none of the incidents were directly caused by the January and
February weather. But still, it's kind of strange all three accidents would
take place at the same time of year.

Maybe NASA should hire a staff numerologist
to advise them of the good dates to launch on.

;-)

NASA has launched 10 other missions
(9 shuttle and Apollo 14) in the Jan 15 - Feb 15
timeframe that were successful.

Rusty

The Challenger Disaster, at least, was partially due to an unusual
freeze occuring in Florida at the time. I don't know anything about the
weather at the time of the Apollo fire or the STS-107 launch, but I
suspect the fact that it hasn't been mentioned probably indicates that
it was rather normal January weather in Florida.

On the surface, it does seem odd that America's 3 fatal disasters have
occured in the same time of the year. (Remember though, that although
Columbia burned up on February 1, the launch that caused the fatal
damage was on January 16, 2 weeks before. After that debris hit,
Columbia was doomed no matter what the re-entry date actually was.) But
if you actually work with Statistics, you discover that clumping like
this is common. It's like being at a party or club and finding that two
people have the same birthday. Or the so-called "20 year curse" on the
American Presidency, which actually is more influenced by the American
economic-political cycle and longevity factors than any sort of mystic
influence. Also, if Apollo 13 had been fatal (which it easily COULD
have been), it was in mid-April, completely throwing the pattern down
the drain. I don't think the Russian program shows this kind of
clumping of their disasters. Does anyone know if there is any sort of
clumping by date by unmanned satellite failures?