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New Spin on Challenger 1986



 
 
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  #11  
Old March 7th 16, 04:03 PM posted to sci.space.history
Stuf4
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 554
Default New Spin on Challenger 1986

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.

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.

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.

~ CT
  #12  
Old March 7th 16, 11:30 PM posted to sci.space.history
Greg \(Strider\) Moore
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 752
Default New Spin on Challenger 1986

"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

  #13  
Old March 7th 16, 11:39 PM posted to sci.space.history
Greg \(Strider\) Moore
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 752
Default New Spin on Challenger 1986

"Stuf4" wrote in message
...

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.


Yes it is.

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.


Then go find the evidence. But no, you haven't done that. No one has done
that. And note Jeff didn't say there was some evidence that was discarded
as false.
He said there was NO evidence. It's not that evidence was found and
discarded. It was that no evidence was found. If say a memo had been found
saying, "The president wants this launch today so he can mention it in the
SOTU" and then people discarded that you might have a point. But there was
ZERO, NADA, NONE. You can't discard what you don't have.


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.


No, it doesn't take "just one person". It wasn't decided that way.


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.


Right, Reagan got on the phone and called the NASA administrator himself.
Now you're just making up ****.



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.


And I still believe there's an invisible pink elephant living in your house.
You can't eliminate the theory.


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.


No, it did NOT work successfully on 24 flights. Feynman was VERY clear on
this. It didn't fail catastrophically but it did FAIL its design criteria on
a number of flights. Now you've gone from making up evidence to
contradicting the actual data.


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.


NO. Wrong. Considering O-rings FAILED on previous flights, the better
analogy is you get in your car, drive within the design parameters to the
store and back and take apart the engine and find the O-rings that were NOT
supposed to be exposed to hot gasses, let alone erode AT ALL, were suffering
damage on a fair number of flights.

So the fact is the SRBs previous to 51-L were NOT operating within spec.
This was quite clear. This had several people worried. And yet, they flew
anyway because the pressure was on to pretend the shuttle was operational
when it clearly wasn't. And as Jeff pointed out, this wasn't the only
critical system that was NOT performing within specs.




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

~ CT


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

  #14  
Old March 8th 16, 03:43 AM posted to sci.space.history
Stuf4
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 554
Default New Spin on Challenger 1986

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

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

snip
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.


Now you have dismissed a huge factor that drives the internal-only theory.

If SOTU was neither a driving factor in an external-pressure scenario as well as an internal-only-pressure scenario, that leaves just one answer as to why 51-L happened:

The NASA leaders responsible for the launch decision are just plain stupid. They make decisions with reckless abandon.
At least on that one day.

The scenario you & Jeff have subscribed to is along the lines of "schedule pressure". But that theory does not hold water, because it does nothing to explain why the 51-L launch was scrubbed when concerns were small, yet it was launched when concerns were HUGE.

The SOTU pressure theory *does* explain that.

The unanswered question for me is whether the SOTU pressure was internal only, or if there was an external driver. And the facts pointing toward the latter have been presented here. You are certainly free to dismiss those facts as readily as you would dismiss the (non-)relevance of specific heats.

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.


Right there is a perfect example of the disconnect going on in this exchange:
- Your quote says "correlation is NOT causation".
- I have been here pointing out the deficiency of that logic. The accurate statement is that "correlation does *not necessarily* indicate causation."

Huge difference.

The first leads people to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The second says, "Hmmm, there still could be a baby in that bathwater."

Every causation has a correlation. So to hold that 'correlation is not causation' in every single case is absolutely faulty.

Your last statement is blatantly faulty because I've already presented one way that external pressure could have been applied where there would be absolutely no trace of evidence. That would be where Reagan had a face-to-face talk with the person running NASA. The purpose of the meeting could have been to discuss their Tee-time, or whatever, and this pressure could have been applied in the most casual of statements.

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.


A famous quote from the last century is, "If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit!"
That is a classic example where lack of evidence leads to the throwing out of a very obvious scenario of how a tragedy happened.

So to summarize this discussion, it is you & Jeff in the courtroom telling the world, "If the SOTU doesn't fit, you must acquit!"

....while there are many people in the peanut gallery who just don't buy into that reasoning. And this analogy would be a much better "fit" if there was any evidence that SOTU was not a driver. I'm not aware of a single fact that points to that conclusion. The glove fits perfectly, and you are still choosing to acquit.

~ CT
  #15  
Old March 8th 16, 04:44 AM posted to sci.space.history
Jeff Findley[_6_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,307
Default New Spin on Challenger 1986

In article ,
says...

Contrary to popular opinion...
The SRB design was actually adequate.


This is absolutely, completely, false.

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.


Again, this is incorrect.

There was actually ample evidence before Challenger that the field joint
was not safe. The o-rings were *never* designed to come into contact
with combustion gases, yet it had happened on *several* flights *before*
Challenger. In fact, that data is what prompted the Thiokol engineers
to recommend *not* launching Challenger on that frigid morning.

Note that playing Russian Roulette with a revolver can "work
successfully" a few times too. That is, until it doesn't, and it kills
you.

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


Fine. The "Rogers Commission Report" then. At least I'm not trying to
pin the Challenger accident on a dead president. That's bat**** crazy.

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.
  #16  
Old March 8th 16, 04:46 AM posted to sci.space.history
Stuf4
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 554
Default New Spin on Challenger 1986

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

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.


Yes it is.


Jeff's statement is so blatantly deficient that it can be readily refuted through all of about 60 seconds worth of effort in quoting Wikipedia. Anyone who maintains that there is "zero evidence" to support a strong connection between the White House and the NASA administration, after you've been told the simple facts of that strong connection, are choosing to be willfully ignorant.

"I was on your transition team to become president, and now you've put me in charge of launching your space shuttles."

That is hardly zero evidence. It is what is known as "circumstantial evidence". The fingerprints are found all over it. I would readily agree that the abundance of fingerprints do not constitute proof of external pressure, there is absolutely no basis for making a statement that being covered with fingerprints amounts to "no evidence".

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.


Then go find the evidence. But no, you haven't done that. No one has done
that. And note Jeff didn't say there was some evidence that was discarded
as false.
He said there was NO evidence. It's not that evidence was found and
discarded. It was that no evidence was found. If say a memo had been found
saying, "The president wants this launch today so he can mention it in the
SOTU" and then people discarded that you might have a point. But there was
ZERO, NADA, NONE. You can't discard what you don't have.


We are talking about the conclusion of investigation reports that tell the story that "The O-rings did it." Quite obviously these official reports were horribly deficient. Yet people with the integrity of Neil Armstrong & Chuck Yeager decided to sign off on that story that they presented to the world.

As for the fact that no memo has been found, you might be aware that presidents typically have a shrewd awareness of how it is smart to remain insulated in certain situations.

I've already explained how the pressure could have been applied with no paper trail at all, strictly through a person-to-person talk. But say that there *WAS* a paper trail...
Is it inconceivable that Nixon can manage to erase tape, while Reagan was incapable of burning a memo?

One obvious possible explanation as to why evidence was not found was because evidence was destroyed. These kinds of things happen, I'm sure Bill Burr would be happy to remind you.

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.


No, it doesn't take "just one person". It wasn't decided that way.


I wasn't there. I don't know for sure.
You, however, appear to be sure in your belief.

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.


Right, Reagan got on the phone and called the NASA administrator himself.
Now you're just making up ****.


You don't think presidents make direct phone calls to the top of their NASA administration? My expectation is that type of phone call would hardly be considered unusual. And I say that for *any* person holding the job of NASA Administrator, let alone a *crony* placed in that job.

Let's be clear:
In January 1986, the person who was placed in charge of running NASA was a Reagan crony.

How hard is it to imagine a phone call made by Reagan to his bud? Yes, I would agree that without a phone record, to say that such a phone call happened *would* be making it up.

Notice that I have never presented such a scenario as fact. My point has been that it is not a huge stretch of the imagination to picture such a phone call.

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.


And I still believe there's an invisible pink elephant living in your house.
You can't eliminate the theory.


Furthermore, if there was strong circumstantial evidence that pink elephants exist, and that one is living in my house, then I would be quite foolish to eliminate the theory.

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.


No, it did NOT work successfully on 24 flights. Feynman was VERY clear on
this. It didn't fail catastrophically but it did FAIL its design criteria on
a number of flights. Now you've gone from making up evidence to
contradicting the actual data.


I will take this opportunity to retell a very old joke:

Q - "What do you call the person who graduates last in medical school."

A - "Doctor."


Just because several SRBs came *close* to failing does not at all mean they failed. They all succeeded. They all "graduated", if you will. The very reason why the joints were designed with two o-rings was just in case the first one didn't hold.

- The SRB o-rings were a successful design.
- The wheel brakes were a successful design.
- The entire Space Shuttle was a successful design.

This is not to say that it could not be improved upon. But it is irrefutable fact that the entire system as a whole worked successfully 24 times. It worked each and every time the design limits were honored.

And it is very easy to make the prediction that if those design limits were honored in the launch of 51-L, the shuttle would have had 25 straight successful missions.

The reason why that prediction is so easy to make is because even when NASA disregarded the design limits, Challenger came very close to making it into orbit. It was that last wind shear that bit them. Gene Thomas & company rolled the dice, and they very nearly got away with it.

And even with the SRB seal that failed...
There are 360 degrees in a circle. That failure point could have happened at a *majority* of points around that circle, and the worst impact to the orbiter Challenger would have been a slight loss of thrust in getting them to orbit. That seal could have failed in a different point, and they *still* could have had a completely successful mission.

If a non-catastrophic failure had happened that day, it is not hard to imagine that a possible solution NASA would have done was to not change the o-ring seal design at all, but simply to honor the temperature limits back to the region where it has been shown that the seals work effectively.

(Hardly the smartest response, but a possible response.)

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.


NO. Wrong. Considering O-rings FAILED on previous flights, the better
analogy is you get in your car, drive within the design parameters to the
store and back and take apart the engine and find the O-rings that were NOT
supposed to be exposed to hot gasses, let alone erode AT ALL, were suffering
damage on a fair number of flights.

So the fact is the SRBs previous to 51-L were NOT operating within spec.
This was quite clear. This had several people worried. And yet, they flew
anyway because the pressure was on to pretend the shuttle was operational
when it clearly wasn't. And as Jeff pointed out, this wasn't the only
critical system that was NOT performing within specs.


Prior to 51-L, the total number of SRB joints that failed in flight was *zero*. This is a fact.

You say "O-rings FAILED". What you are describing is the fact that primary o-rings had experienced blow-by. In all such cases, the secondary o-rings held the seal. This is exactly why the seals were designed with that second o-ring.

An analogy here would be to look at the record of a parachutist...
In 24 jumps, the parachutist lived. Perfectly fine landing. In certain cases, the parachutist cut away from the primary chute and opened the reserve.. Yet still, the record shows a 100% success rate. The very reason why you jump with a reserve is because you might have to use it.

There are many, many cases where reserve parachutes have been used. Nobody says, "GROUND ALL PARACHUTING IMMEDIATELY UNTIL WE REDESIGN THE PRIMARY CHUTE." It is a perfectly fine design that works quite well. If you had to use your reserve, you might decide you don't ever want to jump again, but there will be thousands who will continue to do so on the very same parachute design that was too scary for you.

I will repeat:
- The SRB design was totally adequate.
- The entire space shuttle design was adequate.

Yes, there was huge room for improvement. But it worked.
And it sure worked a lot better when the system was not wantonly over-revved.

~ CT
  #17  
Old March 8th 16, 05:28 AM posted to sci.space.history
Stuf4
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 554
Default New Spin on Challenger 1986

From Jeff Findley:
In article ,
says...

Contrary to popular opinion...
The SRB design was actually adequate.


This is absolutely, completely, false.

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.


Again, this is incorrect.

There was actually ample evidence before Challenger that the field joint
was not safe. The o-rings were *never* designed to come into contact
with combustion gases, yet it had happened on *several* flights *before*
Challenger. In fact, that data is what prompted the Thiokol engineers
to recommend *not* launching Challenger on that frigid morning.


If the position that you & Greg are espousing was accurate, then Thiokol would have *never* recommended a launch. Not for any shuttle launch. And not under any conditions. Until the seal was redesigned.

Note that playing Russian Roulette with a revolver can "work
successfully" a few times too. That is, until it doesn't, and it kills
you.


That "Russian roulette" quote regarding Challenger is a very famous one. Yet it is totally MISLEADING.

It is misleading because the SRB design was a manageable risk. The wheel brakes were a manageable risk. The tile system was a manageable risk. Etc.

Even in Russian roulette, there is a way to make that activity perfectly safe. Never point the gun at your head. MAO!

(Btw, last year it was reported that a fan of the Deer Hunter blew his head off trying to recreate the iconic movie scene.)

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


Fine. The "Rogers Commission Report" then. At least I'm not trying to
pin the Challenger accident on a dead president. That's bat**** crazy.


WHOA! Let's be very clear that *absolutely nothing* I've stated in this thread, nor ever in this forum, is pointing any blame on Ronald Reagan.

Let's say that tomorrow a memo comes to light...
"Dear NASA, be sure to have that space shuttle launched before my SOTU talk..
--signed RWR"

If that were to happen, I would *STILL* not place any blame on Reagan for what happened. Neither Reagan, nor anyone in the entire White House had the expertise to know that launching on the frigid morning of January 28th was not at all smart.

It was the responsibility of an entire chain of command that ran straight through NASA KSC & JSC ...a whole string of people who knew better. It was their job to know better.

If the president were to direct someone to jump off a bridge, and that person died. Then I would hold the president partly to blame, because it would be easy for the president to know the possible consequences for the order given. But if it's a bungy jump, and the president doesn't have a clue as to how much weight that bungy has been tested to, then I would *not* fault the prez.
If the bungy operator knows that the system has been thoroughly tested to work quite well with a 200 lb person, and then wantonly presses ahead with the presidential directive to push a person off the bridge who weighs twice what the system was ever tested with, then I place the fault of the subsequent carnage on the operator. Not the president.


On top of all that...
Even if it *were* proper to blame a president in such a case, I have not said here that Reagan ever did any such thing. Anyone who has read and understood my position will be clear that what I have done here is to show how I am not as willing as others here to outright reject the theory that NASA had external pressure to launch.


But there is a more important distinction to be made between these positions. One side treats the one that is not agreed with with respect. The other side is dismissive to the point of using terms like "bat**** crazy". OM may be gone, but the level of close-mindedness and disrespect displayed in this forum has not diminished. Very sad.

~ CT
  #18  
Old March 8th 16, 05:47 AM posted to sci.space.history
Stuf4
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 554
Default New Spin on Challenger 1986

I said:
But there is a more important distinction to be made between these
positions. One side treats the one that is not agreed with with respect.
The other side is dismissive to the point of using terms like "bat****
crazy". OM may be gone, but the level of close-mindedness and disrespect
displayed in this forum has not diminished. Very sad.


....and along the theme of accurately attributing fault, I should say that the reason why SSH became a cesspool was never the fault of any one person in particular. I saw it to be the fault of the group as a whole.

If there is ever a case (cyber or non) where one person is being abusively treated, then other members of the community have the opportunity to speak up to voice objection to such behavior. There is a critical mass where a certain number of people are acting abusively, and another certain percentage are choosing to remain silent on the matter, forming a tacit base of approval. THAT is when a turning point is reached and a community becomes toxic.

The problem here was never OM as an individual. It was everyone who chose the path of not respecting all members. And it was everyone who remained silent, enabling such toxicity to persist.

This is hardly a problem limited to this forum. Nor limited to Usenet. Nor limited to the web. It is a problem that has persisted throughout all of human history.


....and in many ways, it is quite similar to the problem that caused the 51-L carnage. There was a critical mass of people who pressed with a plan that was obviously abusive to the hardware. And there was a critical mass of people who quite clearly knew much better, but for whatever reason chose to remain silent.

The last time I was at the Cape was in 2013. I spent time with Fred Gregory. He is one of the many who kept silent, sitting on console in Houston Control that morning.

~ CT
  #19  
Old March 8th 16, 12:16 PM posted to sci.space.history
Jeff Findley[_6_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,307
Default New Spin on Challenger 1986

In article ,
says...

From Jeff Findley:
In article ,
says...

Contrary to popular opinion...
The SRB design was actually adequate.


This is absolutely, completely, false.

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.


Again, this is incorrect.

There was actually ample evidence before Challenger that the field joint
was not safe. The o-rings were *never* designed to come into contact
with combustion gases, yet it had happened on *several* flights *before*
Challenger. In fact, that data is what prompted the Thiokol engineers
to recommend *not* launching Challenger on that frigid morning.


If the position that you & Greg are espousing was accurate, then Thiokol would have *never* recommended a launch. Not for any shuttle launch. And not under any conditions. Until the seal was redesigned.


Correct. Just as Columbia's wing leading edge RCC was never designed to
handle the impact of foam during launch. And just as the brakes turned
out to not be good at (differential) steering the shuttle on the runway
during landing and providing the necessary braking when there was a high
crosswind. There are other examples. I have stacks of Countdown
magazines somewhere in the basement detailing all of the issues found
which would need to be addressed.

Note that playing Russian Roulette with a revolver can "work
successfully" a few times too. That is, until it doesn't, and it kills
you.


That "Russian roulette" quote regarding Challenger is a very famous one. Yet it is totally MISLEADING.

It is misleading because the SRB design was a manageable risk. The wheel brakes were a manageable risk. The tile system was a manageable risk. Etc.


No, it wasn't. Cold made it worse, but there were *other* factors
involved, like the "out of round" flown SRB casings being reused. The
design of the insulation and sealing "putty" was changed as well. Also,
the joints underwent rotation when under pressure about the joint due to
the SRB casing expansion not being uniform. None of this was not well
understood until after Challenger. The fact was, it was just a matter
of time before a field joint failed due to the complex design simply not
working as originally intended (i.e. the o-rings were never supposed to
have been exposed to hot combustion gases because they themselves would
"erode" under those conditions).

In fact, the company I work for (then SDRC) used pictures of a finite
element model of an entire redesigned shuttle SRB casing in their
advertising literature for many years, because it was one of the biggest
finite element models ever created at the time. The models quantified
the severity of the joint rotation in the original joint design and that
it was fixed in the redesigned joint that incorporated an extra "capture
feature" which would seal better as the joint rotated.

That analysis technology, and the computational power needed to run it,
was simply not as mature when the shuttle was originally designed in the
1970s, so the joint rotation issue was simply not understood until after
the Challenger disaster.

Even in Russian roulette, there is a way to make that activity perfectly safe. Never point the gun at your head. MAO!


Where the SRB field joint leak was pointed had a huge impact on
Challenger. Had it been pointing away from the ET, the crew might have
had a shot at "riding it out". But it was the blowtorch effect on the
aft SRB strut attachment that doomed Challenger.


The fact is that NASA had been accumulating *a lot* of data on the
shuttle. But, since they were trying to up the flight rate (to where
their management had claimed it would be) there was simply little to no
time or resources available to comb through that data and find issues
like the SRBs, the brakes, and etc. Again, there were *many* critical
systems which were updated during the Challenger downtime, not just the
SRB field joints.

The downtime following Challenger gave all the engineers the time to
comb through data they already had, but had not truly analyzed. It also
gave NASA time to order spare parts to stop the cannibalizing of parts
off other orbiters.

And finally, but most importantly, Congress gave NASA more money to fix
and operate the shuttle while barring (by law) launch of future
commercial payloads by the shuttle (after the backlog of manifested
payloads was exhausted). At the same time the USAF, who was already
looking "for a way out" due to schedule, cost, and technical problems
with the Vandenberg shuttle site, left the program and restarted Titan
flights followed by the EELV program.

In other words, two of the shuttle's triad of customers *completely*
left. This solved the biggest problem of all, which was the fact that
the shuttle would *never* live up to its safety, high flight rate, and
low cost per launch promises since the three were inextricably linked
together by the overall design which could not be changed.

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.
  #20  
Old March 8th 16, 12:27 PM posted to sci.space.history
Jeff Findley[_6_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,307
Default New Spin on Challenger 1986

In article ,
says...

I said:
But there is a more important distinction to be made between these
positions. One side treats the one that is not agreed with with respect.
The other side is dismissive to the point of using terms like "bat****
crazy". OM may be gone, but the level of close-mindedness and disrespect
displayed in this forum has not diminished. Very sad.


...and along the theme of accurately attributing fault, I should say that the reason why SSH became a cesspool was never the fault of any one person in particular. I saw it to be the fault of the group as a whole.

If there is ever a case (cyber or non) where one person is being abusively treated, then other members of the community have the opportunity to speak up to voice objection to such behavior. There is a critical mass where a certain number of people are acting abusively, and another certain percentage are choosing to remain silent on the matter, forming a tacit base of approval. THAT is when a turning point is reached and a community becomes toxic.

The problem here was never OM as an individual. It was everyone who chose the path of not respecting all members. And it was everyone who remained silent, enabling such toxicity to persist.

This is hardly a problem limited to this forum. Nor limited to Usenet. Nor limited to the web. It is a problem that has persisted throughout all of human history.


...and in many ways, it is quite similar to the problem that caused the 51-L carnage. There was a critical mass of people who pressed with a plan that was obviously abusive to the hardware. And there was a critical mass of people who quite clearly knew much better, but for whatever reason chose to remain silent.

The last time I was at the Cape was in 2013. I spent time with Fred Gregory. He is one of the many who kept silent, sitting on console in Houston Control that morning.


Yes, the "culture" at NASA was a huge part of the problem. The culture
was to up the flight rate to what it needed to be to serve its three
masters (NASA, USAF, and commercial). It was unreasonable pressure that
went back to the beginnings of the program, long before the Reagan
Administration.

But, the biggest failure was the original, compromised, design. The
orbiter was far bigger than NASA intended due to the USAF payload
requirements (i.e. optical spysats) resulting in a large, costly,
vehicle design ripe with corners to cut (like going with SRBs to lower
development costs). Also, its cross-range was unreasonably large due to
the USAF requirement for a single (polar) orbit mission with landing at
the launch site resulting in large wings and fragile TPS. This all led
to side-mounting the orbiter on a large disposable tank (which ended up
shedding chunks of its insulation during each and every launch,
ultimately dooming Columbia).

The joint USAF/NASA design was quite simply flawed from the very start.
Want another example of this sort of insanity? Look at the JSF program.
It's a technological, budgetary, and scheduling disaster.

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.
 




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