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New Spin on Challenger 1986
I just saw a new BBC TV production on the Rogers Investigation 1986 with the focus on Feynman. Its claimed to be based on his book "What Do You Care What Other People Think?". I read the book years ago and it departs faaaar away in a crucial point. In this movie its claimed that NASA wanted to launch in cold because they wanted to show the capability to launch spy satellites in any climate. Instead in the book Feynman points to the real reason. Ronald Reagan wanted a "live" interview with the teacher in space during his State of the Union speech in Congress. As far as I know there is still no hard evidence that this was the case. Feynman only explained that NASA had the technical means to do such a TV stunt without much (known) preparations. I suspect they planned to record a live feed with Reagan to the Shuttle and later present it as "live" in the darkened room of the Congress. I find it awkward that there is a whole production line of new spins. A famous book claimed a poor technical presentation, another psychological reasons, a TV docu abnormal strong winds. Now the book that points to the only convincing reason gots such a bad distortion. ## CrossPoint v3.12d R ## |
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New Spin on Challenger 1986
On 1/31/2016 8:53 PM, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article , n- neckar.de says... I just saw a new BBC TV production on the Rogers Investigation 1986 with the focus on Feynman. Its claimed to be based on his book "What Do You Care What Other People Think?". I read the book years ago and it departs faaaar away in a crucial point. In this movie its claimed that NASA wanted to launch in cold because they wanted to show the capability to launch spy satellites in any climate. Instead in the book Feynman points to the real reason. Ronald Reagan wanted a "live" interview with the teacher in space during his State of the Union speech in Congress. The Boston Globe was big on this conspiracy theory for more than a year after the Challenger disaster. That it gets repeated in Feynman's book (if true, I haven't read it yet) is unfortunate. After a year of harping and w/o any evidence whatsoever that the White House was pressuring NASA in any way, shape or form to pull of this supposed SOTUS PR stunt, the Globe quietly buried "the story". I put as much credibility in that story as I did all the Globe stories that ran in the 80's penned by one Fred Kaplan, about money wastage on cruise missile technology of highly doubtful efficacy. Then came Desert Storm. And yet another series of "stories" quietly disappears. Esp. when said weapons were the tool of choice in the Clinton administration and were in fact, in the manner deployed, largely ineffective.... Dave |
#4
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New Spin on Challenger 1986
In article , says...
The Boston Globe was big on this conspiracy theory for more than a year after the Challenger disaster. That it gets repeated in Feynman's book (if true, I haven't read it yet) is unfortunate. After a year of harping and w/o any evidence whatsoever that the White House was pressuring NASA in any way, shape or form to pull of this supposed SOTUS PR stunt, the Globe quietly buried "the story". I put as much credibility in that story as I did all the Globe stories that ran in the 80's penned by one Fred Kaplan, about money wastage on cruise missile technology of highly doubtful efficacy. Then came Desert Storm. And yet another series of "stories" quietly disappears. Esp. when said weapons were the tool of choice in the Clinton administration and were in fact, in the manner deployed, largely ineffective.... At the time, there was huge internal (management) pressure to up the flight rate. Unfortunately, safety issues were being glossed over and parts were being routinely cannibalized from other orbiters to prepare the next for flight. Lack of critical flight spares should have been one, of many, red flags for the program. The projected flight rate was a fantasy, plain and simple. It's worth noting that during the downtime after Challenger *many* problems were fixed in addition to the SRB related issues. For the SRB, the SRB field joint was redesigned, heaters were added to keep the o- rings flexible, and etc. 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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New Spin on Challenger 1986
On Monday, February 1, 2016 at 6:21:32 PM UTC-5, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article , says... The Boston Globe was big on this conspiracy theory for more than a year after the Challenger disaster. That it gets repeated in Feynman's book (if true, I haven't read it yet) is unfortunate. After a year of harping and w/o any evidence whatsoever that the White House was pressuring NASA in any way, shape or form to pull of this supposed SOTUS PR stunt, the Globe quietly buried "the story". I put as much credibility in that story as I did all the Globe stories that ran in the 80's penned by one Fred Kaplan, about money wastage on cruise missile technology of highly doubtful efficacy. Then came Desert Storm. And yet another series of "stories" quietly disappears. Esp. when said weapons were the tool of choice in the Clinton administration and were in fact, in the manner deployed, largely ineffective.... At the time, there was huge internal (management) pressure to up the flight rate. Unfortunately, safety issues were being glossed over and parts were being routinely cannibalized from other orbiters to prepare the next for flight. Lack of critical flight spares should have been one, of many, red flags for the program. The projected flight rate was a fantasy, plain and simple. It's worth noting that during the downtime after Challenger *many* problems were fixed in addition to the SRB related issues. For the SRB, the SRB field joint was redesigned, heaters were added to keep the o- rings flexible, and etc. 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. both challenger and columbia were pure management failures...... a up tick in flying catches, should result in a mandated safety stand down |
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New Spin on Challenger 1986
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New Spin on Challenger 1986
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 |
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New Spin on Challenger 1986
"Stuf4" wrote in message
... 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 -- Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/ CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net |
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New Spin on Challenger 1986
In article ,
says... 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. 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 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. 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". 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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New Spin on Challenger 1986
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 |
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