Discussion Challenger Disaster 30th Anniversary

[PhantomCruiser]

I was a teenager co-op student in the drafting dept of a stove manufacturer (Magic Chef at the time). Driving from school to work I heard the news on the radio. My car was in the shop and I'd borrowed my dads truck. All my music was in the car, so I heard the news instead of my tunes.

"If we die we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us, it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life." - - - Gus Grissom

 

[Urwumpe]

Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it.
We were too gung ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work. Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we. The simulators were not working, Mission Control was behind in virtually every area, and the flight and test procedures changed daily. Nothing we did had any shelf life. Not one of us stood up and said, "Dammit, stop!"
I don't know what Thompson's committee will find as the cause, but I know what I find. We are the cause! We were not ready! We did not do our job. We were rolling the dice, hoping that things would come together by launch day, when in our hearts we knew it would take a miracle. We were pushing the schedule and betting that the Cape would slip before we did.
From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: "Tough and Competent." Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control we will know what we stand for.
Competent means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills. Mission Control will be perfect.
When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write "Tough and Competent" on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when you enter the room these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control.

You can't really say it often enough...

 

[Nikogori]

I made a short video based on this mod STS-51L Alternate History Scenarios

It took me a couple of days just to write a few lines of English subtitles...

 

[kamaz]

Source

 

[Andy44]

Source

Here is the gentleman who wrote that letter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Boisjoly

 

[Frilock]

Remembering Roger Boisjoly: He Tried To Stop Shuttle Challenger Launch

 

[Halman]

Now that most of the primary actors have passed on, perhaps a real explanation for the loss of the Challenger can be brought to light. This was far more than a simple executive error like the Columbia loss. There was significant pressure on NASA to launch that day, which has gotten very little press. The flight was to launch a Tracking Data and Relay Satellite, (TDRS), and so had a launch window every day. The launch had been aborted several times already, so there was no reason to fly on that particular day.

But there was intense pressure coming from somewhere high up to have that shuttle in orbit by that evening, because it was an essential part of a dog and pony show that was going to happen during the State Of The Union address. In particular, Ronald Reagan was supposed to talk to the teacher, Mrs. McCauliffe (sp?) live on camera. The entire address was scripted around that, from what I can gather. That was the reason that the address was postponed for a week.

A call was placed to Morton-Thiokol at about 3:00 that morning to try to get the engineers there to sign off on a launch in the conditions existing on the pad. The folks at Morton-Thiokol refused, stating that people were going to die if they launched in those conditions.

My candidate for the heavy in this story is George H. Bush, the Vice-President at the time. I imagine that the conversation went something like "You launch today, or you are going to lose every penny of money for space." The administrator of NASA was the person he was probably addressing. There is simply no other justification for the decision to launch that day. Research had shown that the O-rings were unlikely to seat properly at temperatures below 45 degrees F. The Solid Rocket Booster that failed was at a temp of about 28 degrees at the time of launch.

The payload could have waited a few more days without any problem, so there was no rush to launch on that account. The original schedule had the shuttle nearing the end of its mission by the time that they launched, which would have allowed for lots of testing of the cameras, relay circuits, and the other technology involved in the stunt they were planning.


(Note: I have no proof for my accusations, just well developed inferences.)

 

[GLS]

A call was placed to Morton-Thiokol at about 3:00 that morning to try to get the engineers there to sign off on a launch in the conditions existing on the pad. The folks at Morton-Thiokol refused, stating that people were going to die if they launched in those conditions.

From what I remember, the famous teleconference, which ended with MT giving their go for launch, ended at about 11:30 PM MST (so 01:30 AM) so by 3AM there was nobody to pressure as it was all decided. :shrug:

The payload could have waited a few more days without any problem, so there was no rush to launch on that account.

Yeah, the payload could wait, but Jupiter doesn't wait*. NASA had to get Challenger off the ground to start Centaur tanking tests on Atlantis, so the 2 May launches could go ahead, and in the meantime also launch Columbia.



*) doesn't justify a launch at all costs

 

[Urwumpe]

From what I remember, the famous teleconference, which ended with MT giving their go for launch, ended at about 11:30 PM MST (so 01:30 AM) so by 3AM there was nobody to pressure as it was all decided. :shrug:

The critical conference started at 8:45 PM EST and ended at 11:15 PM EST, according to the Rogers Report. at 10:30 PM EST was a 30 minute caucus with Thiokol engineers which ended with the statement "the secondary will hold before the primary seats".

There was a following conference on 11:30 EST about the SRBs, but rather about recovering the SRBs ASAP to get data about the SRB O-Ring performance at low temperatures that was missing for the launch decision before.

The first members of the launch team were first briefed about the concerns at 5:00 AM, about 6 hours before launch. In the mean time, the ice teams reported lots of ice on the pad.

(If you think meetings until midnight are not that late, please remember that some members of the final meeting had been working since the early morning)

 

[Sbb1413]

This is a sad week in NASA history.

The Challenger:

Today was the 49th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire (Jan. 27 1967)

Monday is the 13th anniversary of the Columbia accident (February 1, 2003)

My father was 3 when the Apollo 1 Accident occurred. He was 22 when the Challenger Accident occurred. I was 7 when the Columbia Accident occurred.
#KalpanaChawala