A Note on the Challenger Investigation

"For Sweden" (rallybeetle) 01/28/2016 at 15:21 • Filed to: Challenger, NASA, Safety

5

13

Gakwer published !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! today marking the 30th anniversary of the Challenger disaster. It is a post that will interest many here, so I want to add some context to Tom Scocca’s writing.

The thesis of the post was that the U.S. Government hid the truth; that the victims were conscious and aware of their fate from the solid rocket booster explosion until impacting the ocean surface.

He mentions that on the night following the disaster, President Reagan gave the famous line “‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’” That’s not wrong, and even if it did give the impression that the astronauts died in the explosion, it certainly looked that way to anyone watching on TV. President Reagan wasn’t going to wait for the investigation to finish before addressing the nation.

Second, Mr. Scocca writes that NASA didn’t want the public to know all the grizzly details. Some of this is standard procedure; flip open the accident of a high speed airline crash, and you won’t find descriptions of investigators sorting human intestines from hydraulic lines and wire harnesses. The rest was a deliberate decision by NASA, who’s main goal was to return to flight. This decision has been reviewed and debated, usually negatively, in accident investigation courses ever since.

Mr. Scocca also mentions that it took a whole two years for facts to come out. That’s not surprising. Major aerospace accident investigations take time. For one as unique as Challenger, two years is pretty good.

Furthermore, Mr. Scocca mentions that a U.S. Coast Guard officer, participating in the recovery, lied to the media about what he found, under pressure from NASA. I don’t know if NASA told him to lie, but he definitely shouldn’t have given such details to the media. Investigators will, or at least should, never pass along evidence to the media until the investigation is complete; it only causes problems. If the U.S. Coast Guard officer wanted to protect his conscious while respecting NASA’s wishes, he should have said, “no comment.” Watch any post-accident news conference, that is an oft-repeated line.

Shortly after the Germanwings 9525 crash in 2015, a French prosecutor jumped on TV to say the co-pilot committed a mass murder-suicide. It doesn’t matter if he was right or wrong, it changed everything around the investigation. Suddenly, additional media and political pressure pushed on an investigation team still in the fact finding phase. Now they had pressure to prove or disprove a particular theory, instead of starting analysis after collecting all the available evidence.

Finally, my own comments on the Challenger investigation. NASA didn’t have an independent accident investigation board, so they made one !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ; Chuck Yeager, Richard Feynman, Neil Armstrong, Sally Ride, etc. A very capable bunch, but not accident investigators. If the U.S. Government wanted a truly-independent commission, they would have used the National Transportation Safety Board, an independent agency will all the necessary experience. Instead, they made an independent agency that had to turn to NASA to learn how to conduct the investigation.

davedave1111 > For Sweden 01/28/2016 at 15:29

0

I was just reading Appendix F a few minutes ago. I don’t think you can criticise the investigation given how utterly scathing Feynman was - and especially bearing in mind that by that stage in his career no-one in their right mind would have thought he could be swayed by pressure, or that he’d be tactful at the expense of truthfulness.

I’d argue that unlike an airliner crash, the NTSB wasn’t a suitable body to investigate - not because they couldn’t run the investigation, but because they couldn’t adequately communicate their findings.

Jcarr > For Sweden 01/28/2016 at 15:29

0

Thank you. A breath of fresh air compared to the “Evil Reagan lied to everyone” garbage over there.

For Sweden > davedave1111 01/28/2016 at 15:31

0

Why do you think the NTSB couldn’t adequately communicate their findings? Writing reports is a pretty big part of the NTSB’s mission.

ttyymmnn > For Sweden 01/28/2016 at 15:40

0

I’m intrigued by your comments. I haven’t read the Gawker post (Gawker isn’t exactly my go-to source for aerospace news and commentary). Are you suggesting that NASA did, indeed, cover up what they learned about the disaster and the fate of the astronauts? I’ve read plenty of narratives that suggest that the astronauts may have survived the explosion, only to die when the flight deck section hit the water. But none of them have been compelling enough for me to be certain whether or not that happened.

Up until Challenger , things had been going pretty well for the program. NASA had always wanted Shuttle launches to become as routine as a plane taking off. However, there’s never anything routine about putting a group of people on top of a barely contained explosive chemical reaction. Danger is inherent in this business (the Apollo 1 accident anniversary is also this week), and I imagine the astronauts accepted those risks. Which is also not to say that they deserved it. But it’s a dangerous business, and always will be.

davedave1111 > For Sweden 01/28/2016 at 15:40

1

The NTSB doesn’t normally communicate technical matters to the general public. Their findings are public, but not written for the public.

It’s notable how much of the Rogers’ Commission’s staff were communicators - teachers, PR guys, media relations specialists, authors, and so-on - rather than primarily investigators.

For Sweden > ttyymmnn 01/28/2016 at 15:49

0

I don’t think they covered it up; they didn’t purposefully mislead anyone, but they didn’t tell enough. Any horror stories might have delayed a return to flight, but they could have told that story respectfully.

I have previously compared this to news coverage of the September 11 attacks. Everyone saw the horror of people jumping from buildings and the towers collapsing, yet not many pictures exist of the body parts that littered the scene; it’s just not necessary to show them.

As for the risk, the astronauts and everyone involved accepts the risk, but accepting the risk and seeking to reduce the risk are not mutually exclusive.

For Sweden > davedave1111 01/28/2016 at 15:52

0

Which is telling; the intended audience should have been NASA, the people who most needed to listen.

ttyymmnn > For Sweden 01/28/2016 at 16:12

0

I’m sorry, For Sweden, but I’m still not entirely sure where you’re going with this. It seems that in your first paragraph you are arguing that the full story of the astronauts’ demise should have been told but, in the second paragraph, you seem to be saying that any such revelations would have been gratuitous. I’m not trying to be difficult, but I think you have some powerful insights into the investigation of Challenger , and I’m just trying to figure out exactly what you are trying to say.

As I mentioned above, the parallels between Challenger and Apollo 1 are quite salient. I think there may well have been a rush to launch Challenger , just like there was almost unbearable pressure on North American and NASA back in 1967 to get Apollo 1 in the air. In my readings about Apollo 1, it seems that the pure oxygen atmosphere in the command module was a known danger, but in an effort to save weight and complexity they decided to continue with it. The source of the electrical anomaly that sparked the inferno was never definitely determined (at least I don’t think it was), but that may also have been a result of working on a deadline. I imagine that in any engineering problem as complex as a space ship there are certain technical decisions that are taken based on a determination of the lowest amount of risk possible, since risk can never be avoided completely.

As for President Regan, I bully believe the Great Communicator (or at least his speech writers, who were some of the best in the business) was just trying to be poetic.

For Sweden > ttyymmnn 01/28/2016 at 16:21

0

I’m saying that, in an effort to make the story as PG as possible, NASA left out the fact the astronauts were conscious after the explosion. I think that was an overreaction; that stating that fact would be appropriate to the story. Mr. Scocca says NASA should have gone into all the grizzly details in the interests of full disclosure.

ttyymmnn > For Sweden 01/28/2016 at 16:34

2

Okay. I just went and skimmed the Gawker piece and, based on the title alone, it’s typical Gawker hyperbole. Yes, I agree that telling the public exactly what happened might have been the right thing to do. But where would that have left NASA? The American public, especially Congress, would have been clamoring for ejection seats and armored crew capsules and all manner of major redesigns that would have put the Shuttle program back years or even derailed it entirely. Thirty years on, it makes for an interesting discussion, if only a philosophical one, that perhaps NASA carried out the investigation in its own best interests, and one might also argue that they were being altruistic in their concerns about the best interests of the public (I’ve seen some of what purport to be the photos from the Germanwings crash, and I don’t think that anybody outside of the investigation really needs to see them). But I also think NASA would have been seriously damaged by that information being made public at the time. This may not be a popular opinion, but I think that there is always a difference between doing the right thing and doing the best thing. So, perhaps we are really on the same page, and that the right thing would have been to disclose the nature of the crew’s death, but the best thing was to withold the gory details.

davedave1111 > For Sweden 01/28/2016 at 16:48

0

Well, yes and no. The root cause was a failure to get the message across in communication between engineers and management, but apart from that the public demanded to know how it could happen and deserved an answer.

Technical resources sufficient to investigate the problem were also thrown into the mix, and the technical fault was identified, but it was apparent from a very early stage that the fault had been known about beforehand and the launch went ahead anyway. That was rightly where the investigation was focused.

Arguably, the HW Bush administration understood the bigger picture presented by the Commission, too: management failings were the result of overly ambitious targets set by politicians. As a result the Launch Services Purchase Act took a great deal of pressure off the Shuttle as a payload delivery vehicle. Even more arguably, it was that pressure going back on to an extent that indirectly caused the Columbia disaster.

AuthiCooper1300 > ttyymmnn 01/28/2016 at 17:31

1

As a matter of fact, the gory details are never necessary (although that is only what some people want to write or read about). Withholding information, on the other hand, will jeopardise your credibility in the long run.

The reasons why NASA acted that way may have been manifold and not a concerted effort. I suppose some people wanted to be careful, others wanted to be discreet and some may even have wanted to keep as much stuff secret as possible. As long as there are humans around no organisation is entirely monolithic. Besides, I cannot possibly imagine the collective state of shock they all must have been in.

A year ago or so I found this blog which I found extremely interesting. There are some very personal insights on this business. AFAIK the most chilling statement is “I rather be lucky than be right”. Maybe you know it already:

https://waynehale.wordpress.com/

ttyymmnn > AuthiCooper1300 01/28/2016 at 17:35

0

I’ll check this out. Thanks for the reply and the link.