Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!bfmny0!tneff
From: tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: Weekly World News publishes Challenger tape transcript
Message-ID: <57477530@bfmny0.BFM.COM>
Date: 28 Jan 91 01:54:19 GMT
Reply-To: tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff)
Lines: 61

I'm not necessarily defending the WWN, but a few points may not be clear
to readers of this thread.

 * This was considerably more elaborate than their normal "talking cactus" 
   treatments.  It was a four page spread with sidebars, diagrams and
   photographs.  I have not typed in the articles but I probably will:
   net readers should make their own decisions about the contents.

 * WWN is definitely a "family" rag, so if there WERE expletives in the
   original tape, WWN might easily have deleted them.  Of course the
   Times or WPost would do so more responsibly, inserting "[expletive]"
   at the appropriate points.  But they don't have tapes.

 * The article repeatedly refers to a "pieced together" account, and
   mentions that "several" crew members carried personal cassette
   recorders (PCRs).  Later, McAuliffe's recorder is explicitly
   described as having been found, but it doesn't say hers was the ONLY
   one.  I agree that it would be difficult, for instance, for Christa's
   PCR (on the middeck) to capture what Resnik was saying up on the
   flight deck, or what Smith and/or Scobee were saying to her as she
   passed out.  But if several PCRs were involved, their complementary
   contents might indeed be "pieced together" to produce a single,
   possibly incomplete transcript.

 * Why would a disreputable rag like WWN end up with this, rather than
   major, responsible organs like the NY Times?  One possibility is
   that, simply because the big guys WERE so responsible about it and
   tried to go through the courts to force NASA to release what it had,
   their hands were tied: even if someone walked in the front door with
   a satchel of tapes and transcripts, they couldn't publish them
   without risking contempt of court!  The other point is money.  Assume
   some staffer-geek made a few extracurricular visits to the Xerox
   machine one weekend.  Who'll pay him the MOST for his scoop?

 * Is there too little NASA-jock lingo present for this to be real?
   Maybe.  If I were the WWN editor I might unscrupulously delete
   anything that sounded too technical for my readers, or that I
   couldn't understand myself.  There are several multi-second pauses in
   the WWN version that would be hard to explain in a real crisis
   cockpit full of conscious astronauts.  Again, I'm not defending WWN's
   integrity here (tough decision :-); rather, I'm trying to evaluate
   this as source material.

 * Why would someone say 'ditch procedure' when (as we think) no such
   thing exists for the shuttle?  Perhaps because the person talking,
   besides staring his death in the face, was trying to soothe his
   scared crewmates by implying that it'd be just like a fighter plane
   ditch.  The "No way!" immediately following suggests that someone
   wasn't going for it.

 * I have to believe that the whole experience for people strapped into
   the middeck as helpless passengers would be a lot different from that
   of the pilot, commander and other flight deck personnel.  It strikes
   me as unrealistic to expect all seven people, including a satellite
   engineer and a schoolteacher, to behave on cue as the competent,
   steely-eyed stoics of NASA myth.  

------------

Personally and for what it's worth, I would rather think of them going
out to the 23rd Psalm than a checklist anyway...