Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Did the O-rings REALLY do it ???
Message-ID: <1991Feb5.162906.10517@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <38828@cup.portal.com>
Date: Tue, 5 Feb 1991 16:29:06 GMT

In article <38828@cup.portal.com> mmm@cup.portal.com (Mark Robert Thorson) writes:
>... Who is AbuTaha and why should we believe him?

Ali AbuTaha is a semi-crank who's come up with a steady stream of, uh,
interesting theories about the cause of the Challenger disaster.  Some
of them had enough merit, or simply attracted enough attention, for NASA
to spend some effort checking them out.  For example, his claim that
Challenger's SRB had been overstressed by centrifugal force as the
crawler went around the bend in the crawlerway to pad 39B [!] was
decisively refuted by strain-gage measurements during the Atlantis
rollout in the post-Challenger hiatus.  Every now and then the media
rediscovers him and his latest theory.
-- 
"Maybe we should tell the truth?"      | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
"Surely we aren't that desperate yet." |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry