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From: desj@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (David desJardins)
Newsgroups: net.columbia
Subject: Re: Challenger SRBs
Message-ID: <11676@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Sun, 2-Feb-86 02:32:17 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.11676
Posted: Sun Feb  2 02:32:17 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 3-Feb-86 05:14:50 EST
References: <4270@mhuxd.UUCP> <958@ihuxx.UUCP> <977@burl.UUCP>
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Reply-To: desj@brahms.UUCP (David desJardins)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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In article <977@burl.UUCP> rcj@burl.UUCP (Curtis Jackson) writes:
>                                   ...  My father was intimately involved
>in the shuttle program on the safety end of the business for about 8 or 9
>years.  He called the director of flight safety for the SRBs in Florida
>shortly after the explosion and was told that the pilot knew there was
>a problem and had made the decision to jettison both the SRBs and the ET
>and abort back to ground, but that the thing exploded before he could
>accomplish any of this.
>
>This means that there had to be air-to-ground audio traffic on this matter,
>but we never heard any.

   That is exactly what it means.  Not only did we not hear any, but my
understanding is that NASA has specifically denied that there was such
traffic.  NASA has admitted that they have information which is not
being released (e.g. pictures from other angles), but I find it *very*
hard to believe that they would lie about something like this.  They
would certainly be found out; obviously they can't keep the air-to-ground
traffic (or anything else about the accident) secret forever.
   If we find out in a few days or weeks that this is in fact true NASA
is certainly going to feel some heat!

   Also, does anyone know for sure if there is in fact a capability for
abort before the SRBs have burned out?  I seem to recall that there was
something in the early flights but that they weren't too confident about
its chances for success.

>Also, from a (possibly) less reliable source:  The thing that came down on
>a parachute that took forever (almost 20 mins.) to fall was supposedly
>the "black box"; just like the flight recorders used on airliners.  I don't
>know if it was successfully recovered.

   This I am virtually certain is false; there is no such object on the
shuttle.

   -- David desJardins