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From: lmc@cisden.UUCP (Lyle McElhaney)
Newsgroups: net.columbia
Subject: Re: Challenger SRBs
Message-ID: <486@cisden.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 7-Feb-86 16:21:26 EST
Article-I.D.: cisden.486
Posted: Fri Feb  7 16:21:26 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 11-Feb-86 06:15:28 EST
References: <Challenger> <SRBs> <4270@mhuxd.UUCP> <958@ihuxx.UUCP> <977@burl.UUCP> <343@frog.UUCP>
Organization: ConTel Information Systems, Denver
Lines: 36

> I'm willing to believe that NASA _knew_ nothing to tell.  Perhaps the news
> media would have been deliriously happy had NASA elected to release a stream
> of "Well, it might have been X....  No, it might have been Y.... ", but the
> problems with this include (1) the vacillation would make NASA look stupid,
> because each guess (released only out of curtesy) would be treated as an
> Official Explanation, only to have that Official Explanation Officially
> Contradicted later, and (2) somewhere the engineers will examine the
> possibility that some human (or organization) seriously screwed up, and any
> further guesses released which didn't include that human error (like metal
> fatigue, etc.) would look like a cover-up, EVEN if the facts later gathered
> made the human error explanation unlikely (indeed, the better the evidence
> against, "the more thorough the cover-up", right?).

Worse than that is the possibility of legal action taken against any person
or corporation, the possibility of libel/slander proceedings, etc. Mostly
bullshit, right?....until you are the specimen in question, or have been
slandered, etc.

The day of the accident, Rockwell cautioned its employees not to say
anything. One newsperson (so to speak) did collar an employee, who said
that it was "obviously the external tank...", which may easily have lost
him his job. However, the damage was done, and picked up in several papers
that I read later. It was only his personal guess, but it became "Rockwell
engineers said.....", thereby laying the blame (in the public eye) on the
manufacturer of the ET. At that manufacturer's plant, those were fighting
words. They also ultimately seem to have been incorrect. A minor point.

The president's select panel (including Armstrong and Ride) has stated
that it feels no doubt that NASA's own investigation of the accident will be
done in the best possible manner. If they can feel so (and at least one of
them has her life on the line with that statement) then I feel that NASA
can be trusted to find the problem and reduce its future probability to
far less than its current 4% occurance.

Lyle McElhaney
...hao!cisdem!lmc