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From: eros@chovax.DEC
Newsgroups: net.columbia,net.space
Subject: Morton-Thiokol Engineering Claims
Message-ID: <1301@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Date: Sun, 23-Feb-86 14:38:25 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.1301
Posted: Sun Feb 23 14:38:25 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Feb-86 04:36:46 EST
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  Over the last few days, engineers at Morton-Thiokol have been falling
  all over one another to express how sure they were that the O-rings
  on the SRBs would fail during launch and how schedule-minded and
  inflexible NASA management was about delaying the mission.
  
  This brings up an interesting question - if these folks were
  so sure of the danger to the SRBs (in fact, one senior engineer said
  that he and other engineers expressed surprise at launch time that
  Challenger cleared the tower without incident) why didn't they go
  to the media with their concerns?  I'm sure that the networks,
  NPR and the papers would have been more than happy to spash their
  objections far and wide; in fact you probably would have seen a two
  inch high headline in the NY Daily News reading something like this:

	'RUBBER RINGS RICKETY', REVEAL RED-FACED ROCKETEERS
    
  Faced with this kind of prelaunch publicity, NASA would have been
  forced to scrub.

  This of course presupposes that the engineers are accurately
  depicting the intensity of their opposition to the launch.
  I'm beginning to believe more and more that this is just a massive
  CYA movement on the part of the Morton-Thiokol engineering staff.

  How is it that NASA, who has scrubbed launches for all kinds of
  seemingly arcane reasons in the past (everything from failure of
  Nth redundant systems to cloudy days) would suddenly perform a
  180-degree turn and force a launch when engineers are insisting
  the vehicle will blow up?
  
  In my view, if the situation developed the way the engineers
  are claiming it did, then they are equally (if not more) culpible
  than the company executives who signed off on the launch OK and
  the NASA management who insisted on it, since they KNEW that
  seven people (more, if an explosion on the pad occurred) and
  25% of the shuttle fleet were in extreme danger of destruction
  and they chose not to put their reputations on the line by
  publicly speaking out against the launch.

  In the end, it seems they are salving their collective consciences
  with the old 'I was just obeying orders' bit.
  
  Tony Eros
  !decwrl!chovax!eros

  'My opinions are my own; who else would want them?'