Word: boosterism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...rings, already suspect, were spotlighted early in the week when the Times printed details of memos leaked by an unnamed solid-fuel rocket expert. One document, written last July by Richard Cook, an agency budget analyst, noted that booster O rings had shown signs of charring on previous missions and could lead to a "catastrophic" situation...
...reply to the question but forcefully defended the facts in his memo. Two days later, he told the press that NASA engineers had "whispered" in his ear that because of the O-ring problems they "held their breaths" during every shuttle launch. In other testimony, one of NASA's booster experts, Lawrence Mulloy, conceded that damage to the rings had occurred previously. In the 171 joints from spent booster segments that NASA has examined, he said, six primary rings showed signs of erosion...
...week's most tantalizing story, in Aviation Week, reported that the jet of flame from the side of Challenger's right booster had either melted or wrenched loose the struts that held the booster to the lower end of the external tank. The booster then pivoted on its still intact upper-attachment fitting and crashed its nose into the tank wall. The escaping liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen ignited, causing the fatal explosion. At week's end NASA had not commented on the report...
Nearly everyone, including the space agency, seemed to be zeroing in on a failure of the right booster rocket, probably at its bottom joint, as the event that initiated the tragedy. The puff of black smoke seen in the NASA photographs and videotape lends support to theories that an O ring was at fault. According to a flight "time-line" compiled by NASA and released at week's end the smoke first appeared .445 seconds after booster ignition. It swirled between the rocket and the external tank, near where the fatal burnthrough seems to have occurred. One solid-rocket specialist...
What might have caused an O ring in the right booster to fail? Panelist Feynman demonstrated one possibility at the public hearing by conducting a simple experiment in front of the TV cameras. He placed a small section of a ring in a C-clamp and submerged it in a cup of ice water. Then, removing the section and releasing it from the clamp, he concluded, "The resilience is very much reduced when the temperature is reduced." That fact may be significant, because the booster joints that the O rings are supposed to seal shift under the enormous stresses...