Word: launching
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...statement came on the heels of testimony by the official who decided to launch Challenger that he rejected an unsafe-to-fly warning from the spaceplane's manufacturer, because "it was not an objection to launch...
Arnold Aldrich, the number-two man in the shuttle program, said he rejected an objection on the morning of the January 28 liftoff by Rockwell International that ice on Pad 39B made conditions "not safe to launch...
...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 of launch. If the rings are not resilient, ! they may not seat properly in their grooves, leaving gaps through which the hot gases can escape. Thus, Feynman asked, would the low temperature (38 degrees F) at Challenger's lift-off have increased the chance of failure...
Mulloy's statement seemed at odds with a 1982 NASA report. The document concluded that because of shifting motions in the boosters at launch, the secondary O rings might not seat properly. But NASA decided that the shuttle could keep flying without an assured backup, knowing that the consequences of failure, in the agency's own words, could be "loss of mission, vehicle and crew...
...stiff upper lip about both the rocket's defects and the shuttle's future, Rogers issued a terse but devastating statement: he had advised the President that after only one week of hearings, the commission "has found that the process (of decision making leading up to Challenger's launch) may have been flawed." As a result, NASA was being asked to exclude those of its personnel involved in the launch from any further role on the investigating teams...