Word: nasa
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...NASA said that when the remains are recovered they will be taken to a hospital at Patrick Air Force Base, about 25 miles south of Cape Canaveral...
...once been viewed as being too gentle to compete in the rough-and-tumble world of Washington bureaucracy. But after chairing three days of public hearings last week on how NASA reached the decision to launch the space shuttle Challenger on its doomed mission, former Secretary of State William Rogers was visibly--and vocally--angry...
Referring to the avalanche of documents concerning shuttle safety that the space agency passes from desk to desk, Rogers scolded some top NASA launch officials, "You eliminate the element of good judgment and common sense." Frustrated by conflicting accounts of positions taken at crucial preflight meetings, Rogers asked with cutting incredulity, "Does everybody know what everybody else is recommending?" He wondered aloud why those involved had not been required to take clear stands on life-and-death safety issues and had not had their positions recorded. And, Rogers concluded, he was certain the members of the presidential commission agreed with...
That conviction was based largely on testimony indicating how NASA officials had dealt with the preflight concerns expressed by two of the shuttle's prime contractors: Morton Thiokol, which makes the solid-fuel boosters that are the main focus of the search for a cause of the disaster, and Rockwell International, which manufactures the orbiter. Officials and engineers of both companies insisted that they had opposed the launch, at least initially, because of the cold weather and ice at the pad. But the NASA officials who heard the complaints contended that the objections had never been raised as forcefully...
...early as Dec. 17, 1982, the testimony showed, NASA had been concerned enough about the possibility that the O rings might fail during lift-off to designate them as "criticality 1" items, components whose failure would doom the mission. Earlier shuttle flights had indicated that the second ring might be unseated from its groove by the great pressures on the rocket casing during lift-off, and could not always be relied upon as a backup should the first ring fail. Lack of a reliable backup violated a longtime NASA principle. The space agency formally waived the redundancy requirement for these...