The fate of the Challenger crew

[Peter B]

Those of you who've read my comments in this section of UM know that I have little time for theories that NASA faked the Moon landings. Some of you who support those theories assume this means that I (and people like me) are mindless cheerleaders for NASA.

Well, no.

Thirty years ago the space shuttle Challenger disintegrated during launch and its crew died. For some time I assumed they died immediately. Later, I read that, at the very least, the crew survived until the crew cabin hit the ocean although they were probably all unconscious within a few seconds.

Now I've just read an article (actually written in 1988) which suggests that not only was it fairly likely the crew were conscious, but senior NASA officials were aware of this and did their (fairly successful) best to cover this up.

Here's a link to the article, which is fairly long: http://www.lutins.org/nasa.html

Drivers on A1A that night and morning, those who could still focus their eyes, probably didn't much notice the Navy truck. Military vehicles are common in that part of Florida. Nor could they have guessed that it carried something everyone in the country had speculated about at one time or another during the past six weeks.

On the truck, in the garbage cans, were the bodies of three astronauts from the space shuttle Challenger.

"That's a minor horror story," says Robert B. Hotz, a member of the presidential commission that investigated the accident. "There are some major horror stories, about the way they tried to cover up the whole thing. There are a lot of unanswered questions."

I'm not sure exactly how much of the information in the article is generally known to the public, but I suspect not much of it, although some is in the relevant Wikipedia page.

[Czero 101]

I'm not sure I'd classify this as a conspiracy, so much as a desire to not expose the public and more specifically the families of the lost crew to the horrors of what they experienced.

I haven't finished reading the article yet, though, so perhaps my position will change by the end of it....

The real conspiracy, if you want to call it that, is - or rather, was - in the decision making process within NASA management that allowed Challenger to launch that day.... imo, of course...

Cz

[Obviousman]

The decision making process that day is an example in how not to do things; the centre management hierarchy, the personalities, the pressure to launch for the State of the Union, etc.

We see this stuff all the time but we often make the same mistakes.

[+Nuclear Wessel]

Was there not an engineer working on the Challenger who wrote a letter to the higher-ups in which he strongly advised that the Challenger not be launched on that day due to issues with the O-Rings? If so, as Czero said, it is quite suspect as to why they decided to go ahead with the launch.

[Obviousman]

Was there not an engineer working on the Challenger who wrote a letter to the higher-ups in which he strongly advised that the Challenger not be launched on that day due to issues with the O-Rings? If so, as Czero said, it is quite suspect as to why they decided to go ahead with the launch.

The engineer had previously expressed concern but also said that morning that if anything happened, he wouldn't want to be the one to appear in front of the accident board.

The issue was that there had been evidence of O-ring blow-by at lower temperatures. Some engineers felt that it would be okay to launch at the lower temperatures that day because they had done it before without problem. The engineer in question (Roger Bojelay?) said they didn't have any data to support that, and since the evidence showed that there had been leakage they should not launch until the temperature was warmer.

When Morton-Thiokol recommended against the launch, the NASA representative said "Hell, Thiokol - when are we going to launch? Next spring?" This put pressure on Thiokol to give a GO for launch.

[Czero 101]

Roger Boisjoly tried to get the launch stopped some 13 hours before liftoff citing evidence from a similar problem with the field joints and o-rings on a Discovery launch the year previous. Morton Thiokol management along with Boisjoly were in a teleconference with NASA management at the time. They advised against launching. NASA came back at them with outrage at bringing up this information so close to launch and potentially messing up the program's launch schedule. Morton Thiokol put the others on hold to reassess the data. Boisjoly reasserted his position that launching in cold weather was risking disaster. He was told to "take off his engineering hat and put on his management hat", meaning that she should go along with what NASA wants, essentially. Thiokol went back to NASA with a decision to proceed with the launch.

A lot of it is discussed in this episode of "Seconds From Disaster" from 2007, starting at about 24 minutes in

https://youtu.be/INIUciUNwok?t=24m

ETA...

There's also this from Boisjoly himself...

http://www.onlineethics.org/CMS/profpractice/ppessays/thiokolshuttle/shuttle_telecon.aspx

Telecon Meeting (Ethical Decisions - Morton Thiokol and the Challenger Disaster)

Added05/15/2006

Author(s) Roger M. Boisjoly

The evening telecon meeting between MTI, MSFC and KSC on January 27, 1986, was the final event preceding the Morton Thiokol Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster.

Author(s): Roger M. Boisjoly

The evening telecon meeting between MTI, MSFC and KSC on January 27,1986, was the final event preceding the Challenger disaster. The major activity that day focused upon the predicted 18 °F (-8 °C) overnight low and meetings with Engineering Management to persuade them not to launch below 53 °F (12 °C). My whole being was driven to action for this cause because of my memory of my January, 1985, participation in the inspection of the hardware from the previous coldest launch which had massive hot gas blow-by. The discussion activity concluded with the hurried preparation of fourteen Viewgraphs by various engineering groups which had less then an hour to respond for the scheduled evening telecon.

The following discussion is summarized to show the content of the engineering presentation. Figures labeled as Viewgraphs show the major thrust of the telecon and contain the actual content of the originals as presented, with Sl units added, while others are summarized to give general content for brevity.

Cz

Edited February 1, 2016 by Czero 101

[DONTEATUS]

RIP Challenger Crew ! Always and Forever !

[skookum]

We will never know if some or all of the crew were concious/unconscious.

All we do know is they died on impact. It is a horrible situation but one that happened.

RIP brace souls of the Challenger you will never be forgotten.

[Czero 101]

It is known that at least some were conscious after the explosion and before impact as three of the astronaut's flight suit's emergency oxygen supplies were found to have been activated before impact. This could only have been done manually and would only have been done in the case of a depressurization event.

Cz

[DONTEATUS]

Space Is Dangerous !

[Vlawde]

I find it hard to believe they weren't immediately incinerated, especially after rewatching the video of the explosion

Edited February 2, 2016 by Vlawde

[Peter B]

I find it hard to believe they weren't immediately incinerated, especially after rewatching the video of the explosion

I know I assumed that for quite some time after the accident. It wasn't until many years later that I watched a NASA DVD which examined the accident; the DVD showed footage of the aftermath of the accident which clearly identified the crew cabin as emerging almost intact from the fireball.

And according to the linked article in the OP, this is one place where the behaviour of senior NASA officials appears to verge on conspiratorial, in the sense of a group of people working together to hide information and inappropriately influence the actions of others:

The prevailing belief among those in control at Kennedy Space Center -- and especially in the mind of astronaut Robert Crippen, who had taken charge of much of the work there -- was that the crew compartment had disintegrated at the time of explosive fire...the official story was that the crew had been vaporized, and that was that.

Nevertheless, there were others in NASA who pointed out that not only did the crew cabin emerge pretty much intact from the fireball, but was intact enough to remain pressurised, potentially until the cabin hit the water. If this was so, then the crew were not only alive when the cabin hit the water, but conscious:

Though the shuttle had broken to pieces, the crew compartment was intact. It stabilized in a nose-down attitude within 10 to 20 seconds, say the investigators. Even if the compartment was gradually losing pressure, those on the flight deck would certainly have remained conscious long enough to catch a glimpse of the green-brown Atlantic rushing toward them. If it lost its pressurization very slowly or remained intact until it hit the water, they were conscious and cognizant all the way down.

In fact, no clear evidence was ever found that the crew cabin depressurized at all. There was certainly no sudden, catastrophic loss of air of the type that would have knocked the astronauts out within seconds. Such an event would have caused the mid-deck floor to buckle upward; that simply didn't happen.

...some in NASA were pointing out that there was no more than six or seven pounds per square inch of pressure exerted on the crew compartment during breakup, and the compartment had been proof tested to 20 pounds psi.

[Czero 101]

All that is discussed in the video I linked above, so at least as of 2007 when the episode aired, none of this was "secret."

And as I also posted, at least three of the crew's emergency oxygen supplies were found to have been activated when the wreckage was recovered, something that is immediately recognizable, can only be done manually, and was clear evidence at the time that at least some of teh crew survived the initial explosion and breakup of the shuttle.

As to when that particular information was released, I don't know, but it was "public knowledge" at least by the time of the video I linked.

Cz

Edited February 3, 2016 by Czero 101

[Czero 101]

Further to that, it was known at the time of the Rogers Commission (June 1986 - http://history.nasa....ep/genindex.htm ) that when the accident occurred, the shuttle broke into several large identifiable pieces, a wing, the rear engine section and the forward fuselage section, all clearly (-ish) visible on the video of the explosion:

http://history.nasa....rsrep/v1p34.htm

"Hurtling out of the fireball at 78 seconds (left) are the Orbiter's left wing (top arrow), the main engines (center arrow) and the forward fuselage (bottom arrow). In the photo below [bottom right], it plummets Earthward, trailed by smoking fragments of Challenger"

Again, I don't know the timeline of when the report was available to the public, though...

Cz

Edited February 3, 2016 by Czero 101

[Obviousman]

I'm pretty sure the report stated that the emergency air had been activated by some of the crew; I certainly knew it had been and that at least some of the crew had probably been alive until impact.

I'll check,

[skookum]

I did watch a documentary and they stated that some of the switches in the cockpit were not in their launch position settings. They believed it indicated that the crew were desperately trying to regain some kind of control not knowing at that point that the Challenger was almost totally destroyed.

Another thing that came out was the solid boosters were self destructed by NASA control staff shortly after the explosion, apparently this had been kept classified until recently.

[flyingswan]

I did watch a documentary and they stated that some of the switches in the cockpit were not in their launch position settings.

That would be the switches on the emergency oxygen packs.

Another thing that came out was the solid boosters were self destructed by NASA control staff shortly after the explosion, apparently this had been kept classified until recently.

No, this was announced at the time. I've just done a quick check and found it mentioned in a 1987 book.

[Czero 101]

Another thing that came out was the solid boosters were self destructed by NASA control staff shortly after the explosion, apparently this had been kept classified until recently.

No, this was announced at the time. I've just done a quick check and found it mentioned in a 1987 book.

Also it would be very hard to keep that fact classified for any amount of time since there were literally hundreds if not thousands of people watching the launch.

Cz

[Peter B]

That would be the switches on the emergency oxygen packs.

With respect, no, it seems they were something else. According to Wikipedia:

While analyzing the wreckage, investigators discovered that several electrical system switches on Pilot Mike Smith's right-hand panel had been moved from their usual launch positions. Fellow astronaut Richard Mullane wrote, "These switches were protected with lever locks that required them to be pulled outward against a spring force before they could be moved to a new position." Later tests established that neither force of the explosion nor the impact with the ocean could have moved them, indicating that Smith made the switch changes, presumably in a futile attempt to restore electrical power to the cockpit after the crew cabin detached from the rest of the orbiter.

[my bold]

ETA: That's from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster#Cause_and_time_of_death

Edited February 5, 2016 by Peter B

[Obviousman]

I'm pretty sure the report stated that the emergency air had been activated by some of the crew; I certainly knew it had been and that at least some of the crew had probably been alive until impact.

I'll check,

Yep. Joe Kerwin wrote to Dick Truly and said that the cockpit survived the breakup, that the explosion was unlikely to have killed the crew, that the subsequent separation and altitude most likely meant the crew were unconscious, and that three of four PEAPs found had the emergency air activated.This information was released to the public in July 1986.

http://history.nasa.gov/kerwin.html

http://history.nasa.gov/kerwinpr.html

[Astral Hillbilly]

I have a hard time imagining what the temperature at launch had to do with it. Isn't space cold ? I mean, eventually the rocket has to perform in very cold conditions. Even if the rocket separated before leaving the Earth's atmosphere, it would be doing so in much colder conditions than at ground level.

I'm sure the answer is above my pay grade, but it still sounds like a strange explanation to me.

[Czero 101]

I have a hard time imagining what the temperature at launch had to do with it. Isn't space cold ? I mean, eventually the rocket has to perform in very cold conditions. Even if the rocket separated before leaving the Earth's atmosphere, it would be doing so in much colder conditions than at ground level.

I'm sure the answer is above my pay grade, but it still sounds like a strange explanation to me.

The part that failed - the Field Joint O-Ring - was in the SRB which don't operate in space. They burn out and separate long before the vehicle reaches space.

The o-rings are essentially made of rubber and are there to fill the gaps in the field joints (where the sections of the SRB's connect to each other) to prevent the super hot exhaust from leaking out between the joints. They really only have to last about 3 minutes, which is roughly how long the SRB's burn for. They need to be flexible enough to stretch and expand to fill the gap in the joint as the SRB's flex and vibrate during launch.

The day of the launch, the weather was cold. Cold weather typically makes flexible things less flexible. In this case that meant the the o-rings weren't flexible enough to fill the gap in the field joints, allowing the super hot exhaust to burn through them fairly quickly (part of the reason for the black smoke seen coming from the right SRB at launch) and escape through the field joint to impinge on the External Tank.

It is further theorized that, since the fuel in the SRB's solid fuel contains aluminum to increase it's burn temperature and therefore it's thrust, that particles of aluminum in the super hot exhaust collected and solidified in the damaged field joint, effectively sealing the joint and preventing super hot exhaust from escaping until at about 72 seconds after launch when the vehicle stack experienced a strong sideways airflow corresponding roughly to the time the stack passed through "Max Q" or maximum dynamic pressure on the vehicle as it moves through the air.

At this time, the Shuttle's 3 main engines are throttled down to about 60% - 65% until Max Q is passed, then they are throttled up to about 102% - 105% rated thrust to push the vehicle into orbit.

The combination of Max Q, vibrations from engine throttling and the strong sideways air current are believed to have shaken loose the "plug" formed by the aluminum particles in the field joint, allowing the super hot exhaust to once again blow past, impinge on the External Tank, burn through the lower right SRB mounting strut, and burn through the outer skin of the ET. This then is believed to have caused the lower cap of the ET to separate from the tank, rupturing the Liquid Oxygen tank and causing the initial explosion.

The force fo that explosion pushed the LOX tank upwards into the Liquid Hydrogen tank, rupturing it, while the right side SRB, now only mounted to the stack by it's upper mount, was pushed sideways into the upper portion of the ET, further impinging on the Liquid Hydrogen tank, causing the main, larger explosion that blew apart the orbiter.

Cz

EDITED for typos...

Edited February 7, 2016 by Czero 101

[skookum]

Also it would be very hard to keep that fact classified for any amount of time since there were literally hundreds if not thousands of people watching the launch.

Cz

Must have been a part sensationalized for the documentary.

To be honest I had no idea they were purposely destructed until I watched that. I assumed they blew up shortly after because of damage caused in the explosion. Not that it really matters as the Challenger was a total loss by then.

[Astral Hillbilly]

Thanks for the explanation Czero101 !

[Redefining Success]

I wouldn't want to know or speculate whether my brother, sister, mother or father were conscious as they were plummeting towards the earth in a fireball.

As soon as the explosion took place they were dead.

There may of been a to and fro as to wether the launch should of gone ahead, it did, it went wrong, the crew died, they died as heroes and pioneers of space exploration.

Should be left at that.