The Rogers Commission failed; questions it never asked, answers it didn't listen to - Challenger accident

Washington Monthly, Nov, 1986 by Richard Cook

The Teacher-in-Space flight was originally scheduled to end by Tuesday, January 28, the day of the State of the Union address. A one-day delay was introduced in December, which would have meant the flight would still be in orbit when the speech was given. Because of several subsequent delays, Challenger did not launch until the day of the State of the Union address.

It is fairly well-known by now that NASA submitted flowery language about the Reagan Teacher-in-Space program for use in the State of the Union address, but it's worth rereading to see just how wonderful a public relations opportunity they saw in that Challenger flight:

"Tonight while I am speaking to you, a young secondary school teacher from Concord, New Hampshire, is taking us all on the ultimate field trip, as she orbits the earth as the first citizenpassenger on the space shuttle.

"Christa McAuliffe's journey is a prelude to the journeys of other Americans and our friends around the world who will be living and working together in the permanently manned space station in the mid-1990s, bringing a rich return of scientific, technical, and economic benefits to mankind.

"Mrs. McAuliffe's week in space is just one of the achievements in space which we have planned for the coming year.'

The White House, including Speakes and Patrick Buchanan, the communications director who prepared the speech, said this submission was "filed and forgotten,' and that the State of the Union address contained no reference at all to the teacher in space. That is hard to believe. Is it really likely, given the White House's personal involvement in the Teacher-in-Space program, that President Reagan was not even going to mention that Christa McAuliffe was orbiting in space as he stood before Congress? Shouldn't the Rogers Commission at least have interviewed Patrick Buchanan about the speech and requested a copy of the different speech drafts?

There is another detail that has not been discussed in the press so far and was barely addressed at all by the Rogers Commission: the peculiar cancelation of the scheduled Challenger launch the preceding Sunday. Here again NASA followed a procedure unprecedented in its history. Because the weather at Cape Canaveral is notoriously unpredictable, astronauts will board the shuttle even when bad weather is forecast in case the weather changes. But in this case NASA officials canceled the flight Saturday night because bad weather was predicted for the next day. The astronauts never boarded. As it turned out, at launch time, Sunday, it was sunny and warm, so warm that the O-rings probably would not have leaked had the launch occurred that day.

Why then was the launch canceled that Saturday night instead of Sunday at launch time? One possible explanation might relate to a technical requirement that the commission did not discuss. Because loading and unloading fuel creates extreme shifts of temperature in the lines to the fuel tanks, thereby putting tremendous stress on the insulation, NASA has a requirement that fuel may not be loaded and unloaded more than twice in a 48 hour period. If they had fueled up on Sunday, instructed the astronauts to board, and then canceled, they could then try again Monday. But if that failed they couldn't try again until Wednesday. So, by canceling the launch on Saturday before they had fueled up, they increased the chances that the shuttle would be in the air by Tuesday night, when Reagan delivered the state of the union address.