[Doe Eyes]

25 years old NASA. NASA now cannot hardly launch a kids rocket.

This was NASA, 25 years ago.

[ETL]

NASA 1967:

“Apollo 1 (official designation Apollo/Saturn-204) was planned to be the first manned mission of the Apollo manned lunar landing program to launch in February 1967. Its flight was precluded by a fatal fire on January 27, which killed all three crew members (Command Pilot Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Senior Pilot Edward H. White, and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee), and destroyed the Command Module cabin. This occurred during a pre-launch test of the spacecraft on Launch Pad 34 at Cape Canaveral. The name Apollo 1 chosen by the crew, was officially assigned retroactively in commemoration of them.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1#Incident

[mad_as_he$$]

Yup. When rocketry was still relatively new and they got more done with half the people.

[mad_as_he$$]

Actually upon reflection, Challenger was probably the break point where NASA went from cando to F’ed up.

[mad_as_he$$]

Actually upon reflection, Challenger was probably the break point where NASA went from cando to F’ed up.

[darth]

I assume that most of you have heard the inside story on what REALLY brought down Challenger?

I had a friend at United Technologies at KSC. One of the SRBs (Solid Rocket Boosters) had a hard landing at sea. Morton Thiokol, unawares, refurbished the sections of that SRB and shipped them back to KSC.

The SRB segments are bolted together at KSC. The fasteners are one inch bolts on four inch centers. When they tried to bolt up the damaged SRB sections, the holes would not line up because the casing was slightly elliptical. Some Lockheed engineer had the bright idea of plugging the bolt holes and DRILLING NEW HOLES IN BETWEEN THE HOLES ON THE FOUR INCH CENTERS. The Lockheed guy’s NASA boss got a $10K bonus for saving the SRB segment.

So they removed 33% of the steel between the plugged holes and DID NOT perform a structural analysis on the weakened joint.

Upon ignition the weakened joint ripped open like a perforated sheet of paper. You can see the puff of smoke and later the flame coming out on the famous video.

My friend, a rather quiet fellow, assumed that the investigating commission would see the problem on the drawings. When he heard in the first press conference about the O rings being the culprit, he went to the Commission. They told him they could not embarrass all of the eminent engineers and scientists by changing their findings from the O rings. Of course, they did not want to admit that NASA had done something so bone-headed as to change the SRB without analyzing the potential problem with the extra holes.

So...the guilty party kept his bonus, the innocent at Thiokol were punished, and the Agency kept it’s reputation.

The lesson here is NEVER trust official accounts, Aviation Week, or politicians.