LOL. Sure they were. I lived through that period and was as big a space buff as ever lived. I know what the original design was intended to be.
"But we’re talking about accident as it happened."
No, we're talking about the ultimate cause of the accident.
"And that was Sheer Bad Luck."
No, it was politics.
"And I was there."
And so was I.
Sorry, I meant that nobody was talking about the Flyback Booster on this thread. I was always for the concept.
You ‘lived’ through that period. I ‘worked’ through that period.
And we were not talking about What If’s.
As in what if Congress had allowed the boosters to be built in Fla? They would not have been segmented, thus no joints, no gaskets.
What if the fact that NASA needed more funding, meant that the military got to dictate the size of the cargo bay, thus making design changes all the way down the line?
What if the EPA hadn’t mandated a change to the foam insulation?
And yes, all that was politics.
But the proximate cause was bad luck. Higher winds than ever recorded before at exactly the wrong time, and sheer bad luck on the location of the burnthru.
Take away one of these and accident probably would not have happened. Take away both and it certainly wouldn’t have happened, politics, or no politics.