The meeting I sat in on discussed that all solid rocket boosters that were recovered and evaluated. The engineers and inspectors recorded MULTIPLE incidences of ‘blow by’ hot gasses through the O-rings.
There were two sets of O-rings. A primary and a secondary 0-ring. Many times there was evidence of partial blow by of the primary o-ring. Sometimes complete blow-by of the primary o-ring and partial blow-by of the secondary o-ring.
The engineers thought that the shuttle would blow up on the launch pad due to hot gasses blowing by the rigid o-rings. When it cleared the tower one remarked to his co-worker something like, “WE SURE DODGED A BULLET DIDN’T WE?” Then is blew, over a minute later.
Sorry but cross winds at that altitude? no wind up there at that altitude and compared to the speed of the shuttle when it blew any wind would be minimal. Crap the shuttle was going about 2,000 miles per hour (total guess) but a 100 mpg cross wind would be nothing. Sounds like CYA blaming it on the wind.
Investigations in incidents like this list every possible contributing factor. The wind might have contributed something like 0.001% but the 0-ring at 33F contributed 99.999%
NASA/Thiokol knew this beforehand that there was a probably a 33% chance it would be destroyed. The bureaucrats decided to launch anyway.
Nope, it was the cold temperatures on the 0-rings. Hard as rock didn’t seal. Kind of like a leaky faucet, except with very high pressure gasses at extreme temperatures.
Nope, it was the cold temperatures on the 0-rings. Hard as rock didn’t seal. As Richard Feynman told the Rogers Commission, but they did not want to hear it. They wanted a whitewash that exonerated NASA. So Feynman bypassed the commission with his clever public demonstration using a section of O-ring material compressed by a C clamp and immersed in ice-water. The world saw that the material had little resilience when cold.
Feynman found the Thiokol engineers' personal estimates of catastrophic failure was 1%-2% (not 33%), while NASA's official estimate-fantasy was 1 in 100,000.
This is discussed in detail in Feynman's book "What Do You Care What Other People Think?"