Rogers Commission Report
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The Rogers Commission Report was created by a Presidential Commission charged to investigate the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster on its 10th mission, STS-51-L. The comprehensive 225-page report documented the technical and managerial factors that contributed to the accident. The report concluded that SRB O-rings failed as a result of faulty design. Other key findings of the Rogers Commission were that the Shuttle had not been rated to fly in the temperatures of the launch but that that technical concern had been overridden by NASA management after a series of launch delays. The SRB O-rings had been found to be unexpectedly eroded in previous inspections, but that finding had been largely ignored or minimized. The report was published on June 9, 1986.
Renowned physicist Richard Feynman's opinion of the cause of the accident differed from the official findings, and were considerably more critical of the role of management in sidelining the concerns of engineers. After much petitioning, Feynman's minority report was included as an appendix to the official document (Appendix F). Feynman also detailed his observations of the commission and NASA in an autobiographical book.[1]
The investigation and corrective actions following the Challenger accident caused a 32-month hiatus in shuttle launches: the next mission was STS-26 on September 29, 1988 with Discovery. Reforms to NASA procedures were enacted which attempted to preclude another occurrence of such an accident, and the Shuttle program would continue without serious incident until the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster on February 1, 2003.
[edit] Commission members
- William P. Rogers
- Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon.
- David C. Acheson
- Eugene E. Covert
- Richard P. Feynman, winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics.
- Robert B. Hotz
- Donald J. Kutyna, Air Force General with experience in ICBMs
- Sally K. Ride, the first American woman in space.
- Robert W. Rummel
- Joseph F. Sutter
- Arthur B. C. Walker, Jr
- Albert D. Wheelon
- Chuck Yeager, the first person to break the sound barrier in level flight.
- Alton G. Keel, Jr.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Richard P. Feynman, What Do You Care What Other People Think? Further Adventures of a Curious Character, W.W. Norton & Co., (New York 1988).
[edit] External links
- Report of the PRESIDENTIAL COMMISSION on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident — the Rogers Commission report on the accident
