The Rogers Commission Report was written by a
Presidential Commission charged with investigating the
Space Shuttle ''Challenger'' disaster during its 10th mission,
STS-51-L
STS-51-L was the 25th mission of the NASA Space Shuttle program and the final flight of Space Shuttle ''Challenger''.
Planned as the first Teacher in Space Project flight in addition to observing Halley's Comet for six days and performing a ...
. The report, released and submitted to President
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
on June 9, 1986, both determined the cause of the disaster that took place 73 seconds after liftoff, and urged
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
to improve and install new safety features on the shuttles and in its organizational handling of future missions.
Commission members
*
William P. Rogers
William Pierce Rogers (June 23, 1913 – January 2, 2001) was an American diplomat and attorney. He served as United States Attorney General under President Dwight D. Eisenhower and United States Secretary of State under President Richard Nixo ...
, chairman and former
United States Secretary of State
The United States secretary of state is a member of the executive branch of the federal government of the United States and the head of the U.S. Department of State. The office holder is one of the highest ranking members of the president's Ca ...
(under
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
) and
United States Attorney General
The United States attorney general (AG) is the head of the United States Department of Justice, and is the chief law enforcement officer of the federal government of the United States. The attorney general serves as the principal advisor to the p ...
(under
Dwight Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, ...
)
*
Neil Armstrong
Neil Alden Armstrong (August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012) was an American astronaut and aeronautical engineer who became the first person to walk on the Moon in 1969. He was also a naval aviator, test pilot, and university professor.
...
(Vice Chairman), retired astronaut and first human to walk on the Moon (
Apollo 11
Apollo 11 (July 16–24, 1969) was the American spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin landed the Apollo Lunar Module ''Eagle'' on July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC, an ...
)
*
David Campion Acheson
David Campion Acheson (November 4, 1921 – August 16, 2018) was an American attorney. Son of one time United States Secretary of State Dean Acheson, he worked for the United States Atomic Energy Commission and served as an assistant to former Tre ...
, diplomat and son of former Secretary of State
Dean Acheson
Dean Gooderham Acheson (pronounced ; April 11, 1893October 12, 1971) was an American statesman and lawyer. As the 51st U.S. Secretary of State, he set the foreign policy of the Harry S. Truman administration from 1949 to 1953. He was also Truman ...
*
Eugene E. Covert, aeronautics expert and former
Chief Scientist of the U.S. Air Force
The Chief Scientist of the Air Force is the most senior science & technology representative in the United States Department of the Air Force. The current Chief Scientist of the United States Air Force is Victoria Coleman, sworn in on April 6, 2021 ...
*
Richard P. Feynman
Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist, known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superflu ...
, theoretical physicist and winner of the 1965
Nobel Prize in Physics
)
, image = Nobel Prize.png
, alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then " ...
*
Robert B. Hotz, Editor, ''Aviation Week And Space Technology''
*
Donald J. Kutyna
General Donald Joseph Kutyna (born December 6, 1933) is a retired United States Air Force officer. He was commander in chief of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and the United States Space Command from 1990 to 1992, and commander of A ...
, Air Force general with experience in ICBMs and Shuttle management
*
Sally K. Ride
Sally Kristen Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012) was an American astronaut and physicist. Born in Los Angeles, she joined NASA in 1978, and in 1983 became the first American woman and the third woman to fly in space, after cosmonauts ...
, American engineer, astrophysicist and first female American astronaut in space, flew on ''Challenger'' as part of missions
STS-7
STS-7 was NASA's seventh Space Shuttle mission, and the second mission for the Space Shuttle ''Challenger''. During the mission, ''Challenger'' deployed several satellites into orbit. The shuttle launched from Kennedy Space Center on June 18, ...
and
STS-41-G
STS-41-G (formerly STS-17) was the 13th flight of NASA's Space Shuttle program and the sixth flight of Space Shuttle ''Challenger''. ''Challenger'' launched on October 5, 1984, and conducted the second shuttle landing at Kennedy Space Center o ...
*
Robert W. Rummel,
Trans World Airlines
Trans World Airlines (TWA) was a major American airline which operated from 1930 until 2001. It was formed as Transcontinental & Western Air to operate a route from New York City to Los Angeles via St. Louis, Kansas City, and other stops, with F ...
executive and aviation consultant to NASA
*
Joseph F. Sutter,
Boeing
The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product ...
Senior Vice President and Engineering Program Director on the
Boeing 747
The Boeing 747 is a large, long-range wide-body airliner designed and manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes in the United States between 1968 and 2022.
After introducing the 707 in October 1958, Pan Am wanted a jet times its size, t ...
aircraft
*
Arthur B. C. Walker, Jr, solar physicist and
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
professor
*
Albert D. Wheelon
Albert may refer to:
Companies
* Albert (supermarket), a supermarket chain in the Czech Republic
* Albert Heijn, a supermarket chain in the Netherlands
* Albert Market, a street market in The Gambia
* Albert Productions, a record label
* Albert ...
, physicist and developer of
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
's aerial surveillance program
*
Charles E. Yeager, retired Air Force general and the first person to break the
sound barrier
The sound barrier or sonic barrier is the large increase in aerodynamic drag and other undesirable effects experienced by an aircraft or other object when it approaches the speed of sound. When aircraft first approached the speed of sound, th ...
in level flight
*
Alton G. Keel, Jr., executive director of the commission
Findings
The commission found that the immediate cause of the ''Challenger'' accident was a failure in the
O-ring
An O-ring, also known as a packing or a toric joint, is a mechanical gasket in the shape of a torus; it is a loop of elastomer with a round cross-section, designed to be seated in a groove and compressed during assembly between two or more par ...
s sealing the aft field joint on the right solid rocket booster, causing pressurized hot gases and eventually flame to "blow by" the O-ring and contact the adjacent external tank, causing structural failure. The failure of the O-rings was attributed to a design flaw, as their performance could be too easily compromised by factors including the low temperature on the day of launch.
"An accident rooted in history"
More broadly, the report also determined the contributing causes of the accident. Most salient was the failure of both NASA and its contractor,
Morton Thiokol
Thiokol (variously Thiokol Chemical Corporation(/Company), Morton Thiokol Inc., Cordant Technologies Inc., Thiokol Propulsion, AIC Group, ATK Thiokol, ATK Launch Systems Group; finally Orbital ATK before becoming part of Northrop Grumman) was an ...
, to respond adequately to the design flaw. The Commission found that as early as 1977, NASA managers had not only known about the flawed O-ring, but that it had the potential for catastrophe. This led the Rogers Commission to conclude that the ''Challenger'' disaster was "an accident rooted in history".
Flawed launch decision
The report also strongly criticized the
decision making process that led to the launch of ''Challenger'', saying that it was seriously flawed. Morton Thiokol called a meeting the night before the launch to raise concerns over the forecast temperature in regards to the O-Rings. During the meeting, Morton Thiokol's engineers issued a recommendation "not to launch below 53F", the previous lowest temperature of a launch (
STS-51C, a year earlier). The NASA managers challenged this and after a 30 minute offline caucus, Morton Thiokol's senior management overruled their engineers decision and gave the launch the go ahead. The concerns were not communicated beyond the Level III Flight Readiness Review (FRR).
It is certain that even though members of higher FRR teams knew about the issues, there were plenty of members who could have stopped the launch but decided not to. This was done in large part because of the management structure at NASA and the lack of major checks and balances, which proved to be fatal in this scenario. The report concluded that:
Role of Richard Feynman
One of the commission's best-known members was theoretical physicist
Richard Feynman
Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist, known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superflu ...
. His style of investigating with his own direct methods rather than following the commission schedule put him at odds with Rogers, who once commented, "Feynman is becoming a real pain." During a televised hearing, Feynman famously demonstrated how the O-rings became less resilient and subject to seal failures at ice-cold temperatures by immersing a sample of the material in a glass of ice water.
[
] Feynman's own investigation reveals a disconnect between
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
's engineers and executives that was far more striking than he expected. His interviews of NASA's high-ranking managers revealed startling misunderstandings of elementary concepts. One such concept was the determination of a
safety factor
In engineering, a factor of safety (FoS), also known as (and used interchangeably with) safety factor (SF), expresses how much stronger a system is than it needs to be for an intended load. Safety factors are often calculated using detailed analy ...
.
In one example, early tests resulted in some of the booster rocket's
O-ring
An O-ring, also known as a packing or a toric joint, is a mechanical gasket in the shape of a torus; it is a loop of elastomer with a round cross-section, designed to be seated in a groove and compressed during assembly between two or more par ...
s burning a third of the way through. These O-rings provided the gas-tight seal needed between the vertically stacked cylindrical sections that made up the solid fuel booster. NASA managers recorded this result as demonstrating that the O-rings had a "safety factor" of 3. Feynman incredulously explains the magnitude of this error: A "safety factor" refers to the practice of building an object to be capable of withstanding more force than the force to which it will conceivably be subjected. To paraphrase Feynman's example, if engineers built a bridge that could bear 3,000 pounds without any damage, even though it was never expected to bear more than 1,000 pounds in practice, the safety factor would be 3. If a 1,000-pound truck drove across the bridge and a crack appeared in a beam, even just a third of the way through a beam, the safety factor is now zero: The bridge is defective, there was no safety factor at all even though the bridge did not actually collapse.
Feynman was clearly disturbed by the fact that NASA management not only misunderstood this concept, but inverted it by using a term denoting an extra level of safety to describe a part that was actually defective and unsafe. Feynman continued to investigate the lack of communication between NASA's management and its engineers, and was struck by management's claim that the risk of catastrophic malfunction on the shuttle was 1 in 10
5, i.e. 1 in 100,000. Feynman immediately realized that this claim was risible on its face; as he described, this assessment of risk would entail that NASA could expect to launch a shuttle every day for the next 274 years while suffering, on average, only one accident. Investigating the claim further, Feynman discovered that the 1 in 10
5 figure was stating what they claimed the failure rate ought to be, given that it was a manned vehicle, and working backward to generate the failure rate of components.
Feynman was disturbed by two aspects of this practice. First, NASA management assigned a probability of failure to each individual bolt, sometimes claiming a probability of 1 in 10
8, i.e. one in one hundred million. Feynman pointed out that it is impossible to calculate such a remote possibility with any scientific rigor. Secondly, Feynman was bothered not just by this sloppy science but by the fact that NASA claimed that the risk of catastrophic failure was "necessarily" 1 in 10
5. As the figure itself was beyond belief, Feynman questioned exactly what "necessarily" meant in this context, whether it meant that the figure followed logically from other calculations or that it reflected NASA management's desire to make the numbers fit.
Feynman suspected that the 1 in 10
5 figure was wildly fantastical, and made a rough estimate that the true likelihood of shuttle disaster was closer to 1 in 100. He then decided to poll the engineers themselves, asking them to write down an anonymous estimate of the odds of shuttle explosion. Feynman found that the bulk of the engineers' estimates fell between 1 in 50 and 1 in 200 (at the time of retirement, the Shuttle suffered two catastrophic failures across 135 flights, for a failure rate of 1 in 67.5). Not only did this confirm that NASA management had clearly failed to communicate with their own engineers, but the disparity engaged Feynman's emotions. When describing these wildly differing estimates, Feynman briefly lapses from his damaging but dispassionate detailing of NASA's flaws to recognize the moral failing that resulted from a scientific failing: he was upset NASA presented its fantastical figures as fact to convince a member of the public, schoolteacher
Christa McAuliffe
Sharon Christa McAuliffe ( Corrigan; September 2, 1948 – January 28, 1986) was an American teacher and astronaut from Concord, New Hampshire, who was killed on the Space Shuttle ''Challenger'' on mission STS-51-L where she was serving as a ...
, to join the crew. Feynman was not uncomfortable with the concept of a risk factor, but felt strongly that the recruitment of laypeople required an honest portrayal of the true risk involved.
Feynman's investigation eventually suggested to him that the cause of the ''Challenger'' disaster was the very part to which NASA management so mistakenly assigned a safety factor. The O-rings were rubber rings designed to form a seal in the shuttle's solid rocket boosters, preventing the rockets' hot gas from escaping and damaging other parts of the vehicle. Feynman suspected that despite NASA's claims, the O-rings were unsuitable at low temperatures and lost their resilience when cold, thus failing to maintain a tight seal when rocket pressure distorted the structure of the solid fuel booster. Feynman's suspicions were corroborated by
General Kutyna, also on the commission, who cunningly provided Feynman with a broad hint by asking about the effect of cold on O-ring seals after mentioning that the temperature on the day of the launch was far lower than had been the case with previous launches: below freezing at ; previously, the coldest launch had been at . In 2013, the BBC film ''
The Challenger'' revealed that the O-Ring insight had in fact come to Kutyna from the astronaut and fellow commission member
Sally Ride
Sally Kristen Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012) was an American astronaut and physicist. Born in Los Angeles, she joined NASA in 1978, and in 1983 became the first American woman and the third woman to fly in space, after cosmonauts V ...
, who had secretly provided him with NASA test results showing the O-rings became stiff when they were too cold.
Feynman's investigations also revealed that there had been many serious doubts raised about the O-ring seals by engineers at
Morton Thiokol
Thiokol (variously Thiokol Chemical Corporation(/Company), Morton Thiokol Inc., Cordant Technologies Inc., Thiokol Propulsion, AIC Group, ATK Thiokol, ATK Launch Systems Group; finally Orbital ATK before becoming part of Northrop Grumman) was an ...
, which made the solid fuel boosters, but communication failures had led to their concerns being ignored by NASA management. He found similar failures in procedure in many other areas at NASA, but singled out its software development for praise due to its rigorous and highly effective quality control procedures – then under threat from NASA management, which wished to reduce testing to save money given that the tests had always been passed.
Based on his experiences with NASA's management and engineers, Feynman concluded that the serious deficiencies in NASA management's scientific understanding, the lack of communication between the two camps, and the gross misrepresentation of the Shuttle's dangers, required that NASA take a hiatus from Shuttle launches until it could resolve its internal inconsistencies and present an honest picture of the shuttle's reliability. Feynman soon found that, while he respected the intellects of his fellow Commission members, they universally finished their criticisms of NASA with clear affirmations that the ''Challenger'' disaster should be addressed by NASA internally, but that there was no need for NASA to suspend its operations or to receive less funding. Feynman felt that the Commission's conclusions misrepresented its findings, and he could not in good conscience recommend that such a deeply flawed organization as NASA should continue without a suspension of operations and a major overhaul. His fellow commission members were alarmed by Feynman's dissent, and it was only after much petitioning that Feynman's minority report was included at all. Feynman was so critical of flaws in NASA's "safety culture" that he threatened to remove his name from the report unless it included his personal observations on the reliability of the shuttle, which appeared as ''Appendix F''.
In the appendix, he stated:
"For a successful technology," Feynman concluded, "reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
Feynman later wrote about the investigation in his 1988 book ''
What Do You Care What Other People Think?
''"What Do You Care What Other People Think?": Further Adventures of a Curious Character'' is an edited collections of reminiscences by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. Released in 1988, the book covers several instances in Feyn ...
''.
The second half of the book covers the investigation and the issues between science and politics.
Feynman later reported that, although he had believed he was making discoveries about the problems at NASA on his own, he eventually realized that either NASA or contractor personnel, in an apparent effort to anonymously focus attention on these problem areas, had carefully led him to the evidence which would support the conclusions on which he would later report.
Result
The Rogers Commission offered nine recommendations on improving safety in the space shuttle program, and NASA was directed by President Reagan to report back within thirty days as to how it planned to implement those recommendations.
This is a summary of the chapter of Recommendations:
- ''Design'' and ''Independent Oversight''
- ''Shuttle Management Structure'', ''Astronauts in Management'' and ''Shuttle Safety Panel''
- ''Criticality Review and Hazard Analysis''
- ''Safety Organization''
- ''Improved Communications''
- ''Landing Safety''
- ''Launch Abort and Crew Escape''
- ''Flight Rate''
- ''Maintenance Safeguards''
In response to the commission's recommendation, NASA initiated a total redesign of the space shuttle's solid rocket boosters, which was watched over by an independent oversight group as stipulated by the commission.
NASA's contract with
Morton Thiokol
Thiokol (variously Thiokol Chemical Corporation(/Company), Morton Thiokol Inc., Cordant Technologies Inc., Thiokol Propulsion, AIC Group, ATK Thiokol, ATK Launch Systems Group; finally Orbital ATK before becoming part of Northrop Grumman) was an ...
, the contractor responsible for the solid rocket boosters, included a clause stating that in the event of a failure leading to "loss of life or mission," Thiokol would forfeit $10 million of its incentive fee and formally accept legal liability for the failure. After the ''Challenger'' accident, Thiokol agreed to "voluntarily accept" the monetary penalty in exchange for not being forced to accept liability.
[Jensen, Claus. ''No Downlink'', p. 355.]
NASA also created a new Office of Safety, Reliability and Quality Assurance, headed as the commission had specified by a NASA associate administrator who reported directly to the NASA administrator. George Rodney, formerly of
Martin Marietta
The Martin Marietta Corporation was an American company founded in 1961 through the merger of Glenn L. Martin Company and American-Marietta Corporation. In 1995, it merged with Lockheed Corporation to form Lockheed Martin.
History
Martin Mari ...
, was appointed to this position. Former ''Challenger'' flight director
Jay Greene became chief of the Safety Division of the directorate.
The unrealistically optimistic launch schedule pursued by NASA had been criticized by the Rogers Commission as a possible contributing cause to the accident. After the accident, NASA attempted to aim at a more realistic shuttle flight rate: it added another orbiter,
''Endeavour'', to the space shuttle fleet to replace ''Challenger'', and it worked with the Department of Defense to put more satellites in orbit using
expendable launch vehicle
An expendable launch system (or expendable launch vehicle/ELV) is a launch vehicle that can be launched only once, after which its components are either destroyed during reentry or discarded in space. ELVs typically consist of several rocket sta ...
s rather than the shuttle. In August 1986, President Reagan also announced that the shuttle would no longer carry commercial
satellite
A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioisotope ...
payloads. After a 32-month hiatus, the next shuttle mission,
STS-26
STS-26 was the 26th NASA Space Shuttle mission and the seventh flight of the orbiter ''Discovery''. The mission launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on September 29, 1988, and landed four days later on October 3, 1988. STS-26 was decla ...
, was launched on September 29, 1988.
After the
Space Shuttle ''Columbia'' disaster in 2003, attention once again focused on the attitude of NASA management towards safety issues. The
''Columbia'' Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) concluded that NASA had failed to learn many of the lessons of ''Challenger''. In particular, the agency had not set up a truly independent office for safety oversight; the CAIB felt that in this area, "NASA's response to the Rogers Commission did not meet the Commission's intent". The CAIB believed that "the causes of the institutional failure responsible for ''Challenger'' have not been fixed," saying that the same "flawed decision making process" that had resulted in the ''Challenger'' accident was responsible for
''Columbias destruction seventeen years later.
See also
*
''Columbia'' Accident Investigation Board
*
Apollo 1
Apollo 1, initially designated AS-204, was intended to be the first crewed mission of the Apollo program, the American undertaking to land the first man on the Moon. It was planned to launch on February 21, 1967, as the first low Earth orbita ...
References
External links
Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle ''Challenger'' Accident– the Rogers Commission report on the accident (NASA.gov parsed HTML version)
Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle ''Challenger'' Accident– pdf version, compiled b
Thomas ('thomasafb')– Volume I only
*
Hearing on the Space Shuttle Accident and the Rogers Commission Report. 219 pages (14.2 MB)U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space. Date: 99th Congress, 2nd Session, February 18, June 10 and 17, 1986. See als
– Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle ''Challenger'' Accident
by R. P. Feynman
{{Use American English, date=January 2014
NASA oversight
Reports of the United States government
1986 in the United States
United States Presidential Commissions
Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
Richard Feynman
1986 works