Rogers Commission Report
|
|
The Rogers Commission Report was created by a Presidential Commission charged to investigate the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion on its 10th mission, STS-51-L. The comprehensive 225-page report documented the technical and managerial factors that contributed to the accident. The board's technical analysis implicated the SRB O-rings which failed as a result of inadequate inspection and low temperatures. 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 overriden 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 that finding had been largely ignored or minimized. The report was published on June 9, 1986.
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).
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.
The members of the commission were
- 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
External links
- Rogers Commission Report (http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/genindex.htm) on the accident