Talk:Space Shuttle Challenger disaster

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The Commander

It is strange that this article does not even mention, explicitly, who was the commander (the astronaut in command) of the Challenger on the fateful day. One astronaut, Michael Smith, is mentioned as the "pilot", but in NASA jargon, that was really the assistant pilot of the Space Shuttle. The actual pilot in command was always the commander of the Space Shuttle. They were always one and the same person. Confusion needs to be removed from the "commander" and the "pilot" of the Columbia.

Also, this article makes no attempt to describe the assignments of the other astronauts on board the Challenger, such as payload specialist, scientist-astronaut, and so forth. 11:57, 2 November 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.81.9.49 (talk)

New video

Should the newly discovered video be mentioned? [1] - MK (^t/_c) 03:33, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Recent edits

I've reverted a few recent edits.

I'm not sure we need to define "left" and "right" in the lead - if it's vague, it ought to be addressed later in the article - and the second section is pretty heavily weighted in terms of assuming malfesance on the part of NASA - "...is doubtful ... a dubious excuse at best ... indicative of an unacceptable level of negligence and apathy". It's cited to two sources, one for "rubber doesn't like being cold" and one an essay with nothing to indicate its reliability.

The second section seems to have been added as a caveat to an earlier sentence in the lead ("According to NASA leadership, however, the actual report submitted to them by Morton Thiokol was vague in its analysis and recommendations...") which was itself added quite recently; I've taken that out as well, as it doesn't really say anything critical and bogs down the lead.

As to the more general issue of the O-rings, etc, the originally featured version seems to have had a lot more material than this one, which has since been lost. I'll see what can be recovered. Shimgray | talk | 18:36, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Removal of duplicate paragraph

The paragraph starting with "In the aftermath of the" is included in the article twice, once in the "Aftermath" section and once in "Investigation". I removed the one in "Aftermath", as I think it's more relevant as information about the investigation. As far as I could see, the only difference between the two was that the paragraph I removed used the word "disaster" where the other one used "accident". --Spug (talk) 22:55, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

PEAPs photo

I think having adding this photo was an improvement to the article.

I just added a photo to show what the Personal Egress Air Packs were, in the "Cause and time of death" section. I think a photo is needed, as the PEAPs are not explained - do they look like SCUBA tanks? Breathing masks? Something else? However, the photo I located is from the later STS-34 flight in 1989. I think it's an improvement to the article despite the differing crew. I wouldn't be offended if others disagree and want to remove the photo because of any confusion — I was specific in the caption that the photo is from a subsequent mission. Tempshill (talk) 21:23, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Jean Michel Jarre and Rendez-vous Houston

Is there any reason why the 1986 Rendez-vous Houston concert is not mentioned? I was reading the article and thought there should be something about this in the Aftermath/Tributes section. It was a major event dedicated to the memory of the astronauts. At the time it had over 1 million people in attendance. Jean Michel Jarre also released the album Rendez-Vous with music especially composed for the event. I respect this article for the information regarding the disaster, but I consider the concert somehow relevant among the many tributes to the astronauts.

I searched the History of the article and sometime in November 2007 a bit of information about this event was removed. If no one opposes or writes, I'll try writing something about it in the near future.

And btw, thanks to all wikipedians involved in this article. Such a fascinating but overwhelmingly bitter subjet.

Allan McDonald?

Why is it that there is no mention of him and his work with the Rodger's Commission, seeing as he was the one who came forward with the information?

67.2.67.154 (talk) 18:20, 9 December 2010 (UTC) tarissky 11:19 MT 12-09-2010

Contradiction in article?

Twenty-five seconds after the breakup of the vehicle, which occurred at 48,000 feet (14.6 kilometres (9.1 mi)), the trajectory of the crew compartment peaked at a height of 65,000 feet (19.8 kilometres (12.3 mi)).[11]

[edit] Cause and time of death

The shuttle was designed to withstand a load factor of 3 (or 3 g), with another 1.5 g safety factor built in.[13] The crew cabin in particular is a very robust section of the shuttle because of its design and construction of reinforced aluminum.[13] During vehicle breakup, the crew cabin detached in one piece and slowly tumbled into a ballistic arc. NASA estimated the load factor at separation to be between 12 and 20 g; however, within two seconds it had already dropped to below 4 g and within ten seconds the cabin was in free fall. The forces involved at this stage were likely insufficient to cause major injury.

How could the cabin be at free fall 10 seconds after the malfunction if it peaked at 65000 ft. 25 seconds after the breakup? It cant simply be Gforces can it since 0g would occur at the peak which was supposedly 25 seconds afterwards not 10. 74.215.172.243 (talk) 06:26, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

If you throw a stone in the air, from the moment the stone leaves your hand it will be in free fall all the way up and then down (neglecting the friction of the air), since the only force acting on it is gravity. The stone itself will experience 0 g during this time. Parabolic flights produce 0 g during the climb as well as the descent.
--Giuliopp (talk) 10:40, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

STS missions

Just curious. If Challenger in 1986 was STS-51-L, how come a 1989 mission was STS-34? i thought there was some kind of typo in the caption. hbdragon88 (talk) 04:42, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

NASA has used three different numbering systems for shuttle missions. In the first system, which ended with STS-9, the missions were numbered based on which order they were launched. After STS-9, the system was changed due to NASA Administrator James S. Begg's triskaidekaphobia and his unwillingness to designate a mission as STS-13. In this second system, flights were designated based on the year they were authorized (in this case, the "5" indicating 1985), the launch site they were launched from ("1" indicating Kennedy Space Center, "2" would indicate Space Launch Complex 6 at Vandenburg Air Force Base, although Vandenburg was never used), and the letter indicating scheduling sequence. After STS-51-L, the third system was used. This third and current system is numbered sequentially based on when the launch is scheduled, rather than when it is actually launched, unlike the first numbering system. Under this system, missions have frequently launched out of sequential order; i.e. STS-107 launched after STS-113. There is also a fourth and so far unused numbering system that is used for contingency missions if a shuttle is disabled or damaged in orbit and unable to return to Earth. KerathFreeman (talk) 01:41, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

"Needs additional citations for verification"?

Just curious, why is Template:refimprove on this page if it's a featured article?? — Gabe 19 ^{(talk contribs)} 04:22, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Featured articles degrade over time due to rising standards and unless editors keep a vigilant watch over edits, making sure that prose quality remains high and any dubious/unsourced/poorly sourced info remains out. So it should not be a surprise if someone feels that the current referencing could be better on an FA. hbdragon88 (talk) 03:05, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

FA?

Given the article's current condition, with a loose Legacy section (actually more like a Popular Culture section), poor prose ("The crew cabin in particular is a very robust section of the shuttle because of its design and construction of reinforced aluminum" as an example), and lots of uncited text, is this article really deserving of its FA status? I suggest not. Parrot of Doom 09:34, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I just came here to question the exact same thing. It's really at WP:FAR stage, as far as I can tell. The paucity of references for this, a FA, is alarming. Seegoon (talk) 15:13, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Yep agree this version was promoted long ago (November 26, 2006). We should have FA and GA articles automatically listed for review after 2 years at minimum. But that's another talk. Shall we go over this and see if WE can save this....or is it to far gone?Moxy (talk) 18:36, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I have no access to any authoritative sources but I'm prepared to work on this, if others are, to solve its problems. If not, then I think it's WP:FAR for this. Parrot of Doom 18:07, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Owl City - Meteor Shower

I'm not sure, but I don't believe the Owl City song is dedicated to the crew of Challenger. The song is not actually in reference to space flight at all. The other is, however. There could be a note somewhere from Owl City that I am not aware of, but it should be included in the article if there is. If no one objects, I'll remove the Meteor Shower reference.

Wreck it

I propose moving the page to Space Shuttle ''Challenger'' accident. Disaster is a much-overused word in popular media, and it vastly overstates the impact and casualties. TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 23:11, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

I agree, assuming that you did not intend to include the apostrophes in the page title. I have filed a move request below. --GW… 08:21, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm thinking the pagename will italicize the ship name. (The redlink won't accept that...) Thx for initiating the formal process. TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 08:44, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the use of the word "disaster" is a bunch of nonsense that was started by silly members of the news media. Here are examples of genuine disasters: the fire-bombings of Tokyo and Dresden during World War II; the earthquake that hit San Francisco in 1906; the earthquake that hit Tokyo in about 1927; the hurricane that hit southeastern Louisiana and southern Mississippi in 2005; the sacking of Rome by the Vandals during the fall of the Roman Empire; General Sherman's "March to the Sea" during the War Between the States (in Georgia in 1864); the invasion of Russia by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1812. 98.81.9.49 (talk) 12:08, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

In aerospace, a true disaster was the collision of two fully-loaded Boeing 747s at the airport of Tenerife in the Canary Islands back in the 1970s. Over 500 passengers and crewmen were killed in this DISASTER. 98.81.9.49 (talk) 12:12, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus to move. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:04, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

• Space Shuttle Challenger disaster → Space Shuttle Challenger accident
• Space Shuttle Columbia disaster → Space Shuttle Columbia accident

– The term "disaster" is emotive, and implies that a great number of lives have been lost. Whilst the loss of seven lives in each of these accidents was tragic, calling the incidents "disasters" implies higher casualties than actually occurred. -- GW… 08:21, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

• Agree That captures my feeling better than I did. :( :D TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 08:44, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
• Agree IIRC, Media of the day exclusively used "disaster" to refer to the incident, but now we've come to understand "disaster" as something affecting a large number of people. Many people were heartbroken, disappointed, shocked, and whatnot during the Challenger incident, but I'd now call it an "accident" owing to the small (relative to, for example, Hurricane Katrina) number of lives lost and a more precise understanding of the term "disaster." -- ke4roh (talk) 10:02, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose - OED definition of disaster - " Anything that befalls of ruinous or distressing nature; a sudden or great misfortune, mishap, or misadventure; a calamity. Usually with a and pl., but also without a, as ‘a record of disaster’." While not disastrous in terms of loss of life, the two incidents were almost certainly disastrous for the Space Shuttle programme, which was stalled for years. This is one of those occasions where the use of "disaster" is entirely appropriate. I might also add using "accident" to describe these incidents might be playing down the almost criminal levels of negligence seen in the Challenger incident. Parrot of Doom 10:51, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

NASA was criminally negligent IMO. Not the issue. Aviation treats "accident" as "disaster" as a standard: a 747 wreck is an "accident" when 500 people die. Given the small numbers, "incident" would be closer to the usual aviation usage. Using "disaster" because NASA fucked up is POV IMO. TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 12:08, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Spaceflight is not in the same category as aviation. It's not merely loss of life that makes these incidents disasters, but the wound they inflicted on the national psyche. Regardless, however, we should follow the sources, rather than trying to draw the line between "accident" and "disaster" ourselves. Powers ^T 17:40, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. After a brief review of the sources in Google Books and the references used in this article, usage seems split, with a slight bias toward "disaster" for Challenger and "accident" for Columbia (the latter mainly due to the official "Columbia Accident Investigation Board"). As such, I see no compelling reason to change the Challenger article, though I'd probably be Neutral on the Columbia article. Powers ^T 17:40, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose: this term is largely universal, it's not our prerogative to tell the rest of the world what to call this. Maury Markowitz (talk) 20:36, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

The rest of the world does not universally call it a disaster. If you ignore wikipedia and derived sites, usage is evenly split, which to me means that the official use of "accident" should be preferred. Roothog (talk) 16:51, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:POVTITLE. The Boston Massacre may not have really been a massacre, but that's what everybody calls it—same deal here. –CWenger (^ • @) 18:50, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

You're not making a factually correct argument. It's not what everybody calls it. If you google the two phrases in quotes with "-wikipedia", you see an even split. Roothog (talk) 16:51, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

• Agree "Disaster" sounds like hyperbole. The official Rogers Commission report calls it an accident. If you googlefight the phrases "space shuttle challenger disaster" versus "space shuttle challenger accident", you see a 2-to-1 favor for disaster. However, if you add "-wikipedia" into the searches, it's nearly perfectly split, which suggests that wikipedia itself is creating the bias in favor of disaster. Roothog (talk) 16:46, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Ever heard someone say "that party was a total disaster"? Dictionaries give one meaning as "a total failure". (The original meaning, now obsolete, was "a calamity blamed on an unfavorable position of a planet".) As for scope, the loss of the shuttle itself was a billion dollars or so, and the entire cost including delays was probably several times that. That's considerably more than a three-car pileup. Finally, I note another discussion here made the same proposal four years ago and it went nowhere. Time to put it to rest.Paleolith (talk) 02:36, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose I don't think accident captures the scale or impact of this event. Sven Manguard Wha? 03:04, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose If the loss of seven lives and hundreds of millions of dollars of hardware in one horrific instant is not a disaster than nothing is! Barts1a | Talk to me | Yell at me 07:56, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose per Barts1a on the one hand, and on the other because it would be tantamount to calling 9/11 an "accident"! --Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty | Averted crashes} 23:02, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

"tantamount to calling 9/11 an 'accident'" That has to be the most absurd argument against I've seen so far. 3000 dead against 7? Deliberate act by foreign actors, against indifference & incompetence? Are you serious? TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 00:44, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Owl City

Where would it be appropriate to include the song 'January 28, 1986', by Owl City, which is a tribute to this event? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Irandill (talk • contribs) 21:51, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

As a rule, we don't tend to put pop culture stuff in space-related articles. Colds7ream (talk) 11:58, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

There is a song by Owl City on the album All Things Bright and Beautiful titled January 28, 1986. It says, "Ladies and Gentlemen, today is a day for mourning and remembering. They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths, And they had that special grace, that special spirit that says: 'Give me a challenge, and I'll meet it with joy.' The crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God."

These are Snippets from Ronald Reagan's Space Shuttle "Challenger" Tragedy Address. This could be included in the Legacy area.24.10.56.224 (talk) 15:26, 9 August 2011 (UTC)Anonymous 8/09/11

It is improper to conclude that the primary cause was O-rings

I've been voicing protest for years that it is ridiculous to hold that the primary cause of this mishap was a "failure of the SRB O-rings". If you try to operate a vehicle outside of its tested limits and it fails, there should be no surprise in that. You were asking it to do something it was never certified to do. Take your car's engine, for instance. The tachometer is clearly labeled with a white section and a red section. It's been tested for safe operation within that white section. Now say a driver hops in and decides to blow past that limit and revs the engine well into the red zone. BANG! The engine gets totally destroyed. Are you surprised? Is it proper to analyze the fault as being a failure of the "o-rings" on the pistons as having "failed"? Not at all. The cause of the destruction is operator error.

Here is a USENET post from that cold day of January 28, 1986, posted within hours of the mishap: http://groups.google.com/group/net.space/msg/098fec77028fe88e?hl=en

Excerpt: "The early reports have it that one of the SRB's may have exploded. The weather reports had been of very cold weather. What are the temperature cycling limits on the SRB's?"

Ironically, that post was made by a person named Michael Smith. The Challenger PLT Michael Smith has been quoted as having stated to his family that there was no way NASA would launch that morning, with it being so cold. But they did. And no one in NASA's Shuttle Launch Control or Mission Control, let alone astronauts who chose to get onboard that orbiter, had any basis for an expectation of success because those SRBs had not been tested down to those temperatures. It is a total diversion to lay sole blame on NASA management, Thiokol engineers, the SRBs or the O-rings themselves. Every single component of the Space Shuttle System - including the orbiter and ET - would need to be tested down to those cold ambient temperatures before you can properly expect such a launch to succeed. Otherwise you're just winging it. And that's what NASA did that morning. They rolled the dice and they lost.

This is what is known as an "envelope expansion test". They took a deep bite into a region that had never been explored before, lacking thermal certification data that would give confidence that it might succeed. Another major unknown that morning was the huge chunks of ice all over the pad. For all we know, Challenger's SSMEs may have been punctured worse than STS-93 experienced, and THAT failure was in a race with the SRB o-rings to see which would be first to destroy Challenger. It could have been any of hundreds of different failure modes that took out 51-L with various combinations of ice debris and cold-soaked temperatures. But no. The official blame has fallen on O-rings and SRB managers. We wouldn't want to blemish the Gene Kranz & Co Mission Operations' "Failure Is Not An Option" reputation by citing the primary cause of this incident as being their ridiculously cavalier attitude in deciding to launch that very cold, icy morning. And with the Rogers Commission neatly sweeping that under the rug, they set the stage for Mission Operations' arrogant launch decision in 2003, two missions after a huge foam strike that dented STS-112's SRB skirt.

The current debate above is terminology in the article's title. It's clear to me that none of these events are "accidents". This isn't spontaneous human combustion. These were foreseeable incidents where the warning signs were deliberately ignored. The US military has long ago adopted the mindset that all aviation crashes have specific causes that can be mitigated by being smart. They do not call their multi-million dollar fatalities "accidents". They call them "mishaps".--Tdadamemd (talk) 17:52, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

I found this 2007 article that confirms the above position that the cause was operational hubris:

"we’re only qualified to 40 degrees ...‘what business does anyone even have thinking about 18 degrees, we’re in no man’s land’".

With that reference, I made these changes to the article.--Tdadamemd (talk) 01:23, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks to Trekphiler for an excellent cleanup to my edit. Back to the topic of the best title for this article, above I am advocating Space Shuttle Challenger mishap. Here's a reference that includes a NASA HQ ppt slideshow making it clear that NASA has fully adopted the US military attitude that air crashes are mishaps, not unavoidable "accidents":

NASA Mishap Investigation Process (pdf pg19of193)

It also has excellent info showing how many CAIB members came from the standing Interagency Mishap Investigation Board.--Tdadamemd (talk) 22:13, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

TYVM. In case it wasn't clear, I agree, it was a monumentally stupid call. I just think the people involved can say it, & we can leave the reader to see it for themselves. Yeah, I wanted to call the NASA admin staff morons, too... :( They wait til people get killed to fix it... First the 204 pad fire, then this, then Columbia. Which nitwit approved an SRB with that O-ring to begin with? You might as well have stuck det cord on the tank & lit it before the flight if you rolled a six, 'cause you were gonna get a bang eventually. TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 01:36, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, it's easy to get wound up emotionally when one ponders the monumental stupidity behind catastrophic mistakes like these. It is said that hindsight is 20/20, but here is one case where foresight was traded for blindfolds. Imagine walking by all those icicles on the pad that morning thinking, "yup, good to go!" At least 6 of the 7 crew had enough training to know that they were taking a HUGE risk.

If anyone has a right to be arrogant, I'll be the first to admit that it would be NASA. But when that arrogance has bit you time and again, you'd think they'd give it a pause. But no, two flights prior to STS-107 a chunk of foam broke off the tank and dented the SRB. NASA looks at that and says, "yup, good to go!"

...so what's the story that the public latches onto? "The foam did it." How much accountability for the stupidity behind the decision to continue launching missions, without so simple a solution as keeping a rescue mission on call? One person got fired, and one other got sent out of state on assignment for a couple of years. Top officials who supported that horribly faulty decision actually got promoted. There's an entire Safety Empire that was established as a check against management, operations and engineering making atrociously faulty decisions. Did a single Safety person get so much as a letter on file in their records? I'm not aware of a single way that Safety was held accountable.

This was a very sad repeat of the story from Challenger. Blame is diverted to the inanimate (O-rings/foam). Some of the people most responsible actually get promoted (Bob Sieck/Wayne Hale, as just two examples).

Had the lessons from 204 been learned thoroughly, there would have been no Challenger and no Columbia. And it isn't turnover of personnel that caused the corporate amnesia. Look at the MCC photos from Challenger and you'll see Gene Kranz sitting in there. The entire room was thoroughly complicit. Gene Kranz learned he could get away with atrociously bad decisions after he decided to send Apollo 13 all the way around the Moon, instead of turning them around to come home as quick as possible. That decision nearly killed three more astronauts. But he got away with it, and the Investigation Board (internal, not independent) swept Kranz's near-fatal* mistake under the rug. [* - fixed in followup edit]

Cortright's failure to hold Mission Control accountable after A13 fed the establishment's arrogance. And that produced a NASA that 16 years later thought they could get away with flinging the ice-laden 51L crew into the sky.

Over on the Apollo 13 article, I've repeatedly added hard facts that come straight from the official reports, yet those edits get continually reverted. Anyone who holds that A13 had an explosion did not read what the reports said. The investigation was very thorough in analyzing the mechanisms of the tank rupture. Yet today, that article persists in having a section titled "explosion". The words exploded/explosion appear in that article at least seven times. It does not appear a single time in the extensive after action report, the 1970 official NASA document.

Distortions take root and people eventually accept them as unquestioned fact.

This Challenger article does much better on that particular topic in explaining how Challenger did not explode. Yet for some strange reason there is still the subsection title "explosion". I am going to edit that right now. I hope the factual version of this story will persist over the myth.--Tdadamemd (talk) 04:08, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't fully understand your objection here; people knew it as an "explosion", so I think that's an appropriate name for the section heading. The text explains that it maybe wasn't an "explosion" in the conventional sense of the word. Mlm42 (talk) 00:43, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Under the Legacy section

Please also include that in Decatur, AL, a smaller town outside of Huntsville AL, an elementary school opened named Julian Harris Elementary School in 1986. The school chose the mascot "Challengers" and all of the streets surrounding the school were named in honor of those astronauts and one very special teacher who lost their lives. The school address is 1922 McAuliffe Drive. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.195.164.179 (talk) 23:11, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Accountability for the crew not being given an ejection/escape option

While the article does have a section on crew escape, a huge part of the 51L story that is still missing (that would later apply to STS-107 as well) is the decision going back to the 1970s to not give the crew any emergency egress option. Since they survived the initial break-up, and Joe Kerwin in the official report does not rule out the possibility that some survived until ocean impact, we are faced with the disturbing awareness that giving the crew something as simple as a parachute could have made the difference between life and death. At the very least, a hope for survival. An excellent addition to this article would be identifying key decision points that date back to the early 1970s where it was decided that the crew would not be given an escape module that would take advantage of the already designed crew cabin pressure vessel - the vital element that survived the initial breakup of both Challenger as well as Columbia. This could have been designed with a minimum weight drogue chute for stabilization for eventual crew egress. It is understandable that the comprehensive escape module with rocket separation motors, full parachutes and impact attenuation bags was deemed to be weight (/cost) prohibitive. Instead a very practical lightweight system could have been implemented but wasn't. This would consist of a stabilization drogue chute for the crew cabin, minimal thermal protection such as a spray-on ablative coating on the front side. This would get the crew decelerated into parameters where it would be possible to pop the hatch and parachute to safety. Such a lightweight, minimal cost design would obviously not give the highest probability of surviving a loss-of-vehicle, but it would have given them a fighting chance. Even post-Challenger, such a mod might have preserved lives on Columbia.

The facts are out there. I didn't see much in Rogers' report on holding the people responsible for these decisions accountable, but there has to be information on who made those decisions and why. I expect the majority of those officials are still alive today. I never saw Rogers call them to testify. I never saw Gehman, post-Challenger, call for testimony on that either. I'm sure that both boards looked thoroughly into the matter. It's just their reporting that seems to fall short. There must be resources available to Wikipedians that can fill in this blank.

Perhaps the very people involved in making those decisions would like to edit in the facts as to why they did what they did.--Tdadamemd (talk) 05:20, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Your comment appears to be asking for when they made the decision to not have an emergency escape option. I suspect it wasn't a single decision made by a single person, but rather several decisions made be several people, possibly made over several years.. so I think it would be difficult to pin-point. And in the extremely unlikely event that somebody with inside knowledge stumbles across this talk page, it would be inappropriate for them to add information to the article, because that would count as original research. Mlm42 (talk) 00:37, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I thoroughly expect that the decision involved dozens of people through a lengthy timeframe. There is, however, one "pin-point" that is most significant to identify: that is the person who had been authorized to make the final decision on the matter. If I were to take a guess, I'd say this happened around 1973 or so. We can expect that every astronaut helping to develop shuttle during those early years consented to the decision that the engineers and management had made. With all the people involved, I don't think it is unreasonable that at least one of them would want the world to know the accurate story as to why they did what they did, and how they view their decision with the hindsight of 14 dead astronauts. There are many new space vehicles being designed today that could benefit from these lessons learned. Wikipedia can serve as an excellent record of those facts. Not just in the initial design of shuttle, but also after 1986 when NASA was forced to re-examine the problem. That group of people obviously did not provide an adequate solution for the situation that struck again in 2003.--Tdadamemd (talk) 19:03, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Why "Explosion"?

The article has a section that thoroughly explains how the destruction of the vehicle was not an explosion. I had edited the section title to "Vehicle disintegration was not an explosion", but that quickly got reverted back to "Explosion". The section already communicates a more comprehensive understanding (that extreme air loads can tear up a vehicle so that it looks like it exploded, when in fact it did not). I see no way for "Explosion" to be upheld as an accurate and appropriate title for the section. Perhaps those involved in naming that title are not bothering to read the section. Or if the problem is that what that section is saying is not being understood, then this Talk section here can be used to provide a more thorough explanation. Or this section can be used for debate, if anyone really believes that the vehicle did explode. The starting point in that case would be to provide any solid evidence. Quoting a reference written by the many people who do not care to understand the difference between what an explosion is and what an explosion is not would not count as solid evidence.

The beauty of Wikipedia is that it helps to educate us where we can advance from our individual states of ignorance.--Tdadamemd (talk) 19:03, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

The vast majority of sources report the incident as an explosion and in the everyday sense of the word that is what happened. Technically the shuttle didn't explode, but the liquid propellants did, after the collapse of the fuel tanks. I don't support a change to "No explosion". We're not myth busters. However, I would support a change to "shuttle break up" or "shuttle disintegration" or something similar. Polyamorph (talk) 07:18, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I have removed the section entirely. We already have a perfectly good section describing the "Vehicle breakup" and no where does it state that the shuttle exploded so there is no misconception to clarify, we present the facts as they happened. I merged the useful information from the "Explosion" section into this pre-existing "Vehicle breakup" section. Polyamorph (talk) 07:30, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

The only part that might require clarification is in the flight controller dialogue "We have a report from the Flight Dynamics Officer that the vehicle has exploded." Perhaps a sentence stating how technically this was not correct would be fine but it doesn't warrant its own section.Polyamorph (talk) 07:33, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Recent edits, neutrality

I've reverted a recent edit, and notice more by the same user which seem to veer off neutrality, into synthesis of sources and a personal interpretation, and appear to promote a particular expert, in a fashion that reads like some COI might be involved. 76.248.149.98 (talk) 03:01, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Much of it appears to be copyright violation, and I'm wondering if the rest isn't aimed at promoting the views of one expert. Comment here would be welcome, though I may ask for more eyes at a noticeboard. 76.248.149.98 (talk) 03:16, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your attention to encyclopedic content. Which direction is this copying going? The web site in question seems to be from 2010. We've had this article up with much of its content since well before that. Let's be sure the site author didn't grab content here for his page. -- ke4roh (talk) 03:39, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

A Google search indicates that the recent additions-those since November 15-- were copied from text added to the 'o-ring' website on November 9 [2]. But if you look at the content I've reverted, it does appear to be a sort of advocacy, perhaps lifted from a website whose reliability as a source has not been established; Fred Policelli may be an expert, but that needs to be established by other sources, not by his website. The tone raises some questions, and the possibility of copyright infringement raises more. 76.248.149.98 (talk) 03:45, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

I think the discussion engaged here is helpful: [3]. 76.248.149.98 (talk) 03:59, 17 November 2011 (UTC)