At least three senior NASA officials who decided to launch the space shuttle Challenger were not told that ”a number of engineers” with the firm that made the shuttle`s booster rockets strongly opposed the launch because of cold weather.
Former Secretary of State William Rogers, who is chairman of the presidential commission investigating the Jan. 28 shuttle tragedy, made that disclosure Wednesday after the commission met in secret here to review recent testimony.
In a related development, Sen. Ernest Hollings (D., S.C.) said Thursday that one of the Morton Thiokol Inc. engineers who argued against launching Challenger had seen at a shuttle launch last year a puff of smoke from a booster rocket, indicating that a seal was burning.
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Similar smoke was observed in the first seconds of the ill-fated Challenger launch and was believed to be a burning O-ring seal on the right-hand booster rocket. Failure of the seal is suspected as a key link in the chain of events that led to the shuttle explosion 73 seconds into its flight. Hollings said the Thiokol engineer, Allan J. McDonald, told him he had seen such smoke during a shuttle launch in January, 1985, and ”knew it was trouble.”
”He said he would never sign off on any kind of launch below 53 degrees. It was 53 degrees at that particular time,” Hollings said.
The revelations about engineers` objections to the shuttle launch came as former astronaut Richard Truly was named as the new head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration`s space shuttle program. At a news conference Thursday, he pledged to help determine the cause of the Challenger explosion that killed seven crew members and to ”take action . . . to correct it.”
Truly replaces Jesse Moore, who will continue as director of the Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston.
The move had been planned but was not to have occurred until May. Moore`s move full time to the Johnson Center was hastened presumably because he was excluded by a commission directive from participating in NASA`s internal inquiry.
Commission members who requested anonymity identified Moore as one of three NASA officials who did not know about the strong sentiments against the launch voiced inside Morton Thiokol. The others were Arnold Aldrich, director of the space transportation system at Johnson Space Center and Richard Smith, director of the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla.
”The guys who punched the button and said `Launch` didn`t have the critical information on a safety-of-flight item,” said a commission official, who echoed Rogers` previous contentions that the decision-making process leading up to the launch ”may have been flawed.”
”That`s what we thought, and I think the American public is going to say that, too,” he said, noting that there may be more than those three officials. ”We haven`t interrogated all of the key launch people. There may be more. We just don`t know. That`s why we`re fanning out in all directions.” Rogers issued a statement through commission spokesman Mark Weinberg, who noted the review of testimony focused on executive sessions Feb. 10 in Washington and last Friday at the Kennedy Space Center.
”At its session on Feb. 10, the commission questioned NASA officials and representatives of Morton Thiokol Inc. and learned that Thiokol on the Monday night before the (Tuesday) launch had recommended that Challenger not be launched due to weather conditions, but later the same day reversed its decision,” Rogers said in the statement.
”At the session on Feb. 14 at Kennedy Space Center, in very active questioning of NASA officials and Thiokol representatives, the commission learned that, although a Telefax was later received from Thiokol indicating approval of the launch, a number of engineers at Thiokol still strongly urged against the launch,” he said.
”It was further learned that at least three key NASA officials had not been notified and did not know of the recommendation of Thiokol not to launch or the events leading up to Thiokol`s change of mind as reflected in the Telefax of Monday evening,” he said.
Rogers` announcement signaled further commission concern about the decision-making process and the flow of information within NASA leading up to the launch.
After Wednesday`s closed session, the commission ordered that all data relating to the launch decision from NASA and its contractors be forwarded to the panel`s staff here.
Commission members were set to leave Thursday in small working groups to visit Kennedy Space Center, Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and Thiokol. They will gather more data and information privately before returning to Washington to get ready for public sessions next week.
Some NASA astronauts have been described as being ”in a state of shock” over testimony to the commission that Challenger`s crew may have been put at risk without its knowledge. All seven crew members, including teacher Christa McAuliffe, died in a fiery explosion over the Atlantic Ocean slightly more than a minute after launch.
Commission officials have all but concluded that cold weather touched off a series of events that led to the damage on launch of a critical rubber O-ring seal and the subsequent destruction of the vehicle.
As many as 14 engineers at Thiokol advised against launching Challenger in temperatures lower than previous launch experience, according to sources close to the engineers, most of whom work at the firm`s Wasatch Division near Brigham City, Utah.
Moreover, these sources and a commission official asserted that mid-level NASA employees involved with the shuttle`s propulsion systems pressured Thiokol engineers and higher-ranking company officials the day before the launch until the company approved the launch, over the objections of several engineers.
”They (NASA) shouldn`t have done that,” said one of the sources close to the engineers, noting that the Thiokol engineers ”were sort of harassed by NASA. NASA said they couldn`t make a launch without their okay.”
In Chicago, Thiokol spokesman Thomas Russell confirmed there had been opposition to the launch on the part of some company engineers, but he said other engineers voiced approval of a launch.
Five participants were summoned to the meeting at the Kennedy Space Center the evening before launch to discuss ”major concerns about the weather,” according to a source familiar with the meeting.
The session involved what was described as an anguishing decision-making process, with some participants adamant in their recommendation against launching.
A teleconference hook-up was established with Thiokol representatives from Utah and NASA officials at the Marshall Space Flight Center.
McDonald, Thiokol`s top engineer at Cape Canaveral, adamantly opposed launching.
The source said there were many moments of confusion because participants were receiving information about weather-related hazards that they had never seen before.
”Everybody kept extrapolating from the data there was, but in the end it kept coming back to human judgment,” the source said.
”It was clear that at least one person from Marshall was hearing some things he had never heard before about temperatures and sealing performance. He was very surprised by the whole thing. Some of the information seemed completely new to him.
”But in the end, it came down to opinions. It wasn`t like going to a bank teller and asking what our balance is. . . . The gist of the signed statement (from Joe Kilminster, vice president of Thiokol`s space booster program) was that there would be increased risk, but it was probably going to be okay.”
The source said there was tension between NASA and Thiokol over company recommendations against launching.
”Have you ever had your skin crawl? It was like an undertow that you can`t see,” the source said. ”But I had the very definite sense that something was going on between NASA and Thiokol that I couldn`t quite put my finger on.
”The feeling was, `When you add all these things together, why don`t you reconsider?` The mood of this was not so much Thiokol talking to NASA, but man-to-man: Why do you want to launch? Why launch when you have all these nagging problems? Why the heck launch?”
The source said the decision was made between 30 and 50 minutes later during a conversation between Kilminster and two other Thiokol vice presidents.
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”It`s a damn shame,” he said. ”They were nearly right.”
The commission has scheduled public sessions for Tuesday and Wednesday to further discuss the decision-making process. According to Thiokol spokesman Russell, company officials have been summoned to testify at those hearings.
At the end of last Friday`s closed session at Kennedy Space Center, Thiokol and NASA were asked ”to collect and retain any and all documents, memoranda or personal notes of all persons who took part in that decision-making process,” the spokesman said.
At least one senior Thiokol engineer, McDonald, said he kept detailed notes of his conversations with NASA officials.
Such material was to be delivered to the commission by Friday evening.
According to Thiokol officials and commission sources, the sequence of events Jan. 27 that led to the go-ahead for launch the next day entailed two telephone conference calls connecting company and NASA engineers and officials in Utah, Huntsville and at Kennedy, during which Thiokol refused to approve launch because of concerns over cold weather.
”Obviously, NASA wasn`t satisfied with the first two recommendations not to launch,” one commission official said, noting that these meetings occurred from about 5 to 11:30 p.m., when Kilminster approved the launch in writing and sent his approval by facsimile from Utah.
In doing so, Kilminster, or his superiors, overruled the recommendation of a number of Thiokol engineers, including McDonald, a 26-year veteran employee, according to the testimony of McDonald and at least two other Thiokol engineers at last Friday`s commission meeting. The other engineers, according to two commission sources, were Roger Boisjoly and Jerry Mason. Mason declined to comment Thursday.
”We don`t know what pressures there were on Kilminster,” the commission official said, noting that NASA had been planning to reopen the contract on the booster rocket. ”They were going to have a competition, so Thiokol was under some pressure to produce,” he said.
The New York Times reported Wednesday that McDonald on the night of Jan. 27 was arguing primarily with Lawrence Mulloy, who heads NASA`s solid fuel booster rocket project at the Marshall Space Flight Center.
”It was a very prolonged discussion,” the Times quoted McDonald as saying. ”The engineers in Utah were largely in agreement with me.”
Nonetheless, his superior, Kilminster, overruled him, the paper said. Mulloy could not be reached for comment.
At his home in Huntsville, Ala., Judson Lovingood, deputy manager of the shuttle projects office at the Marshall Center, disputed reports about prolonged and heated discussions with Thiokol engineers.
”I do not know of any discontent of Thiokol engineering,” he said.
Lovingood was at the Marshall Center during the launch and participated in the teleconferences. ”I don`t know what went on at KSC (Kennedy Space Center),” he said.
”We had a briefing from Thiokol. There was a discussion of engineering data. Subsequent to that Thiokol gave us a signed statement to proceed with the launch. I don`t know of any heated discussions that went on for hours among anybody at that time.”
Asked if he had since learned of such discussions, Lovingood said, ”I have no comment on that.”
McDonald reportedly testified before the commission that the arguments centered on concerns by engineers over the effects of unprecedented cold weather on the suspect seals in the booster rockets.
In Washington, NASA spokesman Charles Redmond said Wednesday night that
”if Thiokol had such strong reservations, they had two channels. One was for Kilminster to go to (Marshall Center director William) Lucas and say, `You guys are bringing pressure on us, and we`re just not sure.`
”Or he could have sent a memo down,” Redmond said, adding that he wasn`t sure who would look worse in next week`s hearings. ”It`s either NASA, who might have brought pressure on Thiokol, or Thiokol, who had at least two channels” of protest.
A commission source said there is no documentation of communication between Thiokol engineers like McDonald and NASA after the Kilminster communication.