The Challenger Accident - The Inside Story (1986-97) By Tim Furniss. E-book format for £6.50

By Tim Furniss (Spaceflight Correspondent, Flight International 1984-2006).
E-Book
ISBN 978-0-9555651-1-3. 2008.
18,000 words, plus illustrations

(Click images to enlarge)

With thanks to Ali Abutaha for his co-operation.

Comments welcome to tim@spaceport.co.uk.

This reporter investigated and reported on the Challenger accident for over ten years. Was the loss of Challenger and its crew due to defective O-rings - or a breached booster in the area of the attach ring? Far too many questions have not been answered fully by NASA. More critically, much evidence was seemingly ignored, overlooked or not released. You can make up your own mind.

This is not a conspiracy theory - it is investigative journalism, which we didn't see from American journalists who just swallowed all the Rogers Commission findings.

Highlights

Before the Challenger accident, the Space Shuttle primary software supported a premature powered SRB separation manoeuvre and hardware was in place. Obviously, crews were not eager to try. However, the Challenger crew could have attempted the manoeuvre before the break up. The crew of an airliner believed that they saw an SRB separation just before the break up. Jettisoning the whole "stack" including the ET was also an option for crews.
Post-Challenger, crews could practice unauthorised powered SRB-ET separations but apparently simulator time was very scarce for this practice. These were not in the manuals.
The breached booster trailing flame and gas at T+20s and debris coming off top of right hand booster, seen in unpublished Time Life images.
Where was the wind shear?
Views from New Smyrna Beach showing debris shed from the booster.
The crew transcript: What was the '486' report - wind speed or booster pressure reading? See the pressure reading diagram! It matches perfectly with pressure and not wind speed.
The wrong piece of debris was identified as the crew cabin, which explained why it took so long to find it.
Rogers Commission said O-rings were to blame - after 10 days of the 120-day investigation!
Astronaut John Young said it was breached booster in region of semicircular attach ring of right hand booster. He urges for fully circumferential attach ring.
National Research Council is concerned about how well NASA understood the launch loads.
Astronaut Hoot Gibson and NASA Marshall SFC concerned about semi-circular attach ring.
Where was the 'wind shear'? The plume was straight. The later zig-zag part of the plume - due to Challenger's erratic flight path due to the breached booster - remained for ages.
Flight trajectory is erratic. Observers later saw zig-zagging.
Before the first missions the Shuttle's lift off time in was increased from T+4s to 6s after ignition of the SSMEs – doubling the loads on the whole system. A 100% dynamic overshoot. This caused an array of malfunctions on the early missions from lost tiles to broken down satellites.
Shuttle’s payload capacity is reduced from 65,000lbs.
Challenger is heaviest at 4,526,583kg, with heaviest payload of 52,308lbs to date.
Extreme damage in the region of attach ring of right hand booster.
Flight trajectory is erratic. Observers later saw zig-zagging.
Investigation of NASA footage reveals, gases playing on wings, leaking gases striking aft skirt, small flames by right elevons and a lost piece in the plume at 70s.
Viewers at New Smyrna Beach north of KSC see the erratic flight path and debris from plume of right hand booster. Amateur video by Harold Senhert shows everything – even a NASA camera team reported the debris coming out of third plume. The Rogers Commission showed the last 2 seconds of the Senhert video! Imagine only 2s of the film of Kennedy assassination!
Where are all the traditional NASA images of the launch from every conceivable angle as previous missions?
There were 190 cameras covering the launch but only two of the nine pad cameras worked! Not all the coverage was revealed.
The crew conversation links to several launch events, especially the '486'.
National Research Council says that there were significant changes in estimates of loads on STB attach rings.
Finally, Abutaha, Ralph Morse of Time Life and other observers in the New York office inspected only some Challenger images taken by Morse’s cameras and two showed flame and gas emanating from Challenger at T+20s and debris coming off the top of the right SRB at lift off. Everyone was ready to publish them – but they never appeared! This reporter was shown the images in Washington in 1997.
There's much more too.
You can make up your own mind.

Reader Comments

I read the Challenger Accident report. I found it very interesting and informative. I have always thought that there had to be more to it than a o-ring failure that caused the explosion. I can see the evidence of Mr. Abutaha as having merit. I think it was a combination of factors when put together caused the Challenger Accident.

I always questioned why the films of the launch do not show the top of the stack nor the smoke pouring from the joint. Only when the pad camera pictures were developed do you see the plume of black smoke. As a result of reading your report, I have my doubts of the Roger's Commission Report and the causes it cites. Thank you for making this report available.

The conventional wisdom is that it was faults with the O-rings that doomed Challenger in January 1986. Reading this e-book may well make you change your mind, though - or at least look at the official version of events more critically. Veteran British space analyst Tim Furniss presents a cogent and well-argued case - quoting Ali AbuTaha, the engineer who studied the disaster - that the real flaw lay elsewhere but that NASA chose not to admit it, as this could have triggered a fundamental, time-consuming redesign and a longer delay for a return to flight. The strengthening of the attach ring from a semicircular design to a fully circumferential design - the most obvious redesign - presents a very strong case.