The Challenger Disaster Page #4

The carburettors seize in this weather.

This must be how you stay calm.

Roger The Dodger's got me going crazy with that process of his.

He's a lawyer. He's working it through the way he knows.

Yeah, well, maybe some others are kind of working it through the way they know.

What? You think somebody's working it for themselves?

Do you? It's Washington, after all.

I can't believe I got myself back in this world - government, politics...

And military guys like me.

You're surprisingly OK.

I guess you had your fill of military personnel through the '40s.

What was your role back then?

When? During the war, with the A-bomb.

I did the theoretical figuring. It was the math.

I calculated how much fissionable material would

be necessary to make an effective weapon.

It's not a good use of science.

You helped end the war.

Wow, this is beautiful!

Shall we try that Bordeaux?

You go ahead. I no longer drink. If I drink, I can't think.

Oh, sir, we had maintenance look at your heating.

Oh, thank you. Let me know if you still feel chilly.

Could you help me find the number of the National Weather Service?

There you go.

Can I borrow this? Sure.

Yeah, please. Not a forecast.

The temperature at Cape Canaveral. Nearby?

Yeah, Jacksonville, Florida, on the morning of the 28th of January.

Thank you.

That's the variable.

I got the variable.

It was freezing cold on the morning of the launch. We need to focus

our questioning of the NASA managers on stuff to do with temperature.

Temperature? You're talking about ice?

I don't know. Perhaps added weight of ice, perhaps some metal component

becoming brittle. I don't know which component.

There are only two and a half million possibilities!

I'm pretty certain.

As certain as you were about the engines?

Anything from NASA Failure Analysis? Due this afternoon.

Dr Feynman's becoming a real pain in the ass.

Well, yeah.

You betcha.

Dr Weiss? Dick.

What are you doing here?

Well, if the mountain won't go to Muhammad...

You didn't answer my calls.

So you tracked me down all the way across the country?!

Nah, nah, nah. I'm at Washington Hospital Center for a conference.

You got an hour to come over there?

Now? Yeah.

Sure. Hold on.

Um... I need to get this delivered to Dr Keel,

Presidential Commission - this address.

It's extremely important that it gets there.

Yes, sir. Thank you.

Good to see you!

With a vengeance? Mm-hm.

It's compromising your remaining kidney.

Show me the cells. It's here.

OK. That is not so pretty.

I read up on my chances if my sarcoma recurred.

What's the deal if we add in this lymphoma?

It's pretty difficult to calculate the combined...

Don't weasel it, Doc. It's math.

Look, Dick, it's not something we see.

The particular cancers you have, they're...

they're extremely rare. The chance of having them in conjunction...

Well, given what you were doing during the war...

If it even matters.

What do you think? Well, the radiation - what safety precautions were there?

For the test, I...

For the test I had a pair of dark glasses, which I never put on.

Jeez, they were... they were crazy days.

We never slept.

We were on fire, you know, getting the theory and the math

and the physics. It was a race. We thought we were saving civilisation,

but then we found out the Germans didn't have nuclear capability

and we kept on. The science was... so exciting.

Should have stopped.

We threw a party. While people struggled and died, we threw a party.

Hey, you were young.

I wasn't a child.

Yeah.

OK.

I guess we'll talk on the phone. Sure.

I think there are probably worse ways to go.

Hey, your hands are cold.

All the time. What is that?

It's possibly lymphoma.

The blood gets gummy. Capillaries lose their flexibility -

they can't expand.

Thanks.

Yeah, just talk to me about components that are flexible.

What about a solid rocket booster?

Go ahead.

Thank you, Louis.

Hey, I thought this might be helpful.

It's a section model of the SRB joint.

I don't want to see a model. I want to see the real thing.

So there are two O-rings

and they squidge in here?

Correct.

Has there ever been a history of problems with them?

Well, there has been some erosion, even some blow-by.

"Blow-by" is what?

Soot getting past the first O-ring.

That would mean that the seal is incomplete?

Right, but the manufacturer said that... Morton Thiokol?

Right, Thiokol said that the blow-by never got past the second O-ring, never.

But if something prevented the O-ring from doing its job...

...if it became rigid because, for example, it was cold...?

I think what we're looking at is the O-rings

within the seal of the SRB.

Lower temperatures would diminish the flexibility.

Rubber would get harder, less malleable.

At a certain point it would be too rigid to move into the gap.

Bill...

I need any data NASA have on the timings of spring-back.

Resilience of the SRB O-rings in response to temperature.

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning.

Just a reminder that we have many witnesses today

and the press will be in the room.

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to call the commission to order,

so please take your seats, make yourselves comfortable.

Pilot to co-pilot, fix your hair.

Our first witness is Mr Mulloy.

Mr Mulloy, would you come forward and identify yourself, please?

I am Lawrence Mulloy.

Solid rocket booster project manager for NASA

at the Marshall Space Flight Center.

All right. Commissioners? Anyone?

Dr Ride?

Mr Mulloy...

in your position at the Marshall Space Flight Center,

you'd be aware of correspondence, memos, etc?

I guess I'm wondering whether memos exist relating

to problems of launching with O - rings at low temperatures.

I understand the morning of the launch was exceptionally cold.

I'm not aware of such documents at Marshall.

It's not correspondence, but on the evening before the launch,

as a matter of routine, those of us from NASA asked our technical people

and our contractors if there were any concerns about low temperature.

Morton Thiokol, who make the solid rocket boosters, presented us

with the fact that the lowest temperature

we had ever flown an O-ring was 53 degrees,

and they wanted to point out that we would be outside of that experience base.

But having heard the discussion, we... we all concluded that there

was no problem with the predicted temperatures, and I have

a document from the management of Morton Thiokol to that effect.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr Mulloy.

You may stand down, for the time being.

There's some guy in the back who wants to say something.

I have something to add.

I beg your pardon? I... I need to add to what he said, please.

All right, sir. Please, step forward, step forward. Identify yourself.

My name is Allan McDonald. I work for Morton Thiokol.

I'm the director of the solid rocket motors project,

so I was at the launch at Kennedy.

I'd like to say something about the meeting

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