NASA’s Budget Rose by 56% After Challenger Exploded
On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff. The seven crew members were killed instantly.
An investigation into the cause of this catastrophe revealed that the director of NASA had been warned not to launch that day. It was too cold. The engineers of the company that manufactured the first-stage rocket knew that there could be a catastrophic failure of what was known as the O-rings, which held the rocket together. They lost flexibility when frozen. The engineers had told the head of the project that this was a real possibility. They were all opposed to the launch. But the head of the project refused to block the launch.
This is not surprising. Wikipedia explains why.
By 1985, with seven of nine shuttle launches that year using boosters displaying O-ring erosion or hot gas blow-by, Marshall and Thiokol realized that they had a potentially catastrophic problem on their hands. Perhaps most concerning was the launch of STS-51-B in April 1985, flown by Challenger, in which the worst O-ring damage to date was discovered in post-flight analysis. The primary O-ring of the left nozzle had been eroded so extensively that it had failed to seal, and for the first time hot gases had eroded the secondary O-ring. They began the process of redesigning the joint with three inches (76 mm) of additional steel around the tang. This tang would grip the inner face of the joint and prevent it from rotating. They did not call for a halt to shuttle flights until the joints could be redesigned, but rather treated the problem as an acceptable flight risk. For example, Lawrence Mulloy, Marshall’s manager for the SRB project since 1982, issued and waived launch constraints for six consecutive flights. Thiokol even went as far as to persuade NASA to declare the O-ring problem “closed”. Donald Kutyna, a member of the Rogers Commission, later likened this situation to an airline permitting one of its planes to continue to fly despite evidence that one of its wings was about to fall off.
The company got its money from NASA. The head of the company did not want to anger NASA. So, the company pretended everything was all right, and this pleased NASA.
NASA then tried to cover this up. But it finally came out during the hearings.
At first, the head of the program, Stanley Reinartz, shifted blame to the manufacturer. He testified:
At the end of the two-and-a-half-hour period, including an approximately 35-minute-off-the-loop Thiokol caucus, and after their recommendation, their final recommendation, to launch, I collectively asked all telecon parties if there were any disagreement with Thiokol’s rationale and recommendation as stated by Mr. Kilminster.
There were none received from Thiokol at Wasatch, Marshall at Huntsville, nor Mr. McDonald, who was sitting with Mr. Mulloy and myself at KSC. Thiokol was then asked to document their verbal rationale and launch recommendation statement, as is our normal practice.
Based on the process I described and the conclusions reached as a result of that process, including the contractor recommendation and the Marshall engineering support, I concurred with the decision of the Level III project manager, Mr. Mulloy, supporting the launch recommendation and continuing with the launch process.
This was standard CMA testimony. But then the story unraveled.
What was the result? For the rest of the year, NASA’s budget remained the same. The next year, 1987, saw a major increase in NASA’s budget. Over the next few years, it rose 56%.
NOTHING SUCCEEDS LIKE FAILURE
In a profit-seeking company, failure leads to replacement of senior management if the failure is on the scale of the Challenger explosion. That is not how it works in a government bureaucracy.
In a government bureaucracy, almost no one is ever fired. It is too difficult to fire them. They’re protected by civil service laws. They are merely reassigned.
On April 3, 1986, this story appeared in The Los Angeles Times.
WASHINGTON —The chief of the space shuttle project office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center has asked to leave the post “for health and other personal reasons” and will be replaced April 14, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced Wednesday.
In a statement released in Washington and at the Marshall center in Huntsville, Ala., NASA said veteran rocket engineer Stanley Reinartz was being reassigned to his former position as manager of the space agency’s special projects office, a post he had held until he took overall responsibility for Marshall’s shuttle activities last August.
It gets worse.
Appearing before the presidential commission investigating the catastrophe, Reinartz acknowledged that he had made the decision not to inform top management of the extensive weather discussions held between Thiokol and NASA engineers on the night before launch.
Defended Decision
It was a decision that he staunchly defended in his appearance before the shuttle panel and again in a press conference after commission Chairman William P. Rogers declared that NASA’s decision-making process before the launch was “clearly flawed.”
Reinartz could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
He was allowed to retire quietly the following November. He took his pension and disappeared.
Why did he retire?
Officials at the Huntsville, Ala., center said Reinartz left the agency rather than be transferred to NASA headquarters in Washington to become deputy director for the shuttle support program.
“In lieu of accepting that position, he decided to exercise his option and retire,” said Marshall spokesman Terry Eddleman.
It was just too embarrassing to be demoted to mere deputy director of the shuttle support program. After all, he had run the program. The humiliation was just too much to bear.
From Gary North, here.