Report of the PRESIDENTIAL COMMISSION
on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident
Volume 4 Index
Hearings of the Presidential
Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident: February 6, 1986
to February 25, 1986 [part1 of 2]
FEBRUARY 6, 1986 SESSION.
Centered number = Hearing page
number] = Text page.
PRESIDENTIAL COMMISSION
ON SPACE SHUTTLE CHALLENGER ACCIDENT-THURSDAY, FEBRUARY
National Academy of Sciences
Auditorium
2100 Constitution Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
The Presidential Commission met, pursuant
to Presidential Executive Order, at 9:50 o'clock a.m.
WILLIAM P. ROGERS, Chairman
NEIL A. ARMSTRONG
DR. SALLY RIDE
DR. ALBERT WHEELON
ROBERT RUMMEL
DR. ARTHUR WALKER
RICHARD FEYNMAN
ROBERT HOTZ
DAVID C. ACHESON
MAJOR GENERAL DONALD KUTYNA
PROCEEDINGS
CHAIRMAN ROGERS: Ladies and gentlemen, I now would like to call this
first meeting of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle
Challenger Accident to order.
I want to make just a couple of preliminary
remarks. As you know, this Commission was appointed by the President
on Monday, and because of the time frame within which we are working,
we wanted to start as expeditiously as possible, and the members of
the Commission have been very accommodating and agreed to come to
Washington yesterday.
We had a preliminary get-together to discuss
our plans and where we were to go based upon the Executive Order, and
we have, with the cooperation of NASA and the White House and other
officials, been able to set up this meeting for this morning. The
purpose of the meeting this morning is to be brought up to date on
the events that have occurred since the accident, principally by
officials from NASA. They have been very cooperative and have been
working closely with us, and we are obviously going to rely in large
part on the investigations that they have conducted and will conduct
in the future.
On the other hand, as we said when the
[2] President announced
the appointment of the Commission, we have our own responsibilities.
We can seek other evidence, get any other information we may desire,
and the NASA officials have been, as I say, very cooperative in that
I would like to, by way of a beginning, refer
to the Executive Order that created the Commission because we want to
stick very closely to the instructions that we received from the
President, and I will just read briefly the important part of that
Executive Order.
It says "The Commission shall investigate the
accident of the Space Shuttle Challenger which occurred on January
28, 1986, and the Commission shall:
"(1) Review the circumstances
surrounding the accident to establish the probable cause or causes of
"(2) Develop recommendations for corrective or
other action based upon the Commission's findings and
determinations.
"The Commission shall submit its final report
to the President and to the Administrator of the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration within 120 days of the date of this
So our first task, it seems to me, and I
other members of the Commission, is to deal
with, one, review the circumstances surrounding the accident to
establish the probable cause or causes of the accident.
Now, with that opening statement, keeping in
mind that is our purpose this morning, to be brought up to date on
the events that have occurred since the accident, we will call on
NASA officials, and I guess the first witness is Dr. Graham, if the
doctor will proceed to the podium.
Doctor, I will ask the Clerk to swear you
THE CLERK:
Do you swear the testimony you are about to give before this
Commission will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth, so help you God?
DR. GRAHAM:
[3] TESTIMONY OF DR. WILLIAM R. GRAHAM, ACTING
ADMINISTRATOR, NATIONAL
AERONAUTICAL AND SPACE
ADMINISTRATION
DR. GRAHAM:
Mr. Chairman, members of the President's Commission on the Space
Shuttle Challenger Accident, NASA welcomes your role in considering
and reviewing the facts and circumstances surrounding the accident of
the Space Shuttle Challenger.
NASA continues to analyze the system design
and data and, as we do, you can be certain that NASA will provide you
with its complete and total cooperation. Along with the President, I
look forward to receiving your report and to the resumption of space
flight with our national Space Shuttle System.
I would like to introduce now Mr. Jesse Moore,
who is NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Flight and also the
Chairman of NASA's 51-L Data Design and Analysis Test Task Force. He
will conduct the briefing.
Thank you.
THE CLERK:
Do you swear the testimony you will give before this Commission will
be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you
MR. MOORE: I
[4] TESTIMONY OF JESSE W. MOORE, ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR
FOR SPACE FLIGHT, NATIONAL AERONAUTICAL AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION, AND
CHAIRMAN, 51-L DATA DESIGN ANALYSIS TEST TASK FORCE
MR. MOORE:
Mr. Chairman, members of the Commission, we are here today before you
to discuss the Space Shuttle Challenger accident and to talk to you
about where we stand today in terms of our analysis that we have done
so far as a result of that accident, and supporting me here today are
various members of the NASA centers involved, as well as members of
the Astronaut Office down at the Johnson Space Center.
I would like to say that we tried, in
preparing this document for you, to put it together to give you a
sequence of how NASA goes about getting ready for a flight, what some
of the background associated with the Space Shuttle System is, and
then, finally, tell you where we are with respect to the overall
investigation that we are currently working on right now.
We will have to apologize because we probably
have some acronyms in our document here that may be kind of
difficult. Some of the charts that may come on the television screens
may be difficult to read, but we have
tried to put together the best set of
information we could in the time available to do it.
I would like to now proceed with the agenda,
please. [Ref. 2/6-1]
I plan to cover the overview, and then I would
ask various members involved in the Space Shuttle System to cover
respective parts of the Shuttle, and I will start out by asking
Arnold Aldrich, who is the Manager of the National Space
Transportation Program Office at the Johnson Space Center to talk
about the orbiter system as well as to give you some background on
the Shuttle and overall performance, and then I will call upon Dr.
Judson A. Lovingood of the Marshall Space Flight Center to talk to
you about the responsibilities of the systems that the Marshall
Shuttle Projects Office have, and then I will ask Robert Sieck of the
Kennedy Space Center to talk to you about the launch and landing
operations at Kennedy.
I think what is also very important to this
group is the design and development process that NASA follows in
acquiring hardware and software before we fly it, and we will tell
you about how we do that and the overall process, preparations with
respect to that aspect.
Finally, we will close with our actual flight
preparation process: How do we get ready for a
who is involved in getting ready for a flight, and to try to
give you some background information about the overall flight process
involved in the Space Shuttle Program.
The next chart shows an organization chart
showing how NASA is organized from the Administrator level down to
what we call the field center level, and I won't spend a lot of time
going into great detail on this, but I will tell you that Dr. Graham
is the Acting Administrator of NASA. I report directly to Dr. Graham.
I am the Associate Administrator for Space Flight. And then reporting
to me institutionally are four NASA centers involved in not only the
Space Shuttle program but a number of other programs in NASA. The
centers are the Lyndon B. Johnson Center in Houston, Texas. They are
also the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the George C.
Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and the National
Space Technology Labs in Mississippi. [Ref.2/6-2]
(Viewgraph.) [Ref.2/6-3]
MR. MOORE:
The next chart, please, will show a little bit more detail in terms
of how I operate the Office of Space Flight. And in this chart I have
four principal positions in my front office: a Deputy
a Deputy Associate Administrator for
Technical M and a Deputy Associate Administrator for
Management. I have two staff functions, principal staff functions.
One is looking at STS program integration, looking and making sure
all elements of the program are integrated from a standpoint of
program, policy and budget. Then I have a number of what I call line
divisions that report to me that have various responsibilities which
are listed on the chart, and I will just quickly try to let you have
a feeling for what those are.
The box on the far left shows my Customer
Services and Business Planning Division. That division principally
interacts with the Shuttle customers to give them schedule
information and planning information prior to our launches. Then I
have a division called the STS, and here STS- you will see that quite
a bit-stands for the Space Transportation System, Orbiter Division
and Logistics Division. This division is responsible for the overall
program aspects and policy aspects of the Shuttle Orbiter System, and
the logistics to support the Shuttle Orbiter System, meaning all the
hardware and the spares that we need to make sure the Shuttle
CHAIRMAN ROGERS: What does STS stand for
MR. MOORE:
I'm sorry, STS, you will hear that term quite a bit, stands for the
Space Transportation System, and that is another way we use of
talking about Space Shuttle. It is the Space Transportation System.
If you look at the Space Shuttle, you can see the Space Shuttle here,
and different people look at it in different ways. And some say the
Space Shuttle is the orbiter only, but the Space Transportation
System involves more than just the orbiter. It involves the external
tank, it involves the solid rocket boosters, and all the people,
facilities that we have to support it. And that is kind of what we
call in broad terms the Space Transportation System.
CHAIRMAN ROGERS: Thank you.
MR. MOORE:
In addition to our Orbiter Division we have a Propulsion Division,
and this principally is, from a program standpoint, a budget and
policy standpoint, responsible for the propulsive elements on the
Shuttle, and those elements include the Shuttle main engines, of
which there are three, the external tank which provides the fuel for
the main engines on the Shuttle, and then the solid rocket boosters
which provides the-a major part of the thrust during the initial
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