A Serious Deficiency

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He had once been viewed as being too gentle to compete in the rough-and-tumble world of Washington bureaucracy. But after chairing three days of public hearings last week on how NASA reached the decision to launch the space shuttle Challenger on its doomed mission, former Secretary of State William Rogers was visibly--and vocally--angry.

Referring to the avalanche of documents concerning shuttle safety that the space agency passes from desk to desk, Rogers scolded some top NASA launch officials, "You eliminate the element of good judgment and common sense." Frustrated by conflicting accounts of positions taken at crucial preflight meetings, Rogers asked with cutting incredulity, "Does everybody know what everybody else is recommending?" He wondered aloud why those involved had not been required to take clear stands on life-and-death safety issues and had not had their positions recorded. And, Rogers concluded, he was certain the members of the presidential commission agreed with him that NASA's decision- making process "shows a serious deficiency" and was "clearly flawed."

The Rogers commission has another three months to complete its investigation into Challenger's explosion only 73 seconds after blasting off from the ice-encrusted Pad 39-B at the Kennedy Space Center on Jan. 28, killing all seven of its crew. But on one point the testimony already seemed conclusive: so many doubts had been expressed about the safety of the flight that Challenger should not have been launched on that frigid Florida morning. As one source privy to the commission's thinking said, "This was an absolutely preventable thing. This accident never should have happened. Never."

That conviction was based largely on testimony indicating how NASA officials had dealt with the preflight concerns expressed by two of the shuttle's prime contractors: Morton Thiokol, which makes the solid-fuel boosters that are the main focus of the search for a cause of the disaster, and Rockwell International, which manufactures the orbiter. Officials and engineers of both companies insisted that they had opposed the launch, at least initially, because of the cold weather and ice at the pad. But the NASA officials who heard the complaints contended that the objections had never been raised as forcefully as the contractors now claim and that in the end the disagreements had been resolved. Thus the NASA experts felt no need to relay the concerns to their superiors. That put NASA's highest officials in a position to testify that they were unaware of the opposition. And no NASA official conceded under questioning that given the facts available to him, his decision to launch might have been wrong.

After the enormity of the Challenger tragedy, it may have been tempting, even natural, for each participant to recall the discussions in the way that might put the best light on his performance and ease his conscience. George Hardy, a high engineering official at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., where the boosters were developed, last week accused Allan McDonald, the top Thiokol engineer present at Cape Canaveral for the launch, of having drawn on a "convenience of memory" in testifying about his preflight safety objections. Rogers protested that the comment implied McDonald might be lying and asked Hardy to withdraw it. He did.