Wednesday, January 29, 1986  Confusion and Explanations



The destruction of the Space Shuttle Challenger has thrown the future of Americas shuttle program into confusion. A total of fifteen launches were planned this year but all future flights have been suspended until the cause of the explosion is determined. At least two Congressional committees plan to conduct inquiries into the tragedy. Some lawmakers say the space agency was too ambitious in scheduling fifteen flights in one year. Others say private citizens like teacher Christa McAuliffe should not go into space. However there is widespread sentiment in Congress that the program should continue. Congressman Bill Nelson, who flew on the first mission of the year, says the shuttle is too valuable to abandon.



Space agency officials have appealed to any and all people within a wide area around the launch site to surrender any pieces of debris they think they may have found from Challenger to law enforcement officials. Some tiles have washed ashore along with other small pieces from the shuttle. NASA officials caution that some of the debris may contain hazardous materials and should be left for experts to retrieve. Just 73 seconds after lift-off Tuesday Challengers big external fuel tank exploded, causing the orbiter to blast apart in a ball of flame. Search craft are looking for debris. Coast Guard ships have been collecting various types of debris; the largest piece of material, as yet unidentified, is about three meters long.



Witnesses to the disaster saw the two solid-fuel rocket boosters falling away from the main explosion. Those rockets are believed to have fallen into the sea more or less intact and could provide valuable information about what went wrong. There are reports that at least one of the solid-fuel rockets was sighted during the initial search, but recovery was put off because of the approach of darkness. Navy divers and small submarines may be used to locate the rockets. Coast Guard spokesmen say the search will continue as long as there are reports of debris sightings. Helicopters from nearby Patrick Air Force Base have also been involved in the search. Sightings from the air are said to be difficult because so much of the debris is small and is spread over a wide area. It is also not known how much of it may have already sunk below the water surface. What is found will be pieced together in hope of learning what caused the accident. But there is little optimism that much will be found and nobody will speculate on when, if ever, an exact cause will be determined for Challengers demise.



Recovery ships searched through the night in the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Canaveral, Florida, for wreckage of the U.S. Space Shuttle Challenge, as the investigation begins into the fiery explosion of the spacecraft. Several chunks of debris have been recovered so far from the 80 by 160 kilometer rectangle. An investigation team is to meet today to start the long probe into the tragedy. Some experts who studied video tapes of the explosion said they thought the problem was centered in the external fuel tank, containing about two million liters of liquid hydrogen and oxygen to power the shuttle into orbit. There is no official word how long the investigation of the accident will take, but most observers believe it will be several months before any final pronouncement can be made. (VOA News, January 29, 1986)



Search and rescue teams in eight ships and nine aircraft recovered about 600 pounds of debris from the explosion of Challenger on the 28th. No clothing or personal effects were found among the debris, officials said. A large, cone-shaped object believed to be the nose cover to one of Challenger's Solid Rocket Boosters was spotted. Coast Guard spokesman Jim Simpson said that search teams are concentrating on recovery of floating material before probing beneath the surface of the 30-to-200-foot waters.



Experts were studying computer readouts that timed events at one-thousandths of a second, hoping to learn if the problem could have been a rupture of the shuttle's external tank which had been the subject of much speculation as the cause of the explosion.



Kennedy Space Center Director Richard Smith revealed that an Air Force range safety officer had destroyed Challenger's twin rockets after they had split from the shuttle's external fuel tank and began to twist and lurch wildly, threatening nearby communities. Because of the danger to life on the ground, both SRBs were destroyed about 30 seconds after the explosion, NASA public affairs officer Mitch Varnes said. He refused to say where the boosters were heading, saying, "We don't want to pinpoint that area. Actually, only one was heading toward the coastline, but the SRBs are sort of cross-wired where if you destroy one, you have to destroy both." (Florida Today, Jan. 30, 1986)

