Sorting Out a Tragedy

President Reagan’s decision to empanel an independent commission to investigate the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger will dispel any doubt about the thoroughness and integrity of the group’s findings and recommendations. While the National Aeronautics and Space Administration would almost certainly have done as good a job as the new panel will do, it’s generally a bad idea to allow people to investigate themselves.

It was also wise to limit the mandate of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident to the accident itself and its causes. There had been talk of having its members take a broad look at the future of American space policy as well. However, another presidential commission is already doing that, and asking the new panel to undertake the task would have needlessly slowed its work. Now it can concentrate on the accident, pursue every avenue of inquiry and meet the deadline of producing a report within 120 days. A timely report is essential. The remaining shuttle fleet will be grounded until the investigation is completed and the commission’s recommendations can be implemented.

Based on the photographs released by NASA so far, it appears that the disaster, which claimed the lives of seven astronauts, was caused by a failure in one of the solid-fuel rockets, allowing flames to shoot from the side of the rocket and causing the huge external tank filled with liquid hydrogen and oxygen to explode. If that turns out to be the cause, the commission will have to determine whether it resulted from a local mechanical failure or from a basic design flaw. The former would obviously be easier to correct than the latter.

The commission is made up of 12 distinguished citizens under the chairmanship of William P. Rogers, a former secretary of state and U.S. attorney general, and the deputy chairmanship of Neil A. Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. If the truth about the Challenger disaster can be known, this group will discover it.