Shuttle Panel Adopts Aggressive Style in Questioning Witnesses

As the probe into the explosion of the shuttle Challenger progresses, the presidential commission appointed to investigate the disaster has shed its mild manner and adopted an aggressive, challenging style that has caused some witnesses to squirm.

Criticized previously for being almost protective of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the commission on Wednesday prodded space agency officials repeatedly about pressures they may have exerted to launch and about what one commissioner called a “communications gap” in the agency. At times, commissioners openly expressed disbelief at the testimony.

Commissioner Donald J. Kutyna, who during the commission’s early days said he favored holding private hearings, repeatedly chastised NASA officials for failing to report concerns about a possible equipment failure to the agency officials who ultimately decide whether to proceed with a launch.

“When you want to report a fire, you don’t go to the mayor,” Kutyna told one NASA witness.

Shortly after its creation on Feb. 6, the commission met in NASA headquarters here and depended on the space agency to provide all the evidence for the investigation. But, since then, the 13-member panel has hired an executive director and moved into separate quarters of its own.

Confident Questions

“Obviously, as the commission learns more and more, you’re going to see the questioning become more confident,” said Alton Keel, the commission’s new executive director, who frequently asks questions of his own. “What you are seeing is the questioning becoming more confident based on their knowledge base increasing.”

Prior to this week, the most heated exchange between a commissioner and a witness occurred when commission Chairman William P. Rogers challenged a former NASA analyst about whether he was qualified to assess engineering concerns about the seals on the solid rocket boosters. The analyst had written a memorandum warning about problems with the seals, called O-rings, which are now considered a probable factor in the explosion.

But when NASA officials on Wednesday downplayed previous warnings about the effect of temperature on the seals, Roger expressed strong doubts. “I can’t believe there weren’t lots of discussions about the effects of temperature on the O-rings,” Rogers said.

Commissioner Joseph F. Sutter, executive vice president of the Boeing Commercial Airplane Co., lectured Lawrence Mulloy, manager of the shuttle solid rocket booster program, about NASA’s apparent failure to address the concerns of engineers for Morton Thiokol Inc., which builds the boosters. The engineers testified Tuesday that they had vehemently opposed the launch.

Engineers in ‘Hot Seat’

“I think that putting those engineers in a little bit of a hot seat--they’re trying to do their job and say, ‘Hey, we’ve got to do something about this.’ They ought to get more attention paid,” Sutter told Mulloy.

When Mulloy tried to point out what he described as a lack of logic in the engineers’ arguments, Rogers shot back: “It seems very logical to me.”

Questions from the 13-member panel show they are as concerned about the decision-making process as they are about possible problems with the shuttle equipment. Rogers, for example, said it was “troublesome” that the Morton Thiokol officials had felt pressure from NASA to reverse their original decision to recommend against a launch.

“They had their contract (with NASA) coming up for renewal some time this year, so they were under a lot of commercial pressure to give you the answer you wanted,” Rogers told Mulloy.

The commission’s performance this week may help to quell a small but outspoken effort in Congress to hold an independent investigation. Four Democratic congressman called for hearings on the accident last week after complaining that the commission seemed too relaxed in its probing.