NASA Procedures Flawed, Panel Says : Launching Process Ordered Corrected; Photos Buttress Seal Failure Theory

The procedure for deciding whether to launch the space shuttle Challenger was “clearly flawed,” the chairman of the presidential commission investigating the disaster concluded Thursday.

The chairman, William P. Rogers, stopped short of blaming the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s decision-making system for the Challenger explosion. But he instructed top space agency officials to correct what he described as a tangled bureaucratic process that serves to “eliminate the elements of judgment and good sense.”

Rogers’ assessment followed three full days of testimony about unheeded flight safety warnings.

“I believe I am speaking for the whole commission when I say that (the decision-making process) is flawed,” the former secretary of state told four high-ranking shuttle officials. “The process as it worked in this case was clearly flawed because recommendations made were not fully understood by you or conveyed to you.”

Warnings Told

Rogers’ blunt declaration was made toward the conclusion of a hearing in which representatives of Rockwell International testified that they, like engineers for the firm that built the Challenger’s booster rockets, had tried to caution NASA that cold weather posed dangerous unknowns for the delicate spacecraft. Rockwell manufactured the Challenger.

At the same session, a NASA engineer presented an analysis of previously unreleased launching photographs that all but confirmed the failure of a crucial seal in the shuttle’s right-hand solid booster and eliminated two other leading theories about what might have caused the Challenger to explode on Jan. 28, killing its crew of seven.

Most inquiries Thursday were devoted to determining why the top level of launching decision-makers were unaware of warnings about the cold by engineers at Morton Thiokol Inc., the maker of the boosters, and by representatives of Rockwell. The Rockwell representatives feared that ice on the launching pad might damage the spacecraft’s vital system of thermal protection tiles.

The engineers for Morton Thiokol had urged that the launching be suspended because they feared that sub-freezing temperatures at the time of liftoff would impair the critical seals on the boosters.

The commission received emotional testimony from four of the engineers on Tuesday about how their data was attacked by NASA propulsion experts in a teleconference that led to a decision by Morton Thiokol executives to consent to launching. NASA officials explained they had not accepted the engineers’ initial recommendation because the data “didn’t hold together.”

‘Reporting Chain’

William R. Lucas, the head of NASA’s propulsion center, said that the “reporting chain” did not require him to tell the inner circle of launching officials about Morton Thiokol’s concerns, even though, as Rogers put it, “you had ample opportunity to pass along the information that there had been serious concern about this seal.”

Lucas, under some of the sharpest questioning yet, said he had not been told by his underlings about the level of concern cited by Thiokol engineers and suggested that, had this been passed up to him, he would have considered recommending that the flight be stopped.

Lucas said he relied on a document signed by a Morton Thiokol vice president recommending a launching, unaware that the document had been drafted without engineers’ support by three executives and a vice president for engineering. Rogers, in a surprisingly cutting paraphrase of testimony, characterized the Thiokol vice president as having said: “I’m chicken and have to go along.”

There was conflicting testimony by NASA officials and Rockwell representatives about whether the contractor that built the spacecraft had proposed that the launching be postponed or had merely cited “a concern” that had been addressed and resolved.

Rocco Petrone, president of space transportation systems at Rockwell, testified that he had discussed the ice conditions with his managers at the cape by telephone from his Downey, Calif., office in the predawn hours before launching. Petrone said he had told his managers at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida: “Let’s make sure that they at NASA understand that we at Rockwell feel it is not safe to launch.”

Petrone said Rockwell was concerned that icicles might damage tiles on the orbiter needed to protect it during scorching reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. “We had not launched in conditions of that nature and we just felt we had an unknown,” Petrone said.

Robert Glaysher, vice president and program manager for Rockwell, said he informed NASA officials, including Arnold D. Aldrich, NASA’s space shuttle system manager, the second in command, of the contractor’s opposition at a meeting less than three hours before the launching.

Couldn’t Assure Safety

“I told them, ‘Rockwell cannot 100% assure that it is safe to fly,’ which I quickly changed to say, ‘Rockwell cannot assure that it is safe to fly,’ ” Glaysher testified.

Aldrich, however, testified that he believed “Rockwell intended to offer me that concern but they did not intend to ask me not to launch.”

Jesse W. Moore, then the shuttle director, who has been transferred by previous arrangement to another post, said he had not been told of either the Morton Thiokol or the Rockwell flight safety concerns until after the spacecraft was lost.

Sally K. Ride, an astronaut serving on the commission, asked Moore if he believed the Morton Thiokol concerns should have been elevated to “Level 2,” the rung on the management ladder involved in a final flight readiness meeting. “I would have hoped that it would have been brought to Level 2,” Moore said.

When asked what he had been told about Rockwell’s warning, Moore replied: “I knew Rockwell had made a comment. I did not know Rockwell was talking about being safe to fly.”

In both cases, significantly, it was the first time either contractor had cautioned against a launching.

Alarmed by System

Commissioners questioned the wisdom of a final countdown forum that apparently did not poll each principal contractor as to whether it specifically favored a launching. They were also alarmed by a system that allows for mid-level judgment calls on concerns about critical pieces of shuttle equipment.

Rogers said the confusion over Rockwell’s position “illustrates one of the points that obviously has to be corrected. I mean, there were a lot of ‘maybes,’ a lot of people who voted ‘maybe,’ or (testified), ‘I don’t vote.’

“It would seem to me the decision-making process would require people to take stands and you should have a record of it.”

Rogers said that the commission, in the 24th day of its 120-day assignment to pinpoint the cause of the explosion and recommend corrections to President Reagan, had concluded its exploration of the decision-making process that allowed the Challenger to be cleared for flight.

He said that no additional public hearings would be held for at least a week. A commission official said the members would now divide into smaller groups, “roll up their sleeves” and pursue specific trails leading toward discovery of an exact technical cause of the accident.

The key piece of evidence most likely is resting beneath 1,000 feet of ocean waters off Cape Canaveral, where sonar readings indicate the sea floor is littered with what are believed to be shattered remnants of the Challenger’s righthand booster rocket.

The prevailing theory is that a joint in the booster began leaking on liftoff. About a minute into flight, as the spacecraft bucked heavy wind shears and dynamic aeronautic forces at the edge of space, the rupture at the joint widened, directing a deadly plume of hot gas against the spacecraft’s huge external fuel tank.

That theory was buttressed significantly Thursday when a Kennedy Space Center engineer showed the commission newly developed photographs of the launching. Charles Stevenson, who had been called to testify about extensive ice buildups on the launching pad on Jan. 28, said the photographs were among dozens he and other engineers were analyzing to determine if debris had played any role in the accident.

Although Stevenson said that no evidence of ice damage has been detected, the photographs, which were developed only last week, provided the clearest view yet of a large puff of black smoke emerging from the right booster rocket at or near the joint suspected of rupturing in flight.

Photos Indicate Leak

“Engineers don’t like to speculate, but, based on our photo data--we have analyzed all the photos--we feel that that’s a leak,” Stevenson said. “It may or may not be related to temperature. We feel it was coming out of--the most likely spot is the joint between the aft booster and the aft segment.”