Took Hard Look at NASA Management : Shuttle Panel Evolved Into Bold Investigators

It had been two weeks since the horrifying explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, and the blue-ribbon investigating commission named by President Reagan was concluding one of its early closed meetings.

Allan J. McDonald, an engineer for the company that built the shuttle’s solid rocket boosters, sat with his face buried in his hands and wept. He had just revealed to the commission that he and other Morton Thiokol Inc. engineers had raised serious safety objections only hours before Challenger’s ill-fated launch but were overruled by superiors.

Astronaut Sally K. Ride, a commission member, walked over to McDonald and hugged him. “You’ve got a lot of guts,” she said. She turned to Roger Boisjoly, another engineer who had testified about the late-night argument, and hugged him too. He also burst into tears.

Pivotal Episode

Wrenching as the experience was for the engineers, for the 13-member commission it was the climax of a pivotal episode that would profoundly transform the commission, the character of its investigation and ultimately perhaps the future of America’s space program.

Instead of being just a prestigious panel that confined itself to the technical causes of an accident, the commission would weld itself into a surprisingly bold and resourceful instrument--determined to pursue the much more complex task of analyzing and then reshaping the National Aeronautics and Space Administration from top to bottom.

In the immediate aftermath of the explosion, NASA had moved quickly to dominate what would follow, launching its own investigation and--when the presidential commission was appointed--moving to spoon-feed its members. Initially, the commission even depended on NASA for offices.

The stunning revelations of the Morton Thiokol engineers, howev er, reinforced the commission’s determination to shake free of the space agency’s embrace and establish unequivocally that it, not the agency that launched the shuttle, would deliver the final verdict on the worst space disaster in the nation’s history.

“We were shook to our socks,” one commissioner recalls. “None of us were really prepared for it. . . . It became two investigations, one into the accident and the second into NASA management, and the second one has taken more time and effort than the first one. That’s the whole story: The accident was a byproduct of NASA management.”

As the commission releases its final report today, some members are pessimistic that the space agency will receive the complete overhaul they believe is required. But most are satisfied that their investigation uncovered the most pressing of the dangers and laid a groundwork for reform.

Initial Skepticism

On the road to those accomplishments, the commission--an eclectic, accomplished group of scientists, scholars, industry leaders, astronauts and attorneys--had to overcome initial skepticism in Congress and occasional personality clashes among its members.

Because of the expertise of its members and its mandate to report within 120 days, the commission did much of its own legwork instead of leaning heavily on aides. Members who seemed almost timid in their early questioning of witnesses soon found themselves snapping impatiently when witnesses tried to duck a question or obscured their responses in technical jargon.

Commissioners say NASA officials initially talked down to them and treated them like children who wanted to tag along on the agency’s probe.

“NASA started off thinking they were going to snow us,” says one commissioner who asked not to be identified. “Everybody on that commission knew the system intimately, and when they started telling us, ‘This is the shuttle, and this is the front and that is the back,’ we didn’t take kindly to it.”

Public Hearings

The commission, chaired by former Secretary of State William P. Rogers, decided early to move out of NASA headquarters into separate offices of its own. It put together a staff of about 40, including FBI agents, and announced that most of its hearings would be public. Air Force Maj. Gen. Donald J. Kutyna, a commissioner who initially favored closed hearings, recalls how he soon grew comfortable enough to forget the presence of television cameras.

Indeed, Kutyna now believes Rogers was correct in insisting on open meetings. “Had Rogers closed all of them, it would not have been the commission it was,” Kutyna said recently. “The public would not have been informed in the timely way they were and they would not have been so much a party to it.”

The evolution was at times painful. Commissioner Joseph F. Sutter, who as executive vice president of Boeing Commercial Airplane Co. is known as the “Father of the 747,” said he sometimes felt like a “Monday morning quarterback.” He added: “You don’t feel good about beating on other people.”

In fact, some NASA officials grew to resent and fear the commission, accusing its members of jumping to conclusions and conducting a witch hunt.

Within the panel, the strong-willed and politically experienced Rogers clashed with the free-spirited, impatient Richard P. Feynman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist from Caltech. Members recall that Rogers berated Feynman after the scientist set out on his own one weekend to scour NASA headquarters for documents and charts.

‘Naive’ Impatience

As chairman, Rogers discovered that he headed a group of individuals who were leaders in their own right and thus capable of being as stubborn and as strong-minded as he. One commissioner, who agreed to be interviewed only on the condition that he not be identified, complained that the chairman tended to be autocratic and showed a “naive” impatience to get beyond technical matters that the panelists felt needed further investigation.

‘Indoctrinated’ by NASA

Another commissioner said he at times grew exasperated with Ride, who, while impartial in her probing, nevertheless had been “indoctrinated” by NASA. He described an incident in which Ride objected to his suggestion for testing rockets because NASA maintained that the method would be impossible. The commissioner believed NASA should get the equipment to make it possible.

Nonetheless, the commissioners found ways to work together. Former test pilot Chuck Yeager came to only one meeting, but many of the other members put in 60-hour weeks. Friendships were formed and spirited debates rarely became personal arguments.

Commissioners also learned to rely on each other’s expertise. One commissioner said that if he personally knew the witnesses or felt technically unsure of the material, he would ask other members to pursue a line of questioning for him at the public meetings.

Kutyna and Feynman were among those who became friends. The normally casual professor had dressed in a suit and tie for the first commission meeting and fancied himself quite dignified in his attire. But Kutyna had some advice. Polished and neat in his uniform with its shiny medals, the major general turned to Feynman and said: “Co-pilot to pilot: Comb your hair.”

Effects of Cold

Kutyna called on Feynman for scientific advice. While cleaning his carburetor one day, Kutyna began to ponder testimony indicating that cold weather may have affected the rubbery rocket seals, then suspect and now known to have triggered the accident. He telephoned Feynman to ask about it.

The professor responded that rubber loses it resiliency in cold temperatures. Then Feynman became excited. On the morning of the commission’s next meeting, Feynman got in a taxi and searched downtown Washington for a hardware store where he could buy pliers and a clamp.

At the commission meeting, Feynman surreptitiously unfastened a piece of rubber from a model O-ring, the seal on the booster rockets, and asked for a glass of ice water. But when the water finally came, Rogers was still taking testimony unrelated to the effects of cold temperatures on the seals. Kutyna had to hold his friend back to keep him from interrupting.

“Not now,” the general whispered repeatedly. “Not now.”

Finally, at an appropriate pause in the testimony, Kutyna loosed the reins. “Now,” he said.

Feynman plunged the rubbery ring in the water and went on to provide a graphic demonstration of how cold weather on the launch day might have caused the seal to fail.

Earned Admiration

Although he irritated some members, Rogers gradually earned the admiration of most. They say he provided tips on how to deal with the news media, rightly insisted that the investigation be open and quelled the cries for an independent, second probe on Capitol Hill.

Neil A. Armstrong became one of the panel’s most valuable members. Commissioners describe him as intelligent and diligent, a star who had to endure constant requests for autographs and never seemed self-impressed that he was the first man on the moon.

Also, says a commissioner critical of the chairman, “He was the only one who could keep Rogers in line” when he became too domineering.

The panel had been sworn in only four days when the crucial breakthrough began. At a closed hearing in Washington, Rogers urged the NASA officials and representatives of Morton Thiokol, builder of the solid rocket boosters, not to hold anything back.

“Don’t make us pull out what you know,” Rogers reportedly said. McDonald, one of the Thiokol engineers who opposed the launch, stepped forward and advised the commissioners that NASA had not given them the whole story.

‘Raised His Hand’

“Everyone was about finished but there had been no mention of the (pre-launch) discussions and Al sat there for a moment agonizing what to do,” a friend said. “No one had asked him. So, he finally just raised his hand. Al, unsolicited, said, ‘Wait just a minute--no one’s talked about the problem.’ ”

McDonald told the commission that engineers at Morton Thiokol objected to the launch because of concern that crucial seals, the O-rings, on the rockets would not set properly in cold weather.

The commission asked him to testify along with the other Thiokol engineers at a closed meeting four days later in Florida. It was at this meeting that the engineers broke down and the startled commissioners began to perceive the full dimensions of the shuttle’s problems.

“Al McDonald was the pivotal point in this investigation,” one commissioner says now. “Without him coming forward, we might have missed the whole thing.”

In the closed session in Florida, the commission learned that NASA managers had failed to report the engineers’ concerns to key agency officials responsible for deciding whether to launch. An executive session was called. The panel quickly decided to ask all NASA officials who participated in the pre-launch discussions to remove themselves from the investigation. Rogers informed the White House of his plans. On the following day, he released a statement:

The decision-making process that led to Challenger’s launch appeared to have been “flawed,” he said.

Smaller Groups

On the airplane back to Washington, Kutyna and Commissioner Robert B. Hotz, former editor of Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine, discussed ways to divide the commission into smaller groups that could more effectively probe the problems the commission had found. Kutyna took notes. His wife, Lucy, stayed up until 3 a.m. typing them.

The commission decided to form panels of four or five commissioners each, and ordered NASA to reorganize its own probe along similar lines. The panels got to work, traveling to NASA centers in Florida, Texas and Alabama to interview officials and review documents. The panels told NASA what information they wanted and NASA supplied it. The relationship with NASA officials at the centers slowly improved, and commissioners found themselves gaining a new respect for many of them.

“The very first day, it was very cool,” recalls a commissioner whose panel visited NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. “But after the first three or four hours, everybody there was just trying to figure out what broke. . . . There wasn’t a single bit of trying to make me feel like an outsider.”

Rogers agrees.

“The NASA team that worked with us, once those who were involved in the decision-making process were removed, cooperated very well,” Rogers said in a recent interview. “They answered our every request.”

The commission’s relationship with the Thiokol engineers warmed even more. The engineers grew accustomed to getting phone calls at home from an ever-questioning Feynman. Kutyna arranged to have McDonald and others come to Washington to review the fruits of the investigation as it neared its conclusion to be sure nothing had been overlooked.

Engineers Reassigned

McDonald and Boisjoly told the commission that their company had reassigned them in what they believed was an attempt to punish them for their commission testimony. Rogers and Kutyna came to the engineers’ defense.

Rogers told Thiokol Vice President Joseph C. Kilminster that he thought the engineers should have been promoted, not demoted. Kutyna also warned Thiokol executives that the commission had the impression the two men had been punished. McDonald and Boisjoly were reinstated. The company appointed McDonald to head a group working to improve the rockets.

The writing of the report became the commission’s most grueling task. Members complained that the entire panel had to review all the sections, and every comma and semicolon seemed to become an object of contention. One member said his panel began writing its section in early April and was still making changes several days ago. Another member called the process “ridiculous.”

Feynman also complained about the amount of rewriting demanded by Rogers and Alton G. Keel Jr., executive director of the commission. Feynman said Rogers would worry “about how things looked to the outside world” and quibbled over the report to “a fault.”

Feynman Appendix

When Rogers rejected as too emotional a section Feynman wrote strongly criticizing NASA’s public portrayal of rocket safety, Feynman dashed off a telefax demanding his name be removed from the report. Kutyna persuaded Feynman to agree to a handful of word changes and Rogers accepted them. Feynman’s section will appear as a separate appendix to be released with other appendixes during the next few weeks.

“Feynman does things flamboyantly and impulsively,” a commissioner said of the incident. “It was so trivial. He wanted to say that NASA was either stupid or tried to snow everyone. He agreed to change a couple of words to tone it down and everyone was happy.”

Keel cites as a key panel accomplishment the fact that its members could all agree on the report’s final recommendations.

“In all the areas within our charter, we were able to reach a consensus . . . ,” Keel says. “One mark of success was that all the investigative lines we pursued did lead to a conclusive end.”

But some panelists say they had neither the time nor the authority to say all they wanted to about NASA.

“Someone could come up with a better space program than is now laid out,” one commissioner insists.