Challenger Disaster

President Reagan should pay particular attention to Feynman’s supplement to the reports on the Challenger tragedy, before he talks again about SDI.

Your article quotes Feynman: “Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled . . . NASA exaggerates the reliability of the product to the point of fantasy . . . the guys who know something about what the world is really like are at the lowest levels of these organizations and the ones that know how to influence other people by telling how the world would be nice, they are at the top.”

These statements would apply equally to the President and others at the top who try to make us believe Star Wars instead of disarmament will bring us safety.

President Reagan is a master at making an “exaggeration of a complete . . . fantasy,” just like the managers at NASA. I hope he and others at the top will stop fantasizing about the invulnerability of Star Wars and the need for thousands of nuclear weapons, before we have a tragedy that involves the whole world instead of seven astronauts (tragic as that was).

PEGGY THOMAS

La Jolla