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Well, Snopes makes no mention of it at all, but that doesn't prove
anything.
I personally doubt that the rumor is true. I suspect the origin of the
rumor is from some of the many studies that have gone around. Tufte went
into a lot of detail about the way Morton Thiokol engineers tried to
present risk data, but because of the organization the critical
temperature data just didn't get through to the NASA administrators.
But so far as I know, Tufte has never said there was a case of a Warning
left out of a manual.
What really makes me doubt the story, though, is that my understanding
of the NASA shuttle launch documentation isn't organized in a way that
"a warning" about temperatures and o-rings could really be inserted
anywhere. It isn't a procedural manual in the sense that most of us are
familiar with. It's my understanding that the launch controllers and
shuttle crew operate from a series of checklists, with "go/no go"
decisions at each checkpoint. If the particular condition that you've
checked is a go, you proceed to the next data item. If it's a no go, you
stop and report the problem up to the next level, where a manager then
decides to proceed, or recommend a hold in the countdown. If necessary,
it gets kicked further up until a launch director makes a decision to
proceed or to halt the countdown.
Best way to see an illustration of this? Rent "Apollo 13" and watch that
movie's depiction of the launch sequence. It isn't that different for
the shuttle. While there are constant calls for documentation through
the movie and tech manuals are scattered about as props, you don't
actually see any of the controllers consult a manual during the launch.
("Les'see...what comes after we pressurize the LOX?")
Based on what we know now, you could probably say that there was a
-step- missing to check ambient air temperature, but even so this
wouldn't be a case of a tech writer wanting to put the data in and then
being told no. As Peter Neilson's excellent post pointed out, it is more
a case that the NASA engineers didn't understand the potential problem,
and thus never looked at it.
There have been some aircraft disasters that have been traced, in part,
to improper warnings in the documentation. American Airlines 587 in
November 2001 is one, American Airlines 191 in May 1979 is another.
But I don't think the shuttle rumor is true.
--Rick Lippincott
FLIR Systems
Billerica, MA
-----Original Message-----
From: Gilda Spitz [mailto:gaspitz -at- longview -dot- com]
Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 10:00 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: An urban legend regarding documentation?
I have a question about the Challenger disaster, regarding its
documentation.
I heard a rumour that the person writing documentation for NASA wanted
to insert a warning regarding the O rings, but was instructed to omit
it. I suspect this is an urban legend, but I haven't been able to find
anything relevant on my usual Urban Legend Web site.
Does anyone in Techwr-l know anything about this, to either prove or
disprove the story?
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