Quote:
Originally posted by stevepaa
That's not quite what I remember. Do you have a link? I remember the engineers warning about low temperature flight and management at NASA and higher pushing for the flight anyhow.
O-rings are tried and true, and very sucessful when used in proper tested environment. They do not work well when cold.
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I think your right, Steve. The o-rings worked great - as long as the temperature was above a certain point. There had been evidence of blow-by in the o-rings during launches prior to Challenger (as a result of launching during lower ambient temps), and I think that this ability to function at the lower temps provided a false sense of security that lead to the decision to launch Challenger.
Since MSFC is the propulsion center (here in Huntsville) I've gotten to see alot of this stuff (even though I was not involved in propulsion stuff) over the years. I got to crawl around on one of SRB segments that was used during the investigation back in the '80s (they had it stored in an old warehouse on Redstone Arsenal)...OK, I'm rambling...
Mike