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  1. Path: sparky!uunet!news.univie.ac.at!scsing.switch.ch!univ-lyon1.fr!ghost.dsi.unimi.it!batcomputer!rpi!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!news.service.uci.edu!ucivax!news.claremont.edu!nntp-server.caltech.edu!SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU!LYDICK
  2. From: lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU (Speaker-to-Minerals)
  3. Newsgroups: alt.callahans
  4. Subject: Re: An early toast
  5. Date: 27 Jan 1993 14:20:10 GMT
  6. Organization: HST Wide Field/Planetary Camera
  7. Lines: 19
  8. Distribution: world
  9. Message-ID: <1k65mqINN6eb@gap.caltech.edu>
  10. References: <1jvdioINNr25@digex.digex.com> <1993Jan27.043515.14771@wam.umd.edu> <1k56dkINNloq@menudo.uh.edu>,<1993Jan27.062620.24369@midway.uchicago.edu>
  11. Reply-To: lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU
  12. NNTP-Posting-Host: sol1.gps.caltech.edu
  13.  
  14. In article <1993Jan27.062620.24369@midway.uchicago.edu>, mss2@ellis.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer) writes:
  15. >    "People die opening frontiers.  This isn't to minimize the
  16. >tragedy, but no enterprise will ever be risk free.  At least they died
  17. >attempting something worthwhile, and for that we will remember them
  18. >and honor while we live.
  19.  
  20. StM opines, "Given that, though, the *REAL* tragedy of the Challenger explosion
  21. is that they shut down the space program for several years, instead of simply
  22. instituting a policy that you don't launch when the temperature's too low,
  23. while they were in the process of developing the new boosters.  That and the
  24. fact that this wasn't the first problem of exactly this nature that NASA had
  25. had.  You see, back in the '60s, they sent up a satellite, whose antenna was to
  26. be deployed with, essentially bungee cord.  Well, the launch was successful,
  27. but the antenna didn't deploy.  The NASA engineers who investigated the problem
  28. learned that low temperatures reduced the effectiveness of the deployment
  29. mechanism (or, in the vernacular `bungee doesn't bungee when it's cold').  Yet
  30. the institutional memory of NASA is so feeble that, having essentially lost one
  31. spacecraft because of this in the mid-60s, they didn't incorporate this `lesson
  32. learned' into the launch specs for the shuttle."
  33.