Logansport Pharos-Tribune from Logansport, Indiana • Page 5

Pharos-Tribune, Logansport, Indiana, Sunday, January 25, 1987 Page 5 Insight Challenger: forever changing space program CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (UPI) The shuttle Challenger blew up one year ago Jan. 28, killing a school teacher and six crewmates and forever changing the very foundations of American civilian and military space policy. The disaster shocked America with the brutal reality that its prized technology cannot be taken for granted and served as a reminder that exploring the final frontier can exact the ultimate toll. Never again will the United States rely solely on the high-cost, high-risk shuttle system to gain access to space.

A new era of "mixed fleet" operations using the shuttle and new unmanned rockets is just around the corner. "The nation is really in a bad situation," said Rear Adm. Richard Truly, NASA's chief of the shuttle program. "We've created a backlog (of payloads) that's going to take into the 1990s to get back to anything approaching normal. "But I think 10 years from now, you'll look at the nation's space program and we'll have a robust mixed fleet.

We'll have a shuttle that's safe and operating routinely and by that time we'll have probably on the drawing boards a replacement for the shuttle." NASA's climb out of the depths of guilt and paralysis that smothered the agency in the aftermath of the worst disaster in space history has been marked by slow but steady progress toward safely returning America to manned space flight. And the Challenger anniversary, in a sense, is a watershed for NASA, a clear if imaginary line separating the painful work of finding out what went wrong that cold day in January from the I work required to implement the necessary changes. "We're getting our house in order, we're getting our act together, we have turned the corner in our recovery efforts," said NASA Administrator James Fletcher, named by President Reagan to lead the agency back to stability. "Step by step, in a systematic and orderly way, we are reshaping and rebuilding the agency to prepare the nation for a new era of space The first post-Challenger shuttle flight now is scheduled for Feb. 18, 1988, with the shuttle Discovery to carry a $100 million NASA communications satellite into orbit identical to one lost with Challenger at the end of its 73-second flight.

In a clear step toward that ted day, a crew of five veteran astronauts has been selected to man Discovery commander Frederick Hauck, co-pilot Richard Covey, David Hilmers, George Nelson and John "Mike" Lounge. Flight CHALLENGER LAUNCH SEQUENCE 0.57 (seconds into launch) 58.78 73.16 73.28 Immediately after ignition. black smoke appears at alt field burn -through have innated a combustion gas leak through joint of right solid racket booster. Putty failure and O-ring 2 3 4 the joint. Smoke is the product of burning grease and putty JOINT ROTATION: Ignition pressure and launch SOLID FUEL stresses twist booster casings and increase gap between is visible at alt Fuel explosions occur Flash appears near Flame PUTTY casing sections.

held joint of right al center and dome of right booster's lorward booster The 5.800° external tank. as licuid attach point. as plume sears through hydrogen and liquid booster nose pivots BURNING boaster casing. and oxygen lanks rupture and ruptures exlernal FUEL begins to sever tank. booster 'attachment to external tank.

PUTTY 73.61 O- RINGS EXTERNAL FAILURE: Leak path TANK 5 in putty prevents BOOSTER motor SOLID CASING ROCKET AFT pressure BOOSTER FIELD from seating JOINT 0-RING FAILURE: O-rings: Extremely cold temperatures fuel allows to enter burning at launch site reduce CUTAWAY resiliency, resulting in failure of joint. region OF Fireburst engults shuttle. triggers O-ring of O-rings to seal gap in joint. BOOSTER structural breakup of orbiter. Sources: Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle training in ernest is about to begin.

"I think really what our mission will symbolize is the fact that we have decided to press ahead and I think much in memory to the bravery of the crew of Challenger and that we have not let those deaths be in vain," Hilmers said in an interview. But many agency insiders say the February 1988 launch date will be impossible to meet given the sheer number of safety modifications required and a tight test schedule in 1987 to make sure the shuttle's redesigned booster rockets are safe for flight along with a host of other critical systems. Discovery alone faces 30 mandatory modifications ranging from major fuel valve redesigns to improved brakes and maneuvering rocket systems. More than 100 other modifications or design changes are on the back burner and many could end up being required before first flight. Hauck said the launch processing schedule is extremely optimistic and he stressed blastoff will be delayed if the work is not completed to everyone's satisfaction because the stakes are simply too high.

Challenger Accident. Rockwell NASA Graphic Jaegerman "I can guarantee you there isn't a single person in this agency who would for a minute launch us on Feb. 18 if they thought that that could result in any kind of disaster," Hauck said. "I really think that might be the end of the manned space program." Even so, agency managers are cautiously optimistic and whether the February launch date can be met or not, 1987 will be an intense year of work for NASA to regain the high ground of space. "I think there was a natural grieving and shock period and low morale for a good part of last year," Truly said in an interview in his office at NASA headquarters in Washington.

"I guess that was natural. "But within the program today, boy, we've got a lot of hard working people from the top of this' program to the bottom. We're trying to make February '88. We think we can do it. If we can't do it, we'll make the first month after that that's safe to fly.

We've got a lot to do this year." First, however, NASA will pause to honor the memory of Challenger's fallen crew: commander Francis "Dick" Scobee, co-pilot Michael Smith, Judith Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, Ronald McNair, civilian satellite engineer Gregory Jarvis and Astronaut families lend support to each other HOUSTON (UPI) The families of the seven men and women killed when Challenger exploded a year ago are trying to ease their anguish with support of an educational memorial dedicated to future explorers. "We did not want them to be remembered merely as a crew who died in a fire and explosion," said June eScobee, wife of Challenger commander Francis "Dick" Scobee. "I think that the nation feels as I do that it's been very difficult year, but I do look forward to the future. a new hope, a vision. We want to provide a living tribute to their memory and carry out their mission of flying and teaching in space," she said.

Before the ili-fated mission, whose crew included New Hampshire social studies instructor Christa McAuliffe, commander Scobee told reporters it was his wife's education career that helped him understand the historic importance of the teacher-in-space flight. "My perception is that the real significance of it, and especially a teacher, is that it will get people in this country, especially young people, expecting to fly in space," the astronaut said a month before his final flight. The dream was shattered in a ball of fire 73 seconds after takeoff from Cape Canaveral Jan. 28, 1986. Killed along with Scobee and McAuliffe were Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, Ronald McNair, Michael Smith and Judith Resnik.

"The goal of the mission was to share information with the nation," Mrs. Scobee frequently reminds people in her fund-raising efforts for the Challenger Center for Space Science Education. June Scobee is chairwoman of the space science foundation started by the families of the astronauts, Scobee is on leave from her job as a University of Houston education professor. She is traveling nationwide to gather support for the proposed $50 million center. The Challenger Center, to be based in Washington with a space station replica to be built in the area of the Johnson Space Center, is designed to promote space study through teacher training and education programs for children.

Like the close-knit astronaut corps, the crew members' families have banded together since the accident, some of them becoming almost reclusive in their efforts to withdraw from publicity. "We talk to each other at least once a day. We are each other's best support team. We're each others' best friends," said Scobee, who frequently speaks on behalf of all the families. Jarvis's wife Marcia said friends in her oceanside community of Hermosa Beach, and at the Johnson Space Center have been "terrific" in providing emotional support for her.

"I'm doing okay," Jarvis said. "I'm just trying to do ordinary things, some of the things we've always done with our friends. "You just miss a person you lived with for so many years. It's just that life is radically changed, but you can't stop living. My husband was someone who enjoyed every day as much as he could.

"We had always said that if anything happened to one of us that the other was to continue life the way we lived it together and not concentrate on the death. You're not supposed to stop living because the other one's not there. "That's hard to do, but you have to go on. He wouldn't want it any other way," Jarvis said. She was working as a dental assistant until a month ago, when her boss retired.

"So I've retired for a while too," she said. "Right now I want to wait and see. Last year was so hectic. I need a little time to myself," Jarvis said. She plans to spend the first anniversary of the accident "quietly, away from people." When Scobee is asked about her plans for the anniversary, she tightens her lips, shakes her head and looks toward the ceiling.

Apollo disaster struck space program 20 years ago WASHINGTON (UPI) America's first spaceship disaster struck 20 years ago Jan. 27 when the lives of three astronauts were snuffed out in a flash fire in the Apollo 01 cabin during a "routine" test on a launch pad at Cape Kennedy. The 17-second burst of flame that turned the inside of the sealed moonship into an inferno was believed caused by frayed wiring that set the stage for a short circuit and spark that ignited flammable equipment in the pure-oxygen cabin atmosphere. Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Edward H. White and Roger B.

Chaffee were overcome by smoke before they could open their cumbersome hatch. In an aftermath that closely parallels the months following the Challenger disaster 19 years later, America's attitudes about spaceflight changed dramatically. Managers were replaced, the spaceship was vastly improved and astronauts said they would not be rushed into flying again. "I think we all had been lulled into a false sense of security," said the late Rep. Olin Teague, a Texas Democrat, after his House space committee finished hearings on the accident.

"Maybe in the long run, the deaths of these three boys will have saved the lives of many, many others." "We were all to blame for the fire," he said then. Nineteen years later, the statements from the halls of Congress were the same. Only the facts changed. "Flying is a death-oriented business," astronaut Walter Cunningham, who was a backup to the Grissom crew, later wrote. "You either New Hampshire high school teacher Christa McAuliffe.

Ironically, the first anniversary of the Challenger accident comes one day after the 20th anniversary of a launch pad fire that killed three Apollo astronauts and prompted a rebuilding program much like the one currently under way. On Jan. 28 flags at agency field centers will be lowered to half staff at 11:38 a.m. EST, the time one year ago that Challenger blasted away from Earth on its final flight, and NASA employees across the United States will pause in their work to observe 73 seconds of silence. There will be no formal NASA ceremonies, no speeches and no agency memorial services in a conscious attempt by NASA to put the past to rest in order to concentrate on the future.

But during those 73 seconds, all of those who watched or participated in Challenger's launching will remember the delays that postponed blastoff to Jan. 28, the thrill that always accompanies liftoff and the disbelief and horror that followed the shuttle's strangely silent detonation nine miles above the Atlantic Ocean. They will remember the Rogers Commission findings that record-cold weather that day compromised an already faulty booster joint and that Challenger's right-side booster ruptured as a result, triggering the shuttle's disintegration. And they will remember that an insidious chain of faulty decision-making by NASA's managers, fostered by complacency, tight budgets and a brutal launch schedule, ulimately was responsible for the deaths of seven Americans and the loss of one quarter of the nation's manned spaceflight capability. They will remember and perhaps renew their vow to do everything humanly possible to minimize risk and prevent another space tragedy even as work crews continue lowering Challenger's wreckage into a pair of abandoned missile silos for what amounts to permanent burial.

"I don't think we'll ever get over the loss, those were folks we've all known for a number of years," Hilmers said. "It's difficult to view an ascent on film without thinking of the point in the trajectory they were in when the accident happened. The sadness will never go away." "The fact is, this risk involves the ultimate risk for some people and therefore only the highest level of personal commitment and dedication is adequate for this program," said Eugene Kranz, director of mission operations at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "I mean, there is no alternative to that." Challenger explodes above ocean ago 0 Virgil Grissom, Edward White, Roger accept the odds or you stay the hell out. No one had understood this any better than Gus Grissom.

"If we Gus had once said, 'we want people to accept it. We hope that if anything happens to us six months after the accident that his crew would fly only when they felt the ship was safe. "We will fly the spacecraft when we, the crew, feel it is ready," he said. Frederick Hauck, named to command the first shuttle to fly following the Challenger accident, also has made it clear the ship will be launched only when the shuttle booster rocket modifications have been proven safe and when other safety questions are satisfactorily answered. The Apollo 1 fire delayed the maiden flight of the moonship 19 months, much longer than the first estimates.

But when the Apollo command ship did fly, it worked well and officials credit that to the changes that resulted from the accident investigation. The Challenger accident has set back the shuttle program more than two years and officials predict it too will be a far safer spaceship when its post-accident modifications are completed. But chief astronaut John Young said NASA's recovery from the shuttle explosion lacks the intensity of the crash effort to put the moon program back on track toward its 1969 lunar landing target. "It's not like it was in the old Apollo days, I'll tell you that," Young said in a recent interview. "When we had the fire out there on the launch pad, that was a very sad time for us too.

Yet we flew again in 19 months after looking at almost 1,700 changes." "I guess I wish we were attacking this the way we attacked the Apollo business because we would already be flying. But we don't have the resources, we don't have the people and we don't have the time to do that." Chaffee (L-R) were killed in January 1967 it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of Astronaut Walter Schirra, who was named to command the first post-fire flight, made it clear.