posted 07-10-2007 05:43 PM            

I look forward to others questions and your responses.

But, I do agree with the majority that the evidence shows that the main fault was the freezing O-rings. Reports predating the accident (in some cases by years) should have warned the NASA Administration to this problem. None of the other issues you have mentioned were issues to the contractor (Rockwell).

But the issue of Mr. Furniss using suppositions and unfounded evidence should only be found in writings marked 'fiction' not 'history'.

posted 07-11-2007 08:21 AM               

On March 28, 1996, I submitted a letter-to-editor that began as follows:

quote:

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Her incredibly well-researched book, The Challenger Launch Decision, was attacked by Malcolm Ross (Commentary, January 28, 1996) who declared the change of putty in the now-popular booster joints to be the cause of the tragedy. Ms. Vaughan demolished his critique (Letters, March 18) noting that "the worst field joint erosion... occurred" when the old putty was in use in 1981. Now, the book is assailed mercilessly by Martin Sieff, (Books, March 24), who finds it "more misleading than any tabloid headline." This is the mild side of the review. Mr. Sieff seems to be safe from criticism; he uses big guns: The late Richard Feynman and Carl Sagan.

Sief and Ross note that Vaughan is not an expert. Early in her book, Vaughan admitted that she initially thought the O-rings to operate like a "Nerf ball." It takes guts to admit that. The rest of her book shows that she eventually thoroughly understood the nuances of the infamous joints...

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I bring up this snippet to show, particularly to McDonald and Hansen, that I am not averse to seeing history written by the other sides. I do not necessarily agree with Vaughan's conclusions, and I may not agree with the memoir's. Galileo was brilliant at debasing his detractors, and they deserved it. I hope we can rise above the unfortunate tendency to demean those who hold different views than ours. Facts and time will be the ultimate arbiter.

posted 07-11-2007 10:54 AM               

Day writes, "Publish in a peer-reviewed journal and I'll take this seriously." This will not happen. The brouhaha began with a 9-page double-spaced technical paper (now over 100 single-spaced pages) and the peer-reviewers spelled out their position succinctly, as included in Mr. Pearlman's earlier review of Furniss' chapter. Someone may say, well, go back to them, maybe, they changed their minds! No way. The peer-reviewers were not qualified to make an impartial evaluation and/or they were biased.

The late, and dear friend, Wilbur Pritchard was the founder of Comsat Labs and its first director. Pritchard was a pillar of satellite and space technology, as Dwayne knows. Tim Furniss wrote about Pritchard's involvement in the "peer-reviewed" publication of my paper, and I like to include that paragraph here:

quote:

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"On April 3, 1992, and after lengthy telephone discussions, Pritchard wrote a letter to Earl Thornton, the Editor of the AIAA Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, at the University of Virginia about the "possible publication of Ali AbuTaha's paper," and how the peer-reviewers' "comments seem to reflect an underlying hostility." Pritchard went on in the letter, "at this point, in view of the importance of the issue and in recognition of Mr. Ali AbuTaha's respectable credentials as a member of the space fraternity, this paper should be published. If indeed he is right and there is some reason for thinking that he might be, then the implications of refusing to publish it in the event of any further Shuttle disaster are frightening, indeed." Pritchard advised open debate among all engineers in the US, "The peer review that's needed must be done by the profession at large rather than by just a few, possibly biased, reviewers."

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Rich (astroborg) has freed my hand to provide you with more evidence for the other 3 parts of my work (post #107), the O-rings, the sequence of events, and the Crew Cabin. Thank you, Rich.

posted 07-11-2007 11:12 AM               

To quote Occam's razor, "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one."

You (and Tim Furniss) have suggested that there are ulterior reasons why your theories have been rejected. That the peer reviewers "were not qualified" and that "they were biased". Furniss goes so far as to suggest a vast conspiracy/cover-up by NASA and the U.S. media.

All things being equal, I haven't seen from you or read from Tim a clear and simple reason why you aren't simply wrong. You both keep pointing us to prove you right, citing other documents and suggesting we do the research, but that is not our responsibility.

posted 07-11-2007 11:42 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Ali AbuTaha: I read and reviewed Tim's chapter for accuracy. I don't agree with the cover-up, conspiracy and other angles, but he is a journalist and I wouldn't be presumptuous to tell a journalist how to dramatize his or her write-ups.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Ali AbuTaha: I am compelled to agree with both gentlemen that some entries are indeed inappropriate for the Logs. Also, please note that I did not write nor review nor edit those entries, and that I would not have approved the inclusion of some of them.

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Someone on this thread posted the wonderful quotation:
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."

It's a useful quote for many situations in history. But what if the truth has already been discovered, accepted and acted upon? After all, we are talking about something that happened over 21 years ago - longer than the lifetimes of many CollectSPACE readers - and was exhaustively looked at - then and since - by some of the world's best engineers, the most important of whom had no agenda other than to discover the truth. And, as Robert states, AbuTaha's theories were looked at very closely right after the accident, along with many others.

AbuTaha states that "Facts and time will be the ultimate arbiter." I couldn't agree more. For this particular tragedy, the opinion of many respected experts seems to be that we have the facts, and in the two decades that have passed (about the same amount of time as between the Apollo 1 fire and the Challenger tragedy, to put it in perspective) there has not been any major new evidence or compelling reason to change the analysis of them in any major way.

I am glad this discussion is taking place here. Unlike "Moon Hoax" conversations seen on the web, it's generally been polite and based on analysis of the facts. But, to amend the quotation:

posted 07-11-2007 01:02 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Ali AbuTaha:
Jim Oberg mocked Tim in a message (and a posting — I don't know where)

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posted 07-12-2007 08:40 AM               

quote:

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To my understanding the official investigation into the Challenger catastrophe concluded that the (technical) root reason were the O-ring failure. This was eliminated for future flight by a redesign of the SRB field joint. The theory presented by AbuTaha was obviously studied by NASA, but was not considered to be a failure mode. Consequently, nothing, to my knowledge, was done to eliminate or mitigate such a risk. With all the flights STS-26 up to STS-117 being successfully launched (even STS-107) I have never heard that a damage was observed which might have been caused by "dynamic overshoot". If that effect is so dangerous as claimed by AbuTaha, why then did it never cause a problem, not necessarily fatal, since STS-26?

Dietrich Haeseler

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posted 07-13-2007 11:22 AM               

quote:

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If that (dynamic overshoot) is so dangerous as claimed by AbuTaha, why then did it never cause a problem, not necessarily fatal, since STS-26?

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quote:

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If it (AbuTaha's failure scenario) had been correct, these same excessive loads would have occurred on every flight of the Shuttle, not just Challenger...

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First, the "dynamic overshoot" produces a transient effect of 70% or more at start-up, throttle-up or throttle-down of rocket engines and more than 90% for the start-up of solid rocket motors. For the Shuttle, with yield and ultimate safety margins of 25% and 40% respectively, this should indeed cause major failures, if not disasters, in most launches. Why didn't that happen?

Had the dynamic overshoot problem not been partially corrected for, albeit fortuitously, then fatal accidents would have been the rule, rather than the exception. Consider the following Commission or media documented facts, and my comments:

1. The first biggest story relating to Shuttle loads was the tiles problem in the late 1970's, which delayed the program. The old timers remember that. The tiles "failed at about 50% the load at which a failure would have been expected," said Maxim Faget in 1980 (Faget, The Space Shuttle, 27th AAS, p. 5887). A 100% error in measuring the strength of materials in laboratories is unheard of. If any of us, who tested aerospace materials in the 1970's made such a massive mistake, then we would (or should) have been fired on the spot. In the late 70's, Aaron Cohen said, "so there we were with the tiles half the strength we originally thought and the actual loads involved very hard to calculate..." and "Densified tiles have twice the strength of undensified tiles," (Shuttle, Macknight, 1984, my emphasis).

   I have been saying that the "dynamic overshoot" loads caused the 100% tiles' problem. The loads were "very hard to calculate" because the start-up transient effect was not included in the original 1972 JSC 07700 specification at all. Had the strength of the tiles not been corrected, serious accidents would have happened frequently. "Minimum material properties" requirement and other standard conservative design practices would have been the only line of defense against disasters.

2. The SRB segments are connected together with 180 1-inch diameter pins around the circumference. The initial design spacing between the pins is just at the minimum allowable by any Standard (1-inch holes spaced at 1½-inches). In 1986, I discovered that the Forward Skirt Clevis Joints had extra 1-inch holes drilled in between the original holes, i.e., in the 1½ spacing. This violated any and all design Standards. We all see the rivets pattern in airplanes before we board. If I see rivets spaced as above, I would simply not board the plane. The extra holes doubled the number of pins in a specific sector of the segments. That sector is just below the forward struts, which bears the brunt of the "dynamic overshoot" lift-off loads from the SRBs' start-up transient. As I write in my report, "The Shuttle engineers doubled the number of pins to double the load carrying capacity of the SRB sections involved."

   Had the above reckless doubling of the number of pins not been done, serious and deadly accidents would have happened more frequently before and after Challenger. McDonald and Hansen should be familiar with the above correction as it was included in the massive Commission record in the Archives as a Morton Thiokol, Inc. Document — and should perhaps be part of the research for their book. There, Thiokol describes the doubling of the number of the pins in 1984 as a measure to counter "thrust peaking loads." What "thrust peaking loads"? Wasn't that correctly calculated and measured before? In my first post here, I mentioned the "26 SRM Thrust-Time Traces During Ignition" that McDonald presented in a major Propulsion Conference for rocket scientists in 1985 — after the above Thiokol Document. I pointed out that the 26 traces do not show the "dynamic overshoot" because Allan was using "non-overshooting pressure" measurements and presenting them as "force" measurements, which overshoot.

3. The number of "stiffener rings" in the Aft Segments of the SRBs was about doubled in number and strength after STS-1 (just look at your photos of Shuttle launches). Obviously, that was not done for decoration, but to counter serious damage observed from mission to mission.

   Blaming splashdown into the ocean for the observed damage is wrong. I analyzed that with actual splashdown data. Also, Goddard's rockets parachute-landed in the fields and he would recover them, hammer them back into shape and reuse them.

4. Then came Challenger. Failure occurred in the Aft Stiffener Segment near the Aft ET/SRB Attach Ring. The half-ring was doubled to full-ring.

   Some make a big deal out of whether NASA doubled the ring because of AbuTaha or if the agency did it on their own. That is completely irrelevant. The ring was going to be doubled with, or without, me. Without this change, everyone will agree that the Shuttle would have remained vulnerable to catastrophic failure — even after the changes to the joints and O-rings.

On STS-1, long cracks (20 feet long!) were found on the MLP 1-inch blast deck. This is a serious failure. The MLPs were strengthened. Then serious damage was observed in the Aft Skirts, and those were strengthened. Then the number of stiffener rings in the SRB Aft Segments was about doubled to counter observed damage after flights. Then after Challenger, the Half-Attach-Ring was doubled to a Full-Ring. Can you follow the sequence in space and time? The "dynamic overshoot" excessive forces have been chasing the engineers up the stack, who wrote about loads difficult to calculate and loads of mysterious origin. I don't believe in magical forces. Design optimization was well developed and well taught in the 1960's. The initial Shuttle design was supposed to be an optimum design. This means, to this aerospace engineer, that only minor tweaking was necessary on the first roll to the launch pad — Not 100% changes, or changes that exceeded the built-in safety margins. If I translate the above changes to your car, you wouldn't want to own it.

Had all the "doubling" and "strengthening" mentioned above and others not been done over the years, almost every other mission would have been a disaster.

The strengthening of the stack from the bottom up just drove the "dynamic overshoot" effect further up the stack. What was next? How about the segments above the doubled Aft Attach Ring? The mid- and upper-segments? No way, everyone says there are no excessive forces acting on the Shuttle.

Mr. Haeseler writes, "I have never heard that a damage was observed which might have been caused by "dynamic overshoot." Tim Furniss writes in his Challenger chapter, "In January 1992, the Washington Post space reporter, Kathy Sawyer, wrote, "After launches of Atlantis in April and November (1991), NASA found that the forward section of one booster had buckled irreparably and that the forward part of another booster had cracked open halfway around and three of its four main segments had buckled." Ten years after the first flight and five years after Challenger, we still had steel "buckled irreparably" and "cracked open halfway around" in the SRBs? Someone is not doing his or her job right. NASA blamed the damage on "splashdown," and I insisted (and insist today) that it was the "dynamic overshoot" forces moving up the stack. I should point out that before 1983, NASA did extensive analyses and concluded that the splashdown loads "were generally not sufficient to cause the observed damage." Well, if the excessive loads did not originate in splashdown, where did the excessive loads come from?

You don't chase a problem like the "dynamic overshoot." You solve it.
What do you suppose would happen after the SRBs and the Orbiters were strengthened and the payload went from about 65,000 to what, 40,000 lbs? Either we are chasing the dynamic overshoot, or it is chasing us. How about the most reliable part of the Space Shuttle for years becoming the most vulnerable — the weakest, the ET, the External Tank?

The historians of science and technology should take the dynamic overshoot mistake to its roots in history. It's a long journey from von Braun and Goddard to Boltzmann and Mach to Newton and Leibniz.

Let me add that as part of my Challenger work, I studied the scant literature on Soviet rocketry up to the 1980's and I discovered that the Soviets had observed and reported "dynamic overshoot" data without recognizing the source of the effect. The same is true of others.

During 1970-72, I did a lot of work on the dynamic overshoot effect, analytically and experimentally, and I documented that work. Though I lost my massive library, I kept some of those papers. Around that time, I attended a talk by von Braun at a neighboring company or agency. I was fascinated, but I hardly remember a word of it now. One thing that stuck in my mind, which I distinctly remembered after starting this dynamic overshoot work in 1986, was von Braun's comments in the Q/A session. His words were distinct: You cannot include the transient loads in design because of the prohibitive penalty in payload capacity. Talk about a great lesson from a great teacher. And this is why I attribute the 90% Apollo and initial-Shuttle liftoff thrust specification to him. Are there any old-timers around who might remember from direct contact with von Braun how he handled the issue?

As to the O-rings, I will address the issue in response to questions and comments by Bob, which I hope to post soon.

posted 07-18-2007 07:06 PM               

quote:

---

To quote Occam's razor, "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one."

---

1. Something is wrong with our knowledge — We need new knowledge.
   
2. We develop the new knowledge — or we cannot do it.

In fairness to Tim Furniss, he covered my dynamic overshoot work, or Phase II above, extensively after 1990. I think he wrote about my earlier Challenger work, but I do not remember speaking with him then, particularly during 1986-87. It is my responsibility to describe Phase I, which is the subject of this post. Phase II, about new knowledge or dynamic overshoot, may make more sense then.

Let me say to Bob that at least one of the distinguished Commissioners, the honorable David Acheson, was briefed in person on what you will read, that he spoke with other Commissioners about it and that he discussed it with the late Administrator Fletcher. The events and analysis go back to 1986-87. That at the time one of my objectives was to find a way to amend the Commission Report (after it was released) so that this discussion would not take place ten, twenty (today) or hundred years after the Report. Mr. Acheson volunteered the opinion that making my results public was an honorable thing to do, and I do it here in that spirit.

Early in my Challenger studies, I wrote a report on "joint rotation" and I discussed it with other experts, including, Chairs of a Conference to be held then in California. They invited me to give a "talk" at the AIAA/ASME/... Conference. On Registration day, a Chairman called; we had a lengthy talk interrupted several times — apparently for negotiations or consultations with other people. There were problems. I was told that some delegates threatened to boycott the Conference if I took the podium. I did not ask the identity of those folks, but was told they were senior engineers. I was ready to describe how "joint rotation" was not the likely cause of the accident. I was packed and ready. I canceled my trip. My '87 report, which is mentioned often below, was the same report that was revised by the editors of Aerospace America for publication, but, then, not published because of interference of others, as reported by Tim in his Challenger chapter.

Another objective I had at the time was to find a position in NASA that would allow me to handle the dynamic overshoot technical problem in the Shuttle. You could not fix the overshoot problems by dealing with the Orbiter Contractor(s) alone, the ET Contractor(s) alone, or the SRB Contractor(s) alone, etc. Let me add that I was semi-recruited then by top agency managers, to use a line from Dwayne, "whose names you would recognize." To do the above, I wanted nothing to do with politics, the media or other distractions. That did not happen.

"FFrench" (thank you) referred me to the link where Oberg's posting and "follow up opinions of others" could be found. I clicked on it, and there it was — The circus of 10 years ago led by the same mc, Henry Spencer. I mention Spencer here because he wrote about my "joint rotation" study, as if an expert. On "1996/07/04," he wrote:

quote:

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Joint rotation is somewhat reduced, overall, at the joint, but it is still present. (In fact, loads added by the mounting strut aggravate it over small portions of the joint.)

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quote:

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That wouldn't be Ali AbuTaha, would it? If so, be aware he is a known crank on the subject. (Spencer's emphasis)

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quote:

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Unfortunately, the source is not promising. AbuTaha is a certifiable crank, previously noted for several wild theories about the cause of the Challenger accident (for example that the SRB joints had been strained by the turn the crawler has to make to reach pad 39B.

---

Some may hastily accuse me of disrespecting the Presidential Commission by writing about the "joint rotation" issue. The Commissioners were distinguished and honorable in their service to the Country and they remain so today. The fault lies with the engineers who should have done their work more accurately. Engineering is a precise art within tolerances. Give me your numbers, and make sure your numbers are correct. I don't need umpteen decimal points; only correct values. I don't buy hunches, guesses and gut feelings, though I consider them. This goes to all the engineers who were involved in the teleconferences on the eve of the tragedy, in the investigations or in the review of the results of the official investigations.

I couldn't list everything I did with respect to the subjects of joint rotation, O-rings, and cold temperature in 1986-87. But, here is a sample list:

1. First, what is joint rotation? If you put two soda cans in a freezer for a while, the water content freezes, expands and pushes on the inner walls causing the cans to bulge in the middle. If you stack the two cans and look sideways, you will see the sides sloping in different directions where the cans meet. This is joint rotation. Generally, we calculate the bulging using standard elasticity equations and transfer the result using geometry and trigonometry to obtain the slope where the two cans meet, and the joint rotation, and the gap opening. For young students, balloons can be used to demonstrate the effect.

   The pressure inside the boosters causes the SRB segments to bulge, which causes the joint rotations. The Commission was told that all the joints were equal. That is not true. The aft joint that failed on Challenger is very different. In the Commission Report, it was stated that the "rotation" in the aft joint is about 25% less than the forward joints. That is incorrect. The pressure alone in the aft segments, compared with the forward segments, accounts for 15% reduction. There are greater reduction factors.

2. Back to the soda cans. Place a stiffener ring in the middle of one can and freeze it. You will see two bulges — smaller than for the full cans. Hence, smaller joint rotations. If you put two more stiffener rings, in addition to the center ring, on the can and freeze it, you will see less bulging and less end rotations. The aft segments have those stiffener rings I mentioned in a previous post, added to counter the mysterious lift-off forces, or dynamic overshoot. Hence, smaller joint rotations.

3. Now, if you can find a short soda can with the height of a cat-food-can, repeat the freezer tests. The short can bulges less. The aft segment that failed on Challenger is a short one, hence, smaller joint rotation. Where are we going with all of this? I want to show that rotation in the joint that failed was nearly 50% less than the forward joints, just due to the stiffeners alone. Spencer tried to play expert in his above post when, apparently, responding to my report without mentioning it, he wrote:

   The stiffener rings are below the joint, and do not affect ballooning of the segment above the joint.

   That's right Henry. In my '87 report, which you were using, to your credit, but not to enlighten others, particularly young students who seem to count on your word, I wrote:

   The aft segment is constrained from swelling by stiffeners, which are used to strengthen it, and the strongest stiffener is only a few inches below the failed aft joint. Here, joint rotation is reduced by nearly a half.

   So, here we have about 50% rotation reduction, from the segment "below" the joint plus the 15% due to pressure difference, and the failed joint rotated about 65% less than the forward joints. Mr. Pearlman writes that Spencer found my write-up "incoherent." I doubt that Spencer grasped it. Or, did he? The 65% less rotation was not the end of it.

4. In my '87 report, I wrote, "There are other more complex considerations which also contribute to further reduction in joint rotation." The detailed analyses and data were part of the talk I prepared for the AIAA/ASME/... Conference. Spencer could not peek into my "talk" because it was canceled. He didn't, or couldn't after reading my words, show that there was hardly any rotation in the joint that failed.

   Imagine placing thick cylindrical-shaped plastic material with a small core inside a soda can, glued to the inside walls. If the same internal pressure, as in the freezer examples, is generated in the center area, the can will not bulge as with the empty cans. Try it — but be careful. Before the thin walls bulge, the thick bulk of silly-putty, play dough or solid propellant must bulge first. The analysis is not impossible. The stress in the outer layer of the solid propellant in the boosters "at lift-off" is less than 100psi — that's all. There is hardly any bulging of the walls with the propellant in place. The SRM Team Analysis Report (Commission, Vol. II, Appendix B, p. L-110) reported that the propellant reduces the bulging (and joint rotation) by about 12%. That is greatly underestimated. But that's what the computer said! You only get out of the computers what you put into them. I belong to a unique generation of engineers who went from pad and pencil, to mechanical adding machines, to slide rulers, to hand calculators, to computers. The very thick propellant bulk undergoes outward radial deflection, which can be easily calculated. The propellant bulk expands a little outward, but does not bulge.

   I am not saying there was no erosion or blow-by of O-rings. I am saying that maximum joint rotation happens late in boosters' burn, when the propellant is nearly depleted, the pressure is acting directly on the walls causing the thin walls to bulge, the ends to rotate and the gaps to possibly open.

   If joint rotation played a significant role in the Challenger accident near lift-off, then fire would have surged from all the forward joints. The Commission wrote, "All things being equal these (the forward) joints should leak first." Well, if the accident was not caused by joint rotation, because there wasn't any or much at liftoff, then what caused the accident?

5. The Aft Field Joint that failed on Challenger had the struts that connect the SRBs to the ET. In my '87 report, I quoted from the Commission, "Segment L-06, the right aft clevis component, had been flown on 51-C as the left aft clevis member." That's impossible. As everyone knows, you can rotate the tires or wheels on your car, but you cannot switch the right and left doors on your car. The struts are like the hinges on the door of a car. Senior NASA engineers and possible peer-reviewers were furious with me, in a HQ meeting in December 1986, for pointing out to them that their input to the Commission was wrong. In my '87 report, I wrote extensively about this, e.g., "Was the accident caused by the deterioration of a field joint, or adjacent hardware, that was used repeatedly in the same location? And, "because the section is subjected to significant and concentrated forces in the same circumferential area before lift-off, it would have been distorted out of round," etc. Wear and tear is the engineers' worst enemy.

6. The struts imposed concentrated forces on the failed joint. In my '87 report, I wrote:

   "The adverse effect of the forces transmitted through the struts to the aft joint was underestimated before the accident and during and, even, after the investigation."

   And,

   "My study of the early reports of the accident showed that the combined loads in the aft struts varied by 40% between missions, and by more than 100% for individual struts."

   Didn't the engineers in the famous teleconferences before Challenger note the 40% variation, which equals the ultimate safety margin for the system, or the 100% jumps, which exceeded all safety margins? Spencer chastised people on sci.space.history:

   "It helps if you actually read the report. (I've referred extensively to my copy in composing this posting.)"

   In addition to reading, one needs hands-on experience to read numbers, understand them, check them out, etc. Spencer writes as if he were an expert. In his extensive reading of the Report, he did not recognize the massive 40 and 100% disparities in important numbers (Vol. I, page 53), or he didn't care. Maybe, my first sentences on this thread may now make sense:

   "Ten years ago, someone told me that rude remarks were made about my work and me on the net. I checked it out and decided not dignify the ill informed, ill qualified and ill-mannered folks ... with answers."

7. The engineers told the Commission that their NASTRAN computer models of the failed joint incorporated the lift-off loads from the struts to the joint area. That was impossible. I was the in-house expert on NASTRAN at Comsat Labs in the early 1970's, I tried to solve a similar problem with the program, and I couldn't. I even tried tricks to make NASTRAN solve the problem, but couldn't. Reading the above, I called people from NASA, NRC, and elsewhere — there is a problem. The input to the Commission is wrong. Then it came out in the Accident Analysis Team's report, "No strut loads were considered" in the analysis. You can see that the ruckus I raised in 86-87 was not frivolous. Those loads through the struts would prove crucial later on.

8. The emotional teleconferences on the eve of the tragedy are now understandable. But the position of the experienced NASA engineers should also be put in proper perspective. There was concern about erosion and blow-by and cold temperature in the joints, and the primary culprit, according to the Thiokol engineers, was "joint rotation." From this post, you see there was no joint rotation, especially, at lift-off. Perhaps, the confusion will sort itself out. We are moving towards a more likely culprit for the observed damage — the lift-off loads through the struts into the failed joint.

9. I am trying to use words from my early '87 report so no one, Spencer included, would accuse me of rewriting history. In the epigraph to the '87 report, I wrote:

   "According to a senior Director with the National Research Council, a recent test showed that the failed aft joint "opens and closes" when subjected to the lift-off loads through the struts "contrary to NASA's earlier expectations." The Director also said that errors were discovered in the computer models of that joint."

   The excessive loads in the struts and errors in the computer models was the product of my detailed '86 studies, which I shared with NASA and NRC. Everyone was shouting erosion, blow-by, O-rings, joint rotation, gap opening, and cold temperature then. The primary and secondary O-rings' gap-openings are given in the Commission (Vol. I, p. 60) as, "0.029 inches and 0.017 inches" respectively. This is what all the fuss was about, 29 and 17 mils gap-openings. But, the joint that failed on Challenger was permanently deformed out of shape about 30 times more than the secondary gap opening! In my '87 report, I quoted from the Commission:

   "Taken across the 0-180 degrees axis, the tang diameter measurement exceeded the corresponding clevis dimension by +.512 inch;"

   I went on,

   "The aft center segment was distorted to conform to an already deformed section."

   The permanent deformation was in the exact direction of the forces passing through the struts. Either there were greater forces than previously anticipated or all the engineers did not know how to design steal parts that do not deform plastically, or permanently — or within the elastic limit. If, as an engineer, I were worried about a possible gap opening of 29 mils, I would be frightened by a definite 512 mils opening in the same area.

   It was thoughtful of the NRC to send me courtesy copies of their reports, although the stream of my contributions was not acknowledged. But, then I noticed that the Council acknowledged the work of other experts and organizations for other contributions. When I asked that my work be also acknowledged, they declined to do it. That led to regrettable parting of ways with the NRC.

10. I mentioned in previous posts how the messy loads in the struts led me to the dynamic overshoot. While I did not then write about the effect explicitly because of national security concerns, the effect was couched in my write-ups, e.g., in the same '87 report, I wrote,

    The adverse effect of the forces transmitted through the struts to the aft joints was underestimated before the accident and during and, even, after the investigation. This was a serious mistake, which should have been brought to the attention of the Commission before the investigation was completed.

    I am not going to rewrite my previous posts, but the adverse consequences of the dynamic overshoot on Challenger and the Shuttle, including the joint that failed, should be clearer now.

11. There was much more to the loads through the struts to the failed Challenger SRB joint. After accounting for the dynamic overshoot in 1986, there were still more forces unaccounted for, even after considering the forces impressed on the struts by the shrinking ET after tanking. Those forces were not found in fancy conference rooms or from senior experts or peer-reviewers, but from the great men and women in the front lines, the great workers who put the Shuttle stacks together at KSC. In meetings in trailer offices and sitting on the hoods and trunks of cars carrying out intelligent discussions about the system, other crucial findings were made. Here are words from my '87 report:

    "For example, the incorrect rotation of the adjustment nuts on the struts during assembly could account for some of the variations. Clockwise and counterclockwise directions can be easily confused when one changes orientation, such as when you reach under a car to loosen a bolt. Arrows will be added to the adjustment nuts to preclude potential mistakes in the future. This was not noted in reports of the accident, though the forces through he struts play a very important role in the behavior of the failed aft joint."

    If only the arrows showing the direction of preload with certainty resulted from my work, then it was all worth it. A loose or overly tightened strut could spell disaster. I might add that I had experience with similar simple mistakes, which almost led to serious disasters in different systems.

posted 07-18-2007 07:38 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Ali AbuTaha:
We are not at the razor of the Doctor Singularis Occam yet. We don't have 2 or more solutions to select the simplest. We have 2 diametrically opposite views of HOW and WHY the accident happened.

---

You have said that the peer reviewers "were not qualified" and that "they were biased".

They have countered that your theory "reflects lack of understanding" and that it is "based on false assumptions" leading to "false conclusions on [your] part."

posted 07-20-2007 10:32 PM               

quote:

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Publish in a peer-reviewed journal and I'll take this seriously.

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quote:

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You have yet to address why any lay reader should accept your theories when you cannot get the scientific community that exists to study such ideas to even consider your position.

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quote:

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At this point, in view of the importance of the issue and in recognition of Mr. Ali AbuTaha's respectable credentials as a member of the space fraternity, this paper should be published.

---

It is simple. The peer-reviewers had only one technical (or engineering) leg to stand on: Newton's Third Law of Motion. We all learned it by heart when young boys and girls, "To every action, there is always an equal and opposite reaction." The SSMEs produce 1.1 million lbs at lift-off and the structures react with 1.1 MP — end of story to the peer-reviewers. Not so fast, because the engines ramp up quickly to full thrust, the reaction is magnified and the magnification can be calculated and measured. Oh my God! Do you mean NASA will have to change all those wonderful children shows on NASA Select TV and teach the children something contrary to Newton? Mr. Pearlman and dear readers of collectSpace: This and higher issues are not my problem. That's the NASA Administrator's problem. I did my part.

I told of how after a lengthy conversation, the distinguished Commissioner and Professor Emeritus of Engineering at MIT, Eugene Covert, agreed with my results and summarized it all by saying, "You can lead a horse to the water, but you cannot make it drink." Robert says that these anecdotes do not count. To me, they do — a lot. Dr. Covert taught how to design systems like the Space Shuttle, not only to the peer-reviewers, but their teachers.

I will let Galileo say a few words about the highly educated, but biased, peer-reviewers who disguise themselves, as he writes, as "Unknown Academician" and the like. In the Third Letter on Sunspots, Galileo writes:

quote:

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My friends are of the opinion, and I do not disagree, that unless some opposition more solid than this (opinions of the peer-reviewers on the Dynamic Overshoot) comes forth there is no need to reply further.

---

quote:

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If reasoning were like hauling I should agree that several reasoners would be worth more than one, just as several horses can haul more sacks of grain than one can. But reasoning is like racing and not like hauling, and a single Arabian steed can outrun a hundred plowhorses.

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posted 07-24-2007 01:38 PM               

Back to the photos. In response to the posted photos, fragmeister writes,

quote:

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I must admit that enhancing photos can yield evidence unseen at first, but it can also mislead.

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I also developed close-ups of NASA's CC and could easily identify it as the Lower Forward Fuselage. It would be foolhardy to assert that the fire in my photos is not fire because it didn't show up in other photo studies. They just didn't look for it. I did. I also captured convincing evidence of the raging fire from other NASA cameras.

Mark, spacecraft film, writes,

quote:

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Without a control, the visuals you present are not persuasive.

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posted 07-30-2007 12:21 AM               

First, you saw the fire through the Challenger right wing at lift-off in a previous Post. There are other compelling photos of the fire. If raging fire escaped the joint area at lift-off, no demon could reseal the stricken area. Also, had the failure occurred through the O-rings, then the smoke, fire or other exhaust would have surged straight up the side of the booster and beyond the tip of the External Tank. This is self-evident from the geometry of the SRBs' field joints, though no one noticed it before. And so on.

Furniss writes about the New Smyrna Beach film with fervor. I will give some photo evidence in this Post and some description.

• In December 1986, I received the original VHS tape of the Challenger flight taken from the New Smyrna Beach area by Mr. Harold Sehnert, of Lima, Ohio. The car radio was on loud, and I established accurate timeline for the tape from Steve Nesbitt's voice in the background.

• NASA had shown the Commission a "New Smyrna Beach" view, received from a "citizen." The Commission was shown the NSB tape from T+71s, i.e., only from two seconds before the explosion, hardly enough time to grasp what's going on.

• Why didn't NASA show the Commission the full NSB tape? One might think that there was not enough time to show the full tape in a public hearing. This is not so because the Commission was shown a TV-like feed from lift-off to T+71s, at which time the view was suddenly switched to the NSB view.

• It is possible that the NSB tape that NASA had was a close-up of Challenger and, hence, did not capture the astonishing events that I was able to develop from Sehnert's tape — a great bird's eye view.

• Another possibility was that the broadcast quality tape that NASA had was corrupted in some segments from lift-off to T+71s.

• The experts could have disagreed on the interpretation of the tape, and the Commission had a deadline to meet.

• I could not find the full "1-inch" quality tape in the National Archives, though I obtained and examined the recordings of "almost all," "but not all," photo record.

• In December 86, I wrote to NASA and offered to arrange for the immediate delivery of Sehnert's original tape to the agency. NASA declined my offer. I knew that cameras were impounded after the accident, and wondered whether there were legitimate reasons, e.g., national security, why the full NSB views should not be aired publicly. Neither NASA nor anyone else contacted me to say so.

1. Here, you see the "roll maneuver" at the lower part. Notice that the two plumes blended into one plume, which I call the main plume.

2. At T+40 seconds, Challenger executed a sudden upward turn — to counter excessive speed. At this time, puffs of smoke become visible to the left of the main plume (or, the combined left and right plumes).

3. The puffs of smoke are clearly visible to the left of the main plume (T+50s+).

4. The puffs increase in intensity and coalesce into a semi-continuous trail (T+57s+).

5. After T+71 seconds, the leaking trail (on the left) takes on the form of a distinct plume. The two plumes in Photo #5 are NOT the two plumes of the right and left SRBs; rather the main plume on the right side is the two plumes of the right and left boosters and the plume on the left side is the leak footprint.

From the sequence you see above, it is evident that the stricken right booster on Challenger was leaking hot gases throughout flight. If you only saw the New Smyrna Beach tape from T+71s (Photo #5), you could easily conclude that all was well. For example, you might think there were two boosters and you see two plumes, i.e., the plume on the right belongs to the left booster and the left plume belongs to the stricken right SRB. Not so. After T+71 seconds (Photo #5), the plume on the right belongs to both the left and right SRBs (the main plume) and the plume on the left is a third plume — the leak trail.

quote:

---

Originally posted by fragmeister:

He (Ali AbuTaha) seems very confident of his ability to make calculations based on even the best quality video tapes...

---

The question was subject of discussion by the Commission. Some NASA experts said Challenger turned 2-degrees and some said it turned at "a rate of 2-degrees per second." Some said the SRB nozzles could turn 3-, 8- or 13.5-degrees. If Challenger turned 10-degrees at a rate of 2-deg/sec, then it would take 5 full seconds to make the turn. Well, what happened at T+40s, how many degrees did Challenger turn, and were the turn sudden or gradual? Here is a sample Q/A from the Commission records (pages refer to Vols. 4 and 5):

quote:

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NASA: ... and then there was an unusual event, a forced event that occurred around, what, 40 seconds or so is what the time line chart indicated. (p.216)

DR. RIDE: ... I think there may be something at around 40 seconds. (Ibid)

VICE CHAIRMAN ARMSTRONG: Is it determined yet that the two degree nozzle switch would be consistent with — would the direction of the two degree nozzle change be consistent with the moment direction that would be expected ...(p.225)

VICE CHAIRMAN ARMSTRONG: ...have you ever seen nozzle excursions of this magnitude as a result of a breach? (Ibid)

NASA: They have what, a three degree limit of the motion of the nozzles? (Ibid)

MR. WALKER: I thought I saw eight degrees. (Ibid)

NASA: At around 40 seconds — during ascent we get our normal actuator movement responding to wind. (p.434)

NASA: At 40 seconds we see a 2-degree gimbal angle on the — on both the solid rocket boosters. This is well within our experience base; and we explain that because of winds; it is directly related to some winds. We don't see anything unusual; so we don't worry about that. (p. 498)

---

A picture is worth a thousand words, and here is such a picture. I had taken a close-up of the 40-second event (Photo #6); and the average of measurements made by the engineers attending my Challenger course at the George Washington University was 10-degrees. You can measure the angle that Challenger made at T+40s directly from my photo with a simple protractor. Is it that simple? Yes. The Shuttle is driven through its center of gravity. When the nozzles turn, the stack turns on a dime, more like a London Cab than a New York Taxi.

A sudden 10-degree turn is a Major Event, but it is not listed in the "STS 51-L Sequence of Major Events" Table in the Commission, Vol. I, page 37! Before T+40s, the SSMEs had throttled down to 65% in the bucket, but the assembly was moving alarmingly fast, and the onboard computers, to counter the unexpected speed, executed the major 10o turn. The faster than normal speed would have resulted from the uneven burning of propellant in the stricken right booster aft segments, which I mentioned before.

Let me add that my reconstructed trajectory, based on the (very reliable) data called out by Dick Scobee and Mike Smith, showed that Challenger was moving faster than the projected trajectory.

Here is another photographic measurement that can be easily made. From my Course notes, I mark two exact times on a photo similar to Photo #3. Dr. Hansen will appreciate this; all one needs do is count the number of puffs, divide by the time in seconds to obtain the fundamental, or natural, frequency of oscillation (in puff/sec, or cycle/sec, or Hz) of the in-flight twang. For those who don't know it, hold a ruler firmly at the edge of a table and tap the free end. The up and down oscillation is the twang. If you hold the ruler vertically, the oscillation (or twang) will be sideways — just like the SRBs exhibit in flight — the in-flight twang. This oscillation was responsible for the 3-hertz frequency of the puffs of smoke detected and reported in the official reports soon after lift-off during the time referenced by Hansen as, "the SRB joint leaked from 0.638 to 2.5 seconds during liftoff ..." Some of us wondered in the 1970's how long the in-flight twang lasts. As Dr. McDonald can see from Photo #3, the oscillation continues well into flight. Also, a careful and knowledgeable observer can calculate important things from photos and video tapes.

This brings up another matter of great interest (an important Challenger lesson). I mentioned the change of liftoff timing in my first Post here. One can see why NASA and the Contractors were between the rock and a hard place when the liftoff timing change was made. If the lift-off timing were not changed, the in-flight twang would have been far more prominent and destructive of the Shuttle and its payloads. Satellites, especially antennas and solar arrays, are very fragile and very vulnerable to lateral loading, which the in-flight twang produces. I had analyzed this mode in the 1970's before I left the space program. Since then, I haven't seen studies by Thiokol engineers that evaluate the possible role that the in-flight twang might have played in the unseating of the famous O-rings in the field joints to cause erosion and blow-by in pre-Challenger flights.

quote:

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Originally posted by Dr. James R. Hansen:

There is no way the SRM could be leaking near 6000o gas from a broken case for the previous 59 seconds (as AbuTaha claims) without any drop in pressure, without developing any observable plume, or not causing a major structural failure to the SRM or burning through the ET during that time frame.

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posted 07-30-2007 07:47 PM            

Both events had anomalies (plume during lift-off and debris at re-entry respectively) and the images that were captured on film revealed significant data which was confirmed with the telemetry and other signatures after many hours of careful review.

Cameras don’t lie, they take what they see.

If you know what you are looking at, and know what to look for, photo’s can be your best friend.

I’d like to thank you again for providing the info and images (along with the video), and suggest that they get reviewed again (or perhaps for the first time) with people who know what they are looking at.

It’s never too late.

posted 07-31-2007 05:17 AM               

Can this be timed to the classic launch video where the cameras temporarily lose focus for a second or so? Would this be related to the 10 degree deviation from the normal flight path ? This could make the cameras working on a preset distance focus temporarily "farsighted". I don't wan't to add to any notion of a conspiracy here, but this would be a humble lay guess of what we might observe.

posted 07-31-2007 10:31 AM               

quote:

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Cameras don’t lie, they take what they see.

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posted 07-31-2007 11:06 AM               

At NASA and COMSAT, we had a technical bond in the 1960s and 70s. We generated the specifications and RFPs and evaluated input from contractors at home and abroad. That required us to be familiar with leading edge technology everywhere, and not only in a given company or country. We helped each other. In the 1970s, I participated in the ATS and other tests at Goddard, exchanged views with NASA engineers on testing new composites, fuel cell design, wind tunnel tests, general-purpose-computer-programs, and I provided technical analysis, through chain-of-command, for launch vehicle failures and, even, Apollo 13 — And yes, my input on 13 related to the stresses produced by the sudden start-up transient dynamic overshoot. When I shared my "sequence of events" with managers at HQ in 1986, half of the experts agreed with my findings while the other half strongly disagreed. The mood was a new experience.

I will describe some of the evidence discussed in the NASA HQ meeting in '86. I will also describe objections raised by NASA and my specific answers.

Photos #1 and 2 show an anomalous puff of exhaust that projected "upward" from the far side, or the right SRB side, at T+54 seconds. Some NASA experts said that that was a plume feature. I had not seen that before, not on the belly side, which exhibits smoother aerodynamics.

Photos #3 and 4 show the same event in a US TV Network (for credit, I'll find out which one from my old files) side-by-side replay of Challenger (left) and a previous Shuttle mission (right). The plume boundary on the bottom for Challenger is certainly coarser than the previous mission. The anomalous puff is clearly seen on the top at T+54.1s. Also, note that at T+55.0s, there are "two anomalous puffs."

The two puffs in Photo #4 indicate that either the initial puff (in Photos #1-3) broke up in two, or that there were two independent puffs that initially overlapped and appeared as one puff. I favor the second explanation for the reasons and further evidence described below.

My Sketch #1 helps to visualize what might have happened. At 1, one or two pieces of the right booster's aft-walls ripped off, which caused the emergence of the 2 puffs. At 2, the two puffs were hidden by the plume (red) and not captured on film from that camera. At 3, the two puffs overlapped and emerged as one puff. Down stream (Photo #4), the two puffs became distinctly visible.

Not even magical wind can explain the appearance and progress of the T+54s puff(s). A chunk of propellant flying out of the right booster might be proposed, but that is highly unlikely. Such mass would tend to sink downward and disappear in the main plume. I also captured the T+54s puff(s) in the New Smyrna Beach and other views.

What pieces of the stricken right booster could have fallen off? Figure 25, in the Commission Report (Vol. I, p. 68), shows reconstruction of the failed right booster segments and the primary "burn area" near the aft ET Attach Strut. The booster pieces to the left of the "burn area" were not found despite the most intensive search and recovery effort in history. The missing RSRB pieces are exactly in the location that could produce the anomalous puffs described above, if those pieces were to fall off suddenly.

During the Commission hearings, it was specifically revealed that at T+60s, the pressure in the RSRB fell off suddenly:

quote:

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NASA: At that time they (controllers in Houston) do not see the righthand rocket. It attempts to stay down, and is affected in some way and does not build. (IV, p. 217)

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quote:

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NASA: To us that is telling us that ... we are literally losing part of the steel case to meet that type of model. (IV, p. 565)

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• Two anomalous puffs of exhaust appear from the right booster's stricken area.
  
• Two pieces of steel went missing from the right booster's stricken area.
  
• The pressure in the right booster fell precipitously.
  
• Top experts conclude from engineering studies, "we are literally losing part of the steel case to meet that type of model."

Someone go out and look for potential pieces falling from the Challenger assembly before T+60 seconds. Where? Begin with the photographic record. Where were all the authors who wrote books, reports, papers and articles and the experts who produced TV specials, talk programs and failure programs? At T+57s, I discovered falling pieces in the NASA TV-feed that was available to everyone all over the world. And then, I found the "falling pieces" from other views and cameras, including, the extensive photo record of Time Magazine, which Tim Furniss writes about. In the Dec. '86 meeting at HQ, I showed the "falling pieces" in normal, forward, backward, slo-mo, pause, rocking and other modes. Again, half the experts agreed: A Major Event; the other half insisted: Plume features seen before. Well, I hadn't seen the events before.

Here is a photo of what I showed NASA in Dec. '86 — Photo #5.

The primary objection to the photo (or video) was that the purported debris lied within the boundary of the plume, which made the "potential pieces" part of the plume — a plume feature.

After the NASA meeting, it occurred to me (from past experience) that the edges of the visible plume glow due to the hot 5,000° to 6,000° temperature. So, filter out the glow. The results are shown in Photos # 6 and 7. The falling piece(s) lied outside the edge of the plume, sans glow.

Here, you see that the T+57s event was not one piece falling off the assembly (as I had initially thought), but two pieces. In video, you clearly see the appearance of the first piece (Photo #6), then the second piece (Photo #7) swirls by, etc.

This is not the end of my sequence of Major events between T+50 and T+60s.

Around T+58s, the Challenger assembly experienced a brief violent vibration, a jolting motion — which I cannot show in still photographs. But if you read the 4 Items I listed above, you will grasp why the stack experienced the vibration.

At T+60s, I captured several white pieces flying at the edge of the plume, as you see in Photo #8. Now these are similar to "plume features" that were seen in the past. Photo #9 shows similar white pieces flying at the edge of the boosters' plumes at SRB separation in a previous Shuttle mission. Specifically, these are "insulation" pieces stripped off in areas where the propellant was completely consumed.

What does the appearance of "insulation" pieces at T+60s mean? It means that some of the propellant in the stricken right aft segments was consumed a minute after lift off. This is the source of the energy that drove Challenger alarmingly faster than projected before the T+40s event, which I described in my last Post. Most of the recovered forward segment pieces still had 2-4 inches of unburned propellant left near the walls. Yet, if you carefully read the reports of the Search, Recovery and Reconstructions Teams, you will find that the RSRB aft segments had no propellant left in them at all, e.g., for pieces #21-1, "there was no propellant on this piece," #21-2, "There was no propellant on this part," #21-3, "There is no propellant on the part," #21-5, "There is no propellant on this piece," and so on (Commission, Vol. III, p. O-272).

As I said before, I am writing many things from memory and a few references scattered around me, and without my 1986-87 files. Any "Sequence of Major Events" for Challenger should consider some of the following events:

• T+52s: Throttle up Command.
  
• T+54s: Anomalous puff appears from the RSRB stricken area.
  
• T+55s: Two anomalous puffs become visible.
  
• T+57s: SSMEs throttle up to 104%.
  
• T+57s: Two pieces of debris appear in video.
  
• Two steel pieces missing from the RSRB's stricken area.
  
• T+58s: Assembly experiences jolting motion.
  
• T+60s: Pressure in the right booster falls off precipitously.
  
• T+60s: Insulation flying out of RSRB.
  
• T+60s: NASA engineering study concludes, "losing part of the steel case."
  
• T+60s: The puffs seen from New Smyrna Beach become semi-continuous trail.

Remember that you are looking at photo evidence developed in 1986. We didn't have in our homes Adobe or Image Composers, nor CDs or DVDs, nor HDTV or digital enhancements at the tips of our fingers. I took couple video clips to high tech outfits and tried to digitally enhance what I was discovering with massive helium-cooled and noisy equipment. The results weren't much better than I was getting with supplies from Kodak, Radio Shack and Sony.

One "theory" might have derailed the investigations. The Commission noted:

quote:

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Fracture mechanics analysis indicates that a hole in the (SRM) case larger than one inch would cause the entire case to rupture in a few milliseconds. (Vol I, pp. 55-56)

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posted 08-02-2007 12:07 AM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by kyra:
Can this be timed to the classic launch video where the cameras temporarily lose focus for a second or so?

---

The flight open loop control system pitches the assembly down if it is moving slowly, and up, if it is moving fast. The 10-deg pitch-up observed in the NSB photos at T+40 seconds would have followed a period of unanticipated acceleration. The excess speed would be the result of faster-burn rate of propellant in the breached right aft segments. Afterwards, the intensity of the right booster's plume diminished noticeably, which would cause Challenger to slow down. Other photo evidence, discussed below, points to the possibility that initially Challenger slowed down, before speeding up. Why the emphasis on photo evidence? The black smoke that appeared at lift-off indicated an early failure of some sort. Afterwards, there were communication dropouts. The black smoke was in the vicinity of the cable tray in the RSRB aft segments. The data collected in Mission Control could have been corrupted.

The out-of-focus in the far field is similar, though not identical, to near-field focusing. We all experienced it with slight up or down movement of a sample under a microscope. The far-field focusing is not as severe. As the vehicle moves farther away, the focus-field narrows down, and the out-of-focus problem becomes more prominent if the system speeds up or slows down. There is correlation between the defocusing in the TV-feed and the events captured in the New Smyrna Beach — and other — photographic evidence. Some evidence comes from the official reports.

The drawing here (Commission, Vol. I, p. 68) shows the "burn area" between pieces #131 (aft center segment piece) and #712 (aft segment piece). Notice the missing pieces that were not recovered in the extensive search: A, B and C. The location of pieces A and B is consistent with the T+54s puff(s) described in my last post.

Now, look at the photos of pieces #131 and #712 (Vol. I, p. 79 and Vol. III, p. O-289). Here, I inverted #712 and positioned it such that the "burn area," or burn hole, is aligned. The horizontal dimension of the "burn area" was reported at about 27-inches, this is the area I said a few dollars worth of quarters can be placed in it. The existence of this "burn area" shows that the membrane

theory — which requires the booster to burst instantly if a hole bigger than 1-inch developed — is wrong. Study the photos carefully and compare them with the above reconstruction Drawing.

We all know that after T+60 seconds, fire was flowing out of the "burn area" and washed down by the wind as Challenger moved above Mach 1. The oval scorched area (Burn Mark) in the lower piece #712 in the aft segment was noted and discussed in the official reports. That was easy to explain; the wind washed the fire down and the fire left the "Burn Mark."

Now look at the aft center segment piece #131. Do you see the finger-like scorch marks "above" the burn hole — and my words, "what are these fingerprints doing here"? When were these burn marks made? What do they prove or disprove? If Columbo saw these obvious fingerprints, or "handprint," he wouldn't leave the hanger before developing an explanation.

The "handprint" represents welder torch-like mini-rocket sending exhaust straight up, which would have altered the motion of Challenger. Notice the footprint of the "in-flight twang" that I mentioned in my last posts. The torch-like fire surged up at the twang's natural frequency. The "fingers" can be counted and if the time is established, then the frequency can be determined, empirically. The scorch-marks also show when the "aft field joint" failed through the O-rings! Who should have discovered these and related things?

Senior NASA experts with more than 200 years of experience with the design of SRB field joints and the Space Shuttle were driven out of the investigation and the agency after the accident. Who was left to answer the above questions? Thiokol engineers, including, Dr. McDonald.

The Challenger aft field joint, and its primary and secondary O-rings, did not fail at lift-off, and the joint was intact after the vehicle cleared the tower. How do we know this? It's right there — in the combined picture I show above. When you're driving 100 mph and you put your hand out the window, you know which way the wind is blowing. This one needs more aerodynamics. If McDonald and Hansen have an explanation for the torch marks "above the burn hole" in the aft-center piece #131, they can post their explanation here. And if Mr. Henry Spencer solved this one before, he can also post his solution. It's tedious work, but it can be done, and the NASA Challenger films in the Archives are helpful. I need a long post to do it, and I'll skip it for now.

2-D or 3-D? Don't expect stereoscopic views or holograms. For the New Smyrna Beach's distant plumes, I wrapped pieces of paper, taped them together, and with physicists and engineers, including a former senior Shuttle engineer, we used flood lights to simulate the lighting of the Sun and the plumes to make sure that the puffs were actually puffs and the extra trail at the end of flight was an extra trail. For the above burn marks, I used my Shuttle models. I also wrapped white cardboard pieces into cylindrical shapes, cut out the burn area and the missing pieces, marked the "fingerprints" and simulated the motions of Challenger to develop clear explanations for the inexplicable burn marks. The best 3-D models were simple white Styrofoam coffee cups, which I used in my course, Anatomy of Failure Mechanisms, and when the cups were ruined, someone ran to the coffee station and brought more.

The focusing trouble in the TV-feed can be correlated (qualitatively) with the photo evidence. It is better to gather all relevant facts first. "One thing at a time."

posted 08-04-2007 07:22 AM               

Ali was asked to post more details of his theory and now when he puts up some rather startling "evidence" (such as the claim that Challenger made a 10 degree turn!) no-one seems to be offering support one way or the other!

posted 08-04-2007 01:46 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by dom:
Why has this thread suddenly slowed to a trickle in the last week?

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posted 08-04-2007 02:56 PM            

Where are you folks?

Certainly, there is no 'conspiracy' here, and the 'theory' part seems to be moving more toward 'fact', based on the info provided above.

posted 08-04-2007 03:18 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Rizz:
...and the 'theory' part seems to be moving more toward 'fact', based on the info provided above.

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posted 08-04-2007 04:17 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted: Time will tell.

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In this instance, my understanding is that:

This accident happened over 21 years ago.

AbuTaha's claims were looked at in detail by experts at the time, and dismissed as fundamentally incorrect. These experts included people with no motives other than to find the truth.

There have been more shuttle launches post-Challenger than there were pre-Challenger, by a large percentage. These claims and effects, if dismissed at the time of the accident but subsequently turning out to be true, would surely have been raised again by dozens of engineers. After all, people have had entire lengthy careers with NASA and shuttle contractors in the time frame we are talking about. None of them have noticed an engineering effect of shuttle launch that is powerful enough to contribute towards a shuttle loss?

I'm no engineer. But if I am being asked to look at a 2-dimensional enhanced closeup of a three-dimensional event - a curving shuttle exhaust contrail, no indications of whether the shuttle is sloping away from the camera, towards, to the left, right... no discussion of how smoke plumes billow, how wind interacts on them... how they are inherently chaotic and thus impossible to precisely measure... and knowing that any time I up the contrast on any image from my own camera, all kinds of 'mystery' bright and dark spots will emerge - nothing I am seeing here, from my layperson's small knowledge, indicates any drastic error on the part of the investigative team.

My mind, instead, goes to "debates" such as this one - where NASA photos were contrast-enhanced to "prove" that structures were built by aliens on the moon.

If AbuTaha's information was taken and compared with other shuttle launches, and it was clearly shown that this was a substantially different event in the way AbuTaha believes, then there might be something to ponder. Has this been done? Apparenly not.

Instead, I'm guessing if people here started zeroing in on small parts of blurry imagery from any launch, enhancing little blobs on the peripheries of chaotic smoke plumes and trying to measure straight lines in curving, dissipating, three-dimensional trails, then we'd find out every Shuttle launch provided similar "evidence."

In the case of STS-107, which seems to be being used comparatively here, the problem was being guessed at even during flight, but was not acted on. After the tragedy had occurred, engineers looked at the evidence, replicating events where possible, and came to a conclusion relatively soon after the tragedy. I have not heard any evidence since those STS-107 conclusions were reached to suggest they were incorrect.

And yet, a similarly-motivated group of expert investigators apparently got it woefully off-base for Challenger, and 21 years later the truth is still waiting to come out "in time"?

I think the time has come. And gone. Time will tell... and time has told.

posted 08-04-2007 08:03 PM            

This will be my last post on this subject.

In my line of work, I have worked with all types of experts each having there own opinion which is based on their own level of experience.

Enough said.

FFrench, I respect you buddy, and you have a gift, but your comments and conclusion regarding "zeroing in on small parts of blurry imagery from any launch...blah blah blah" with all due respect aren't worth commenting on, but I must tell you, and I hate being repetitive, the comparison re 107 comes from 'people who do zero in on small parts of blurry imagery' for a living and know what they are looking at.

That is all that the 107 reference was meant to serve. Some saw an anomaly on the leading edge of the wing, some didn’t. Simple.

You are absolutely correct about 2D & 3D imaging, camera angles and POV's and limitations of photographic evidence, I wont argue there.

Of course people who don't know what they are looking at can certainly miss it, not understand what they are looking at, or imagine seeing other things as you suggest with Dr. Mitchells link.

Reading Ali's posts, over and over again, it appears to contain some interesting timelines and observations backed with photographic images.

I too find it amusing that the people on this thread, who requested more info, got it, and haven't replied.

Could be they are too busy, that’s fine.

Maybe they could care less. That’s fine too.

This is a great site and a super forum for this type of stuff.

I have been working with photographic images and anomalies for decades, observing space debris and all kinds of other things that I won’t even get into, not on a message board at least.

I have a passion for the unexplained, and I try to keep an open mind.

My comment, “time will tell”, perhaps will take place after the shuttle program is long gone and it won't even be remembered.

But keep in mind, the world was once thought to be flat, and our orbit around the sun was questioned and ridiculed as well.

All I am suggesting is that this stuff gets looked at again, that’s all.

It may be a waste of time; perhaps no one is really interested, except Ali, and certainly no one on this forum has what it takes to support Ali, so this thread will soon go away, just as quickly as it appeared.

Oh well.

posted 08-04-2007 08:35 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Rizz:
FFrench, I respect you buddy, and you have a gift

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posted 08-05-2007 04:31 PM               

From what I see and read, the evidence does not seriously change my view that the original explanation was correct. I don't think that all the photographic evidence is sufficient to overturn that explanation. It may add to it but I agree that the original points have not been addressed as expected. Yes, it is all interesting and to me some of it is definitely new, but the case for changing the explanation is not proven.

posted 08-05-2007 11:42 PM               

Let me begin with a shock wave that both NASA and I captured in photos. The right booster safety system destruct (T+110 seconds) is shown in Photo #1 (Commission, Vol. III, p. N-58). I captured the same event, Photo #2, where the explosion of two charges on the RSRB is shown. The doughnut shape reveals the shape of the charges on the booster. The near circular shape indicates that the speed of the booster had little effect on the wave fronts. The shape also indicates that no external bodies obstructed the travel of the wave fronts. And so on.

But the situation is different with the "shock wave" of the main explosion, which can give a clear picture of what happened before and after the explosion, including, to the Crew Cabin. Let me first mention some related facts.

Photo #3 shows the fire that appeared between Challenger and the ET in the close-up view that we saw on TV just before the explosion. Some experts told the Commission that the fire was the result of oxygen leaking down from the LOX tank on the top of the stack and hydrogen (defying the laws of nature) climbing up to meet the oxygen. Commissioners Covert and Feynman ridiculed the explanation — hydrogen climbing up against a vehicle moving at March 2? This puzzle was not solved, and it is related to the main shock wave.

Photo #4 is taken after the LOX tank exploded suddenly and violently — a few frames ahead of Photo #3. By then, the shock wave of the LOX tank explosion has already cleared the screen. But notice in particular that the same fire (or glow) that appeared in Photo #3 is still persistent in Photo #4, after the LOX tank exploded and its wave front cleared the scene. The fire between the

Orbiter and the ET had nothing to do with hydrogen-oxygen burning or leaking oxygen. This is worth pursuing a bit further.

A frame is about 40 milliseconds, and I am going to say 1 frame = 50 milliseconds. Look at what happened beginning one frame before the LOX tank explodes:

• (T+0.000s): I am on a frame similar to Photo #3, where you see the right booster fire in the background on the bottom, hydrogen gushing out of the aft dome on the ET, and the glow between Challenger and the ET.

• (T+0.050s): I move one frame forward, and the picture is filled with shaded areas moving outward. The LOX tank explodes in this timeframe.

• (T+0.100s): One more frame forward, and I am in Photo #4. The LOX explosion is over. The "shock wave" is come and gone. It's all over. Yet, the glow that appeared between the Challenger and the ET is still there! That's another story.

I am going to skip several events, of roll, pitch, yaw, vibration and other actions, that I found in video clips, photos and telemetry; all of which add up to a coherent account of what happened to Challenger in those terrible moments.

Here is my photo of the "shock wave" of the main explosion (the LOX tank explosion), captured in the New Smyrna Beach video — Photo #5. Catching that picture was difficult. I couldn't see the shock wave at normal speed or in slow motion, and I could hardly get a glimpse of it in frame-by-frame scroll. I'd find it, stabilize the frame on a monitor and by time I set up the camera, the shock wave was gone. Start all over, but the shock wave wouldn't show up again! That was the most frustrating picture to capture and, perhaps, the most gratifying to trap. Shock waves are elusive. Estimating the Mach-cone and Mach-angles in my head for the Concorde as it passed from Mach 1.0 to above Mach 2, I was unable to see any Mach lines outside the window. The books said there should be shock waves out there. Were those photographed from outside the craft? I don't know. But here is a summary description of the Challenger shock wave:

• Imagine standing near New Smyrna Beach, some 30 miles north of the Cape.
  
• Challenger launches facing east, executes the roll maneuver and begins to climb over the water to your left (or to the east) with a slight inclination to the north. Use my previous NSB photos to get oriented. Photo #5 shows the shock wave of the LOX tank explosion.
  
• Imagine a stationary LOX tank suspended at that location. If it explodes, its shock wave will travel in all directions (sphere) and the camera will capture a picture of a circle.
  
• Imagine the LOX tank moving in the direction of the plume at Mach 2.0, and exploding at the same location. The shock wave will be deformed — more oval than circular.
  
• Now, put all the pieces together (Challenger, ET, SRBs) and study the geometry of the shock wave in Photo #5, and try to see what happened.

It is helpful to divide the scene into 4 quadrants, as shown in the next thumbnail and to evaluate each quadrant separately. The most important, and telling, is Quadrant I. But first, some comments on the other 3 quadrants:

• Quadrant II: Here you see the effect of speed on the wave front.
  
• Quadrant III: Here, we see the effect of speed plus the ET intertank structure obstructing the downward motion of the wave front.
  

• Quadrant IV: There is no trace of a shock wave in this quadrant as the Orbiter absorbed the energy of the explosion in this direction.
  
• Quadrant I: This is the Quadrant of primary interest. The LOX tank towers above the Orbiter. The shock wave should have penetrated into this region, to the right, but it didn't. Something got in the way and obstructed the progress of the wave front in this direction. The Crew Cabin traveled farthest south (to the right) than any other Orbiter piece, which indicates that the Crew Cabin was hit broadside by the wave front of the violent explosion.

File size again. Other photos must wait. The more formidable problem to solve was the initial "vertical" velocity of the Crew Cabin that sent it to a higher altitude than the other Orbiter's parts. In the event anyone pursues this further — with the incredible software and hardware available today — the following comments will be useful:

• The Crew Cabin was hit broadside by the shock wave of the LOX explosion, which explains the horizontal (southern or to right in photo) distance the Cabin traveled.
  
• This requires the Crew Cabin to advance "forward" from its position on the stack, how?
  
• The forward travel of the CC requires that the Cabin broke off from the Lower Forward Fuselage section, which was mistakenly identified by NASA as the Crew Cabin.
  
• The location, distance, altitude and times related to the Lower Forward Fuselage indicate the LFF was in its place near the ET intertank area when the LOX explosion happened.
  
• The CC climbed to the highest altitude of all Orbiter pieces after the explosion.
  
• The shape of the shock wave precludes any possibility that the explosion's wave front propelled the CC upward.
  
• Then, what propelled the Crew Cabin upward?

The 1987 NASA videotape — without the shock wave of the main explosion — signaled the end of my effort to incorporate my findings into the official reports. By then, I had numerous meetings and conversations with senior agency managers, House and Senate Committees' staff and some members of the Commission about it. There was a lot of politics. My supporters, the silent minority, lost the day, and my detractors, the boisterous many, won it. I did not lose on merit, and that's why I extended my posts on this thread, which I hope to conclude soon.

I had given Tim Furniss and Flight International (and other reputable journalists and publications at home and abroad) tens of photos, often at their request, showing the events you have seen in this thread, including the shock-wave photo. I explained in detail the meaning of the photos and the relevant events. I don't remember Flight International publishing my photos, and that might have led to lack of reference for Tim in writing about the Challenger investigations.

posted 08-06-2007 07:57 AM               

Ali Abutaha's comments and illustrations have certainly helped many people to realise that there is much more than meets the eye regarding the Challenger accident and I hope the technical debate will continue on the chatroom.

"A Life in Space" is an entertaining and inspirational autobiography telling the story of a 12 year old boy who acheived an ambition to become a space journalist.

Naturally, it covers my coverage of the Challenger accident for Flight International from 1986-96. The book is also a popular history of the 50 years of the space age.

If you don't like what I reported on Challenger that's fine but "A Life in Space" is not an historical tome that needs to be verified by an editorial board or by CollectSpace for that matter. I am a reporter and I reported. You can make your personal judgement. If it disagrees with what I have written it does not mean automatically that I am wrong.

With Ali, I probably did more objective reporting on the Challenger accident than anyone. I investigated the questions that needed answers. Most journalists, including those in the USA gave up or were too scared to follow up the obvious questions that should have been asked or worse still weren't bothered to do their own investigating. But some lost their jobs for trying.

As far as I am concerned that's it. You can argue all you like. You can debate all you like. It is not going to make any difference to my book, especially regarding Challenger. I can assure you that you will be inspired to do your own investigating. If you don't buy the book, you are not qualified to make any comments about "A Life in Space" and especially the Challenger coverage, which you will not have read. Please note that making copies of the the book is a breach of copyright.

A press release/announcement below places the book in its correct perspective.

The debate on CollectSpace has opened up the issue and given Ali Abutaha the attention he deserves, as has been illustrated by the comments that have been posted on the CollectSpace site after the appearance of his illustrations. There will also be questions about Challenger and I hope that my coverage will encourage others to look closer at the evidence before making the hasty judgements that have been made on CollectSpace about a book and chapter no one has read — yet.

Tim Furniss

quote:

---

"A Life in Space" by Tim Furniss
published August 2007
Including: What really happened on Challenger?

The loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger accident on 28 January 1986 may not have been caused by an O-ring failure on the right hand solid rocket booster (SRB) but by a structural failure on the SRB, in the region of the semicircular attach ring which connects the SRB to the external tank.

This is revealed in a book published by British spaceflight journalist Tim Furniss, who was the spaceflight correspondent of Flight International magazine 22 years and investigated the accident for ten years.

"A Life in Space", tells the story of a 12 year-old boy, whose enthusiasm for space was fired by Yuri Gagarin's flight on 12 April 1961. "A Life in Space" is also a popular history of the 50 years of the space age, which began in 1957 with the launch of Sputnik 1.The book includes many inside stories.

Tim purchased his first copy Flight International in 1962, when the magazine featured a Space Special issue and he continued to read the magazine every week.

His ambition was to meet astronauts, visit spaceports, to see launches and to get a job in space.

He witnessed Apollo, Shuttle and other launches from Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Centre and also met and interviewed many astronauts and cosmonauts. Tim became Flight International's spaceflight correspondent in 1984.

His career reached its peak when he was the first British journalist to watch a manned launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, in 1988 and met many veteran cosmonauts.

As he stood on Gagarin's launch pad 1, Tim remembered with thanks to God for that day in 1961. He had come full circle.

His inspirational story is linked with a first hand history of the space age, which began on 4 October 1957, with the launch of Sputnik 1 — from the same launch pad at Baikonur — to the present day, including all the main events, including the Challenger accident.

Wiith the initial assistance of American aerospace engineer Ali Abutaha after the accident, Tim began his investigations and eventually covered the Challenger accident for ten years — the only journalist who continued to investigate, after many others gave up. There seems to have been a media clampdown in the USA. Questions that should have been asked were not and the few US journalists who investigated were "encouraged" not to and some lost their jobs.

The official cause of the accident was an O-ring failure, an expected conclusion made by the Rogers Commission. Like a detective story, concerns about the O rings in cold weather were raised by engineers at Morton Thiokol but these may have been a red herring in this case. It appears that the Commission was not provided with all the information that it should have been.

As Challenger rose into the skies, the author believes that the right hand booster was shedding pieces from a breach in the region of the semi-circular attach ring on the right hand solid rocket booster.

Challenger was later fishtailing through the sky — a fact that seemed to have been recognised by the crew, when the crew conversation is linked to the timeline of the events occurring outside.

NASA did not release any still images that showed what was really happening — unlike the hundreds of views from every conceivable angle that are usually published after a launch.

Indeed, the famous side-on image of Challenger at lift-off showing the puff of smoke was for some reason cropped so as not to show the top of the booster. Have you ever wondered why? Find out in "A Life in Space".

Also, amateur video coverage seen from the north of the Kennedy Space Centre clearly shows the right hand booster shedding debris and trailing a third contrail which NASA at first admitted but quickly denied and cited shadows in the contrail. Only the two final seconds of the video was shown to the Rogers Commission. Why?

An unpublished Time magazine image shows flame coming from the right hand booster during the roll programme. Flight published an artwork of the image. NASA stayed silent.

Abutaha was persecuted and rubbished by NASA, which apparently took his findings seriously and redesigned the Shuttle — including a fully-circumferential attach ring — which was clear to see on the Shuttle's Return to Flight in 1989. Why reinforce the attach ring if it was just O rings? There are many other Challenger revelations.

Make up your own mind about Challenger. Read the evidence and much more for yourself in Chapter 10 and in later chapters of the book.

"A Life in Space", the inspiring, amusing, moving, frank, intimate, surprising and feel good read, like "The Rocket Boys" (October Sky) and "Billy Elliot", can be purchased from Spaceport Publishing, as a download on Tim's website, www.spaceport.co.uk, for 12 pounds sterling. It can be printed easily chapter-by-chapter.

An October Sky-type screenplay of the personal aspects of "A Life in Space" is also in preparation.
www.spaceport.co.uk features a daily space dairy, "Spaceshots", details of a space career that started in 1966 and many other great features some of which are under development.

Contact details: tim@spaceport.co.uk, (+44) (0)1237 477883

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posted 08-06-2007 09:24 AM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Tim Furniss:
It is quite clear now that NASA is getting very twitchy.
It seems that my PayPal account has been stopped.
Abutaha's pictures have been a revelation.
It only serves to prove that there is more to Challenger than meets the eye.

---

posted 08-06-2007 12:32 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by aurora:
Thanks FFrench for your comments. My PayPal account has been closed due to "outside influences" says PayPal. I will leave it to others to make conclusions.

---

Actually, it appears you wasted no time whatsoever to jump to a conclusion here. You posted news of the shutdown of your Paypal account here as some sort of evidence that NASA is getting "very twitchy" about your theories. So really, you aren't leaving it to others to make their own conclusions. You are suggesting that NASA was involved in shutting down your account.

posted 08-06-2007 01:12 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Tim Furniss: Thanks FFrench for your comments. My PayPal account has been closed due to "outside influences" says PayPal. I will leave it to others to make conclusions.

---

You are welcome. Actually, I was far more interested in your immediate conclusion that you chose to immediately publicly state - that it must be the result of covert NASA-related forces wishing to quieten the revelations you have uncovered.

quote:

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I appreciate your concern especially as you are such a fan of mine.

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Very big fan of your 1980s-90s work, as previously stated in this thread, and will always be - you did some outstanding research at that time.

quote:

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I will keep you posted with developments.

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Thank you. As you uncover the evidence to support your statement that NASA forces acted to shut down your Paypal account, I'd love to hear them. I am sure others here would too.

quote:

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I hope FFrench that you will buy a copy and read the Challenger chapter for yourself. Indeed I really think you will like the whole book.

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Thanks. In fact, some of your early life and coverage of missions would be of interest to me to read, and I'd probably enjoy it.

Based on your descriptions of other parts of the book that appear on this website and other websites (including your own), I have enough information to know exactly what I would think of this book overall without having to read it.

quote:

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If I may suggest, you might just loosen up a bit mate.

---

Thank you for the advice. Believe me, this isn't personal. I'm simply someone who believes that space history should be told accurately, a feeling I hope you share. I am always interested in discussing when there are gray areas to look into, but also someone that looks for extraordinary evidence when extraordinary claims are made.

posted 08-06-2007 04:18 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by aurora:
It is quite clear now that NASA is getting very twitchy. It seems that my PayPal account has been stopped.

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posted 08-07-2007 02:11 AM               

quote:

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It is quite clear now that NASA is getting very twitchy.
It seems that my PayPal account has been stopped.

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posted 08-07-2007 02:31 AM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:

Given the number of years Ali has invested in his theory...

---

I measure the difficulty of a job by the mathematical analysis required, and such analysis is not done on a keyboard or in a month or, sometimes, years. Here is a list of my works since 1986, which just happen to fall in sequence of mathematical difficulty: From simple to difficult to very difficult to extremely difficult to what has been dubbed by great thinkers through the ages as "impossible to do."

1. "Challenger Investigation" (1986-87 and 90-92). The start-up transient dynamic overshoot problem in the Shuttle was straightforward, primarily because I did that type of work in detail in 1970-72, including analysis that I did for Comsat Labs about the Apollo 13 incident in 1970. The photo evidence was an intellectual diversion.

2. "Cold Fusion" (1989-91). In 1989, the world was shocked to hear of nuclear fusion at room temperature — cold fusion. I am not a nuclear physicist and I wouldn't in my wildest dreams think to get involved. As the story developed, I noticed that the inventors reported releasing 4MJ/cc (4 million joules per cubic centimeter) from palladium dipped in deuterium (heavy hydrogen). In the early 1970s, I investigated the failure of nickel-hydrogen fuel cells. I did extensive research and identified hydrogen embrittlement as the culprit. Veteran pilots may remember aircraft wings falling off in hangers — Hydrogen attacking titanium (same family as palladium). You put heavy hydrogen and palladium together and you are apt to ignite a storm, which I called, to the dislike of physicists, rapid rusting.

   The trick was to calculate the energy content in a cubic centimeter of palladium, or other metals. It wasn't easy, but as it turned out, we need more than 10MJ to form 1cc of palladium from the ore — by melting. While the inventors were telling the Congress and the world that they could get 1000% return on investment, I showed that we only recover part of the energy that we put into the metal in the first place, when we melt it. Previous NASA references were vital to the work.

   To make a long story short, see my two papers on the subject published in the MIT Journal of Fusion Energy; respectively, Cold Fusion — The Heat Mechanism, J. Fusion Energy, 9, Sep. 1990, 345, and Cold Fusion — Engineering Perspectives, J. Fusion Energy, 9, Dec 1990, 391. The first paper, "Cold Fusion — The Heat Mechanism" was invited for publication by the world renowned Journal, Nature. I opted to publish both papers together in an American Journal. More people read Nature than JFE and that's probably why not many heard of that work.

3. "Pulsing Thrust" (1990-93).

   In the midst of the shouts about whether the "dynamic overshoot" blunder made its way into Shuttle design or not, someone (for credit, I'll get his name from my old notes) from the Office of Vice President Dan Quayle asked me point blank if any of my theories could be turned into useful application(s). I was stunned, as I always detested engineers crying out about problems but not providing solutions. My "pulsing thrust" invention was mentioned in previous posts. The letters about my invention from NASA, major (Shuttle) contractors and others were blunders of historic proportion. Robert suggested releasing the overly polite rejection letters in full. I think it more appropriate to release these letters in full.

   Though it has not been mentioned by anyone here, or elsewhere, I'll say it myself. My invention had shown that the most sacred law (theory) of energy conservation may be wrong and may require modification. This is the big story and no one mentioned it when writing about my invention.

   For the record, when I finished the grueling mathematics, thermodynamics and physics of the invention, I called the Office of the Vice President (same telephone number) to follow up. The Administration had changed. It turned out that the previous Administration took their files with them and the new filing cabinets did not have anything on my invention. Go figure. I wasn't going to spend another exhausting campaign to convince the Office of Vice President Al Gore to follow up on my invention, though Mr. Gore had responded to my "dynamic overshoot" work when he was in the Senate.

4. "The Cause of Gravity and Formulas of the Unified Interaction" (1993-95)

   In 1993, the First Secretary in the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, who was familiar with my engineering work since the 1970s, invited me to debut a series of lectures on science and technology at the Embassy in Washington DC. He wanted something new, something unique. I mounted another massive effort that had actually begun decades before. I prepared the Lecture and a lengthy report, with the required mathematics. I think that by then, Spencer et al. were tap dancing on the net about my Challenger work and me. My name was going downhill very fast and my Lecture was canceled.

   In brief, the theories of gravitation of Newton and Einstein have led to an invisible universe. NASA and others keep finding things that we cannot see in the universe, e.g., black holes. With black holes, dark matter and, now, dark energy, over 90% of the universe is not there. But, it is there. My theory fixes that problem — and more.

5. "Method for Producing Natural Motions" (1980s-Present)

   After doing hundreds of thousands of tests (actually counted), I applied for a patent with the title, "Method for Producing Natural Motions" on December 30, 1997. You can find the Patent on the USPTO site, with the above Title as follows: Patent No. 6,826,449, Date of Patent Nov. 30, 2004. I hope you don't mind me giving the "Abstract" of the invention:

   "A method to produce natural motions, or self-motion, of animate or inanimate bodies or their parts by the application of pulses at two or more locations on the surface, or inside, of the bodies or their parts. Turn on the pulses, and motion results instantly. The mechanism can emulate living motions, and as living motions can take on infinite gaits and forms, so can the mechanism produce infinite forms of motion. Smooth, repeatable, controllable or random motions can be induced. Just as living muscles convert the pulses from the nervous system into natural motion in one step, so will the mechanism convert artificially generated pulse-trains into motion in one step. The dynamic coupling or modulation of waves which travel within a body, and which are caused by artificially generated pulse-trains, produces the desired motions in directions perpendicular to the plane of the pulses. Changing the number of pulse-trains, the frequency and/or the amplitude of the pulses, or other parameters, can vary the speed, gait or form of the motion induced by the pulsing method. The moving bodies can be made to turn sideways, at 90 degrees, or at any other angle."

   I am the first, and perhaps still the only, person to induce his or her body to move mechanically with the above invention, i.e., I substituted mechanical for the nervous pulses to move my body. I also induced, and stopped, motion disorder disease-like motions in my arms; and I produced hundreds of motion models, some of which were built for DARPA under contract.

   Where is the invention — in the market? Remember my heart failure in 2004. That was two weeks before the Patent issued. All plans went down the drain as I was confined to bed. Anyway, if you have seen models that move without wheels, gears, pulleys, clutches and the like by DARPA, other agencies or companies, that's my invention. And if you have heard of attempts to fly with some ingenious devices, that's experts trying to expand on my invention without first understanding it.

6. "Instauration of Science, Engineering, Mathematics and Philosophy" (2004-Present).

   Confined to bed, I completed another major work that had waited since the 1950s — above Title. Hansen (history of engineering) and many others will love this one. It will alter the foundation of our knowledge in physics, mathematics, engineering, philosophy and other important subjects as developed since Plato and Aristotle.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:

There must be a reason why you cannot submit your paper(s) for publication in a peer reviewed or engineering journal.

---

Inadvertently this thread has turned into a discussion about a book that isn't, mine. After experiences with agents, publishers, attorneys, prominent aerospace educators for co-authors and others, I am convinced that my Challenger work will not be published in the normal way. I don't believe in self-publishing. No one has published my pictures with cogent description of events before. It's not an easy task, as you might have noted from my posts. I hope the description provided mostly from memory is adequate. I still think today, as I did 21 years ago, that my Challenger work can only appear as a government sanctioned, or sponsored, product. Perhaps, my 1986-87 attempts to the same end will make sense to many of you now.

As an educator, I feel obligated to make valuable information available to others, particularly young people who might be inspired to do greater things in their lives and the lives of others. It is in that spirit that I took the time to prepare the lengthy posts, and to give a synopsis, answer questions, post photos and specific challenges, and defend myself against thoughtless attacks. As you can see from the above list of works, I really must return to work soon. But I look forward to post relevant messages and answer questions.

Go Endeavour. Great mission. Safe return.

posted 08-07-2007 07:59 AM               

So, even though I have given you three specifc examples of what was covered in Flight International you still doubt and because of that you don't want to read the earlier parts of the book which you would have liked to have read. A bit of flawed logic I think. Go on give it a go mate! It's only £12!

I assume that you will not be posting any more contributions now that you have decided not to read the "A Life in Space" and will have not actually have read Chapter 10 - and that goes for any others who have made their comments. I only post this in the interest of accuracy, courtesy and objectivity.

posted 08-07-2007 08:31 AM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by aurora:
Again, I suggest you read the book before making comments, then you can say all you want!

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posted 08-07-2007 01:02 PM               

As I have explained before a number of times, the chapter I wrote many months ago now - which was a DRAFT for a book which was planned for a more detailed look at the Challenger accient later - with some of illustrations provided by Ali - and which you (Robert) have used for comment on my book, is not a representation of a shorter chapter of "A Life in Space" and the other references in my book.

As an act of goodwill, I hoped Robert would have understood this. It was a mistake of mine to allow a draft to be read as if it was the final work. I think this was when things started to go wrong.

Ali ran through this with me to make sure it was accurate from his point of view but I should have done a final run through with him before providing it. Indeed, I should not have used it as early publicity for the book. Simple. It was a draft.

The chapter in "A Life in Space" (which is not what Robert received) is an objective description of the accident that points out many salient questions which have always been raised - in addition to others that have not - about the accident. It is a sober description which reflects my reporting and work with Ali.

It is not a huge tome like the Rogers Commission but more of a reporter's coverage experienced at the time. I am very sad - but not surprised - that without having read the chapter (and later chapters) in "A Life in Space" it has been painted as a "conspiracy". I am not aware that I ever described it as such. I admit that my early publicity did go overboard. I do get very enthusiastic sometimes.

The salient chapters in "A Life in Space" are accounts of what I reported on - sometimes with Ali's cooperation - for Flight International and the evidence that I saw with my own eyes much of which was published by Flight International.

The book does not include illustrations - and of course, here we go again, it is therefore rubbish assumes CollectSpace - but that is the way it is. It is my book, my story.

As explained earlier, a larger book the basic draft of which you (Robert) were given - with illustrations etc like the work that Ali has placed on the CollectSpace - is planned later.

As I have said so many times, I saw and reported what I saw. Repeat - what I saw. I can't deny what I saw!

No doubt yet again the wolves will rush in not even having seen the chapters in "A Life in Space". They will call for the evidence. That is understandable but will have to wait until I have a budget to produce the full book refered to earlier.

I have established Spaceport publishing and have a series of ISBNs to use, including one of "A Life in Space". I plan other books as well as the full Challenger book.

Read the "A Life in Space", then make your comments.

If not, don't make fools of yourselves making assumptions as you seem to have accused me of making.

Much of the great coverage in CollectSpace, especially Ali's work, has made for an excellent debate spoiled by some who have had an axe to grind from the very beginning.

All I ask is that you read the chapter 10 of "A Life in Space" and the other chapters because with respect many of the comments that have been made are without basis.

I repeat, the book and the Challenger chapter - and other references on Challenger in the book - are a personal account of my reporting not a history of the Challenger accident.

I know that there will be some who will want the last word and I hope that Robert will not let them. However, I think that this is a vain hope.

As I have explained and apologised for is that I earlier hyped up the book and the Challenger coverage as a publicist does and this did not do me any favours either. That was a mistake which rebounded. I deserved the criticism.

The book is there to read but you are really not qualifed to comment on it until you have read it.

If you cannot accept what I have written here there's not much more I can add. The book speaks for itself and if you continue criticising it without having read it you will be doing what you have accused me of doing. And your comments without reading the book will do likewise.

I hope that CollectSpace will consider this in its further coverage of the thread.