FEYNMAN AND THE CHALLENGER EXPLOSION

[Scott Zasadil]

"Arthur E. Sowers" <arthures at access5.digex.net> wrote:

>Although it was a high profile techno-disaster, I would maintain that in 
>terms of the propensity of human beings to do things that turn out bad 
>instead of good that they should have been able to predict and avoid, the 
>Challenger disaster was a drop in the bucket compared to many other 
>"comparable" disasters. 
>
Several examples given.

>5. The use of pure oxygen atmospheres in the early 3-man space
>   capsules (I don't remember the names & dates etc, but 3 guys were
>   burned to a crisp in about 2-3 secs and there was a committee report
>   recommending against the pure oxygen for safety reasons).

Apollo 1: Grissom, White, and Chaffee. I believe it was on January 25, 1966 
- almost ten years exactly prior to the challenger explosion. BTW their
spacesuits protected them from a lot of the fire. Their official cause of
death was listed as suffocation from the toxic fumes.