Gov't pushed for liftoff

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They were taking a chance on Jan. 28, and met a disaster. Yet, they give every signal that they will continue to send up non-astronauts for the publicity gains.

Star Wars and the shuttle This aim may be related to the fact that the Strategic Defense Initiative program, otherwise known as Star Wars, which depends on the shuttle, is itself a jump into the void. Only people who take their fantasies to be reality (such as the president, perhaps) believe that Star Wars will protect anything or anybody from missiles.

The rest of the Star Wars proponents are staking the national economy, and the survival of humanity, on the hope that a massive escalation in the arms race can intimidate or wear out the Soviet Union and the semicolonial peoples enough to guarantee another " American Century."

They told Christa McAuliffe she was safe. What does that say about their nuclear-arms policy?

Even as the Air Force and such prominent scientists as James Van Allen (Scientific American, January 1986) are After days of nasty weather, Jan. 28 dawned cold and clear. Christa McAuliffe was to venture into orbit. In the evening, President Reagan was to lecture TV viewers about the State of the Union.

And for a nightcap, perhaps, the Great Communicator would conduct a first-ever televised chat with a teacher in space! What better way to boost flagging public enthusiasm for Star Wars?

Instead, Jan. 28 exploded in scandal. The presidential commission hearings that began last month reveal that NASA flagrantly disregarded the recommendations of project engineers to cancel the flight.

Analysts working for NASA first expressed alarm last summer that a "catastrophe" was in the making. They pointed out that flight safety was "being compromised by the potential failure of the seals" that prevent hot gases from escaping the booster rockets.

Engineers working on the projects stated repeatedly that cold weather would likely make the flaws worse. Only minutes before lift-off, the director of shuttle operations for Rockwell International Corp. told NASA that "we're not safe to fly."

A warning given by engineers working for another company, Morton Thiokol, Inc., was also shrugged off by NASA officials. Finally, four Thiokol vice pres -idents overruled their engineering staff and gave NASA the go-ahead. "I felt personally that management was under a lot of pressure to launch," an engineer at Thiokol, Roger Bois, testified last month.

Why was there so much "pressure to launch" on Jan. 28? The presidential com -mission has attempted to place blame on "gung ho" officials along NASA's "chain of command." But NASA officials were scarcely blind to the fact that the shuttle launch was to be part of an extravaganza capped by the participation of the president himself that evening. And now that we mention it, which great communicator once proclaimed, "The buck stops here?"

—MICHAEL SCHREIBER