Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring Concepts

Truth, Lies, and O-Rings: Inside the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster

by Allan J McDonald and James R. Hansen · 25 Apr 2009 · 787pp · 249,157 words

, Orlando University of Florida, Gainesville University of North Florida, Jacksonville University of South Florida, Tampa University of West Florida, Pensacola TRUTH, LIES, AND O-RINGS Inside the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster Allan J. McDonald with James R. Hansen University Press of Florida GAINESVILLE · TALLAHASSEE · TAMPA · BOCA RATON PENSACOLA · ORLANDO · MIAMI · JACKSONVILLE · FT. MYERS

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14 13 12 P 6 5 4 3 2 1 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA McDonald, Allan J. Truth, lies, and o-rings : inside the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster / Allan J. McDonald with James R. Hansen. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8130-3326-6 (alk. paper

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most coherent description I'd ever read of what happened with the infamous Space Shuttle O-rings and, in particular, of how events unfolded in the hours before, and the weeks and months following, the launch of Challenger. His narrative lent great urgency—and sometimes an appropriate measure of humor when circumstances allowed

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that my book includes, but more important, they all suffer from numerous technical mistakes and misinformation that are revealed in my book. Truth, Lies, and O-rings: Inside the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster is the only book that has ever been published by an individual directly involved in the

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on the right-hand booster exhibited 0.039 inch of erosion. Nor was it well known about STS-41C Challenger, Dick Scobee's flight, that while there was no erosion of the primary O-ring in the aft field-joint of the left-hand booster, there was a blowhole through its vacuum putty

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. Onizuka, who flew on STS-51C Discovery and would also fly a year later on STS-51L, the ill-fated Challenger, like his compatriots, was never told about the serious O-ring erosion and blowby condition that we certainly knew about and attributed to cold weather. No one would have predicted that Onizuka

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yet flown), Mission Specialist Dr. Don Lind. Cross section of the badly eroded primary O-ring that failed in the nozzle-to-case joint on STS-51B Challenger (SRM-16A). (Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, Vol. 3, June 6, 1986.) Even though the returned flight hardware from these

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Shuttle flight. 5 An Impotent Task Force In spite of the O-ring erosion problems, which got progressively worse, the Shuttle continued to fly. The loss of the primary O-ring with significant erosion of the secondary O-ring in the nozzle joint on the Challenger flight (STS-51B) on April 29, 1985, raised the level of

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Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. At the end of October 1985, we launched STS-61A Challenger. Postflight examination of the recovered case hardware showed some soot between the primary and secondary O-rings in two field-joints: the aft joint on the left-hand motor and the center joint on the

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the cold temperature would slow down the timing function, making it more difficult for the primary O-ring to seal the joints. Exaggerated sketch of opening field-joint. (Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, Vol. 3, June 6, 1986.) Boisjoly's next chart showed how cold temperature would

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ever made aware of the concerns raised by Morton Thiokol the night before concerning the ability of the O-rings to seal in such cold temperatures. Furthermore, the four space veterans in the Challenger crew—Commander Francis Scobee, Mission Specialist Judith Resnik, Mission Specialist Ronald McNair, and Mission Specialist Ellison Onizuka—had all

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STS-51L and was the primary basis of concern by the Morton Thiokol engineers for launching the Challenger in even colder weather. None of the Challenger crew was ever made aware of the concerns of the O-rings sealing properly on this cold launch or the grave observations concerning their own previous Shuttle flights

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effects that the extremely cold temperatures could have on the sealing capability of the O-rings in the SRB field-joints. I breathed a sigh of relief as Challenger lifted off the pad. I really believed that if the O-rings were to fail, it would be at ignition during the critical 0.6-second

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the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident. The chairman of the Presidential Commission was William P. Rogers, former Secretary of State for President Nixon. Other members were Neil Armstrong, Vice-Chairman and former astronaut and first man to walk on the Moon; Dr. Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize winner in physics

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from NASA. It was readily apparent to everyone there that Commission members were deeply upset by the fact that reports of O-ring failure as the suspected primary cause of the Challenger accident had appeared in the press before NASA had shared the first thing about the subject with the Commission. To read

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the meeting the night before the launch and the fact that Morton Thiokol did initially recommend against launching Challenger. Thiokol had been very concerned about the effects that cold temperatures might have on the O-rings in spite of what Mulloy had just said. Furthermore, our recommendation was given to NASA in writing

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‘flawed.’” According to this new information, “Mr. McDonald had warned NASA the night before not to launch the Challenger because of concerns about the O-rings at the cold temperatures, but he was overruled by his superiors.” Correspondent Sherr concluded her report, “ABC will provide further information on this late-breaking

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that the horizontal assembly created these blowholes on the static tests, but STS-2 showed severe erosion of the primary O-ring in the field-joint, the most severe prior to the Challenger accident. Eight other field-joints from returned flight motors also showed blowholes in the vacuum putty, so it was unfathomable

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quite a bit of rebuttal for them to do. During the first public hearing conducted on February 11, 1986, Rogers Commission member Dr. Richard Feynman removed a piece of O-ring that he had squeezed in a C-clamp from a glass of ice water, thereby demonstrating to NASA's Larry Mulloy the loss

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launch-decision process actually were—and that he was still trying to defend. It was known by all well previous to the launch of Challenger that if the O-rings failed, the entire Shuttle system would explode, destroying the orbiter and everything in it, including seven human beings. But this catastrophic possibility didn

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had demonstrated a high reliability. I had raised the same concern with the O-rings in the four hinged nozzles on the Stage I Minuteman after the Challenger accident. According to our post-Challenger O-ring erosion analysis, we would predict that the O-rings should periodically experience erosion and charring in the grease-filled split lines of

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turned into a very ugly affair for me. Larry Mulloy tried to blame me for closing out the O-ring erosion problem so that it wasn't visible in the flight readiness reviews for Challenger, even though he personally, without anyone's knowledge, had waived the issue for every flight for the past

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defend how good their PAS system was, yet neither of them knew that an error had been made that closed out the O-ring erosion problem! At the launch of Challenger, they were still assuming it was open! It demonstrated that no one, including Mulloy or Wear, paid any attention to the PAS

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in writing to that effect. If the Challenger accident hadn't happened, closing out this item would surely have been accepted because they were getting pushed by their management to reduce the size of the PAS report. “Nobody answered this letter of Mr. McDonald's?” Richard Feynman asked. “No,” Wear admitted, without saying

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be more miserable because Ed would quickly mimic Charlie's attitude, which he did. After the Challenger accident, Thiokol corporate management from Chicago visited the Utah plant to get a better understanding of how the O-rings were made. (Cartoon by Cal Grondahl, 1986, Standard Examiner, reprinted with permission.) If I had known

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the Presidential Commission, congratulating them for a job well done. The newscaster reported that the Commission had concluded that the Challenger accident had been caused by the failure of an O-ring in a joint of the right solid rocket booster, which had been precipitated by the cold temperatures the morning of the

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failure in history”: I received my notoriety by trying to delay the launch of STS-51L, the Space Shuttle Challenger, on January 28, 1986, because of my concerns with the sealing of the O-rings in the joints of the solid rocket boosters at cold temperatures, but I failed. I then came forth

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, 1986, Los Angeles Times, reprinted with permission.) Humorists criticized NASA Marshall management for preventing the O-ring concerns of Morton Thiokol engineers from being heard by the NASA Mission Management Team, the group responsible for actually launching Challenger. (Cartoon by Bruce Beattie, 1986, Copley News Service, reprinted with permission.) One laughed but wanted

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was clear even to cartoonists that communication problems and turf battles led to the ill-fated Challenger launch, with NASA Marshall management making a conscious decision not to share Morton Thiokol's concerns about cold O-rings with any of the other members of the NASA Mission Management Team. (Cartoon by Dana Summers

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to separate during initial pressurization at ignition. Misleading graph showing the correlation of the number of field-joint O-ring incidents on Shuttle flights versus temperature. (Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, Vol. 1, June 6, 1986.) The data used in the Commission's graph also included all

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. Although somewhat relieved by this response, I also knew that if Thiokol ever got dragged into court over the Challenger accident, that my document, along with my presentation to NASA headquarters on the O-ring seal problems on August 19, 1985, would most likely be a focal point for any litigation. Even though

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tang side of the joint restricted the opening of the joint to only about 15 percent of that experienced by the Challenger design. This design also provided a capture-feature O-ring with a zero gap that tried to get even tighter with pressure from the motor during ignition, thus being totally insensitive

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our capture-feature and primary/secondary O-rings automatically responded in opposite directions, eliminating any possibility that a single load could unseat the total joint sealing area as like what happened with Challenger. Because the Challenger design had adjacent bore-seal O-rings, any load that tried to prevent the primary O-ring from sealing would do the

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same thing to the secondary O-ring, not allowing “true” redundancy to be maintained. A very intensive O-ring testing program was conducted in order to

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flexing of the vehicle would later break open any brittle aluminum oxide seal that had formed around the burned O-rings. This series of seventy-pound-charge hot-fire tests further substantiated the Challenger failure scenario, our test hardware then becoming a very useful tool for testing the tolerance of both the old

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several separations that could possibly result in hot gas channeling through the joint and impinging directly on the O-rings. As a result, we decided to return the ETM motor back to the original pre-Challenger design configuration. We redesignated it ETM-1A and tested it by filling the blowholes in the vacuum

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for a deposition on the same day as Bob Ebeling, who was working for me at the time of Challenger as the Manager of Ignition Systems and Motor Assembly and had the O-ring seals under his direction. Suffering from a serious bout of depression, he had retired from Thiokol in his late

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new motor design was safe. Hot gas was being purposefully channeled through the new insulation and through the O-rings with the intention of proving that this new motor was much safer than the pre-Challenger design. If that wasn't enough, a short section of the insulation had been intentionally unbonded from

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to the country as an inexpensive program, thereby sowing the seeds for disaster. Prescription for Disaster painted a picture in which the Challenger disaster was caused not by defective O-rings but by a political system that produced the Shuttle program in the first place. When I first read the book, I found

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me from the start. While her conclusion that a “normalization of deviance” had occurred within both NASA and Morton Thiokol—certainly concerning the O-ring problems that were known prior to Challenger—was likely on the mark, I found numerous technical errors in her book. Moreover, she had conducted forty-nine personal post

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involvement on the Rogers Commission. Along with a gripping firsthand account of his famous bit of theater with the O-ring dipped in ice water, the memoir detailed Feynman's battles during the Challenger investigation between science and logic, on the one side, and politics and expediency on the other. Purposefully acting the

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story and get more details before we made it public. Indeed, Richard Feynman was a highly laudable and brilliant man—some have called him a “contemporary Leonardo”—who made important contributions to what was learned about the causes of the Challenger disaster. But he was definitely not the drama's solitary hero—or

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Rogers Commission findings and offered possible alternative interpretations. Regarding the first finding, the authors acknowledged that O-ring failure had something to do with Challenger's destruction, but they suggested a more complicated view, which was that excessive compression on the O-rings could have been the principal cause. (The NASA Accident Analysis Team following

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decisions, and politics dating back to the early 1970s as it did with immediate circumstances related to O-ring design, cold temperature, and problems at Thiokol or arrogance in Huntsville. They concluded their discussion of Challenger with a description of the psychological hurt suffered by many at MSFC. Individuals already deeply sorry for

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ignored it. In fact, McDonald's name appeared only a couple times in their chapter on Challenger. One of those references contained the subsequently controversial comment made by McDonald during the teleconference about the secondary O-ring being in a better position to seal than the primary, as if McDonald was in fact

Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman

by James Gleick · 1 Jan 1992 · 795pp · 215,529 words

and scientists. None of which could fully account for the presence of laboratory, rheostat, and lab assistant—tokens of a certain vivid cultural stereotype. Richard Feynman was relentless in filling his bedroom with the trappings and systems of organized science. Neither Country nor City Charmed lives were led by the children

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. Feynman.” On one occasion the bureau discovered a “contact by Oppenheimer with one ‘FINEMAN’ (phonetic)” and surmised “that this ‘FINEMAN’ is in fact subject RICHARD FEYNMAN.” Officials discussed the possibility of turning him into a confidential informant against Oppenheimer. They authorized a discreet approach and then placed Feynman on the “no

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go ahead—suppose that judgment was wrong. Nobody is going to blame anybody. I mean, somebody has to make those decisions.” But Feynman immediately challenged Moore on the view that O-ring blow-by had been acceptable because the secondary rings had held. “You said we don’t expect it on the other

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:149. Fox, David. 1952. “The Tiniest Time Traveler.” Astounding Science Fiction (magazine). Francis, Patricia. 1989. “Science as a Way of Seeing: The Case of Richard Feynman.” Manuscript, University of Maryland. Franklin, Allan. 1979. “The Discovery and Nondiscovery of Parity Nonconservation.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 10:201. ——. 1990. Experiment

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1774. An Essay on Genius. London: Strahan. Gieryn, Thomas F., and Figert, Anne E. 1990. “Ingredients for a Theory of Science in Society: O-Rings, Ice Water, C-Clamp, Richard Feynman and the New York Times.” In Theories of Science and Society. Edited by Susan E. Cozzens and Thomas F. Gieryn. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana

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Hiley, B. J., and Peat, F. David. 1987. Quantum Implications: Essays in Honour of David Bohm. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Hillis, W. Daniel. 1989. “Richard Feynman and the Connection Machine.” Physics Today, February, 78. Hofstadter, Douglas R. 1979. Gödel, Escher, Bach. New York: Basic Books. ——. 1985. Metamagical Themas. New York: Basic

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The Enigma of Time. Bristol: Adam Hilger. Laurence, William L. 1959. Men and Atoms. New York: Simon and Schuster. Leighton, Ralph. 1991. Tuva or Bust! Richard Feynman’s Last Journey. New York: Norton. Lentricchia, Frank. 1980. After the New Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago. Leplin, J., ed. 1984. Scientific Realism. Berkeley:

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1971. “Jewish Academics in the United States.” American Jewish Yearbook, 89. Lombroso, Cesare. 1891. The Man of Genius. London: Walter Scott. Lopes, J. Leite. 1988. “Richard Feynman in Brazil: Recollections.” Manuscript. Lopes, J. Leite, and Feynman, Richard. 1952. “On the Pseudoscalar Meson Theory of the Deuteron.” Symposium on New Research Techniques in

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Thought. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. Mehra, Jagdish, ed. 1973. The Physicist’s Conception of Nature. Dordrecht: Reidel. Mehra, Jagdish. 1988. “My Last Encounter with Richard Feynman.” Talk at Department of Physics, Cornell University, 24 February. Melsen, Andrew G. van. 1952. From Atomos to Atom: The History of the Concept “Atom.” Translated

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84 “Century of Progress” (1933 World’s Fair), 40–42 CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research), 381, 383 Challenger (space shuttle), 11, 145, 415–28 background, 425 investigating commission, 416–17 launch, 415–16 O-rings, 418–23, 427–28 risk assessment, 427–28 Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan, 316 chaos, 119, 182, 360, 430–31

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Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material: British Broadcasting Corporation: Excerpt from” Fun to Imagine,” an interview between Richard Feynman and Christopher Sykes as broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1983. Used by permission. David Higham Associates: Four lines from “Tattered Serenade,” from Collected

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

by Richard P. Feynman and Jeffrey Robbins · 1 Jan 1999 · 261pp · 86,261 words

in Modern Society 5There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom 6The Value of Science 7Richard P. Feynman’s Minority Report to the Space Shuttle Challenger Inquiry 8What Is Science? 9The Smartest Man in the World 10Cargo Cult Science: Some Remarks on Science, Pseudoscience, and Learning How to Not Fool Yourself

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to write a living line, must sweat, . . . For a good poet’s made, as well as born.” What have Jonson and Shakespeare to do with Richard Feynman? Simply this. I can say as Jonson said, “I did love this man this side idolatry as much as any.” Fate gave me the tremendous

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breathless by the lecture (even Einstein would have been impressed, I think). For the first time in my life I felt a smidgen of what Richard Feynman called “the kick in the discovery,” the sudden feeling (probably akin to an epiphany, albeit in this case a vicarious one) that I had grasped

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theory of nuclear reactions, especially for his discoveries concerning the energy production in stars. Ed. †In 1965, the Nobel Prize for Physics was shared by Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger, and Sin–Itiro Tomonaga for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, and its deep consequences for the physics of elementary particles. Ed. 2

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, and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations. 7 RICHARD P. FEYNMAN’S MINORITY REPORT TO THE SPACE SHUTTLE CHALLENGER INQUIRY When the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after its launch on January 28, 1986, six professional astronauts and one school-teacher were tragically killed. The nation was

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accident and to recommend steps to prevent such a disaster from ever happening again. The fact that Richard Feynman was that one scientist may have made the difference between answering the question of why the Challenger failed and eternal mystery. Feynman was gutsier than most men, not afraid to jet all over the

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the Commission held a live press conference to answer questions, Feynman did his now-famous tabletop experiment with one of the shuttle’s gaskets, or O-rings, and a cup of ice water. It dramatically proved that those key gaskets had failed because the warning of the engineers that it was too

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factor at all; even though the bridge did not actually collapse because the crack only went one-third of the way through the beam. The O-rings of the Solid Rocket Boosters were not designed to erode. Erosion was a clue that something was wrong. Erosion was not something from which safety

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based not on physical understanding but on empirical curve fitting. To be more detailed, it was supposed a stream of hot gas impinged on the O-ring material, and the heat was determined at the point of stagnation (so far, with reasonable physical, thermodynamic laws). But to determine how much rubber eroded

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, and those pesky infinities that gum up so many equations. “I think the theory is simply a way to sweep the difficulties under the rug,” Richard Feynman said. “I am, of course, not sure of that.” It sounds like the kind of criticism, ritually tempered, that comes from the audience after a

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js, slightly violet-bluish ns, and dark brown xs flying around. And I wonder what the hell it must look like to the students. 12 RICHARD FEYNMAN BUILDS A UNIVERSE In a previously unpublished interview made under the auspices of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Feynman reminisces about his

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salesman for a uniform company in New York City. On May 11, 1918, he welcomed the birth of his son Richard. Forty-seven years later, Richard Feynman received the Nobel Prize for Physics. In many ways, Mel Feynman had a lot to do with that accomplishment, as

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Richard Feynman relates. FEYNMAN: Well, before I was born, he [my father] said to my mother that “this boy is going to be a scientist.” You can’

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the world and the way to look at it which I found was deeply scientific for a man who had no direct scientific training. NARRATOR: Richard Feynman is now professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, where he has been since 1950. Part of his time he spends

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addition, mathematics by itself had a great appeal for me. I loved it all my life. [. . .] NARRATOR: After graduation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Richard Feynman moved approximately 400 miles southwest to Princeton University, where he would eventually get his Ph.D. It was there, at the age of 24 that

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you agree, Professor Einstein?” Einstein said, “No-o-o-o,” and that was the nicest no I ever heard. NARRATOR: It was at Princeton that Richard Feynman learned that even if he lived his entire life in the world of mathematics and theoretical physics, there was another world out there that would

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uranium isotopes was indeed theoretically possible, another method was eventually used to produce uranium-235 for the atomic bomb. Nevertheless, there was still plenty for Richard Feynman and his high-level theorizing to do at the main laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, charged with developing the bomb. After the war, he

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okay as a philosopher? NARRATOR: In this edition of the Future for Science–a taped series of interviews with Nobel laureates–you’ve heard Dr. Richard Feynman of the California Institute of Technology. The series has been prepared under the auspices of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. ______ *John Archibald

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, 198 Feynman integrals, 191 Feynman Lectures on Physics, The 191 Feynman, Richard awards for, 233. See also Feynman, Richard, and Nobel Prize and Challenger O-rings, 152. See also Space Shuttle Challenger, O-ring seals and his children, 21–22, 172, 195, 204 death of, 1 and father, 3, 4–5, 7–8, 65, 174, 180

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Reviews, 152, 153, 164 high-pressure oxygen and fuel turbopumps, 159, 160, 162–164 launch schedules, 168, 169 management, 152, 155, 161, 167, 168–169 O-ring seals, 152, 155–156 problems. See Problems, and bottom-up/top-down design solid fuel rockets, reliability estimates of, 153–157 Space Shuttle main engines

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, Louis J., 153 Ultimate particles, 192–193, 199, 238 Uncertainty, 24–25, 104, 111–112, 115, 146, 247–249, 250, 252, 254, 256 and O-rings on Challenger, 157 See also Doubt Uncertainty principle, 50 Understanding nature, 13–14, 15, 23, 102, 108, 110, 148, 182, 198, 204, 240, 241 imitating nature, 47

Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors

by Matt Parker · 7 Mar 2019

O-rings When the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after launch on 28 January 1986, killing all seven people onboard, a Presidential Commission was formed to investigate the disaster. As well as including Neil Armstrong and Sally Ride (the first American woman in space), the commission also featured Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. The Challenger

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sections to provide a tight seal. It was these O-rings that failed during the launch of Challenger, allowing hot gases to escape from the boosters and start the chain of events which led to its destruction. Famously, during the investigation, Richard Feynman demonstrated how the O-rings lost their elasticity at low temperatures. It was vital

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that, as the separate sections of the booster moved about, the O-rings sprang back

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to maintain the seal. In front of the media, Feynman put some of the O-ring rubber in a glass of iced

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been tryin’ to tell the supervisor about it, but we never get anywhere!’ The final report bears all this out. The performance of the rubber O-rings was definitely the primary cause of the accident and remains the headline finding that most people remember. But as well as the

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O-ring findings, and recommendations for how NASA should handle communication between the engineers and management, there is Finding #5: ‘significant out-of-round conditions existed between

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better than correct and dead. But we owe it to ourselves to try to work out these probabilities as best we can. This is what Richard Feynman was faced with during the investigation into the shuttle disaster. The managers and high-up people in NASA were saying that each shuttle launch had

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.23881, 121.38806, 123.80597, 145.95522, 208.02985, 241.26866, 244.53731–245.95522 resonant frequencies: 269.68657–269.74627, 274.23881–280.95522 Richard Feynman: 154.95522, 222.00000–223.29851 rm -rf: 23.08955–23.47761 Rock Paper Scissors: 163.50746–163.71642 roll over errors: 25.38806, 180

Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space

by Adam Higginbotham · 14 May 2024 · 523pp · 204,889 words

determined. “I’m very concerned we don’t get myopic and say it’s this O-ring thing,” he said. In Huntsville, Marshall Space Flight Center Director Bill Lucas told reporters that his engineers’ decision to launch Challenger had been “sound”; in the meantime, his senior staff continued to seek ways to place

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analysis—Feynman flew to Huntsville to help supervise tests intended to establish exactly how the solid rocket seals had failed during Challenger’s brief final flight. But Feynman, already satisfied that O-rings made inflexible by extreme cold had burned through and destroyed the shuttle, had little interest in pursuing the details any

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Boisjoly had called for a redesign of the joints in the solid rockets and tried to stop the Challenger launch the night before it happened. Here, he holds up a sample of the Viton O-rings used in the joint. Getty Images/Denver Post/Duane Howell Allan McDonald being sworn in for his

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booster project at the Marshall Space Flight Center, points to the O-ring in a full-size cross-section of the rocket joint during his testimony before the Rogers Commission on February 13, 1986. AP Images/Scott Stewart Caltech professor Richard Feynman alienated some of his colleagues on the commission with what they saw

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as his publicity-seeking antics; but his ice-water “experiment” helped crystallize the role of the O-rings in the accident with the media. AP Images/Dennis Cook In January 1987, NASA workers began lowering the recovered wreckage of Challenger

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I, 121; Brian Russell, author interview, April 6, 2022. In 1982: McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 9–10. Thiokol’s Wasatch operation: Cecil Houston, R-NARA, April 10, 1986, 83–86; Boisjoly, Challenger Book Material, 11; Brian Russell, author interview, April 6, 2022. For example, Russell’s father worked in

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1989; Heppenheimer, Development of the Space Shuttle, 283–84. Still, when the Thiokol: Brian Russell, author interview, April 6, 2022; Malloy, “Parker Says Shuttle O-Rings Met Standards”; “Challenger’s Last Flight,” LAT, February 9, 1986; Mark A. Vigil, R-NARA, March 27, 1986, 16; Curtis J. Newsome, R-NARA, March 27, 1986

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Decision, 82. The Flight Readiness Review: RCR, vol. I, 15. Here, Administrator Beggs: Vaughan, The Challenger Launch Decision, 82–84; Weeks, R-NARA, April 7, 1986, 23. By that time: McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 26. One senior engineer: Jay Honeycutt, author interview, July 15, 2022. Within this exacting: Vaughan

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Hansen, “Big Sky Values, A Biography of Allan J McDonald,” Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 580–82. Coolheaded and capable: Brian Russell, author interview, April 6, 2022; McConnell, Challenger, 182. Until a few months: McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 10–22. Officially, the change was designed: Bob Crippen, author interview, October 4

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of the inspection was no later than September 12, 1984: Presentation chart from Thiokol SRM Preboard FRR, Vaughan, The Challenger Launch Decision, 145. Since reluctantly agreeing: McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 28–30. McDonald’s new tasks: Ibid., 30–31. Even so: Ibid., 25. In the months since: Weeks,

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Procedures,” April 11, 1984, reproduced as Chart 20 in RCR, vol. II, Appendix H, 13–14; Vaughan, The Challenger Launch Decision, 140. In the meantime, Mulloy: Ibid., 130; McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 217–18; McDonald, R-NARA, March 19, 1986, 49–50; RCR, vol. I, 156–58; SRB Critical

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Russell, author interview, April 6, 2022; McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 39–41; Thiokol, “SRM Preboard Problem Summary Chart,” September 12, 1984, in Vaughan, The Challenger Launch Decision, 145. At a meeting on September 12: Investigation of the Challenger Accident: Hearings before the Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House

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Congress, second session, October 29, 1986, 55. The analysis passed into the decision chain: Ibid. The package: McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 41–42; Vaughan, The Challenger Launch Decision, 143; Problem Summary, Shuttle Projects Office Board, September 19, 1984, reproduced as Chart 29 in RCR, vol. II, Appendix H, H

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weather.gov/ilm/January1985cold. At Cape Canaveral, the water: Trento interview with Boisjoly, April 12, 1991, 3–4; Boisjoly, Challenger Book Material, 236; McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 47; Vaughan, The Challenger Launch Decision, 154–55; Arnold Aldrich testimony, RCR, vol. V, 1018. The ambient temperature on the launchpad at liftoff

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Jerry Burn, author interview, April 7, 2022; Brian Russell, author interview, April 6, 2022; McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 47. That left the one aspect: Ibid., 47; Vaughan, The Challenger Launch Decision, 154–55. In the past, Boisjoly had been: Ibid., 27; Boisjoly, R-NARA, April 2, 1986, 38–40

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May 21, 1986, 77. In the meantime, the Thiokol engineers’: McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 51–52; Boisjoly, R-NARA, April 2, 1986, 18; STS-51-G launched June 17, 1985; Boisjoly, Challenger Book Material, 282, gives date of disassembly as June 25. as little as three-tenths: Don Lind

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RCR, vol. V, 1591–92. In the meantime, the members: McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 59–60; extracts from Thiokol memos and presentations July 2, 1985, to July 9, 1985, in Boisjoly, Challenger Book Material, 288–93; Dunar and Waring, Power to Explore, 362. Back in Utah: Date cited in

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Boisjoly to Lund, Thiokol interoffice memo, 31 July 1985, “SRM O-ring Erosion/Potential Failure Criticality,” RCR, vol. V, 249–50; Boisjoly, R-NARA, April 2, 1986, 18–19; Vaughan, The Challenger Launch Decision, 174. At the end of a long meeting: McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies

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, and O-Rings, 63–65. At the Thiokol plant, Roger Boisjoly: Boisjoly, Challenger Book Material, 296–300; Boisjoly, R-NARA, April 2, 1986, 19–21; Boisjoly to Lund, “SRM O-ring Erosion/Potential Failure Criticality.” now he decided: McDonald, R-NARA, March 19

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, 1986, 46–48; McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 65. But before leaving: McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 66; Boisjoly, Challenger Book Material, 301–3; RCR, vol. V, 1592. McDonald writes that he regrets agreeing to this change, but in

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iowa-state-aerospace-engineering-alumni-awards/. the most candid report: RCR, vol. II, H-69; Vaughan, The Challenger Launch Decision, 176. The Thiokol engineer talked: McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 66–67; Vaughan, The Challenger Launch Decision, 176–78. But Mike Weeks felt: Weeks, R-NARA, April 7, 1986, 33–35

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us a warning,” foreshadowing the physicist’s own conclusions. (Feynman personal notes dated “Sunday March 29, 1985,” http://natedsanders.com/Richard_Feynman_Handwritten_Diary_Style_Document__-LOT60358.aspx.) Back in Utah: Boisjoly, Challenger Book Material, 304–5, 307. “Hooray for the management”: Boisjoly, “Notebook #1”, September 11, 1985, JSTC, Box Two, Roger Boisjoly

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“Shuttle in Space After 7 Delays; Astronauts Launch RCA Satellite,” January 13, 1986; McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 80, 203. Even so: Trento, Prescription for Disaster, 280. The technicians: McConnell, Challenger, 73. On January 6: Michael Wines, “Shuttle Nearly Lofted with Too Little Fuel,” LAT, August 6, 1986, https://www

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it seems he was mistaken—it was L-2. McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 93. The crew: Staff of the Washington Post, Challengers, 180; McConnell, Challenger, 123–24; Hohler, I Touch the Future, 238; “The Challenger Disaster Part 1 (Pre Mission News Coverage),” YouTube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJKywSdnzfw

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Ebeling, R-NARA, March 19, 1986, 14–15; McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 94, 96–97; the full weather forecast is described by McConnell, Challenger, 171. “This has to be”: McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 97. It now fell to McDonald: Ibid., 97; Houston, R-NARA, April 10, 1986

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R-NARA, March 20, 1986, 12. in an unusual breach: McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 111. It was 9:00 p.m.: Ebeling, R-NARA, March 19, 1986, 15. TEMPERATURE CONCERN: Boisjoly, Challenger Book Material, 392. During the first nine: RCR, vol. I, 155. From the Utah: McDonald with Hansen

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, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 98–100. “more like a brick”: Ibid., 100. The numbers were bracing: If launched at

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temperature of 26 degrees, the Thiokol engineers estimated that the temperature of the O-rings in the 51-L rockets would be 27 degrees to 29 degrees Fahrenheit. McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 102. As he wrapped up: Boisjoly, Challenger Book Material, 398–401. Boisjoly “cringed” when Arnie Thompson displayed data from

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gas tests that seemed to show the O-rings would form a tight seal between metal surfaces down to temperatures below freezing

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April 10, 1986, 34. But the Thiokol team: Kapp, R-NARA, March 19, 1986, 43–44; McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 106. Boisjoly felt his stomach churn: Boisjoly, Challenger Book Material, 408. But to others: Cecil Houston, R-NARA, April 10, 1986, 32, 44. “ask them”: Sayer, R-NARA, March

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March 16, 1986, 5–6.) As a humming quiet: McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 107–8. Down in Alabama: Ben Powers, R-NARA, March 12, 1986, 16–17. “We’ve got to make”: Boisjoly, Challenger Book Material, 409. Nonetheless, for the next few minutes: Kapp, R-NARA, March 19, 1986

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://www.nasa.gov/missions/space-shuttle/sts-51l/challenger-crew-transcript/; Lewis, Challenger: The Final Voyage, 15. In Firing Room 3: McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 120–21; Hamburg, “Jan. 28, 1986, Etched Forever.” At his console: McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 120. “We just dodged”: Hayhurst, “I Knew

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watch?v=H3SYYrKxHD8; “STS-51L Sequence of Major Events”; RCR, vol. I, 19–20, 26–28; McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 142; NASA, “Transcript of the Challenger Crew Comments from the Operational Recorder”; Lynn Olson, “TV Brought the Trauma to Classroom Millions,” Education Week, February 5, 1986, https://www.edweek

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July 15, 2022, and Chet Vaughan, April 1, 2021; McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 122–23, 130. Fortunately, a contingency plan: William Safire, “Handling Bad News,” NYT, January 30, 1986; John Noble Wilford, “Challenger, Disclosure and an 8th Casualty for NASA,” NYT, February 14, 1986; Sam A Marshall, “NASA After

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Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident,” C-SPAN, February 11, 1986. But Feynman had heard: Although he gave the physicist permission, Rogers made his disapproval clear. “Do what you think is right,” he told Feynman: Keel, author interview, October 21, 2020; RCR, vol. IV, 363; “Richard Feynman Debunks NASA,” YouTube video,

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; David Sanger, “NASA Photos Hint Trouble Started Right at Liftoff,” NYT, February 14, 1986; Boisjoly, Challenger Book Material, 431–2. Following his unexpected: McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 175–79. When the hearing began: RCR, vol. IV, 609. Almost immediately: Ibid., 634–35. The two engineers: Ibid., 631; McDonald

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86. When McDonald finished: Ibid., 186–87, RCR, vol. IV, 707–8. That afternoon: McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 189. In the meantime: Boisjoly, Challenger Book Material, 438; Rita Beamish, “Challenger Panel Questions Decision to Launch Shuttle,” Charlotte Observer, February 16, 1986; Chairman’s statement of February 15, quoted in RCR

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his work: Gleick, Genius, 426. he scribbled notes on: “Richard Feynman 4pp. Handwritten Document From the Challenger Investigation—Feynman’s Detailed Notes for 4 Days Spanning 7–10 February 1986, Leading Up to & Including Discovery of O-Ring Failure,” Nate D. Sanders Auctions, http://natedsanders.com/richard_feynman_4pp__handwritten_document_from_the-lot61780.aspx. To the

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accepted the job in May 1986. Bob Ebeling: Jerry Burn, author interview, April 7, 2022. The two men: McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 326; Boisjoly, Challenger Book Material, 499–500. Together with: Ibid., 518–19. “Five Lepers”: Russell, author interview, April 6, 2022. When the commission’s report: Feynman, “What

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, June 29, 1986. The company’s treatment: McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 412–18. After Markey’s letter: Boisjoly, Challenger Book Material, 485–86, 500, 605, 787–89; McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, 403–5; 414–18; the later events ultimately took place during 1987. Boisjoly’s medical

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accomplished,” statement from Steven McAuliffe, Concord Monitor, January 28, 2016. After overseeing the: McDonald with Hansen, Truth, Lies and O-Rings, 520–41, Clay Risen, “Allan McDonald Dies at 83; Tried to Stop the Challenger Launch,” NYT, March 9, 2021; Brian Russell, author interview, April 6, 2022. Cheryl McNair stayed: Cheryl McNair, author

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Major Malfunction. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1987. McDonald, Allan J., with James R. Hansen. Truth, Lies, and O-Rings: Inside the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2009. McNair, Carl S., with H. Michael Brewer. In the Spirit of Ronald E. McNair, Astronaut: An American Hero.

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Guy, 146, 151, 153, 174–75 Boeing 747, 81 Boisjoly, Roberta, 250 Boisjoly, Roger, 245–62, 273, 289, 442 Challenger disaster and, 359 Challenger disaster investigation and, 383–84 at Hangar AF, 245, 246, 252–54, 312, 329 O-ring concerns of, 251–62, 271–72, 311–13, 319, 323–29, 331, 408, 430

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booster rocket temperature, 337–38, 345 launchpad ice, 311, 325, 333–34, 337–41, 343, 345, 349 O-rings and, 253–57, 259, 262, 392, 393 Challenger STS-51-L disaster and, 349–51, 381, 384 Challenger STS-51-L launch concerns about, 297, 300–301, 303–7, 310–20, 321–32, 335–36

Overcomplicated: Technology at the Limits of Comprehension

by Samuel Arbesman · 18 Jul 2016 · 222pp · 53,317 words

have built. This book is why. Chapter 1 WELCOME TO THE ENTANGLEMENT On a winter day early in 1986, less than a month after the Challenger disaster, the famous physicist Richard Feynman spoke during a hearing of the commission investigating what went wrong. Tasked with determining what had caused the space shuttle

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Challenger to break apart soon after takeoff, and who was to blame, Feynman pulled no punches. He demonstrated how plunging an O-ring—a small piece of rubber used to

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it to lose its resilience. This small piece of the spacecraft was sensitive to temperature changes, making it unable to provide a firm seal. These O-rings seem to have been responsible for the catastrophe that cost seven crew members their lives. Contrast this example with another failure, one in the automobile

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Atlantic, January 15, 2015, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/01/the-cathedral-of-computation/384300/. CHAPTER 1: WELCOME TO THE ENTANGLEMENT the Challenger disaster: James Gleick, “Richard Feynman Dead at 69; Leading Theoretical Physicist,” The New York Times, February 17, 1988, http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/09/21/reviews/feynman

The Greatest Story Ever Told--So Far

by Lawrence M. Krauss · 21 Mar 2017 · 335pp · 95,280 words

on very small scales, nature behaves in a way that human intuition cannot ever fully embrace, because we cannot directly experience the behavior itself. As Richard Feynman once argued, no one understands quantum mechanics—if by understand one means developing a concrete physical picture that appears fully intuitive. Even many years after

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, one of the most important in modern particle physics, is, not surprisingly, called the Dirac equation. (Some years later, when Dirac first met the physicist Richard Feynman, whom we shall come to shortly, Dirac said after another awkward silence, “I have an equation. Do you?”) Dirac’s equation was beautiful, and as

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. Clarifying the physical imperative for antimatter came through the work of one of the most important physicists of the latter half of the twentieth century, Richard Feynman. Feynman could not have been more different from Dirac. While Dirac was taciturn in the extreme, Feynman was gregarious and a charming storyteller. While Dirac

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all such probabilities and summing them to determine the quantum mechanical likelihood that a particle that starts out at A will end up at B. Richard Feynman, as a graduate student, after learning about Dirac’s paper at a beer party, mathematically derived a specific example demonstrating that this idea worked. By

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The physicist Enrico Fermi is largely unsung in the public’s eyes, but he remains one of the greatest twentieth-century physicists. He, together with Richard Feynman, more than any of the other remarkable figures from that equally remarkable period in physics, most influenced my own attitude and approach to the field

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problems on the blackboard, beginning at the upper left of the board and ending at the lower right with almost no erasures. Bethe strongly influenced Richard Feynman, who used to marvel at Bethe’s patient methodological approach to problems. Feynman himself often jumped from the beginning of a problem to the end

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his colleague both in high school and later at Kyoto University. Tomonaga was so talented that he would later share the 1965 Nobel Prize with Richard Feynman and Julian Schwinger for demonstrating the mathematical consistency of quantum electrodynamics. That Yukawa, who had been a student in Japan at a time when many

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nuclear physics could fit in a single university lecture hall, and these physicists, including all the major players, tended to gather at this annual meeting. Richard Feynman was sharing a room at the meeting with Marty Block. Being an experimentalist, Block was not as burdened by the possible heresy inherent in the

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.e., sinister versus good) would not then be totally artificial. Thus the world in a mirror could be distinguished from the real world, or, as Richard Feynman poetically put it later, we could use this experiment to send a message to tell a Martian what direction is “left”—say, the hemisphere where

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age of eighteen, he received his PhD by the age of twenty-one. Perhaps no two physicists could have been as different as he and Richard Feynman, who shared the Nobel Prize in 1965 for their separate but equivalent work developing the theory of quantum electrodynamics. Schwinger was refined, formal, and brilliant

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of the Z interaction. Still, questions remained, especially given the apparent disagreement with the Seattle/Oxford results. At a talk at Caltech on the subject, Richard Feynman, characteristically, homed in on a key outstanding experimental question and asked whether the SLAC experimentalists had checked that the detector responded equally well to both

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the different polarizations. (Feynman would famously get to the heart of another complex problem eight years later after the tragic Challenger explosion, when he simply demonstrated the failure of an O-ring seal to the investigating commission and to the public watching the televised proceedings.) Over the fall the SLAC experiment refined their

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not particles were real, Gross was well primed to try to kill quantum field theory for good. Recall that even as late as 1965, when Richard Feynman received his Nobel Prize, it was still felt that the procedure he and others had developed for getting rid of infinities in quantum field theory

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the experimentalists who discovered the charmed quark in 1974 won the Nobel Prize two years later, in 1976. But the biggest prize of all, as Richard Feynman has said, is not the recognition by a medal or a cash award, or even the praise one gets from colleagues or the public, but

Stephen Hawking

by Leonard Mlodinow · 8 Sep 2020 · 209pp · 68,587 words

the universe were unrealistic. That kept them occupied, but nobody paid much attention to their papers. The low quality of the work prompted Caltech physicist Richard Feynman to write his wife from a 1962 conference on gravity in Warsaw, “Because there are no experiments this field is not an active one…there

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Time, “I was afraid that if Bekenstein found out about it, he would use it as a further argument to support his ideas.” But as Richard Feynman used to say, physicists don’t tell nature how things behave, nature shows physicists. So Stephen eventually accepted that Bekenstein was correct: black holes have

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quantum theories and for the most part ignored general relativity. They were the two most influential theoretical physicists of their era, Murray Gell-Mann and Richard Feynman. A decade after Stephen’s Fairchild year, I arrived at Caltech and had the office next to Murray, and down the hall from Feynman. Gell

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the shuttle in dangerously cold weather. The result was a bad seal that developed when rubber joints called O-rings lost their flexibility. He demonstrated the effect on national television by dramatically dropping an O-ring into a glass of ice water and then pounding the ring on the table. It had become as

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, he would have come in at just number three among the physicists on the fourth floor of the Lauritsen Laboratory—behind Murray Gell-Mann and Richard Feynman. Still, Stephen was happy to have become a spokesperson for his field. What was more important was that probably more than any other physicist alive

Beyond: Our Future in Space

by Chris Impey · 12 Apr 2015 · 370pp · 97,138 words

January 28, 1986, a nationwide TV audience was stunned when the Space Shuttle Challenger broke up and exploded in a clear blue winter sky, just seventy-three seconds after launch. Later investigation showed that a leak from an O-ring seal on one of the solid-fuel boosters had led to extreme aerodynamic

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-one fatalities in the history of the space program (three astronauts died on the ground in the Apollo 1 fire). In 1986, an O-ring on one of Challenger’s solid rocket boosters failed during the fiery ascent and led to an explosion. In 2003, a breach in a protective panel allowed the

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exciting, but it will raise fascinating moral and ethical questions, especially if these semiautonomous robots come into contact with each other. Here Come the Bots Richard Feynman was an iconic physicist who won a Nobel Prize for his work in quantum theory. His delight in understanding how nature worked was infectious. In

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-Air-Space Museum in New York City were the lucky recipients. 18. After the Challenger disaster, President Reagan formed the Rogers Commission to investigate. In their televised hearings, physicist Richard Feynman had a memorable moment when he dipped an O-ring into a cup of ice water to show how it became less resilient at

Six Not-So-Easy Pieces: Einstein’s Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time

by Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton and Matthew Sands · 22 Mar 2011 · 182pp · 51,816 words

gravitational field 6-7 The curvature of space-time 6-8 Motion in curved space-time 6-9 Einstein’s theory of gravitation INDEX ABOUT RICHARD FEYNMAN Copyright Page Also by Richard P. Feynman The Character of Physical Law Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics: The 1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures (with

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of Technology’s Physics Department and Institute Archives, in particular Judith Goodstein, for helping to make this book/CD project happen. INTRODUCTION To understand why Richard Feynman was such a great teacher, it is important to appreciate his remarkable stature as a scientist. He was indeed one of the outstanding figures of

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the investigations of the Challenger disaster, he took great pains to show, on national television, that the source of the disaster was something that could be appreciated at an ordinary level, and he performed a simple but convincing experiment on camera showing the brittleness of the shuttle’s O-rings in cold conditions

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. He was a showman, certainly, sometimes even a clown; but his overriding purpose was always serious. And what more serious purpose can there be than the understanding of the nature of our universe at its deepest levels? At conveying this understanding, Richard Feynman was supreme. ROGER

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SPECIAL PREFACE (from The Feynman Lectures on Physics) Toward the end of his life, Richard Feynman’s fame had transcended the confines of the scientific community. His exploits as a member of the commission investigating the space shuttle Challenger disaster gave him widespread exposure; similarly, a best-selling book about his picaresque adventures

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merely famous among members of the scientific community—he was legendary. Undoubtedly, the extraordinary power of his teaching helped spread and enrich the legend of Richard Feynman. He was a truly great teacher, perhaps the greatest of his era and ours. For Feynman, the lecture hall was a theater, and the lecturer

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—who would be the main beneficiaries of his magnificent achievement, which was nothing less than to see physics through the fresh and dynamic perspective of Richard Feynman. Feynman was more than a great teacher. His gift was that he was an extraordinary teacher of teachers. If the purpose in giving The Feynman

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total energy and transformation of uniform vectors vertical component of Waves light, variations in length of sound, speed of Weak decay Weyl, Hermann Work ABOUT RICHARD FEYNMAN Born in 1918 in Brooklyn, Richard P. Feynman received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1942. Despite his youth, he played an important part in

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of advanced publications that have become classic references and textbooks for researchers and students. Richard Feynman was a constructive public man. His work on the Challenger commission is well-known, especially his famous demonstration of the susceptibility of the O-rings to cold, an elegant experiment which required nothing more than a glass of ice

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water. Less well-known were Dr. Feynman’s efforts on the California State Curriculum Committee in the 1960s where he protested the mediocrity of textbooks. A recital of Richard Feynman’s myriad scientific and

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locks, an artist, a dancer, a bongo player, and even a decipherer of Mayan hieroglyphics. Perpetually curious about his world, he was an exemplary empiricist. Richard Feynman died on February 15, 1988, in Los Angeles. 1 The Dyson quotations are to be found in his book From Eros to Gaia (Pantheon Books