When NASA People Say Inaccurate Things NASA Doesn't Care
Keith’s note: Yesterday I sent the following email to NASA JPL employee Ron Baalke yesterday about two inaccurate tweets he has posted (and retweeted) regarding the Challenger accident. I cc:ed JPL and NASA HQ PAO. The tweets are still out there misinforming people. No one at NASA seems to care that a NASA employee is perpetuating misleading information. Yes, its a “private” Twitter account – one that goes out of its way to identify the owner as a JPL employee. This account is also used for work-related promotion of JPL projects. This account is otherwise a very useful one full of space facts – with these two glaring exceptions. When other people circulate inaccurate information like this about NASA events NASA PAO gets all upset. But when a NASA employee does it, no one cares. Go figure.
“I see that your twitter account just retweeted these tweets. They are factually incorrect on several levels. 1. Space Shuttle Challenger did not “explode”. Challenger was torn apart by extreme aerodynamic forces as a result of an explosion in the External Tank. 2. The crew of Space Shuttle Challenger were killed by the breakup of the vehicle and/or the impact of the crew compartment with the ocean at high speed – not by any “explosion”. These are matters of established fact. Please correct your tweets.”
Keith’s additional note: There is some debate as to whether the ET actually “exploded” in a technical sense. A large fireball occurred as the ET lost structural integrity itself – and Challenger was attached to the ET. Jim Oberg wrote an excellent article about what did and did not happen. Read Myth #2.
|
|
In point of fact, Challenger broke up when the leak from the righthand SRB joint impinged on the mounting strut, and not only caused it to fail, but burned through the hydrogen tank portion of the ET. This was followed by the SRB pivoting around the remaining forward strut until it ruptured the LOX tank. As the two cryogenic propellants flashed to vapor, mixed and ignited, the asymmetric forces caused the orbit to break up. What appeared to be an “explosion” was NOT a high-order detonation. As was stated above, the astronauts were killed either by the g-forces from the breakup or from “multiple extreme injuries” on impact of the cockpit section hitting the water. There is ample evidence that at least some of the astronauts were alive following the initial breakup, as at least Judy Resnick is reported to have leaned forward to activate the oxygen valve for the astronaut seated above her!
It is indeed sad, but reporters should at least try to get their facts straight!
Yes. The central point is this false narrative that people perpetuate that the Challenger itself exploded. It did not. You’d think that someone who has worked at JPL for decades would want to be right on something like this.
Try saying that in 280 characters…
“The fuel tank exploded and the Shuttle broke up.” That’s 48 characters if I counted correctly. Look, if a reporter was covering a war or terrorist incident, what would you think if he wrote, “the building exploded” rather than “a bomb exploded and the building collapsed”?
Yes, if the Orbiter had been designed with the crew in an escape module, as the F-111 had, the astronauts in both the Challenger and Columbia may have survived the breakup of the Orbiter. It’s why NASA went back to using capsules which are structurally stronger.
Challenger – perhaps. Columbia … not so sure since it was going very very fast and a complete TPS would have been needed.
If Shuttle II had only been implemented…
No. NASA went back to capsules because they are simple.
Also simple: mechanical brakes, AM radio, and the abacus.
I think you are stretching here. I’m everyone’s visual memory there was an explosion. The details don’t matter that much when sending out a tweet that isn’t trying to explain the detail. When folks say “challenger” they are referring to the orbiter and boosters/tank not just the orbiter as the whole stack was destroyed.
Details DO matter. When we forget “the details” we invite another accident to happen. Challenger did not explode and an explosion did not kill the crew. If you want to go around life being inaccurate about technical things that is your business. NASA and its employees however should not.
How would you describe what happened in a single word? Explosion. It’s a tweet. Context is everything.
The Rogers Commission said that “the Orbiter to severe aerodynamic loads that caused complete structural breakup.” It did not “explode”. It was torn apart by external forces acting upon it. An explosion did not kill the crew. Aerodynamic forces and/or ocean impact did.
Breakup or in two words “broke apart”
Exactly.
Mission-critical mindset and practices contributes to success.
Watered down and inaccurate descriptions combined with no intestinal fortitude to do what is right, every time, contributes to failure.
This maxim is built into the universe.
It can be delayed, or faked out, but inexorably, failure to recognize this hard and unforgiving rule, then live within its envelope has consequences, nearly always negative.
From google dictionary: Explode: burst or shatter violently and noisily as a result of rapid combustion, decomposition, excessive internal pressure, or other process, typically scattering fragments widely.
From Webster: Explode: to burst forth with sudden violence or noise from internal energy: such as
a : to undergo a rapid chemical or nuclear reaction with the production of noise, heat, and violent expansion of gases
Using either of these definitions, I find it a stretch to complain that Challenger didn’t “explode”. And the explosion did result in the death of the astronauts, be it from the initial blast or the resulting disintegration.
The point of going to the definitions is that “explosion” does not require “detonation”.
The experts do not say that it exploded. The Rogers Commission said that “the Orbiter to severe aerodynamic loads that caused complete structural breakup.” It did not “explode”. It was torn apart by external forces acting upon it. An explosion did not kill the crew. Aerodynamic forces and/or ocean impact did.
The giant fireball that ensued could by some definitions be called an explosion due to its intensity and rapid increase in size. However the fireball/explosion was the result of the breakup of the external tank, not the cause of it. And either way the orbiter’s momentum quickly propelled it past the fireball, where it broke apart from aerodynamic forces due to being off-center in the supersonic airstream.
The external tank disintegrated when the bottom literally fell out of it, caused by the plume burning through the tank near the lower attachment point. The resulting expulsion of hydrogen out the bottom of the tank created a propulsive force that rammed the hydrogen tank upward into the LOX tank . Simultaneously the right SRB pivoted into the upper portion of the tank . Aerodynamic forces then shredded the tank. There may have been some explosions within the tank during this process, however saying that the external tank exploded would be the equivalent of a car getting rear-ended and crushed by a semi, causing the fuel tank to rupture leading to an explosion, then describing that event as the car exploding, without mentioning the semi.
I have seen a few news articles use the term break up which I think is more appropriate. However I understand why many journalists use the term explosion if they don’t know any better. However I agree with Keith that NASA should use accurate terminology, even in a tweet. Break up may sound strange to the average reader, but maybe that will cause them to realize that the accident was more complicated than it appeared, and maybe even lead them to learn more about it. There are in fact many mainstream news articles out there specifically dispelling the myth that the Space Shuttle exploded. So there’s no need for someone at NASA to perpetuate that misconception.
I feel like this is an example of “technically correct is the best kind of correct”. Keith, you are correct -their 140 characters of text didn’t fully explain the nuance of a disaster involving multiple components and subsystems. But the main point, as I read their tweet, was a note that the crew died (which is a fact) and that the reporter was covering it. I refuse to click links in twitter since it’s reasonably hard to verify where they will actually take you, but I assume that’s a link to some reporting from the day of the mishap.
To be fair – while the reporter was covering it, from the ground, the explanation “the shuttle exploded” would have been a pretty common explanation for what happened, even if some people immediately and correctly understood that the problems appeared to originate from the booster. It took years of work to build the complete explanation you and others here have accurately recounted.
I enjoy this forum, but sometimes it feels like a community looking for minor things to complain about. I like that NasaWatch highlights things going on in the community, and generates interest, but I worry that nit-picking like this attenuates some of the interest in space that you could be generating.
He has 280 Characters. This is not a minor thing. To me and others this is one NASA person inaccurately describing the death of our friend’s family members. Mr. Baalke was informed of this error and is too lazy or careless to fix it.
Wow, this definitely a good use of everyone’s time. Its Twitter for godsake, not a real news source, not a verified source of information.
I, for one, am glad that NASA does not follow up on a complaint like that, according to Nasawatch, they are already wasting enough taxpayer money.
Let’s not be precise when we talk about rocket science then.
Its engineering, not science.
You’re now trolling.
Sorry but I agree with Nathan. This is highly compressed information in a tweet not the “Challenger Report”.
Excuse me but the words in this tweet are WRONG.
So? The average person remembers the Challenger exploding. They don’t care if that doesn’t reflect the chemical and physical process that actually occurred. It was there one minute and gone the next, and in its place was a big ball of “smoke.”
OK so you can just use whatever word you want even if it is wrong? This is rocket science after all.
I agree. Keith is being way too picky. We have much bigger fish to fry in the space business.
I was at NASA as this was debated – where were you? Being picky was the furthest thing from people’s minds. The report was very specific on its use of terminology. I know this from people who participated plus the families who are my friends by virtue of having been on the Challenger Center board of directors for 4 years.
Actually, it’s highly compressed _mis_information in a tweet. That raises the more general question of whether a tweet is the right platform for saying something that’s a bit complex and hard to describe accurately in 140 or however many characters. Perhaps there are some things (say foreign policy or engineering) that just don’t fit with Twitter.
Keith’s right. There wasn’t a problem with the orbiter. If I was Rockwell/Boeing I wouldn’t want NASA personnel spreading the rumor that something I’d built killed astronauts. Especially someone that presents themselves as an authority on the subject. This lands squarely on Morton-Thiokol and NASA management who decided to fly that day.
I worked at Rockwell Downey on Shuttle 1981-83.
WTF? Ron Baalke is usually better with the facts.
The NASA PAO announcer that day said “we have a report that the vehicle has exploded”. The New York Times headline was “The Shuttle Explodes”. To the general public, any rapid unscheduled disassembly is an “explosion”, they don’t care if there was a detonation or merely an aerodynamic breakup, the falling debris looks exactly the same in either case. Most people think that Columbia exploded on reentry also.
RIP Challenger…
OK so NASA can just use any old word even if it is not exactly right because close enough is OK in Rocket Science.
It’s not rocket science, though. Rocket science is the full, thorough investigation that was completed and the changes made afterwards. This is, at best, amateur PR.
Hell, NASA PAO kept calling a roll reversal a dang S-Turn during my entire Shuttle career. Two totally different things. And when you tried to correct them, they acted as if they always knew better…smh
Did not the roll reversals result in S-curves to the ground track? I thought I read same in my workbooks.
Yes. But the groundtrack that resulted from roll reversals are a by-product of initially steering towards the site at 1st roll, then reversing the roll at a given delta azimuth from the landing site (dependent of Mach number). Hence, roll reversal. A S-turn is was something done in an off-nominal situation. If the Orbiter was in a high energy situation, the Orbiter would steer away from the landing site, increasing the range to fly, to help get the Orbiter back on nominal energy.
Then what precisely was the purpose of performing the roll reversals?
Roll reversals are performed to keep the heading error within a deadband.
“Challenger was torn apart by extreme aerodynamic forces as a result of an explosion in the External Tank. “
Incorrect. There was no explosion-period. No shockwave was generated. The ET structural failure and the propulsive effects of the release of highly pressurized fuel pushed Challenger out of its slipstream and subjected the vehicle to aerodynamic loads of about 20 G. This caused the orbiter to break apart at the structural attach points.
Like others, you are confusing “explosion” with “detonation”.
My memory recalls that the orbiter pitched ‘up’ ~90 degrees on its own in the slipstream when the structural integrity of the tank (which was holding the stack together) disappeared. When the orbiter was now going belly-first into the Mach 4 breeze it broke apart, wings off and fuselage separated into its separate portions. I don’t remember mention of any propulsive component due to the ET’s propellant flash fire causing any structural damage to the orbiter. Does my memory have a hole in it?
The tweet says :”space shuttle Challenger exploded”. Space Shuttle refers to the whole stack: orbiter, SRBs and external tank. So if the external tank actually exploded then the tweet is accurate.
No, sorry it doesn’t. Space Shuttle Challenger is a thing with wings. The ET and SRB are its boosters as its “stack” – at least that is the way we referred to it every day at work at NASA when I worked there.
I think there is more involved here (stack vs orbiter) than you are suggesting, Keith. At JSC we of course most typically thought of the orbiter alone when we would refer to the vehicle names. However, when ‘Challenger‘ (or any of the others) was on the pad or launching, the public’s perception/assignment of meaning of the phrasing ‘Space Shuttle Challenger‘ referred to the entire combined vehicle, not just the shuttle orbiter, which was reflected in the headlines. (I remember seeing a NYT’s editor, in a Challenger documentary, elaborating on the deliberate time spent over their headline choice; they very intentionally aimed to imply more than just the orbiter (and even just the stack!) with their phrasing). Interestingly enough, during orbital flight as well as entry and landing, the public (and press) used the same phrasing to refer to just the orbiter itself.
I’m not defending Ron Baalke’s continued use of his original phrasing (especially after his imprecision was flagged), but language and its use by different groups of people can be a nuanced thing…and I hold that your exclusive statement that ‘SS Challenger is a thing with wings’ is not universally true.
OV-099 Challenger launched ten times (of course only nine times successfully). For each launch it was paired with a different external tank, and with essentially twenty different SRB’s since the boosters were rebuilt each time using various segments from previous launches as well as new segments. Together these otherwise disparate pieces of flight hardware formed the stack for a particular launch. On January 28th, 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger was part of the stack for Space Shuttle mission STS-51-L.
I agree that this nuance is not going to be understood by many in the general public (or newspaper editors). I’m guessing that the editor that you are referring to had it drilled into them many times previously that the Space Shuttle is more than just the orbiter, so within their limited knowledge they thought that they were being accurate by referring to the entire stack as Challenger. As to what the general public perceived by that terminology is even more of a wild guess.
Thinking about this reminded me how common it was for people to refer to “The Space Shuttle” as if there was only one. For example even thirty two years later I can still hear the voice of a coworker sitting at a desk behind me to my right saying, “The Space Shuttle just exploded.” I’m sure there are many people who thought there was only one, but even someone who knows that there was a fleet of shuttles still might in certain contexts use the word “the” when referring to a specific shuttle. As an example someone might say “They have ‘a‘ Space Shuttle at the California Science Center, I’m going to go see it.” The same person once inside the building might ask one of the museum guides “Which way to ‘the‘ Space Shuttle?” If you only heard them make the second statement you wouldn’t know whether or not they knew that there was more than one.
As I said, nuanced.
I suspect (but of course have no idea of knowing) that your coworker may indeed have appreciated that morning that there were multiple shuttle orbiters when we lost Challenger. They might have been saying “The shuttle that just launched exploded”, leaving out a few words in-between since the context was sufficient to convey their desired meaning. [Or is this what you were actually saying here? I wasn’t sure based on your specific choice of words (!).]
I doubt very much someone would have said in such a setting (as Keith would have preferred ;-)) “The Space Shuttle stack just came apart in flight and the space shuttle orbiter Challenger was lost.” That’s simply not how people talk to each other unless one is giving a formal briefing or lecture.
As for the NYT editor, my impression was that they fully understood the differences in the technical terminology but wanted to say something in the headline deeper about the entire program which, of course, can be referred to collectively as ‘the Space Shuttle’ or even ‘Space Shuttle’.
Such is the fascinatingly complex nature of language and communication.
Yes that is what I meant. People will normally say “An Amtrak train crashed” they don’t say “The Amtrak train crashed.” But for some reason people often used that terminology with the shuttle, i.e. “The space shuttle launched while I was on vacation in Florida”. Considering the overall lack of knowledge about the space program, you have to wonder how many people who used that terminology didn’t know that there was more than one.
The NYT headline that you are referring to, “THE SHUTTLE EXPLODES” was followed by the lead article which stated in the first sentence “The space shuttle Challenger exploded in a ball of fire shortly after it left the launching pad”. To be fair to the editor, no one knew what had happened at that point other than visually seeing a fireball and pieces raining down. But within a few months the actual facts came out, and yet the initial public perception has never changed. That’s certainly understandable as most of the general public didn’t follow the details of the investigation. However when supposedly knowledgeable people are still stating that the space shuttle Challenger exploded they are being corrected and I don’t consider that as nitpicking. Challenger was the name of the orbiter, as far as I have ever read the stack was always referred to by the mission number, unless someone has seen NASA documents that use different terminology. And as discussed separately it’s even debatable whether the ET exploded, since the word “exploded” is normally used to describe what caused the destruction, whereas “explosion” describes one of the events that took place during the destruction.
If someone is restricted for number of words they could say “Challenger broke apart due to aerodynamic forces following the disintegration of the external tank that it was attached to.” If someone still insists on using fewer words, then “Challenger broke apart”.
As I noted earlier, I’m not trying to defend the originally criticized inaccuracy, especially after Keith brought it to his attention. I am merely trying to highlight (as you have done quite well) that specific choice of words can mean different things to different people and this should be acknowledged. Some of Keith’s word choices in some of his criticisms here make what I would call reverse generalizations about the meaning of particular phrases that are not necessarily true for all involved constituents. As he is criticizing specific word choice in the first place, I presume he would care since accurate communication is the overarching objective.
Show a video of an object being “torn apart by extreme aerodynamic forces” in conjunction with the explosion of something the object was attached to just moments prior and ask 1000 people if it exploded and 999 of them will say yes. The 1 remaining is being pedantic and picking nits that really don’t matter.
So its OK if NASA uses words that are close enough even if they are not accurate cuz you say so? This is rocket science after all.
Would providing the additional detail have added anything to the tweet? Everything we say is to some extent a generalization. Even your description of what happened was not perfectly accurate, after all how much detail is needed to be considered “accurate”? Should we have gone on at length about exactly how much stress each component endured before it failed? Maybe we should list off exactly how many pieces (by part number) the shuttle broke into during the accident. Maybe we should really be accurate and describe the exact energy state of each atom involved.
Or when making a non-technical statement in a non-technical environment we could avoid listing unnecessary and useless detail and just say that it exploded and people died.
You are trolling. See ya.
I think you’re missing the point. Without more technical details, the tweet could have been more accurate (the fuel tank exploded and the force shattered the orbiter.) That’s not overwhelmingly technical and is more accurate. Why not say it that way? If you don’t, it’s really just lazy reporting, and there isn’t anything wrong with criticizing lazy reporting.
No, the fuel tank exploded and the force shattered the orbiter is NOT more accurate. Even allowing for the ET ‘exploding’, your omission of words creates a misleading description since it was primarily (if not exclusively…see above) freestream aerodynamic forces that broke up the orbiter. Read the report!
I am amazed (well, not really given that I’ve taught writing) at how many ways folks here, in their criticism of others misrepresenting facts, have misrepresented the facts themselves.
I’ve read the Rogers Report at least three times, and I think my brief description is accurate. (Well, we can talk about whether the ET exploded, or if it vented fuel which then detonated, or what…) I wrote, “the force” shattered the orbiter. I didn’t say the force of the explosion. What I actually wrote says a force resulting from the explosion caused the orbiter to break up. That’s intentionally vague on whether it was the direct force from an explosion or the indirectly caused aerodynamic forces (and, if I really wanted to push it, I might event say the force from impacting the ocean was an indirect result of the ET explosion.)
I guess the problem may be stated and implied misrepresentation. The description I gave is, I think, actually correct. To keep it brief, I may have said it in a way which could be misunderstood or which might not give the whole picture. But I didn’t actually write anything incorrect. I think that’s significantly different from actually saying something which really is incorrect (e.g. “the orbiter exploded.”)
Now you’re arguing about the difference between a sin of commission or omission. What you wrote (putting aside the explosion-correctness part) suggests strongly that the ‘explosion’s’ force shattered the orbiter. It didn’t, but your phrasing (specifically your choice of the definite article ‘the’ before ‘force’) implies that it did.
Thus what you are suggesting as ‘accurate’ is in fact directly misleading. Suppose you had written ‘a force’ instead of ‘the force’. This would be even MORE accurate by your standards of generalizing inclusiveness, but such phrasing is almost pointless in its vagueness since it opens up the possible presence of a tractor beam from a passing UFO as the cause of the breakup.
Instead, by using your exact phrasing with ‘the’, you are conveying a connectivity to the reader that is not in fact present (explosion <=> force; to what else would the reader ascribe the specified force?) while deceptively ignoring the force’s actual origin/nature (aerodynamics). This you call being accurate?
Words matter. Even the tiny ones.
I was unfamiliar with Mr. Baalke’s Twitter feed. Thanks for cluing me into it. I like it a lot.
Also thanks for the link to Mr. Oberg’s article. At the bottom of his article is a broken link. For anyone who’s interested, I found it here: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6…
Honestly, of the myths in Mr. Oberg’s article, clarifying that Challenger didn’t “exploded” is pretty low on my list of peeves. Myths 4 (they flew with a known bad design…) and 6 (because of political pressure) are the ones I hear most often. It’s never that simple. I think average people actually have more interest and attention bandwidth than they’re given credit for. Thanks to you and Jim Oberg for reminding us of the actual facts.
I’ve found that my reaction to this post, and to Keith’s responses, has evolved since first posted. At first I agreed with many here who thought the distinction a bit too pointed. As I thought about it, though, I’ve come around. And grateful that someone is out there caring the flag on this important issue.