Customer Reviews

Prescription for Disaster: From the Glory of Apollo to the Betrayal of the Shuttle

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Certainly Joseph J. Trento and Susan B. Trento will tell us in "Prescription for Disaster," and it won't be pretty for NASA. Not truly an investigation of the "Challenger" accident, its authors conducted an in-depth review of the NASA management and research and development system emphasizing the agency's putative "fall from grace" after the Apollo program. They argue that the giants of the 1960s, the people who had successfully managed the lunar program, were gone and had been replaced with government bureaucrats who played the political game and sold the Space Shuttle as an inexpensive program, in the process sowing the seeds of disaster.

The Trentos blame the Nixon Administration for politicizing and militarizing the space program. Every NASA administrator since that time, they said, has had to play hard, but against bigger opponents, in both arenas. They argue that the "Challenger" failure was not caused by the O-rings that allowed the explosion of the spacecraft, but by the political system that produced them.

To the credit of the authors, this book is well referenced, and most of the material for it came from attributed interviews with key officials, although there is some question about how the materials were used to support the Trentos' thesis. The themes presented in "Prescription for Disaster" require continued scholarly analysis by anyone wishing to understand the Space Shuttle program.

Of course, this book is essentially an expose of NASA and the Space Shuttle program, as one would expect in the aftermath of the "Challenger" accident. For a scholarly analysis, and one that is much more effective and compelling, readers should review Diane Vaughan's "The Challenger Launch Decision" (University of Chicago Press, 1996). "Prescription for Disaster" has been far superceded by that book. It is useful mostly for its discussion of the politics of NASA and the White House in 1986, and its overarching perspective on what the public thought about the accident.

I agree with the review by "Historian" but want to add a little. After reading "Hubble Wars", this looked like another fascinating book about the politics of NASA. I am disappointed with the author's style. While "Hubble Wars" was hard to put down and one of my favorite books, this plods along in a fact-filled but boring slog to the end.

I have a friend who read this book, who called to suggest that I buy it, and who tells me that:

Bearing in mind the time period (Cold War years), there still existed in the minds of U.S. decision makers the need to maintain pressure on Russia. Unfortunately, the fiery end of this story leaves little left unsaid for the surviving families on behalf of their loved ones who, shortly after boarding that ill-fated shuttle, became sacrifical lambs caught in the crossfire of a frenzied race for air and space superiority.

I thought that this book was factual, and that it showed the lengths that the U.S. Government will go to be superior - even with lies to the general public. The first shuttle launch never happened. It did not even have an engine. It was basically a large glider, with a mock up fired into space, with another mock up landing out in the desert. They pinched pennies on survival equipment way before the Challenger disaster...which could have been avoided completely. All of the above comments are expounded on factually and specifically in this book, and I recommend it highly to anyone interested in the truth concerning this subject.

In the aftermath of this disaster, the official story to the public was that the crew died instantly. However, it was later determined that in fact, there was a 20-minute period of agonizing torment prior to their deaths. The underlying opportunity which created the stage was the shape of the exterior covering for the shuttle, which came from a company by the name of Morton Thiercaull. The tubes were oval shaped, and the techs affixing the tubes to the exterior of the shuttle were using plumber's putty (which cracked and fell out, leading to the disaster) to compensate for that shape. Later, the engineers claimed that they did not know thay were that far out around.

During the design phase, there was talk of an ejection pod which could have been used, but which was ruled out due to cost.