Thanks Alex

I enjoyed the discussion.

Michael

he was only on the panel as a token scientist, to give it credibility; Nasa fully intended the whole thing to be a whitewash. Feynman, though, was a physicist to his core, and an experimentalist first and foremost. He approached the investigation with the same rigour that he would have approached a scientific experiment.

Didn't know this, but one of the things I love about this story is that NASA presumably co-opted him as he was a celebrity - good headlines, etc.. They thought that he would lend more credibility than some entirely admirable geek no newspaper had heard of.

But they didn't bargain for the fact that proper scientists can't, actually, bring themselves to swear to false or fake or merely insufficiently rigorous science...

Emma

One part of the story that I always liked was about when the investigating committee were taken to Morton Thiokol. They were chaperoned around the place on a planned, guided tour, in which they were supposed to see what the company's senior executives wanted them to see. But Feynman wandered off on his own and started talking to the engineers who actually knew how the solid rocket boosters were designed. That's where he got the sample of O-ring rubber that he used in his experiment.

For anyone interested in finding out more about the Challenger accident, the official report is here: http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/rogers-commission/table-of-contents.html

Professor Richard Feynman's own report is in appendix F, here: http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/rogers-commission/Appendix-F.txt. It's pretty damning, even though it was watered down at the insistence of the rest of the committee. My favourite line is the very last one:

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

That ought to be etched in stone and a copy given to the many organisations who claim to believe that human-induced climate change is some kind of conspiracy (of a kind which no government appears capable of achieving in any arena which they would really care about, such as sending cables in secret between embassies and central government).

Alex

<Added>

I think Feynman is one of my favourite physicists of all time.

Feynmann was the speaker when my sister got her PhD from UCLA - she said his speech was terrific. I suppose not everyone can have style and substance, but he managed it...

Emma

My biggest regret, from my time as a physics student, was that I only got around to buying volume 1 of the Feynman Lectures on Physics. His approach to teaching the subject was akin to shining a searchlight into a dark cave. He had the same clarity of thought, on the subject, as Albert Einstein (one of whose books on Relativity I also bought - a very worthwhile investment, for the clarity of explanation).

Alex