Rogers Commission

The disaster resulted in the formation of the Rogers Commission, a special commission appointed by United States President Ronald... 

ANON, Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident (1986), World Wide Web, http //www.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-1/docs/rogers-commission/table-of-contents.html, NASA (1997). 

One famous example of a special commission was the Kemeny Commission that investigated the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979. Another is the Rogers Commission that investigated the Challenger Space Shuttle accident in 1986. 

October 1986. The Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident (the Rogers Commission) presented its findings. Chapter 7, entitled The Silent Safety Program, states ... 

The ability of a line organization to handle safety effectively may have a relationship to its location in an organization. The Rogers Commission Report (Case 35-lb) provides an example of an organizational disconnect for a safety function. 

One of the additional conclusions of CAIB was the failure of NASA to integrate its safety program effectively into management decisions. The conclusion was similar to the findings of the Rogers Commission Report for the loss of the shuttle Challenger a few years earlier (Case 35-1). ... 

Further flights found some erosion in the primary O-ring, but this just reinforced the confidence that the second seal would hold. The problem was tracked but not considered serious enough to warrant launch constraints. The Rogers Commission found (Report, 1986d) that, of the prior 24 shuttle flights to 51-L, 13 had seen some erosion or blow-by in at least one field joint. Of those 13, eight had erosion or blow-by in more than one field joint. 

The Rogers Commission was surprised that in the many hours of testimony, NASA s safety staff was never mentioned. They also discovered that there were no safety representatives on the mission management team that made key launch decisions on January 20. The investigators found (Bunn, 1986) four significant failures in the NASA safety program lack of problem reporting requirements, inadequate trend analysis, misrepresentation of criticality, and lack of involvement in critical discussions. The commission also concluded that the safety team was not independent for creating a set of checks and balances in the system. 

A Presidential Commission (also known as the Rogers Commission after its head, former Attorney General William P. Rogers) was assembled to investigate the disaster. 

ADAM, J.A. and ROGERS, V.L. (1978). A Classification System for Radioactive Waste Disposal—What Waste Goes Where , U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Report NUREG-0456 (National Technical Information Service, Springfield, Virginia). 

By the beginning of the 1940s, Roger Adams and coworkers at the University of Illinois—commissioned by the LaGuardia Commission—were able to demonstrate a simpler method for synthesizing cannabinol and isolated the second important member of this family cannabidiol. From their work, and that of A.R. Todd at about the same time, it became clear that these first two molecules are barely psychoactive and that the important components are produced by tetrahydrocannabinols (THCs). 

See the Report of the Ontario Nickel Commission, Toronto, 1917, pp. 126-133 Tolruan and Rogers, Engineering and Mining J1917,103, 226. 

Rogers, M. D. (2003b) The European Commission s White Paper Strategy for a Future Chemicals Policy A Review. Risk Analysis 23, 381-388. 

Rogers V.C. and Nielson K. (1984), Radon Attenuation Handbook for Uranium Mill Tailings Cover Design. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, NUREG/CR-3533. 

Figure 4.7. Roger Boisjoly, before the Presidential Commission investigating the Challenger accident, February 25,1986.

The work from the author s laboratory discussed in this chapter was supported by grants from the U.S. Public Health Service, GM 18278, the National Science Foundation, PCM 77-00927, and the Washington State Tree Fruit Research Commission. I thank Linda Rogers for assistance in preparing this chapter and Drs. Penny von Wettstein-Knowles, J. D. Mikkelsen, C. Cassagne, R. Lessire, A. Huang, and R. Moreau for making available unpublished manuscripts. I also thank Drs. N. D. Hallam, T. P. O Brien, and A. P. Tulloch for Fig. 1, 3, 7, respectively. 

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