Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Shuttle Astronauts.....Alive?!?!?!?!??? Message-ID: <1988Sep21.165637.20309@utzoo.uucp> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology References: <15152@ames.arc.nasa.gov> <3704@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> Date: Wed, 21 Sep 88 16:56:37 GMT In article <3704@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> sproule@purt1.Princeton.EDU writes: >There was some press coverage a couple of months ago about a possible court >order to release the flight tapes of the Challenger. Does anyone know if >these were released, and if so, does anyone have a transcript of the tapes?? The tapes in question were released. They contained a bunch of general pre-disaster chitchat, mostly. They ran only a fraction of a second beyond the communications-link tapes, and the only extra content was one of the crew saying "uh-oh" as things started to go wrong. Space shuttles, unlike airliners, do not carry crash recorders; don't confuse these ordinary voice recordings with the sort of "flight tapes" used to analyze air crashes. NASA's reluctance to release them was mostly because of a long-standing rule that on-board conversations are private unless explicitly intended otherwise. (Eugene, here's another you might want to consider...) -- NASA is into artificial | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology stupidity. - Jerry Pournelle | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu