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