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From: Hudson, MA
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From: Bellevue, NE, USA
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posted 10-11-2012 10:25 AM               

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I believe he's looking for the primary source documentation of the screw. I know it was mentioned in the Tom Jones autobiography "Sky Walking" and some press releases mention it, but finding an original source document might be a little tough since the mission flew at a time when the internet was still in relative infancy. Every document of it likely was still hard copy (printed paper and non-digital photos).

Plus, that type of thing tended to stay pretty internal anyway. Unless NASA transferred it to an archive that can be researched by the general public, I don't know if one will likely be able to find it. I don't believe the archives at University of Houston Clear Lake go that recent.

Posts: 675
From: Hudson, MA
Registered: Jul 2005

posted 10-12-2012 08:34 AM            

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quote:

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Originally posted by Apollo-Soyuz:
A screw came loose and got stuck in the actuator that opened the hatch. Technicians found it postflight. The STS-80 flight was Story Musgrave's last flight.

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I have read Mr. Jones book and I'm just about finished with "The Way of Water" where the hatch is mentioned but not the reason why it failed.

quote:

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Originally posted by Jay Chladek:
...finding an original source document might be a little tough since the mission flew at a time when the internet was still in relative infancy. Every document of it likely was still hard copy (printed paper and non-digital photos).

Plus, that type of thing tended to stay pretty internal anyway.

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The internet is overflowing with NASA documents from the 1960's. I suppose they are not obligated to load every document but a post flight report especially with a failure that basically crippled a good chunk of that mission would be publicly released. No?

What do you mean 'internal'? Like hidden? Why?

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From: Bellevue, NE, USA
Registered: Aug 2007

posted 10-13-2012 03:16 AM               

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There is a difference between a "press release" and something that would be an internal document. While we aren't talking about something that is "classified" in military circles, NASA doesn't go pubishing EVERYTHING IT DOES on a day to day basis either. There are things protected by laws and matters of privacy. Some hardware is also protected by ITAR (usually rocket engine designs). If you want, you could place a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request for those pictures and internal reports with JSC. Nobody is stopping you from doing so. Don't make the request too broad though or it could get expensive. JSC has a dedicated point of contact for that. I've never used it (I haven't needed to), but I know friends who have. From what I understand, if something has been released about it already, the office will point you there instead of going through the whole FOIA procedure, since they have to go through a specific set of procedures for a document being released through FOIA (which can be time and resource consuming, depending on what it is).

Part of the reason why the 1960s stuff is on the web is because time and resources were devoted to doing so. University of Houston Clear Lake also has other things in its NASA archives that haven't been put on the web yet (I've found things there on my own visits for book research). As I understand it, they are currently remodeling and expanding the archives, so it is temporarily closed to the publich. One day we may see STS-80 stuff being housed there. But people still have to go through it and catalog it and that takes time.

You also have to remember the climate at the time of STS-80 was shuttle launches were rather routine and due to that, coverage wasn't quite as big as it was say for Glenn's shuttle flight a few years later or the post STS-107 flights. The press release was likely made a few weeks after the mission returned once the door got inspected. But it isn't like it was an SRB O-ring or some other "smoking gun," so I doubt it got much traction except for a brief mention in some local newspapers. Likely nobody from the press was covering the door failure like it was a matter of life and death. This was also essentially a pre-internet time period. We didn't have the resources back then that we do today with hypertext and embedded photos of the piece in articles.

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