Under that memo is another memo: “Professor Feynman of the Presidential Commission wants to know…”—from that subordinate to his subordinate, and so on down the line.
There’s a paper with some numbers on it from the poor bastard at the bottom, and then there’s a series of submission papers which explain that the answer is being sent up to the next level.
So here’s this stack of papers, just like a sandwich, and in the middle is the answer—to the wrong question! The answer was: “You squeeze the rubber for two hours at a certain temperature and pressure, and then see how long it takes to creep back”—over hours. I wanted to know how fast the rubber responds in milliseconds during a launch. So the information was of no use.
I went back to my hotel. I’m feeling lousy and I’m eating dinner; I look at the table, and there’s a glass of ice water. I say to myself, “Damn it, I can find out about that rubber without having NASA send notes back and forth: I just have to try it! All I have to do is get a sample of the rubber.”
I think, “I could do this tomorrow while we’re all sittin’ around, listening to this Cook crap we heard today. We always get ice water in those meetings; that’s something I can do to save time.”
Then I think, “No, that would be gauche.”
But then I think of Luis Alvarez, the physicist. He’s a guy I admire for his gutsiness and sense of humor, and I think, “If Alvarez was on this commission, he would do it, and that’s good enough for me.”
There are stories of physicists—great heroes—who have gotten information one, two, three—just like that—where everybody else is trying to do it in a complicated way. For example, after ultraviolet rays and X-rays had been discovered, there was a new type, called N-rays, discovered by André Blondel, in France. It was hard to detect the N-rays: other scientists had difficulty repeating Blondel’s experiments, so someone asked the great American physicist R. W. Wood to go to Blondel’s laboratory.
Blondel gave a public lecture and demonstration. N-rays were bent by aluminum, so he had all kinds of lenses lined up, followed by a big disk with an aluminum prism in the middle. As the aluminum prism slowly turned, the N-rays came up this way and bent that way, and Blondel’s assistant reported their intensity—different numbers for different angles.
N-rays were affected by light, so Blondel turned out the lights to make his readings more sensitive. His assistant continued to report their intensity.
When the lights came back on, there’s R. W. Wood in the front row, holding the prism high in the air, balanced on the tips of his fingers, for all to see! So that was the end of the N-ray.
I think, “Exactly! I’ve got to get a sample of the rubber.” I call Bill Graham.
It’s impossible to get: it’s kept somewhere down at Kennedy. But then Graham remembers that the model of the field joint we’re going to use in our meeting tomorrow has two samples of the rubber in it. He says, “We could meet in my office before the meeting and see if we can get the rubber out.”
The next morning I get up early and go out in front of my hotel. It’s eight in the morning and it’s snowing. I find a taxi and say to the driver, “I’d like to go to a hardware store.”
“A hardware store, sir?”
“Yeah. I gotta get some tools.”
“Sir, there’s no hardware stores around here; the Capitol is over there, the White House is over there—wait a minute: I think I remember passing one the other day.”
He found the hardware store, and it turned out it didn’t open till 8:30—it was about 8:15—so I waited outside, in my suitcoat and tie, a costume I had assumed since I came to Washington in order to move among the natives without being too conspicuous.
The suitcoats that the natives wear inside their buildings (which are well heated) are sufficient for walking from one building to another—or from a building to a taxi if the buildings are too far apart. (All the taxis are heated.) But the natives seem to have a strange fear of the cold: they put overcoats on top of their suitcoats if they wish to step outside. I hadn’t bought an overcoat yet, so I was still rather conspicuous standing outside the hardware store in the snow.
At 8:30 I went in and bought a couple of screwdrivers, some pliers, and the smallest C-clamp I could find. Then I went to NASA.
On the way to Graham’s office, I thought maybe the clamp was too big. I didn’t have much time, so I ran down to the medical department of NASA. (I knew where it was, because I had been going there for blood tests ordered by my cardiologist, who was trying to treat me by telephone.) I asked for a medical clamp like they put on tubes.
They didn’t have any. But the guy says, “Well, let’s see if your C-clamp fits inside a glass!” It fitted very easily.
I went up to Graham’s office.
The rubber came out of the model easily with just a pair of pliers. So there I was with the rubber sample in my hand. Although I knew it would be more dramatic and honest to do the experiment for the first time in the public meeting, I did something that I’m a little bit ashamed of. I cheated. I couldn’t resist. I tried it. So, following the example of having a closed meeting before an open meeting,I discovered it worked before I did it in the open meeting. Then I put the rubber back into the model so Graham could take it to the meeting.
FIGURE 15. The field-joint model from which Feynman gol the O-ring sample.
I go to the meeting, all ready, with pliers in one pocket and a C-clamp in the other. I sit down next to General Kutyna.
At the previous meeting, there was ice water for everybody. This time, there’s no ice water. I get up and go over to somebody who looks like he’s in charge, and I say, “I’d like a glass of ice water, please.”
He says, “Certainly! Certainly!”
Five minutes later, the guards close the doors, the meeting starts, and I haven’t got my ice water.
I gesture over to the guy I just talked to. He comes over and says, “Don’t worry, it’s coming!”
The meeting is going along, and now Mr. Mulloy begins to tell us about the seals. (Apparently, NASA wants to tell us about the seals before Mr. Cook does.) The model starts to go around, and each commissioner looks at it a little bit.
Meanwhile, no ice water!
Mr. Mulloy explains how the seals are supposed to work—in the usual NASA way: he uses funny words and acronyms, and it’s hard for anybody else to understand.
In order to set things up while I’m waiting for the ice water, I start out: “During a launch, there are vibrations which cause the rocket joints to move a little bit—is that correct?”
“That is correct, sir.”
“And inside the joints, these so-called O-rings are supposed to expand to make a seal—is that right?”
“Yes, sir. In static conditions they should be in direct contact with the tang and clevis* and squeezed twenty-thousandths of an inch.”
“Why don’t we take the O-rings out?”
“Because then you would have hot gas expanding through the joint…”
“Now, in order for the seal to work correctly, the O-rings must be made of rubber—not something like lead, which, when you squash it, it stays.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, if the O-ring weren’t resilient for a second or two, would that be enough to be a very dangerous situation?”
“Yes, sir.”
That led us right up to the question of cold temperature and the resilience of the rubber. I wanted to prove that Mr. Mulloy must have known that temperature had an effect, although—according to Mr. McDonald—he claimed that the evidence was “incomplete.” But still, no ice water! So I had to stop, and somebody else started asking questions.
The model comes around to General Kutyna, and then to me. The clamp and pliers come out of my pocket, I take the model apart, I’ve got the O-ring pieces in my hand, but I still haven’t got any ice water! I turn around again and signal the guy I’ve been bothering about it, and he signals back, “Don’t worry, you’ll get it!”
&n
bsp; Pretty soon I see a young woman, way down in front, bringing in a tray with glasses on it. She gives a glass of ice water to Mr. Rogers, she gives a glass of ice water to Mr. Armstrong, she works her way back and forth along the rows of the dais, giving ice water to everybody! The poor woman had gotten everything together—jug, glasses, ice, tray, the whole thing—so that everybody could have ice water.
So finally, when I get my ice water, I don’t drink it! I squeeze the rubber in the C-clamp, and put them in the glass of ice water.
After a few minutes, I’m ready to show the results of my little experiment. I reach for the little button that activates my microphone.
General Kutyna, who’s caught on to what I’m doing, quickly leans over to me and says, “Co-pilot to pilot: not now.”
Pretty soon, I’m reaching for my microphone again.
“Not now!” He points in our briefing book—with all the charts and slides Mr. Mulloy is going through—and says, “When he comes to this slide, here, that’s the right time to do it.”
Finally Mr. Mulloy comes to the place, I press the button for my microphone, and I say, “I took this rubber from the model and put it in a clamp in ice water for a while.”
I take the clamp out, hold it up in the air, and loosen it as I talk: “I discovered that when you undo the clamp, the rubber doesn’t spring back. In other words, for more than a few seconds, there is no resilience in this particular material when it is at a temperature of 32 degrees. I believe that
FIGURE 15A. The O-ring ice-water demonstration. (© MARILYNN K. YEE, NYT PICTURES.)
has some significance for our problem.”
Before Mr. Mulloy could say anything, Mr. Rogers says, “That is a matter we will consider, of course, at length in the session that we will hold on the weather, and I think it is an important point which I’m sure Mr. Mulloy acknowledges and will comment on in a further session.”
During the lunch break, reporters came up to me and asked questions like, “Were you talking about the O-ring, or the putty?” and “Would you explain to us what an CD-ring is, exactly?” So I was rather depressed that I wasn’t able to make my point. But that night, all the news shows caught on to the significance of the experiment, and the next day, the newspaper articles explained everything perfectly.
Check Six!
MY cousin Frances educated me about the press. She had been the AP White House correspondent during the Nixon and Ford administrations, and was now working for CNN. Frances would tell me stories of guys running out back doors because they’re afraid of the press. From her I got the idea that the press isn’t doing anything evil; the reporters are simply trying to help people know what’s going on, and it doesn’t do any harm to be courteous to them.
I found out that they’re really quite friendly, if you give them a chance. So I wasn’t afraid of the press, and I would always answer their questions.
Reporters would explain to me that I could say, “Not for attribution.” But I didn’t want any hocus-pocus. I didn’t want it to sound like I’m leaking something. So whenever I talked to the press, I was straight. As a result of this, my name was in the newspaper every day, all over the place!
It seemed like I was always the one answering the reporters’ questions. Often the rest of the commissioners would be anxious to go off to lunch, and I’d still be there, answering questions. But I figured, “What’s the point of having a public meeting if you run away when they ask you what a word meant?”
When we’d finally get to our lunch, Mr. Rogers would remind us to be careful not to talk to the press. I would say something like, “Well, I was just telling them about the O-rings.”
He would say, “That’s okay. You’ve been doing all right, Dr. Feynman; I have no problem with that.” So I never did figure out, exactly, what he meant by “not talking to the press.”
Being on the commission was rather tense work, so I enjoyed having dinner once in a while with Frances and Chuck, my sister’s son, who was working for the Washington Post. Because Mr. Rogers kept talking about leaks, we made sure we never said a word about anything I was doing. If CNN needed to find out something from me, they’d have to send a different reporter. The same went for the Post.
I told Mr. Rogers about my relatives working for the press: “We’ve agreed not to talk about my work. Do you think there’s any problem?”
He smiled and said, “It’s perfectly all right. I have a cousin in the press, too. There’s no problem at all.”
On Wednesday the commission had nothing to do, so General Kutyna invited me over to the Pentagon to educate me on the relationship between the air force and NASA.
It was the first time I had ever been in the Pentagon. There were all these guys in uniform who would take orders—not like in civilian life. He says to one of them, “I’d like to use the briefing room…”
“Yes, sir!”
“… and we’ll need to see slides number such-and-such and so-and-so.”
“Yes, sir! Yes, sir!”
We’ve got all these guys working for us while General Kutyna gives me a big presentation in this special briefing room. The slides are shown from the back on a transparent wall. It was really fancy.
General Kutyna would say things like, “Senator So-and-so is in NASA’s pocket,” and I would say, half-joking, “Don’t give me these side remarks, General; you’re filling my head! But don’t worry, I’ll forget it all.” I wanted to be naive: I’d find out what happened to the shuttle first; I’d worry about the big political pressures later.
Somewhere in his presentation, General Kutyna observed that everybody on the commission has some weakness because of their connections: he, having worked very closely with NASA personnel in his former position as Air Force Space Shuttle Program manager, finds it difficult, if not impossible, to drive home some of the tougher questions on NASA management. Sally Ride still has a job with NASA, so she can’t just say everything she wants. Mr. Covert had worked on the engines, and had been a consultant to NASA, and so on.
I said, “I’m associated with Caltech, but I don’t consider that a weakness!”
“Well,” he says, “that’s right. You’re invincible—as far as we can see. But in the air force we have a rule: check six.”
He explained, “A guy is flying along, looking in all directions, and feeling very safe. Another guy flies up behind him (at ‘six o’clock’—‘twelve o’clock’ is directly in front), and shoots. Most airplanes are shot down that way. Thinking that you’re safe is very dangerous! Somewhere, there’s a weakness you’ve got to find. You must always check six o’clock.”
An underling comes in. There’s some mumbling about somebody else needing the briefing room now. General Kutyna says, “Tell them I’ll be finished in ten minutes.”
“Yes, sir!”
Finally, we go out. There, in the hall, are TEN GENERALS waiting to use the room—and I had been sitting in there, getting this personal briefing. I felt great.
For the rest of the day, I wrote a letter home. I began to worry about “check six” when I described Mr. Rogers’ reaction to my visiting Frances and Chuck. I wrote, … I was pleased by Rogers’ reaction, but now as I write this I have second thoughts. It was too easy—after he explicitly talked about the importance of no leaks etc. at earlier meetings. Am I being set up? (SEE, DARLING, WASHINGTON PARANOIA IS SETTING IN.)… I think it is possible that there are things in this somebody might be trying to keep me from finding out and might try to discredit me if I get too close.… So, reluctantly, I will have to not visit Frances and Chuck any more. Well, I’ll ask Fran first if that is too paranoid. Rogers seemed so agreeable and reassuring. It was so easy, yet I am probably a thorn in his side.…
Tomorrow at 6:15 am we go by special airplane (two planes) to Kennedy Space Center to be “briefed.” No doubt we shall wander about, being shown everything—gee whiz—but no time to get into technical details with anybody. Well, it won’t work. If I am not satisfied by Friday, I will stay over
Sat & Sun, or if they don’t work then, Monday & Tuesday. I am determined to do the job of finding out what happened—let the chips fall!
My guess is that I will be allowed to do this, overwhelmed with data and details…, so they have time to soften up dangerous witnesses etc. But it won’t work because (1) I do technical information exchange and understanding much faster than they imagine, and (2) I already smell certain rats that I will not forget, because I just love the smell of rats, for it is the spoor of exciting adventure.
I feel like a bull in a china shop. The best thing is to put the bull out to work on the plow. A better metaphor will be an ox in a china shop, because the china is the bull, of course.*
So, much as I would rather be home and doing something else, I am having a wonderful time.
Love,
Richard
The press was reporting rumors that NASA was under great political pressure to launch the shuttle, and there were various theories as to where the pressure was coming
from. It was a great big world of mystery to me, with tremendous forces. I would investigate it, all right, and if I protected myself, nothing would happen. But I hadda watch out.
Gumshoes
FINALLY, early on Thursday morning, we get to Florida. The original idea was that we would go around the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral and see everything on a guided tour. But because information was coming out in the newspapers so fast, we had a public meeting first.
First, we saw some detailed pictures of the smoke coming out of the shuttle while it was still on the launch pad. There are cameras all over the place watching the launch—something like a hundred of them. Where the smoke came out, there were two cameras looking straight at it—but both failed, curiously. Nevertheless, from other cameras we could see four or five puffs of black smoke coming out from a field joint. This smoke was not burning material; it was simply carbon and mucky stuff that was pushed out because of pressure inside the rocket.
'What Do You Care What Other People Think?' Page 12