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Ride said, "Well, I could probably talk for hours on this subject. So I'll refrain from my professorial tendency and not do that. Let me just say that the investigation, believe it or not, is very similar in a lot of respects. There are just obvious differences. The difference is in the accident itself.
"You know, when we started looking into the Challenger accident when our commission was first formed, we actually didn't have any idea what caused the accident; and we started a slow slog through the data. We actually thought we were going to be in trouble because the Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff. There was no telemetry to the ground that was an indication of the accident. There was nothing on board that was an indication of the accident. The launch videos that we saw didn't give any clues to what the problem was. There was no downlinked data that mission control wasn't at the time looking at that was useful. We weren't sure that we were going to find anything, because it exploded over the ocean. So we actually thought that we were in for a long haul.
"Now, we quickly came upon -- we got luck. We got lucky because when we started through the slog of all the data, some of the data that was available to us was the launch photos, the high-resolution photographs taken on the launch pad. One of those photographs, if you remember, just showed the famous puff of smoke. Well, the orbiter was still on the launch pad, less than one second after ignition. The puff coming out of the aft solid rocket. So as soon as we saw that, we said, okay, let's try following these puffs; and, of course, we could.
"Just as an interesting aside, the launch cameras didn't work well then either; and we didn't have access to the cameras that would have shown us exactly where the problem was. But with that clue we were able to really kind of hone in and put together the story, not from the photos but using the photos kind of as the first clue. We were able to put together the story from the debris that was gradually found, to track down the flow path; and the telemetry that we slowly analyzed just to look at, you know, where were the shear and how were the control systems responding and put together the story pretty quickly, much more quickly than we've been able to do here [with Columbia]. But it all started because we got pretty lucky by having that photographic evidence of the initiation of the problem. But it was detective work.
"Now, what you're seeing here is very similar detective work that requires a use of essentially all the available evidence. The photography is really crucial. Would that we had high-resolution good launch video of this accident or this flight just to see, you know, how big was that piece of debris, where did it hit. Then we'd have much better justification of honing on that. We haven't pinned that one down yet. We still are not certain. You know, we're going through the debris, collecting the debris, probably at about the rate that we were collecting it after the Challenger accident, and going through the real details of the telemetry. So the investigative work is actually rather similar but harder in this case.
"You know, you asked a question about comparing the commissions. I would say that the talent on the two commissions is actually very, very comparable. I mean, this is a board that started with a lot of expertise in the details of investigations, accident investigations. The Rogers Commission brought that talent onto the staff; but, you know, basically my impression is that the two teams looking into the investigation are really very, very similar and have a very similar approach to the accident and to the investigation.
"I guess just maybe the final thing to say here that's also, I think, fairly obvious is that because of the speed with which we were able to home in on what the root cause of the Challenger accident was, we were able to get rather quickly into some of the other related issues -- decision-making, the role of the safety structure of NASA, the role of management. We were able to look at maintenance records and just a variety of different things more quickly; but I think that you've got the sense that this investigation is leading into many of those areas, too, in some cases somewhat the same way as it did on the Challenger. You know, the times are different, NASA is different, the accidents were different, the details are different, but a lot of the questions that we're asking are the same and we'll just see what we come up with here."