It is *misreported* on the internet in what appear to be otherwise authoritative articles on the Challenger Disaster investigation with respect to Richard Feynman. The article I just read, for example, described a hostile relationship between Rogers, the Chairman of the Rogers Commision and Feynman during the investigation. But that is incorrect. The hostile relationship was actually between Dr. Alton Keel, Executive Director of the commission, and Feynman. William Rogers was not technical and shied away from ego battles, not so with Drs. Feynman and Keel. And it was Keel who kept Feynman’s portion of the Final Report relegated to the Appendix.
to whit,
”The chief conflict, according to several participants, was between Mr. Rogers and Dr. Richard P. Feynman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist from the California Institute of Technology. They repeatedly clashed not only on how harshly to criticize NASA but also on how to conduct the investigation and deal with the press.
Indeed, only last week Dr. Feynman threatened to dissent from the commission's final report unless a section that he had written, which Mr. Rogers considered too harsh and emotional, was included as he had composed it. That last-minute fracas was resolved through the mediation of Maj. Gen. Donald J. Kutyna of the Air Force, a commission member who, through the course of the proceedings, became a close friend of Dr. Feynman. General Kutyna cautioned today that the issue involved only a few words and had been resolved to the satisfaction of all.
From the start, Dr. Feynman, known for his brilliant and original intellectual forays, was impatient with committee meetings, bureaucratic planning, formal hearings and detailed discussions of the best way to word reports. As far as he was concerned, the way to investigate a problem was to venture out as an individual and have long talks with the technical people who could explain everything they knew about the shuttle technology and its problems.
