Feynman’s role is overrated by history. Everyone knew that NASA management circumvented the Senior engineers, supposedly Feynman’s major insight, very early into the investigation. Surely by the time the Thiokol engineer testified. There were two paths in NASA bureaucracy, engineer and management. The problem Rogers had with Feynman was he wasn’t a team player, he wanted to be the star of the show. Feynman was lucky to get his words in the Final Report at all. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was ill, as he had been suffering with cancer for many years and actually passed away soon after the report was published. Feynman especially clashed with Al Keel, Executive Director of the Rogers commission and Berkeley post doc, who was just as smart if not smarter than Feynman, and who had performed the final aerodynamic analysis at the beginning of the Shuttle program many years before.
