Actually, the reclassification happened in December 1982, according to the Rogers Commission report that you reference. (The original classification as 1R happened in 1980; the reclassification that removed the "R" happened in 1982.) Which I agree is not the summer prior to the Challenger launch; I was misremembering that part. But the rest of what I said--Thiokol recommending to NASA that the Shuttle be grounded until the O-ring issue was fixed, and NASA refusing--did happen the summer prior to the Challenger launch (summer 1985).
> the issues with the o-rings not sealing properly were known from the very beginning
The fact that the design was unorthodox was known, yes. The extent to which that design would lead to actual events in actual flights was not. The Thiokol engineers only gradually learned what the extent of the actual flight risk was as they analyzed flight data. A good account, which includes a brief description of how the design was flawed, the efforts made by the Thiokol engineers to analyze flight data and to obtain test data on the O-rings, the information sent by Thiokol to NASA in the summer of 1985, and and an account of the conference call the night before the Challenger launch, is given in this paper co-authored by Roger Boisjoly:
To be clear, none of this means the design should have been accepted in the first place; clearly it shouldn't have been. I am simply pointing out that the article under discussion in this thread leaves out further points in the process, besides the original design choice and the conference call the night before the launch, where NASA was given strong indications that they should change their minds, and they never did.
Actually, the reclassification happened in December 1982, according to the Rogers Commission report that you reference. (The original classification as 1R happened in 1980; the reclassification that removed the "R" happened in 1982.) Which I agree is not the summer prior to the Challenger launch; I was misremembering that part. But the rest of what I said--Thiokol recommending to NASA that the Shuttle be grounded until the O-ring issue was fixed, and NASA refusing--did happen the summer prior to the Challenger launch (summer 1985).
> the issues with the o-rings not sealing properly were known from the very beginning
The fact that the design was unorthodox was known, yes. The extent to which that design would lead to actual events in actual flights was not. The Thiokol engineers only gradually learned what the extent of the actual flight risk was as they analyzed flight data. A good account, which includes a brief description of how the design was flawed, the efforts made by the Thiokol engineers to analyze flight data and to obtain test data on the O-rings, the information sent by Thiokol to NASA in the summer of 1985, and and an account of the conference call the night before the Challenger launch, is given in this paper co-authored by Roger Boisjoly:
https://people.rit.edu/wlrgsh/FINRobison.pdf
To be clear, none of this means the design should have been accepted in the first place; clearly it shouldn't have been. I am simply pointing out that the article under discussion in this thread leaves out further points in the process, besides the original design choice and the conference call the night before the launch, where NASA was given strong indications that they should change their minds, and they never did.