Challenger's "White Steam" During Ignition and Late Lift-off -- Withholding Accomplished

On Nov 23, 8:15 am, "max...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <max...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Nov 23, 1:51 am, BradGuth <bradg...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

(My final message in this sequence will detail how NASA leaked several
replacement frames from Camera D67, to divert attention from both the
early "white steam" frames shown by Camera E60 and the later "white
steam" interval shown by Camera E217.)

On February 13, 1986, NASA publicly released a sequence of "smoke"
frames from Camera E60. However, those began at 0.678 seconds, rather
than at 0.445 seconds (as described by *** Kohrs in closed session
that day).

On Friday, February 14, UPI finally published one of its own photos
showing black smoke at lift-off. Rather importantly, some of it was
inboard (including a lighter shade at the aft attachment):

<http://www.mission51l.com/art/UPIsmoke.jpg>

No event time was available for this UPI photo. It was released late
because NASA had impounded it. That same Friday UPI described as
follows the frames NASA had elected to give the media:

"New NASA photographs show a cloud of black smoke spurting around a
shuttle rocket booster less than a second after Challenger's blastoff,
indicating the crew of seven was doomed from the moment of liftoff.

The photographs were released Thursday night and today. ...

The first of the six photographs was taken 0.676 seconds after solid
rocket ignition, which commits the shuttle to blastoff. ...

While the first two pictures, taken milliseconds apart, are not clear,
the NASA caption said 'dark smoke begins to appear.'

The third picture in the series was taken 1.81 seconds after launch
and by that point, the cloud of smoke is clearly visible, extending
about 15 feet up from the area of the highly publicized joint.

The last two pictures in the series, taken at 3.34 seconds and 3.37
seconds after launch, do not show any signs of smoke or any other
apparent problem."

AW&ST actually published one of those (E60) frames on February 27, but
without an associated event time.

However on March 10, 1986, AW&ST switched to a new NASA-leaked frame
from Camera D67. (I wrote about that frame and its caption in my
second post to this thread.)

In conjunction with the later begin time formalized by Germany and
Stevenson on March 21, 1986, the D67 photo-replacement permitted AW&ST
to set the stage for NASA to eliminate all those indicting E60 frames
(and others) from the color "smoke puff" sequences ultimately found in
the PC Summary.

JTM -- <http://www.mission51l.com>
.