We Have to Be in Space

Bill Rogers knew what he had to do. He felt it in his gut, a gut conditioned by nearly 50 years at the center of public crises of one kind or another. He walked out of Ronald Reagan's office having agreed to run the Challenger investigation ("Because the President wanted me to do it . . . somebody had to") without a staff, office or any real technical expertise on space. But experience whispered to him.

"We had to establish congeniality in the commission," he said last week, looking back on four solid months of some of the most intensive work...

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