Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space

“But there were others who had trained for the moon program and seen their dream snuffed out with the cancellation of the final Apollo missions. Many of the old guard could be forgiven for regarding the new intake of astronauts, and the competition they would soon represent, with suspicion and resentment.”

As NASA sought to revitalize the space program with the inception of the shuttle program, they opened up their recruitment policies. However, as this quote indicates, the change was not welcomed by all. Many astronauts were unwilling to extend the opportunities that they themselves were still waiting to experience to a younger, and more diverse, set of colleagues. This is a reminder that, though space exploration is a matter of scientific advancement, it involves human emotions and flaws.

“While the newly arrived astronaut candidates were still—briefly—naïve enough to believe the agency’s most optimistic forecasts, the veterans in the office had long ago learned that NASA often told the public and Congress one thing, while it quietly made plans to do another. One old hand liked to joke that the letters of the agency’s acronym stood for Never A Straight Answer.”

The duplicity of NASA is illustrated here, underscoring The Political and Economic Pressures of Exploration. The practice of providing conflicting information to involved parties foreshadows the way that NASA’s handling of difficult situations would prove especially damaging with the failure of the Challenger launch.

“The [training] exercises were conducted under the gaze of reporters and cameramen […] doing their best to capture a telling quote, or a photograph of any action—but especially of the six female trainees. By now, each of the women understood that the novelty of being America’s first female astronauts made them a focus of attention, but their patience was already fraying.”

The sexism present within American culture led many to view female astronauts as a spectacle or novelty. Each of the female astronauts had to struggle against the perception that women were not equipped to be successful astronauts. This is one of the reasons why the presence of two women aboard the Challenger would represent another significant step forward for women in space travel.

“[Astronaut John] Young tried to focus on the ascent procedures, and the string of emergency protocol devised to allow them to glide the orbiter back to earth if something went wrong during the crucial first eight minutes of flight. Each was fraught with risk. […] Yet Young knew that he wasn’t being paid to worry about all the things that could kill him, and now lay beyond his ability to control. So he tried to keep his fears at bay, concentrating on the routine that he had spent so many years runny and rerunning, hundreds, then thousands, of times: every eventuality, in one simulation after another.”

This quote emphasizes both the extensive and rigorous training that astronauts undergo—performing their functions over and over again until they become routine, impressed upon them through muscle memory. This, coupled with astronauts’ expertise and knowledge, is what they rely on to ensure that they are doing what is within their control to fly safely. Nevertheless, human emotion is still present, and Young’s thoughts point to the way that this cannot be eliminated completely.

“There was a crackle over the air-to-ground radio as sixteen separation motors fired simultaneously; Bob Crippen saw yellow-white flames from the pyrotechnics flash past his cockpit window, and the giant boosters fell away like burned-out Roman candles.

‘Roger on the sep, Columbia.’

At this, Max Faget leapt to his feet: after twelve years of struggle, reversals, and compromise, his design had at last passed a crucial test—and, with the separation of the boosters, Faget no longer had to worry about one major aspect of its test flight that had caused him so much anxiety.”

Since so many aspects of how the shuttle would operate could not be completely predicted, it was highly rewarding for Max Faget when his reusable shuttle was successfully launched. The launch brought NASA a large step closer to successfully employing a reusable shuttle.

“Once divided into the assigned and the unassigned, mission selection seeded an undercurrent of jealousy among the new astronauts, just as it had with their predecessors. Almost from the beginning of the space program, there had been more crew than missions for them to fill, and there was little that most astronauts would not have done to win one of the coveted spots in orbit.”

Though there was a large degree of friendship and camaraderie among the astronauts, this quote stresses how highly competitive space trips remained. Each astronaut had to set themself apart by honing a specific skill set that would make them valuable. Competing with one’s friends could create difficult tensions.

“This compression [between the O-ring and the gap in the rocket joint it filled]—the engineers called it ‘the squeeze,’ and measured it obsessively to tolerances of four-thousandths of an inch, or the thickness of a sheet of copy paper—was vital to the safe functioning of the joint. If the diameter of the O-ring was too small, or the space between the metal surfaces of the joint too large, then the squeeze would not be tight enough to hold back the sudden rush of hot, high-pressure gas surging through the rocket at ignition, and the joint would spring a leak.”

This quote emphasizes just how significant tiny errors could be in the construction of the space shuttle, reflecting the risks and rewards of ambition. Though the O-rings were a small and simple component relative to the other technology that operated the shuttle, they proved enormously important since their complete failure would be catastrophic.

“But down in Huntsville, the specialists in the labs of the Marshall Space Flight Center were not convinced. In a pair of memos written in 1978 and 1979, they said that the joint was badly designed. They called for the problem to be addressed as soon as possible—failure to do so would be unacceptable—and wrote the issue required urgent attention to ‘prevent hot gas leaks and resulting catastrophic failure.”

At several points, NASA was warned not to rely on the O-rings. These memos often got lost or buried amid the constant flow of information into NASA. Their refusal to heed the warnings led to the Challenger disaster, reflecting The Failure to Learn From Past Errors.

“[T]he engineer noticed unmistakable signs of burning across an inch-long section of the primary Viton ring inside the forward field joint of one rocket—and more in the seal of the nozzle joint of the other. This was alarming news: it meant that O-ring erosion in 1981 was no longer an isolated exception, but a recurring issue. And this time it had happened in two places on the same flight.”

Initially, the O-ring damage was thought to be an anomaly. However, as this quote indicates, the damage grew increasingly worse with subsequent launches, providing proof that the O-rings were not a reliable solution to seal the joint gap. Nevertheless, NASA continued to regard them as safe, in part because it essentially widened its definition of acceptable risk.

“Over the course of the years they had been developing and flying the solid rocket motors, the men at Thiokol and Marshall had slowly expanded the parameters of what they regarded as acceptable risk in the joints. Incrementally, they had become to accept as normal problems that deviated dangerously from the original design standards set for the boosters […] Erosion of the O-rings by hot gas should have presented a grave warning of calamity for the engineers.”

This quote provides an important explanation of the mindset that contributed to the lack of alarm about the danger of the O-rings. Since they continued to do their job, despite their damage, the company became reluctant to address the issue. Their refusal to accept the severity of the issue reflects The Failure to Learn From Past Errors.

“It was clear that Roger Boisjoly’s suspicions had been correct: the performance of the O-rings—and the squeeze—was profoundly affected by temperature. In cold weather, the rings would become so inflexible that they might fail to seal against the metal surfaces of the casing—and not just in the first moments after the rockets lit, but at any point during their two-minute flight. But when Boisjoly reported the findings to his manager in the engineering department at Thiokol, he told him to keep the data to himself; it would be too damaging to the company if anyone at NASA learned what they had found.”

This quote underscores the pressure that Thiokol executives felt to withhold bad news from NASA, given that NASA was threatening to withdraw its contract. Motivated by financial factors, Thiokol continued to sweep Boisjoly’s findings under the rug. The company’s attitude thus reflects the political and economic pressures of exploration.

“This was clear evidence that the lives of the shuttle crew had relied on the backup seal alone for the entire duration of the rockets’ journey. The flight had been a perilously narrow escape: only much later would the astronauts learn that they had been as little as three-tenths of a second away from an explosion in the solid rocket booster that would have torn apart the orbiter and killed everyone on board. For Roger Boisjoly, the news destroyed what remaining confidence he had that the booster joints were fail-safe.”

The extreme danger of the O-rings was evident to Boisjoly, but his warnings continued to be ignored. Since NASA had yet to experience a true catastrophe with any of the space shuttles, it continued to rely on the O-rings. The known flaws in the O-rings would prove damning during the Commission’s examination of the Challenger explosion after the fact, reinforcing the sense of the failure to learn from past errors.

“At last, Boisjoly decided to put his fears on the record. On the last Wednesday of July 1985, he sat down and wrote an internal memo addressed to Bob Lund and copied to other senior engineering managers at the plant […] Given the damage he had seen on the second flight back in April, he said he could not rule out the total failure of a joint in the solid rocket motors on a future mission—in all probability, within the first second of their ignition on the pad at Cape Canaveral. ‘The result would be a catastrophe of the highest order—loss of human life […] It is my honest and very real fear that if we do not take immediate action…we stand in jeopardy of losing a flight along with all the launch pad facilities.’”

Boisjoly remained committed to his ethics and refused to remain silent about the dangers that the O-rings posed. Later, his decision to speak out against his company would result in his ostracization, but historically, he would be regarded as an important and admirable figure in the Challenger crisis and an important counterexample to the failure to learn from past errors.

“As the weather grew colder, Roger Boisjoly became so consumed by the fear of flying that he thought he would come unglued. During his lunch hour, he stopped eating at his desk and instead began taking long walks around the facility to calm himself. Eventually, Boisjoly could hardly bear to go to work at all. He started to call in sick, just to stay away from the plant.”

The extreme guilt that Boisjoly experienced stemmed from the burden of being convinced that the O-rings were unsafe. Since he could not convince anyone else of the gravity of the situation, he began to experience severe anxiety. Though the narrative suggests that Boisjoly did everything he could to prevent the launch of the Challenger, his guilt would only worsen after the explosion became a reality.

“Like many of the veteran astronauts who still publicly opposed it as a hazardous publicity stunt, Resnik had little time for the Space Flight Participant Program. Not only did amateur astronauts pose a potential danger to the professionals in orbit—getting in the way, panicking of things went wrong—but they were taking hard-won opportunities away from Mission Specialists like her.”

NASA’s attempts at generating a positive public reputation sometimes collided with its ability to successfully carry out its day-to-day operations. Though intelligent and professional, this quote reminds readers that NASA astronauts were still human, ruled by undesirable emotions, such as jealousy, at times.

“The domino effect of Columbia’s delays also forced back Challenger’s launch date, adding mounting pressure to get both crews off the ground as soon as possible—not only to keep to the crowded 1986 launch schedule, but also because the scientific missions planned for later in the year were subject to the inflexible timetable of celestial mechanics.”

It may be difficult for the layperson to understand that rush to launch in late January 1986, given the trepidation of Thiokol’s engineers. This quote places the delay in perspective, underscoring all that would be lost or missed if the shuttle schedule was further delayed. Ultimately, the Challenger was launched in cold weather to prevent future delays and wasted costs, reflecting the political and economic pressures on exploration.

“Many of Thiokol’s team recognized that the data they had about the behavior of the joints in cold weather was scant; some was contradictory. As a result, the recommendations they would be making were subjective and qualitative—it was far from a perfect case based in the hard engineering fact. Even so, it was one that they believed raised enough concerns about the flight safety of the Challenger mission to advocate a drastic course of action […] Do not launch.”

This quote stresses how important definitive data was in the decision-making processes. Though Boisjoly’s predictions about the O-ring behavior in cold weather were rooted in logic and some evidence, they were not deemed completely scientifically sound because there had not been enough real-life instances to prove them as such. NASA’s determination to ignore the warning reflects how wide their definition of “acceptable risk” had become.

“As he wrapped up, Boisjoly felt sure that he had built a damning argument against launch. But there were complications: he knew his data was thin […] Marshalls’ Larry Mulloy began pressing him to provide more hard numbers to back his argument. Boisjoly grew flustered. He told Mulloy that he had no more data, but knew that, as the temperature dropped, the performance of the seal declined.”

The inconclusively of Boisjoly’s data became the rationale that NASA used to disagree with Thiokol’s recommendation not to launch. It is ironic that the managers insisted on scientific certainty when, in retrospect, it is clear that their motives were guided not by science but by the political and economic pressures on exploration.

“That afternoon, Boisjoly wrote one more entry in his logbook:

SRM-25 blew up approximately one minute into flight. Presently waiting for information on the cause of the disaster. I feel real sick about this but I did everything possible to convince them not to fly.”

The Challenger explosion was particularly devastating to Boisjoly, who, as noted here, did as much as he could to prevent the launch. His certainty about the failure of the O-rings was always unshakeable. Boisjoly, despite the risk of damaging his career, would continue to maintain this position.

“‘All the people involved in this program, to my knowledge, felt that Challenger was quite ready to go,’ Moore said. ‘And I made the decision, based upon the recommendation of the team supporting me, that we launch.’”

NASA’s associate administrator for space flight was the top of the command chain for space shuttle launch. The final decision to launch lay with him; he presented testimony that the Commission would later find misleading. NASA had indeed been made aware of the risks in launching in cold temperatures by Thiokol. The Commission’s investigation would ultimately lead to Moore’s resignation.

“Whether gathered in classrooms, at home or at work, or transfixed by the images flickering across rows of TV screens in store windows, as midnight arrived on Tuesday, an estimated 95% of American adults had seen the footage of the shuttle’s final moments play on television.”

The scope of those who were moved by the tragedy of the explosion rivaled that of President Kennedy’s assassination, cementing the event as one of great historical significance. It was in large part the live footage of the explosion that made the gravity of the tragedy palpable.

“At first, the public saw the accident just as the President had framed it on the day it had happened: as a one-in-a-million accident, the inexplicable technical failure of a well-tested machine; the tragic but almost inescapable consequence of pressing the boundaries of technology. In the narrative of Reagan’s rhetoric, the Challenger crew had laid down their live as a part of the virtuous quest to expand humankind’s knowledge of the universe.”

Believing that the tragedy was a fluke mechanical failure brought a small degree of consolation for the American public and the family of the perished crew members. Viewing the crew as martyrs for scientific advancement immediately imbued them with heroism, embodying the risks and rewards of ambition.

“Later that day, the company issued instructions of everyone who had worked on Challenger’s solid rocket motors to hand in any relevant documents they had—for safekeeping, pending an investigation. When word reached Boisjoly, his distrust in Thiokol’s management got the better of him; fearing that it might be the first move in a corporate cover-up […] he decided to hand over only the handful of Viewgraph slides he had prepared for the teleconference the night before the disaster. Everything else—his notebooks and memos, including the desperate ‘loss of human life’ message he had written to the Vice President of engineering in July the previous year—Boisjoly kept to himself.”

Boisjoly’s calculated actions would ultimately pay off, as the Commission—and the historical memory of the nation—would come to view him as a whistleblower, motivated by ethics to save the lives of others, rather than disloyally out to ruin his company. The testimony of Boisjoly and Allan McDonald, along with the documentation that Boisjoly supplied, allowed the truth of the explosion and the culpability surrounding it to come to light.