Space Shuttle Challenger

There are certain critical moments in American history that leave a permanent mark on the minds and memories of the people who witnessed it. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, people could close their eyes and still vividly picture sights of men and women jumping out of the World Trade Center towers to their death. Those who saw live coverage of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy or heard soon after the fact still probably remember exactly where they were and what they were doing. This kind of flashbulb memory also applies to the failed launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger in January of 1986. Of course, the Challenger disaster is notable for the very public and very sudden loss of multiple human lives. In the popular use of the word, the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger mission was an American tragedy, and seven good people were lost in its disintegration.

Unfortunately, the real tragedy surrounding the events of the Challenger is that the cause of the problem was probably preventable, and at the very least, the decision to launch was definitely preventable. In physical terms, the failure of the spacecraft as a whole was prompted by an initial failure of the O-ring seal on the shuttle’s solid rocket booster. From there, hot gas leaked to the outside and affected the attachment of the booster, which would lead to structural problems with the external tank of the Challenger and the eventual breaking apart of the space shuttle. Challenger team officials later would concede that prior to the launch of the spacecraft, there were concerns about certain conditions on the day of the launch as well as lack of included emergency safety procedures. Regarding the conditions for launch, on the day of the Space Shuttle Challenger mission, temperatures were at or below freezing, and even though the performance of the O-ring under such stress was considered questionable, the launch was still allowed to proceed. It also seems that NASA was a little overconfident when it came to precautions taken for the Challenger. There was no reliable backup should the O-ring fail to seal, nor were there any ejection seats in place, so even if crew members did survive the launch, they would not have survived the craft’s fall into the sea.

Aside from what we learned about the physics of NASA spacecraft, we also learned a great deal about the psychology of the event and the dangers of too little information. The Challenger fiasco served as another powerful reminder of the nature of flashbulb memories, but also gave us insight into how an entire organization can be primed into putting aside their better judgment (regarding the O-rings) for the sake of leadership’s insistence on deadlines, or more generally, the failure of people to take individual responsibility and act while as a member of the group. Furthermore, the absence of information was not only dangerous to the sanctity of the Space Shuttle Challenger mission, but also NASA’s reputation. Their silence on the nature of the failure prompted inaccurate theories by the media in the following days, obscuring the true nature of the failure for generations to come and reflecting poorly on those who decided to proceed with the launch.