Date: 26 January 2025
Location: Pat & Carol
About 15 bookers attended our monthly meeting at Pat and Carols. The book of course is about the Challenger disaster, which we all remembered. Most of the Bookers read all or a good part of the book, and, even though it could be painful in places, we generally seemed to appreciate the book and to be glad to have read it.
Throughout the book Higginbotham provides a lot of background information and details about NASA and the development and operation of the shuttle program. Another nice aspect of the book is that he describes in reasonable depth the stories of the seven astronauts who died in the disaster.
Naturally, much of the book centers on the events leading up to the disaster itself. We were all aware of course of the importance of the o-rings that led to the calamity. But most of us did not realize how the problem had occurred on previous launches and that key Thiokol engineers were strongly opposed to the launch in the bitter cold.
But there was tremendous pressure from the press, the public and the government to get the shuttle launched. And the decision to launch resulted at least partially from a reversal of the established NASA/contractor roles. NASA was supposed to insist that the contractor declare the shuttle was safe to launch, but instead NASA basically asked the contractor to say why it was not safe to launch.
The risks of launching in the extreme cold were recognized, at least by the Thiokol engineers, and this was made known to the Thiokol managers and NASA administrators at Marshal Space Flight Center. Unfortunately, the managers at both Thiokol and NASA succumbed to the intense pressure to get the shuttle launched. The decision to launch was obviously a very bad mistake, resulting from organizational and human failings. These failing was regrettable, but at least understandable. What was even more reprehensible, however, were the attempts of key NASA officials to deny and coverup the cause of the disaster.
— Bob