The Challenger
Disaster
Tom Tandler
Theology: Junior
Morality
April 18, 2006
On
the morning of January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger 51-L was
scheduled to launch into space carrying several observation satellites and a
crew of seven men and women: commander Dick Scobee,
pilot Mike Smith, mission specialists Ron McNair, Judy Resnik,
and Ellison Onizuka, payload specialist Gregory
Jarvis, and the to-be first teacher to go into space Christa McAuliffe. However, they would never make it there.
About seventy-three seconds into the launch, the shuttle disintegrated in a
massive fireball at about 46,000 feet above the ground mainly due to a
malfunction of rubber seals between gas cartridges which leaked out volatile
rocket fuel which in turn ignited, sending the crew to their deaths. The failure
of these O-rings was due to several factors including lack of proper
communication among NASA management and insufficient testing of the
O-rings. Looking back on the event,
there is little doubt that this was an accident that could have been prevented;
the question is who should be held responsible. Pressures on the launch
schedule, poor communication, and negligence to look at possible safety threats
all contributed to the destruction of the Challenger and its crew.
Morton-Thiokol
was the company that was awarded the contract by NASA to build the shuttle
solid rocket boosters (SRBs) in 1974. These boosters
are what propel the shuttle upwards
against Earth’s gravity. However, once the solid rockets are ignited, they are
almost impossible to control, unlike the previously used liquid rockets, which
were much less powerful. This made it extremely important that the shuttle’s SRB’s were perfectly designed, because even the slightest
flaw could cause an unwanted ignition. The SRBs
consist of several cylinders of fuel connected together by special joints,
which are sealed by rubber O-rings. In 1981, a problem with joint rotation
caused Thiokol to take a closer look at how the O-rings would perform in colder
temperatures, and found that the seals were consistently broken to let volatile
substances out when the O-rings were first exposed to colder temperatures. Because temperatures the night before the
launch were predicted to be quite low, in the low twenties, this prompted Alan
McDonald, the director of the Solid Rocket Motors Project to call a
teleconference between NASA managers and engineers from NASA and
Morton-Thiokol. Thiokol’s engineers, Boisjoly and Arnie Thompson, gave
an hour-long presentation and a convincing argument on why the launch should be
postponed. Thiokol’s Engineering Vice President Bob Lund also backed his
engineers and explained that the O-rings had never been tested under 53 degrees
Fahrenheit, and that was considered a “cold” temperature that caused the
O-rings to not fully operate correctly. The O-rings’ temperature was predicted
to go down to 29 degrees. However, the managers, who not all had engineering
backgrounds, decided to bypass the engineer’s suggestions and make it a
managing decision. Their new
recommendation to launch stated that the engineers’ assessment was inconclusive
since the O-rings were never actually tested at such extreme temperatures. NASA
managers approved the launch boosters despite the fact that the temperature was
outside their operational specifications and against the advice of their
engineers. During this conversation, the engineers’ tempers seemed to get the
better of them several times when they found themselves yelling at NASA’s
managers. Some were reduced to tears. Most of them watched the launch the next
day fully expecting the shuttle to blow apart at liftoff. Although they gained
hope after the first minute passed, their fears were confirmed when the shuttle
was engulfed in flames at 73 seconds after liftoff.
Pressure on NASA
manager to launch the shuttle due to economic and political considerations and
having already postponed the launch several times may have affected their
decision to launch, despite several warnings, mainly from the engineers. There was some competition coming from the
European Space Agency, so NASA had been asking for record amounts of money. In
1986, NASA started scheduling record amounts of missions in order to justify
their huge budget requests. Several
launches, including the Challenger, had been delayed and NASA was falling way
behind schedule. The first time it was delayed was due to an inclement weather
front that was predicted to move into the area, bringing rain and cold
temperatures. It was delayed a second
time when there was a defective micro switch in the hatch locking mechanism,
and by the time this was sorted out, winds became too high for launch, forcing
NASA to push the launch date back yet again. When engineers wanted the date pushed
back even further, NASA managers did not want to hear it, despite seemingly
obvious risks, which will be discussed later.
Other political pressure may have also caused the managers to launch.
President Ronald Reagan was to give his State of the Union address just a few
days after the launch. His main topic was going to be on education and he
intended to mention Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher in space. Although there is no proof that Reagan or
anyone from Washington D.C. directly pressured NASA into the launch, the NASA
managers, who knew that Reagan intended to talk about the program, put the
pressure on themselves to make sure that the shuttle was launched on time.
The Roger’s
Commission Report on the Challenger Accident was written to investigate and
detail exactly what happened to cause this disaster. A separate letter, written
by a renowned physicist named Richard P. Feynman, is entitled Personal
Observations on the Reliability of the Shuttle and has been added to the
Roger’s Commission Report as an Appendix. It takes a much more scathing
attitude toward the NASA managers than the Roger’s Report does. The Roger’s
Report does recognize that the managers made a mistake and that the accident
could have been avoided, but does not put full responsibility on them. Feynman
not only says that it could have been avoided, but it should have been avoided
and puts much more responsibility and blame on the NASA managers. He states
that they have a “fantastic faith in machinery” that is over exaggerated, which
gave the managers a false sense of safety.
They claimed that the probability of failure was over a thousand times
less than the engineers claimed. Feynman charged NASA officials with not
“dealing in a world of reality” and trying to get too much out of their money
to the point where they put human lives at stake. They “proposed unrealistic
flight schedules” which only created more pressure. He concluded stating that
“for a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public
relations, for nature cannot be fooled,” a direct slap in the face of NASA
officials saying that they can’t play around with human lives to improve their
image, because there are certain laws that can’t be broken. These laws can cost human lives no matter how
good their institution looks to the public.
Bibliography
The Challenger Disaster
I. Intro
II. Discussion between engineers and managers
A. Morton-Thiokol’s role
B. Temperature’s affect on O-rings
III. Pressures to Launch
A. Political
B. Economic
C. Previous Postponements
IV. Roger’s Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident
A. Roger’s Report
B. The Feynman Appendix