Challenger Tragedy - In Depth, and Deeply Felt

Patchw0rk F0g writes "On this, the anniversary of the Challenger disaster, Jay Barbree has a moving and in-depth piece on this international disaster." From the article: "During several earlier shuttle missions, disaster did everything it could to crawl into the shuttle launch system and turn it into tumbling flaming wreckage. The primary O-rings on those flights suffered severe erosion from superheated gases, sometimes accompanied by lesser erosion. And the erosion had occurred after launch temperatures much higher than on this freezing Florida day -- 53 degrees was the lowest launch-time temperature up to that time. The booster engineers felt helpless. For months, they had been studying the O-ring seal problem. They knew a disaster was coming, but no one stepped forward and said, 'Stop this train until it's fixed.'"

Comments

they did step forward

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, the engineers did step forward and let NASA know. the company they contracted the boosters to had a telecon with nasa at marshall the night before. NASA was a huge account for them, they didnt want to lose it, so the executives at the company ignored the engineers. not to mention the tremendous pressure from the media and goverment. they HAD to launch, it was worth the risk to alot of the high ranking people.