What a great documentary and a total contrast to today's docutainment industry. No 5 minute program destroying introduction, no relentless repetition because the audience can't be trusted to remember anything after an ad break. Oh yeah and it's two and a half hours long, why? Because it needs to be to do the material justice.
"A Rush To Launch" is 50 minutes and succinctly covers these issues. I'm all for comprehensive coverage, and I don't have a problem with it being 2 and 1/2 hours. That being said, it didn't need to be as long, and there is needless repetition involved.
i dont mean to be offtopic but does any of you know a trick to get back into an instagram account?? I was stupid lost my account password. I would appreciate any tricks you can give me.
Roger Boisjoly & Allan McDonald are the real MVPs in this WHOLE situation. Speaking up and OUT. RIP McDonald & Boisjoly. Lawrence Mulloy also passed, 2014.
Someone should start the Roger Boisjoly & Allan McDonald Center for Ethics and Courage where they would teach those qualities and other noble behavior for people, especially to those in government and corporations.
@@MegaSunsparkUnfortunately, that’s not something you can “teach”. Not in the manner for which those qualities are needed in government departments and organisations. They are qualities that a person either has or they don’t have. There’s no grey area.
An engineer is not a salesperson. They are rarely management material. They don’t have an agenda other than to see something they have created perform it’s job. If an engineer ever tells you something is dangerous - you’d better damn believe them and take action. Because they are just being totally honest. This wasn’t an accident. It was arrogance. Those poor souls need not have died.
Absolutely, It was happened due to sheer negligence, they broke the bond they had with those astronauts which was to do every thing possible to ensure their safety and security. Very casual risk assessment by such an elite management. May the brave souls rest in peace.
This is an outstanding documentary on the loss of Challenger. Probably the best I have ever seen. I’ve participated in hundreds of flight readiness reviews in my FTE career and never have I encountered such a upside down logic…”prove that it is not safe” rather than “prove that it is safe” to fly. Roger Boisjoly stands out as a man of incredible integrity and courage. I also never realized that there may have been undue pressure from the Whitehouse to fly because of the State of the Union address the evening of the launch. Such a sad event on a human level and also from an organizational standpoint. Thank you for posting.
I appreciate the in depth of this documentary. Actually I love it. Seeing the management squirm under being questioned by a panel of folks wondering what happened. Also the mentioning of prior launches with o-rings. The thing I love most about this is there's no ad interruptions so it's perfect to fall asleep to or it's perfect for background noise without the worry of advertisements.
I was 5 when this happened. My mother was one of the finalists from my state and 'almost' won the seat for the teachers slot. she was a few steps removed from being on that shuttle. I cannot fathom growing up without her and seeing these interviews. I'll keep those thoughts to myself. What a pointless tragedy. so absolutely heartbreaking.
I was a senior in high school and one of our teachers was also a finalist. I remember she took it really hard and I don’t blame her. I was actually a little more disturbed when the Columbia broke up. Good riddance to the shuttle program.
Call it fate and your mother along with everyone else on the list who wasn’t chosen were extremely fortunate. Even Country & Western singer John Denver admitted to counting his blessings (because he too was in the shortlist of civilians chosen to go into space) for the rest of his life believing that had he not given up his place for the “teacher in space” program, he would’ve been on that ill-fated final flight of Challenger. I’ll bet every other teacher on the shortlist who “missed out” did the same thing. After the loss of Challenger, I’ve noticed until recently there have been No Civilians in space. Scientists and US/Allied Countries Military personnel ONLY. I say Allied Military because I know for a fact Andy Thomas was NOT American by birth. I also know of a few RAAF pilots who were offered jobs with NASA before the loss of Columbia.
This is by far the most comprehensive documentary on the Challenger disaster. The interviews included are very informative. Thank you very much for posting this!
I have read and viewed just about everything about this avoidable disaster. I hadn’t realized the degree NASA tried to cover their tracks and deflect blame until now.
NASA has history in that department !!! en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-27#:~:text=Upon%20landing%2C%20the%20magnitude%20of,one%20tile%20was%20missing%20altogether.&text=There%20was%20almost%20no%20damage,to%20return%20to%20Earth%20successfully.
The first time I saw a grown-up cry was when I was sitting in class as a sixth grader and my teacher started to cry when the principal announced the explosion over the intercom. That was 35 years ago and I can still remember her face like it was yesterday.
I still remember watching it live and being completely shocked when it blew up. Shame on those that ignored the engineers advice which cost those astronauts lives.
I too saw it live. I turned on my (BETA) VCR to record the flight while I was making breakfast and came back to the TV just in time to watch the launch. I kept watching and saw the thing blow up, which I couldn't believe. I kept the VCR running for the next two hours I believe. It still haunts me to this day.
7 people were killed and secondarily, loss of vehicle. But as I type this, sometimes a disaster has to reveal itself before action gets taken. It has widespread meaning what I'm referring to.@@sarahshulman2086
Funny that Allan McDonald was not interviewed for this program. He was one of the more outspoken critics of the launch decision and has never been shy about appearing in documentary programs regarding the disaster and even wrote a book about it. My guess is that because he was still employed by Morton Thiokol in 1992 that he was gagged and barred from participating.
Correct, he was part of the team to redesign the shuttle. After he retired, he then tells all about STS 51L. You can watch the documentary called A RUSH TO LAUNCH...Allan McDonald tells his side of the story .
A tragic and unnecessary loss of 7 men and women, all due to Morton Thiokol *and* NASA management failing to listen to the engineers who knew it was a massive risk and high chance of Loss of Mission. Excellent documentary and I commend the producers.
@@CharlesVance I am no engineer but i think the design of the SRB was shit to begin with. Lets contain all of this extremely high pressure gas with segmented sections that can flex and bend under the pressure
Thank you very much for all the effort you put into this. It is clear that they made a terrible mistake but what really makes it worse it was tha cover up and and the repercussions on the whistle blowers. A sad regrettable moment in the space program, paid with human lives, that we will never forget.
Yes…and they did the same exact thing with Columbia afterward. They knew for years about the foam impacting the orbiter. They looked the other way. They knew for years about the blowby. They liked the other way. Same result.
For some strange reason I’ve been always touched deeply by this tragedy. I was 13 at the moment and being from Chile I could feel it as a “foreign accident”, but I felt it and still feel it like a “familiar tragedy”. First time I see this documentary. I’ve seen them all (or that’s what I thought) and it’s fantastic. Doesn’t go to the emotional side of the story, talking about crew’s families, but explain many of the dark sides of the (not) accident. Great!
I was working in a law firm on the 86th floor of Sears tower. When we heard about it, everyone from janitors to senior partners rushed into various conference rooms (killer views) to watch tv's. We couldn't believe it. God rest their souls.
I agree with the majority of comments,,, this is by far the best documentary of the challenger disaster that I've ever seen!! Very informative and interesting,,, rest in peace the crew of challenger!!!! Amen
Yep... what's REALLY stupid is, they did the EXACT SAME THING AGAIN 17 years later with Columbia... gambled with astronaut's lives and LOST... The foam strike damage to the heat shield that doomed Columbia to break up and kill the crew on reentry wasn't a "bolt out of the blue" never seen before problem... they'd CHOSEN to fly with the risk for decades... and there had already been a number of "near misses" with shuttles returning with damage, even one with a hole burned through its belly, thankfully by dumb luck for that crew in an area which was "non critical" to the structural integrity of the vehicle... NASA *KNEW* it had a problem and chose to "work on it" while they continued flying-- after all, nothing bad HAD happened, so they assumed nothing bad WOULD happen, until it did and they had another 7 dead astronauts. All because of "the needs of the program" led management to take bad risks based on faulty assumptions. BUT during the Columbia stand-down when they finally figured out that there really was NO real "fix" for the foam problem, that it was just a risk predicated by the very design of the shuttle that COULD NOT be designed out, only "worked around" it FINALLY laid bare the technological problems of the shuttle and the fact it was an aging 40 year old design that needed either billions in upgrades to continue flying indefinitely (at considerable risk of another loss of vehicle to an inevitable foam strike) or retirement and replacement by "something else". Hence they decided, rightfully so, to retire the shuttle and replace it with "something else". Later! OL J R :)
Obviously. Their complacency and negligence led to the deaths of 14 shuttle astronauts. Both accidents very avoidable if they were more determined to always put safety first. But too often money and timing took priority.
And additional blood on their hands for the astronauts of the Columbia disaster, whose lives were also lost a few years later. They could have been saved , which had been proven by the present situation of present astronauts having to remain in the international space station for 8 months after being unable to return to earth in their original space module.
One of the best documentaries ever!! This should have been shown to high school and college students back in the day. So many people who remember this tragedy don't know the real truth behind it all. How sad.
The more I learn about this having seen it just in after it happened 37 years ago, I actually can’t believe some of these no good bast-ds didn’t get prosecuted. These guys were absolute scumbags all running and hiding like weasels.
This was a terrible tragedy and I remember it like it was yesterday. This disaster could have been avoided had Mr Boisjoly and Mr MacDonald’s warnings were taken seriously. When government bureaucracy gets to big for it’s britches we are left with failed accountability. Government bureaucrats very rarely are held accountable for anything they screw up.
Whenever/wherever politics weighs heavily, we should ALWAYS proceed with caution. In the information age, most have come to realize that politicians(democrat, republican...whatever) are not to be trusted.
Wrong. There was only one man responsible for this: Larry Mulloy. And why did he push for the launch? To make Mr. Small Government himself Ronald Reagan happy.
The Challenger Disaster is a day I will never forget. Thanks for giving a detailed explanation. May they Rest In Peace. A horrible potentially avoidable catastrophe.
Once slight correction: The moon landings were more than just one of the supreme achievements of our time. They were one of the supreme achievements of human history, and always will be, no matter what comes after them.
A very good presentation. Thank you for it. I'll never forget witnessing the Challenger disaster on that terrible terrible day. That your report emphasizes moral integrity is important and I appreciate it.
The Space Shuttle program is a great example of sunk cost fallacy: A great idea to make space flight routine at low cost. A craft that remained experimental and therefore dangerous. Was not cost effective, nor routine. But carried forward for 30 years because they were too far in to turn back when they probably should have done. The program should have been cancelled after Challenger.
in South Florida they rarely have a hard freeze. A hard freeze morning was the day NASA forced the launch of Challenger, a very unwise decision that disregarded the engineer's warnings and safety protocols for the crew. The average temperature at Cape Canaveral FL in early January is 71F high/54F low. The very next morning the temp was much warmer, all they needed to do is wait one more day- they knew that.
The issue was the teacher was scheduled to do her lesson to ll American classrooms on Friday. If they waited another day it would be Saturday and the kids wouldn’t be at school.
You all missed the true reason why the launch had to be done that day. Simply put, it was the last chance to get the teacher up there before President Reagan hit the podium to deliver the State of the Union address that very evening. This was a huge PR project by NASA. Would'nt surprise me if there was a planned live phone call to the teacher in space during the State of the Union address that evening. It was all about politics and funding for NASA. They needed her up there desperately.
@@nickv4073 Thanks Nick, I knew it, well not exactly that. If they didn't launch that day and launched the next day, Teacher Christa's teaching lesson would have been too late. She was scheduled to be giving her space lesson on Friday, televised in hundreds of schools. a day later wasn't going to work.
Every person who gave the go ahead for launch should've been fired and charged with criminal negligence. That launch should've never happend, and 7 good people paid with their lives.
Grace Corrigan, Christa McCauliffe's mother spoke with her daughter by phone in the early evening of the 27th. Christa told her mother that the crew had received word that they would be launching the next morning of the 28th "no matter what".
@@deoglemnaco7025 No, it wasn't a one in a million occurrence. Columbia was destroyed on reentry 17 years later for the very same reasons as Challenger was destroyed - a problem that NASA had known about for years, but failed to correct and which engineers had attempted to bring to upper management's attention without success. In both cases, the management structure at NASA deemphasized safety resulting in the needless loss of astronaut lives. The shuttle program ended as a direct result result of this second accident.
@@invernessity well maybe not one in a million but certainly rare. Since we started space flight it’s been 60 years! Which is like 22k days. And on only two of those has America ever lost people in flight. Very very low odds
@@deoglemnaco7025 That's bullsh!t... did you even watch the video?? I'd read that basically Dick Scobee, as commander, and Mike Smith, as pilot, since they were the two senior members of the crew with the most intimate knowledge of the shuttle and its systems and launch parameters, had an impromptu meeting with the other crew members that night and told them there was very little chance they would be launching the next morning (the 28th) because of the cold/weather, and they should expect another scrub. They were pretty well shocked and amazed when word came down in the predawn hours that they were going to suit up and board the vehicle for launch... Of course they didn't know about the O-ring issue, but given the delicacy of the shuttle heat shield tiles and the necessity of the sound-suppression water flood at the pad to a safe liftoff without damaging the shuttle from the acoustics, they naturally presumed that the launch would be scrubbed. When even Rocco Petrone (an old Apollo veteran manager who was working for North American, the shuttle builder) said "don't launch" well there's your sign... NASA management had decided to "launch regardless" of what its contractor engineers most familiar with the system said, despite their opposition. That's the whole point! OL J R :)
This should be shown at all corporate conferences dealing with institutional culture and its effects on decision-making. In other words, how to set your priorities straight.
To proceed with an event when it is known that there Is the potential for catastrophic failure,is nothing short of murder. As a mechanical engineer with many years North Sea oil and gas industry experience,specialising in Subsea pressure containment and flow control systems,elastomers(o rings) play a vital role in pressure containing/retainment areas,for example,blow out preventers,on such equipment the o rings used in their assembly are subjected to extensive testing and inspection,on average a B.O.P is designed to retain 50,000 psi ( operating pressure) and are subjected to hydrostatic pressure testing to 75,000 psi (test and design pressure),during such testing the equipment is subjected to 75,000 psi for 15 minutes(primary test pressure),the pressure is then relieved and taken back up to 75,000 psi for a further 15 - 30 minutes.If the equipment should demonstrate failure during either test phase,the first item examined is usually the elastomers in pressure containment areas,it is quite possible for an elastomer which has passed initial inspection,which includes shore hardness testing,verification of the date of manufacture and lifespan of the elastomer to fail during testing,in such instances,the elastomer will be regarded as being insufficient and new design ,chemical and mechanical composition/properties will generally be specified for future elastomers to be used in such an application,what should never happen is for engineering recommendations to be overruled by non engineering personnel regardless of any cost or specified completion date overruns.Of course this will happen on occasion unfortunately as in the case of the macondo well B.O.P failure.But in the majority of cases engineering recommendations are adopted.
Excellent assessment. I am a humble, domestic plumber and work with double O ring fittings rarely exceeding 2.5 bar / 36 psi and still find it incredible. You are working on kit rated 2000 times the pressure. Goodness knows the loads on those SRB seals. Such complacency should have involved life sentences for those disregarding and overruling the engineers.
Every manned spacecraft, is fundamentally experimental, and risky. There were so many compromises in the final design of the shuttle. Combine that with very poor decision making, and there is the disaster.
Probably why SpaceX returned to a capsule, albeit a very advanced one. It's just a very robust shape. To come back from orbit with wings will always be a little ify and solid rockets are just bad on a manned flight.
Well, let’s see now. 135 flights vs 2 failures. That’s a 1,4% failure rate. Given the “risk”, I’d say those odds where great and the only significant factor in the loss of both orbiters is HUMAN failure, not technical ones.
Yup... which wasn't listened to anyway. Go figure... The ice was a concern because of the extraordinary fragility of the shuttle heat shield tiles... they're not hard like bathroom tiles, they're basically about the same strength as styrofoam... I've handled them and you can easily dig a trench in one with a fingernail or crush your fingerprints into one with a firm squeeze... they're about the same strength and consistency as that freeze dried "astronaut ice cream" you can get at the NASA visitor centers... or a sheet of styrofoam. That's why the shuttle had such strong launch constraints-- even flying through a rainstorm would beat the heat shield all to h3ll, as raindrops impacting the tiles at speed would be like BB's from a BB gun hitting foam! The ET was covered in foam because, unlike the Apollo Saturn V launches where a virtual BLIZZARD of ice and frost was shaken loose and allowed to rain down at liftoff, the Shuttle would have its heat shield SHREDDED by all that frost and ice at liftoff, hence the tank was insulated with spray-on foam to minimize/prevent the formation of frost/ice before launch. Course when you have an ICE STORM the night before and everything is coated in ice from frozen precipitation, well, the foam isn't going to stop that since it's already there! When even North American, who build the orbiters and serviced the heat shields was telling them to not launch, well, that tells you something. They were d@mned and determined to launch that vehicle NO MATTER WHAT and they thought their luck would hold and they'd get away with it... after all they'd had plenty of warnings from prior missions, but NOTHING BAD HAD HAPPENED, so they ASSUMED *nothing bad COULD happen*. They were wrong. The foam designed to protect the heat shield would go on to cause the destruction of Columbia 17 years later... a basically "unfixable" problem inherent in the design... Later! OL J R :)
Two interesting space shuttle disaster facts. Their was no need to split the srb into sections this was done only to make transport from thiakol easier, because Thiakol were so far from Florida they could only transported by rail. Alternative contractor designs didn't need to split the srb creating the field joint problem. For Columbia NASA changed the type of foam used to cover the external tank to a CFC free type which was kinder to the environment but had a much higher tendency to break off. For every disaster their are always multiple causes.
The problems with foam strikes from the main fuel tank on the Space Shuttle had been problematic for the entire history of the Shuttle programme and had very little to do with the replacement of CFC's in 1995. In fact even after 1995 up to the completion of the Space Shuttle programme in 2011, foam containing CFC's had been continuously used on critical areas of the main fuel tank on the Space Shuttle. The very first Space Shuttle, Colombia's STS 1 mission the Crew, Pilot, Robert Crippen and Shuttle Commander, John Young, noticed white material streaming past the windows on the orbiter during the orbiter external tank flight, crew estimated sizes of between a quarter of an inch to first sized pieces. Post - landing report describes probable foam loss of unknown location and over 300 tiles on the Space Shuttle needing outright replacement due to various causes. So foam impacts from the main fuel tank striking the Orbiter and damaging the heat shield had been happening from day 1 of the programme and were well known about by NASA's engineers. The Shuttles solid rocket boosters were also problematic from day 1 . In fact NASA were warned about the dangers and unreliability of using solid rocket boosters on the Shuttle as far back as 1977, a full eight years before the Challenger disaster. The Space Shuttle was the first manned space vehicle in the world to use solid rocket boosters as a means of providing primary thrust at liftoff. The main reason they needed expansion joints in them in the first place is because the company who was awarded the contract to supply the SRB's to NASA was Morton Thiokol, of Brigham City Utah, which is 2,300 miles from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, and when fully assembled are just short of 150 feet long. which means they had to be manufactured in sections , 7 in total, in order to be transported to the Cape for assembly requiring expansion Joints and each joint represents a potential weakness. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_external_tank www.tsgc.utexas.edu/archive/general/ethics/boosters.html
The real sad part here..Despite the internal engineering flaws..if they just waited a few more days (for the weather to warm up) the rocket would have worked. They could have just made a "weather" announcement and waited a few days. Of course then it would have been February and they would have missed the NASA goal.
@@peterpan9988 C'mon man, don't try and deflect blame for NASA...they were fraught with budget over-runs, delays, losing public interest and support, and even being mocked by the media for these problems. NASA arrogance and disregard for expert opinions caused this tragedy. Read it in the Rogers report for yourself.
"...if they just waited a few more days (for the weather to warm up) the rocket would have worked." And they would have "gotten away with it" again, and the fundamental problem would remain.
Well, they were on a course for disaster anyway. NASA had grown complacent about safety and were taking LONG chances well before Challenger... had it not blown up in January the odds were it or another shuttle would have blown up within a year or two anyway. The problem was still there, it was still on a 'slow burn' to getting fixed, and there were a LOT of other chances NASA and the Air Force were taking or planning to take with the shuttles. The next launch after Challenger was to be the first launch of a shuttle from the SLC-6 complex at Vandenberg AFB in California, into a polar orbit... this would have been firsts for the shuttle-- first launch from California and first polar orbital launch. Engineers had expressed serious doubts after the troubled over a billion dollar development program to build SLC-6, with some engineers convinced that the poor acoustic environment would fatally damage or even destroy a shuttle on liftoff. The shuttle program was also running full speed ahead on developing the "Shuttle Centaur" large liquid hydrogen upper stage for the shuttle, which would have been about like putting a bomb in the payload bay. Liquid hydrogen is notoriously difficult to handle and seal against leaks, and Centaur was a pressure-stabilized stage, meaning it relied on internal pressure to prevent it from collapsing and bursting open. Liquid hydrogen is SO cold air LIQUIFIES when it touches uninsulated surfaces touching the liquid hydrogen, creating LIQUID AIR which is 21% liquid oxygen, which is extremely volatile and can burst into flame if it contacts grease or oil or anything flammable, basically. Shuttle Centaur was SO heavy that the shuttle could NOT land with it fully fueled in an abort, which meant they had to install a complicated fuel dump system into the shuttles to dump the volatile fuels overboard in an emergency to allow the shuttle to land, adding MORE complexity to an already impossibly ambitious abort procedure which had to go PERFECTLY for the crew not to perish... SLC-6 would never have a shuttle flight post-Challenger and Shuttle Centaur would be scrapped after Challenger... and yet STILL sufficient problems existed with the shuttle to doom the Columbia and her crew 17 years later... OL J R :)
I've been watching documentaries about this disaster for years, but only when I watched this documentary did I realize that they were lucky that the Challenger didn't simply blow up right there on the launch pad at the moment of ignition. No wonder the NASA launch team breathed a sigh of relief when the shuttle made it off the launch pad seemingly in one piece. They really thought they were in the clear from then on in. SMDH...RIP to the crew, who should still be alive and with us today (especially Christa McAuliffe).
This is a great documentary. I learned new information here that I didn't know before. Larry Mulloy and the entire NASA and Morton Thiokol managements belong in prison charged with mass murder. They knowingly and willfully proceeded to launch the shuttle against expert opinion of the engineers who knew best whether it was safe or not. The NASA managers asked the engineers to prove that the O rings would fail. How do you prove something like that other than present them with known data, logic and reason? It's like asking someone to prove that you will be killed if you jump off of a tall building. I guess in retrospect the engineers did prove it, didn't they?
The engineers had an empriical data point demonstrating failure. I couldnt believe the managers were sticking to their guns under questioning by the commision. They came across as morons. I have clients who pull the old line, it has worked before. I simply tell them, it does not meet code and is therefore unsafe. You are free to use the part without my reccomendation but, it wont have my PE stamp on it.
Certainly the upper management warranted both civil and criminal liability as the evidence is clear that they are responsible. Knowing this they intimidated those who couldn’t afford to lose their jobs and fired those who did.
M M - Thanks for the upload. It contains many parts of the Board hearings that people need to see. One thing: Next time don't upload an older video into a 16:9 format. In the interviews it squishes everyone's head and is annoying. People can still deal with black bars on each side of the video feed.
The backup o rings were never supposed to have any damage. They did. Right there was...........stop flying. But they did not. But, as a pilot myself, I would have flown on the Shuttle........happily. Especially after the fixes after the Columbia accident.
Essentially both NASA and Morton Thiokol knew 150 % that the O-rings would fails & the seal become leaky. However, even a reclassification of the O-rings into the highest risk category AND stating that their failure would cost the entire mission and the lives of the crew did not change a thing & work progresses as before. In my legal understanding this amounts to manslaughter, proved by the subsequent explosion and loss of the crew. Essentially the crew was cannon fodder, post-humously glorified into heroes. The same applies to the later burn-up of another shuttle due to wing damage caused by a piece of foam during lift-off. The crew could have been saved by a. Close inspection of the damage in orbit, and b. By sensing up a rescue mission to retrieve the crew. Alas, hubris prevented both of this, the crew tried to land as normal, and disappeared in a fireball. 14 lives lost without any need - can anyone reasonably explain why this had to happen ?
There was no possibility of rescue for Columbia-- totally wrong orbit and it wasn't equipped to dock with ISS anyway; the Columbia as the oldest flying shuttle was too heavy and thus not modified to dock with ISS which is why it had basically been sidelined during the ISS phase, except for this one "non-ISS" mission to "clear the books" of a lot of unflown stuff that had piled up. It flew to a low-inclination orbit closer to the equator not the high-inclination orbit of ISS (28.5 degrees versus 51.6 degrees for ISS) so there was NO WAY for Columbia to get to ISS at ANY rate. Even *IF* they had photographed the Columbia with the Keck Telescope in Hawaii or with an NSA spy satellite as the engineers wanted, that only gave them less than 2 weeks to get a rescue shuttle up there, and that wasn't enough time. Even speeding up the flow of the next shuttle launch to basically ignoring ALL safety precautions to launch a rescue would have taken a minimum 3 weeks to a month. Columbia only had like 2 space suits aboard IIRC which couldn't have served 7 people. They had no Canadarm on the shuttle or means to perform a repair EVA or even an inspection of the vehicle. Some "ad-hoc" suggestions to perform an inspection would have required someone to suit up and go outside the shuttle, be essentially dropped in orbit floating free (they had no MMU either) and then the orbiter "fly around them" or up to them close enough for them to actually attempt to do anything, which without hand and foot holds would have beena fools errand. The odds of getting an untethered astronaut back when the shuttle would have to maneuver around them and scoop them up wasn't good either. About the only "fix" they could possibly have done was perhaps cram a tool bag filled with water frozen solid into the damaged wing leading edge and hope that it stayed put and actually help up and deflected the heat long enough to survive reentry. IOW, Columbia was doomed the moment it entered orbit after launch. Linda Ham and the other shuttle managers, faced with the prospects of this, decided to "hope and pray' that the shuttle would come back fine, rather than have some huge protracted drama play out on TV like Apollo 13, as the astronauts huddled in the dark on a doomed shuttle in "survival mode" while NASA attempted some totally ineffectual means to recover them only to ultimately fail anyway... Can you imagine the bad press from heartfelt tearful families demanding something be done, risking blowing up another shuttle and a couple astronauts in some crazy half-baked launch attempt without the proper safety procedures, the tearful goodbyes between the families and crew broadcast all over the world, etc. over the 2 weeks between launch and the shuttle's expenditure of all its consumables FORCING it to return to Earth?? They *MIGHT* have could have held out for 3 weeks had they got into a "hunker down" mode the second day of flight, but to what end?? NASA decided NOT to go down that road... for the same reason that if a crew was hopelessly stranded on the Moon the radios would be turned off and the crew allowed to perish silently... Later! OL J R:)
@@lukestrawwalker The official report lists rescue via Atlantis as doable. They wouldn't have had to skip many of the tests, and Atlantis would have brought enough suits for everyone. Presumably, they would have thrown ropes across and just pulled them. They could have lived. And that whole spiel of trying to save them being bad press is sociopathic. Besides which, they shouldn't have been flying shuttles with all that foam shedding and no plan for rescue. This is entirely NASA's fuck-up.
The really sad thing is that they preemptively scrubbed on Sunday, with a forecast at launch time of rain, wind and storms. Unfortunately, a secondary low pressure center formed on the front and slowed its progress south. Weather at launch time Sunday: Sunny with temperature in the 70s.
Hmmm.. I get it.. but I believe eventually this would have taken down a subsequent shuttle launch with the same results. It just got moved up to 1986 from 1996 let's say.. and who knows what else. It led to a severe reshaping of the safety culture at Nasa.. at least for awhile...
@@silasmarner7586 Yes... it wouldn't have taken that long either... NASA was taking a lot of wild chances and were basically ignoring everything in a desperate attempt to "prove" the shuttle could fly 25 times a year... the most they ever accomplished in a 12 month period was 9 flights IIRC in 1985... and there had been "near misses" then and it was totally unsustainable, let alone surpassable to get to 25 flights a year. Later! OL J R :)
All in all quite infuriating , to put these human lives at the peak of their carreer at risk and essentially signed their death warrant for allowing the shuttle to take flight knowing there was a major fault . I mean yes its is essensially strapping people to a fireworks rocket but the acceptable risk should always as low as possible.
Ms. Ride looked like she wanted to throttle that Mulloy guy. 'em 'r' daggers comin' outta her eyes. And rightfully so.... And I wouldn't have blamed Armstrong if he jumped over the tables and decked him. He has enough standing in the world stage where I suspect people would have understood.
Yeah I wonder if they knew they were basically there to do a "whitewash job" to protect NASA from political fallout from the investigation... It wouldn't be the first time astronauts went to bat for NASA and the program in the wake of a fatal disaster (as they did following the Apollo 1 fire). Thank goodness for Roger Boisjoly and the other whistleblowers that prevented it all from being swept under the rug and NASA's MISmanagement being lost in the fog of the "technical cause" of the disaster... It SHOULD have made them furious as astronauts who'd put their trust in NASA and its managers and put their own @sses on the line believing that NASA management "had their back" and wouldn't put them at unnecessary risk, even if they weren't flying anymore and wouldn't be, but knowing other astronauts would be putting their @sses on the line for a bunch of desk jockeys playing politics to gamble with "for the good of the program" rather than "safety first" over "accomplish the mission". The only ones that TRULY seemed PO'd about it was Robert Hotz and Richard Feynman... Oh you could tell that Ride and Armstrong weren't happy, but I have a feeling they'd "go along to get along" "for the good of the program" which is why they were chosen... Rogers seemed more PO'd that whistleblowers were making his whitewash job harder than it had to be than about the shuttle blowing up and the blatant mismanagement... Once it was in the press though he couldn't just steamroll it, which was a good thing, for what good it ultimately did... certainly the facts coming out didn't save the Columbia crew from the same flawed decision making... Later! OL J R :)
@@lukestrawwalker I think you may be doing Ride a disservice. I seem to remember Gen Kutyna confirmed that Dr Ride had been an essential inside source of info being hidden from the Commission or at least some of its members. He only confirmed it after she died in 2012, having promised her not to reveal the facts until after her death. She apparently was VERY pissed with what the bureaucrats had done and then almost got away with. Supposedly quite a few astronauts were appalled. Then you get Columbia, which revealed just how little NASA apparently learned from Challenger. She served on that investigation, too. Cheers
@@steeltrap3800 maybe so, I hadn't read that.. thanks! You would think so, after all astronauts have to trust that the folks behind the scenes are fundamentally doing the right thing and looking out for their lives first and foremost... Because there's SO many things to go wrong and they can't be everywhere and know everything. We do know that the team failed them on three very visible occasions... Later! OL J R
@@lukestrawwalker I think you've understood and expressed very well exactly what I've seen written her attitude was about this and Columbia, and also why I posted it. Have a great New Year.. Cheers
@@steeltrap3800 Thanks. I appreciate your additional insight into the situation including the stuff kept quiet until after Sally Ride's passing. Historically when faced with disaster or extreme difficulties (like after the Apollo 1 fire, Challenger, and Columbia disasters) NASA tends to "go back to it's military roots" and responds as they would, "circling the wagons" against outside attacks, and presenting a "united front" against external threats/criticism. Everyone, astronauts included, are *expected* to be "good little soldiers" and go along with the "company line" and present this united front to those outside the agency, be the governmental, media, or the public at large. NASA, being a governmental agency, doesn't like to air its dirty laundry in public, and doesn't like to be made to look foolish or inept or by extension from foolishness or ineptness by its managers or contractors. NASA will do what's best for NASA, that can be counted upon. If it means covering for a contractor, it will, if it can; if it means exposing a contractor and reprimanding it, it will, if it must to keep NASA itself out of as much trouble as possible. It's basically how ALL governmental and even nongovernmental institutions tend to react, so basic human nature. The astronauts were NOT happy about the state of affairs within the Apollo program, the "go fever" and the fact safety was taking a back seat to timelines before the Apollo 1 fire, but they were basically "helpless" to stop it and the knew it. Even Gus Grissom didn't give his crew more than a 50% chance of surviving the mission, and he expressed that to other astronauts and said he'd quit the mission if he could, BUT if he did it would mean the END of his NASA career, and he'd be disgraced. SO he went ahead and paid the ultimate price. After the fire, NASA "circled the wagons" and the astronauts, despite being appalled at the situation, closed ranks and did as they were expected, and presented that united front against critics both in and out of government. Frank Borman, who was arguably the most appalled at the situation, presented the best face of all for NASA and the astronaut corps during the post Apollo 1 Congressional hearings, nobly arguing for the continuation of the program and "letting them get back to work" to fix the problem, correct the deficiencies, and get back on track. Whatever his criticisms (and the other astronauts) of the "go fever" and the timelines or way the program was being conducted, they were only presented within NASA and behind closed doors, safely out of the public, media, and overseeing government's view. It was much the same with Challenger and Columbia as well, just different people at different times, but the response was much the same. NASA learned the lessons well after Apollo 1, took a deep introspective look at itself and how it was conducting the program, and made the appropriate changes in short order to get back on track. After Challenger the process seemed to have had less impact, at least long term... 21 years elapsed between Apollo 1 fire and Challenger, but only 17 between Challenger and Columbia. While the physical causes between Challenger and Columbia were different, many of the management failings and shortfalls were similar, just different people/organizations, etc. In a way Apollo 1 was quite similar as well... management desperate to stay on a schedule/budget despite mounting problems and a need to pause and reevaluate, solve problems and issues, then move forward again. I wonder if the mindset has changed some... look at the problem-plagued Boeing Starliner spacecraft, and the fact that not one but TWO of the astronauts first in line to fly it have stepped down and moved on... for whatever "reasons" they presented. It's unprecedented... BUT being privy to all the inside knowledge of the spacecraft and the program overseeing it, is it possible that they have decided "nah, not worth the risk" and decided to bow out? It's interesting to be sure! Probably won't know the full story for another 20 years or so at least LOL:) Later! OL J R :)
How could the astronauts be left out these last minute decisions! Or the risks with the launch, then spend 3 minutes in what must have been total terror waiting for the capsule to hit the ocean and die. This is Incomprehensible!!
Experts swear that the crew were rendered unconscious almost immediately after the blast by the sudden drop from 20gs of force from the explosion down to 4gs as the cabin area fell back to earth. Let’s just hope they were then they wouldn’t have known a thing about the plummet and the 200gs estimated force of smacking into the ocean. 😢 Had there been the technology to automatically deploy a chute from the cabin as it began to fall, they could’ve been alive today. Unlike Columbia, when they recovered the remains of Challenger, the crew cabin was found to have survived the blast relatively unscathed and intact. Further studies proved their bodies were also intact until they hit the water.
@@C21L01 Yet, we know that someone on the flight deck manually activated the emergency air packs. So someone on the flight deck was alive, and conscious, after the breakup.
You've got Larry Mulloy chattering away about "launch commit criteria" like he is ordering a sandwich. Completely stoic and sociopathic in his delivery with the backdrop that his call to override Morton Thiokol's engineers resulted in the ultimate decision that directly caused the deaths of seven astronauts. And then you have Jerry Mason who told Lund to "take off your engineering hat and put on your management hat". That was a threat. That threat was based on the underlying problem that Morton Thiokol had which was the cold reality that NASA was looking for another source for the SRB component. And I'm sorry that the loss of the Shuttle SRB contract would have resulted in layoffs in Utah. But all of the problems to date at the time were the result of bad engineering design. The engineers on staff finally discovered this with post launch analysis of the hardware mission after mission. So we hear terms like "blow-by" and "inconclusive" regarding whether temperature was a factor. If temperature was NOT a factor then the blow-by problem was caused by some other unknown factor. The first instance of blow-by was STS-2 in 1982. The program should have been stopped immediately right there. The engineers at Thiokol at that point should have been ordered to correct the problem then. To their credit, they were *finally* given not only the go-ahead but effectively were ordered to fix the problem. But it took the loss of seven lives to make this happen. I was a rookie engineer just three weeks into my career working at Digital when the Challenger disaster happened. Thirty-six years later (I suppose to my good luck) I have *never* been asked to sign-off on an unsafe design by any manager. If I had and my concerns had been ignored, I would have resigned.
In the Netflix documentary on Challenger, both Mulloy and Lucas state without reservation that they are entirely comfortable with their conduct in connection with the launch. Lucas states that launching that day was the correct decision and claims he'd make the same decision today if he were put in the same situation again. The sociopathy is truly breathtaking. He argues that these seven deaths were simply the price we pay for human achievement and scientific progress - as if the astronauts are just commodities, no different than the rocket fuel that gets burned up on each shuttle launch. Did anyone let any of the seven Challenger astronauts in on that philosophy? I doubt it - not one of them would have gone anywhere near Cape Canaveral if they'd known.
This is schocking through and through... knew from many documentaries that warnings were ignored but the amount of pushing, lying, downplaying and ignorance that can be seen here is on another level...
They would have used tablets in their ministry in those days - historical records show clearly that tablets were in use at that time. Although history does not say what OS they were using or what version.
And Boeing followed in their footsteps. A higher ranking, anamous of course, Boeing management official described their culture as 'run by monkeys and supervised by clowns'
Always remember Roger Boisjolly and Allan McDonald! They should've been given Gold Metals of Honour for their knowledge about the systems they were in charge of and to speak up when it mattered and for their integrity. These two men tried so hard to stop the launch of Challenger that day, knowing full well that it could end in disaster. But they were overruled by the idiots in charge at NASA and Morton Thiocol. The rest, a tragic history only to be repeated with the loss of Columbia due to the same incompetence of NASA.
Whether or not Challenger was part of the State of the Union Speech by Reagan , there was a smoking gun in whitehouse i believe that put tremendous pressure to launch it on the fateful day otherwise i can not understand the rational why they could not delay the launch to happen few days later when the temperature is usually ok in Florido even in winter time.
@@Olican71 Because NASA was desperate... the shuttle was already embarrassingly behind schedule, support and funding were waning, and NASA was desperate to "prove" the shuttle was the "cheap, easy, frequent space airliner" that they'd sold Congress and the public... when it was anything BUT that. Every scrub, every delay, rippled down the pipeline of future launches, so NASA was desperate to cut out the scrubs and get the thing off "on time" despite it already having suffered several scrubs, which only increased the pressure to launch. Later1 OL J R: )
The idea of saving money in this field is stupid, and almost criminal. If the cost is to high, just skip it. And if the budget is to low - say No! A side note: the Soviet Buran was an improved version of the shuttle with an escape pod!! That possibility seem to never have occured to NASA. Also, Buran didn't use foam and Soviet traditionally did more testing before using any rocket or shuttle before being used with Kosmonauts. Overconfidene and propaganda had it's cost after so many years with luck for NASA. (Not taking away anything from the great engineering).
Bro I had a pretty funny argument about whether or not the buran counted as a space shuttle. It was an Instagram post saying “comment your favorite shuttle” and this random guy said I couldn’t put that because it only flew once. We also went on about the boosters Energia and the Solid rocket boosters. He said Energia failed to put Polyus into orbit. I was like, Energia had nothing to with polyus after they separated. Polyus failed because Polyus had a glitch in its system.
It was launched one time with no one on it. Never used again. To say it was better than the American shuttle fleet based on one unmanned launch is kind of silly.
Buran had no "escape pod" it was quite similar in many ways to the US shuttle. What Buran DID have was LIQUID booster rockets that could be shut down in an emergency. Buran only flew once UNMANNED (and landed itself automatically to boot!) because the Soviets KNEW that the shuttle wasn't the "money saver" that NASA claimed when getting it built, and they were suspicious when the Air Force and NASA teamed up to build the shuttle. They directed their head of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Mystislav Keldysh, to determine WHY the US was building a shuttle. Upon analyzing the design, the Soviets figured out that the polar launches out of Vandenberg AFB in California could be used for a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union. A shuttle launching southwards from Vandenberg would jettison it's SRB's off the coast of Baja California, flying southwards and entering orbit over the south polar region, fly over the South Pole, and then northwards toward Soviet territory, it could then open its payload bay and launch a load of hydrogen bombs in reentry vehicles which would strike their western cities and leadership bunkers in mere minutes, and still have time to perform a deorbit burn, reenter over the north polar region and northern Canada, and fly down to a landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California 90 minutes after liftoff... this was a planned "mission mode" (the "once around" polar orbit flight the Air Force planned, to use the shuttle like some "super-SR-71 spy plane" or to capture or sabotage enemy spy sats using the shuttle. When the Soviet leadership heard that the shuttle could potentially be a nuclear first strike weapon, they determined that they had to build one of their own to maintain "strategic parity" with the US and thus build their own "Buran" orbiter using their existing "Energia HLV" launch vehicle. The Soviets had originally built the "Proton" launcher as a "super-heavy ICBM" in the 60's for the exact same role-- launcing a first strike on the US mainland by flying SOUTH over the pole instead of NORTH over the pole the way all our missile radars and launch detection satellites and sensors were pointed. They never deployed it as a missile but used it for a heavy space launcher instead... Now you know... OL J R :)
It’s important to note that Mr Cook’s opinion regarding Whitehouse involvement is widely discredited by and angers fellow whistleblower Boisjoly. Because there is ZERO corroboration for that theory on the part of fellow brave whistleblowers, my opinion is that Mr Cook’s assertions serve a personal agenda.
Challenger was an obvious example of political pressures overriding science, and I think it's naive to think there was no pressure from the White House on some level.
@@bonchbonch Then present your evidence of White House involvement. Like Adlai Stevenson, I'm prepared to wait until hell freezes over. The ins and outs of the decision to launch Challenger are well known, well documented, and well understood. Even the top level of NASA management was not involved, and the White House was not involved.
Mulloy has a reasonable point about the slippery slope of using on-the-fly criteria but it’s cowardly to not acknowledge what was known a long time before that. I appreciate that he was forthcoming in his flawed decision analysis. It’s good to understand how people rationalize their nonsense so you can see through it in time to do something about it.
I was amazed that as I was watching it I was seeing the psychology of it more so then the actual ABCD actions that were being taken in both trying to stop the launch by the lower management and analysts, for most importantly safety sake I.e. the lives of those 7 astronauts as the same psychology of the upper management and government not only proceed with the launch but to then, although it was ultimately futile, attempt to cover it up subsequent to the disaster. I couldn't agree more with Dr.Maier's closing. Every company needs to watch this and learn from this and implement courses of this type in their business so that if there is a problem the person that has the guts to say something doesn't wind up with a noose around their neck. I have such admiration for both Mr.Cook (even though out of fear he lied to his bosses),and Mr. Boisjoly for their courage,and steadfastness in the eyes of those who were out to silence them, and destroy their careers if they spoke up. They are true men,and truly American in my opinion. Excellent documentary Taralees husband -Brian
Being strangely drawn to this video, 2:20:50 begins words that I needed to hear. Nothing to do with the subject of the video, but the Professional advice the man had to say.
@@opiocorbin1419 I just finished reading "Challenger. A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space" by Adam Higginbotham. Here is a line from it, "Yet at the Rocketdyne plant in California and on the test stands of NASA’s Rocket Propulsion Test Complex in the swamps of southern Mississippi, one after another of the experimental engines caught fire, melted down, or exploded after only seconds of operation. To save money, the agency had opted to conduct “all - up testing." which meant that instead of conducting trials of individual components, they all had to be tested together as part of a complete engine, by firing the entire system - with often catastrophic result. The rocket team destroyed one unit after another, and soon began to run short of engines to test. The process was not cheap; each one cost at least $40 million." And from Wikipedia, "After each flight the engines would be removed from the orbiter and transferred to the Space Shuttle Main Engine Processing Facility (SSMEPF), where they would be inspected and refurbished in preparation for reuse on a subsequent flight. A total of 46 reusable RS-25 engines, each costing around US$40 million, were flown during the Space Shuttle program, with each new or overhauled engine entering the flight inventory requiring flight qualification on one of the test stands at Stennis Space Center prior to flight." I can't figure out if the $40 million is in today's dollars or yesteryear's dollars.
What is so crazy about this disaster is I worked for a company that tested gaskets/o-orings and there is such a clear difference between gaskets that work below freezing temperatures and "outdoor" freezing temperatures gaskets. All those engineers who didn't know this should be in jail. It is so well known among manufacturers who make both indoor and outdoor rated electrical enclosures. Outdoor rated o-rings and gaskets are so different than indoor (below freezing rated) gaskets.
So in effect, the Commission had NO INTENT of weeding out and getting to the bottom of what and why it happened. Their intent was to protect Reagan and NASA. Well, my respect for Chairman Rodgers has gone out the door. Were Armstrong and Ride in on it?
Maier had met Roger Boisjoly, a booster rocket engineer at Morton Thiokol, the company that supplied the rockets for the NASA shuttle program. Boisjoly had warned against launching the Challenger. The story Maier heard from Boisjoly prompted him to write and produce the video-based training module, “A Major Malfunction: The Story Behind the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster,” which has been used in more than 1,000 universities and organizations and in 23 countries since its release in 1992. The intent of what Maier considers a pedagogical documentary was to teach about leadership ethics and organizational transformation. “The video was intended to impact viewers in a visceral way in order to change organizations."
@Brent Nuckolls it has nothing to do with being a liberal or communist dumbass..it's called negligence when you have the knowledge about it not being safe to fly and still flying anyway costing 7 people their lives..you must be one of these new generation idiots who think you're smart but really you're unintelligent and uneducated..go learn something
This is the best documentary on Challenger that I've ever seen. One of the best documentaries I've seen, period. Is there a pdf or something that Dr. Maier has written that encapsulates lessons learned here? From an organizational and leadership perspective, this seems like a must study for anyone out there.
One of the few good outcomes of this disaster - the news learned to keep their mouths shut about criticizing launch schedule delays with NASA. What a foot-in-mouth moment for mainstream news!!
![BOLIVIA vs. COLOMBIA [1-0] | RESUMEN | ELIMINATORIAS SUDAMERICANAS | FECHA 9](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/zg15uVWjuf4/mqdefault.jpg)
What a great documentary and a total contrast to today's docutainment industry. No 5 minute program destroying introduction, no relentless repetition because the audience can't be trusted to remember anything after an ad break. Oh yeah and it's two and a half hours long, why? Because it needs to be to do the material justice.
@richadam 🦻you are 100% correct!
Peace-out 🌎 💞 Auradr California
"A Rush To Launch" is 50 minutes and succinctly covers these issues. I'm all for comprehensive coverage, and I don't have a problem with it being 2 and 1/2 hours. That being said, it didn't need to be as long, and there is needless repetition involved.
💯
i dont mean to be offtopic but does any of you know a trick to get back into an instagram account??
I was stupid lost my account password. I would appreciate any tricks you can give me.
@Valentino Anderson Instablaster ;)
Roger Boisjoly & Allan McDonald are the real MVPs in this WHOLE situation. Speaking up and OUT.
RIP McDonald & Boisjoly. Lawrence Mulloy also passed, 2014.
Someone should start the Roger Boisjoly & Allan McDonald Center for Ethics and Courage where they would teach those qualities and other noble behavior for people, especially to those in government and corporations.
Your da best bro
@@MegaSunsparkUnfortunately, that’s not something you can “teach”. Not in the manner for which those qualities are needed in government departments and organisations.
They are qualities that a person either has or they don’t have. There’s no grey area.
39:15 the fact that he wrote this activity report on the “seal problem task force” three months before the disaster is UNREAL.
sorry think lawrence mulloy has part to blame here
Documentaries were really done differently in the 1990s, less reliant on flashy effects and more focused on the essentials. Great stuff
And of course, a massive RIP to the wonderful crew ❤️
Everything was different in the 90 s, poeple were different, yes it was better
@@rafhan6136AMEN TO THAT!!
An engineer is not a salesperson. They are rarely management material. They don’t have an agenda other than to see something they have created perform it’s job. If an engineer ever tells you something is dangerous - you’d better damn believe them and take action. Because they are just being totally honest. This wasn’t an accident. It was arrogance. Those poor souls need not have died.
Absolutely, It was happened due to sheer negligence, they broke the bond they had with those astronauts which was to do every thing possible to ensure their safety and security. Very casual risk assessment by such an elite management. May the brave souls rest in peace.
@@azizraheel8671 absolutely my friend. They were warned enough times and chose to ignore those warnings.
well they should have demand it ontv before the launch instead of crying afterwards
@@keylara4135 she's gonna make a good engineer, for sure. that's from an senior engineer with more than 30 years experience.
NASA bureaucracy killed the Challenger and the brave astronauts. Management managed them to death.
This is an outstanding documentary on the loss of Challenger. Probably the best I have ever seen. I’ve participated in hundreds of flight readiness reviews in my FTE career and never have I encountered such a upside down logic…”prove that it is not safe” rather than “prove that it is safe” to fly. Roger Boisjoly stands out as a man of incredible integrity and courage. I also never realized that there may have been undue pressure from the Whitehouse to fly because of the State of the Union address the evening of the launch. Such a sad event on a human level and also from an organizational standpoint. Thank you for posting.
Nice video man
evidence of white house pressure ? I have not seen that.
a friggin glass of ice water would have proved it.
I appreciate the in depth of this documentary. Actually I love it. Seeing the management squirm under being questioned by a panel of folks wondering what happened.
Also the mentioning of prior launches with o-rings. The thing I love most about this is there's no ad interruptions so it's perfect to fall asleep to or it's perfect for background noise without the worry of advertisements.
How nice NASA ❤
I was 5 when this happened. My mother was one of the finalists from my state and 'almost' won the seat for the teachers slot. she was a few steps removed from being on that shuttle. I cannot fathom growing up without her and seeing these interviews. I'll keep those thoughts to myself. What a pointless tragedy. so absolutely heartbreaking.
I was a senior in high school and one of our teachers was also a finalist. I remember she took it really hard and I don’t blame her. I was actually a little more disturbed when the Columbia broke up. Good riddance to the shuttle program.
@@wallofrock6725 not the ship just the shit thats supposed to maintain it
well your lucky next time it cold be these maintance guys have no balls to say too there boss its not ready to fly see if any of them switch seats
Good video bro perfect video I love it man ❤ thank you
Call it fate and your mother along with everyone else on the list who wasn’t chosen were extremely fortunate.
Even Country & Western singer John Denver admitted to counting his blessings (because he too was in the shortlist of civilians chosen to go into space) for the rest of his life believing that had he not given up his place for the “teacher in space” program, he would’ve been on that ill-fated final flight of Challenger.
I’ll bet every other teacher on the shortlist who “missed out” did the same thing.
After the loss of Challenger, I’ve noticed until recently there have been No Civilians in space. Scientists and US/Allied Countries Military personnel ONLY. I say Allied Military because I know for a fact Andy Thomas was NOT American by birth. I also know of a few RAAF pilots who were offered jobs with NASA before the loss of Columbia.
This is by far the most comprehensive documentary on the Challenger disaster. The interviews included are very informative. Thank you very much for posting this!
I have read and viewed just about everything about this avoidable disaster. I hadn’t realized the degree NASA tried to cover their tracks and deflect blame until now.
Yep
NASA has history in that department !!!
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-27#:~:text=Upon%20landing%2C%20the%20magnitude%20of,one%20tile%20was%20missing%20altogether.&text=There%20was%20almost%20no%20damage,to%20return%20to%20Earth%20successfully.
they had to get the teacher up
They had to get military hardware up.. a lot of pressure from Ronny ray-gun.
That’s the transportation Industry though. From busses to space shuttles.
@@krakenwoodfloorservicemcma5975 You are a party pooper and must be just gobs of fun at a party
The first time I saw a grown-up cry was when I was sitting in class as a sixth grader and my teacher started to cry when the principal announced the explosion over the intercom. That was 35 years ago and I can still remember her face like it was yesterday.
I love this video ❤
I still remember watching it live and being completely shocked when it blew up. Shame on those that ignored the engineers advice which cost those astronauts lives.
I too saw it live. I turned on my (BETA) VCR to record the flight while I was making breakfast and came back to the TV just in time to watch the launch. I kept watching and saw the thing blow up, which I couldn't believe. I kept the VCR running for the next two hours I believe. It still haunts me to this day.
Shame on those that ignored the engineers advice that prevented christa mcauliffe from giving the planned 2 lessons.
7 people were killed and secondarily, loss of vehicle. But as I type this, sometimes a disaster has to reveal itself before action gets taken. It has widespread meaning what I'm referring to.@@sarahshulman2086
Funny that Allan McDonald was not interviewed for this program. He was one of the more outspoken critics of the launch decision and has never been shy about appearing in documentary programs regarding the disaster and even wrote a book about it. My guess is that because he was still employed by Morton Thiokol in 1992 that he was gagged and barred from participating.
Correct, he was part of the team to redesign the shuttle. After he retired, he then tells all about STS 51L. You can watch the documentary called A RUSH TO LAUNCH...Allan McDonald tells his side of the story .
I noticed he’s not on a few of these documentaries! He was in the Netflix Challenger story
Maybe because he'd already done so many documentaries that he was tired of doing them. Hes done at least 5 docimentaries lol
Thank you Good video
A tragic and unnecessary loss of 7 men and women, all due to Morton Thiokol *and* NASA management failing to listen to the engineers who knew it was a massive risk and high chance of Loss of Mission.
Excellent documentary and I commend the producers.
They listened...they just CHOSE to not heed warnings.
Anytime a president appointments a special commission to investigate an event you can just about guarantee it's to cover something up.
Yeah, just ask Kennedy family
Expert recommendation. "Rubber seals don't work below zero degrees". Launch temperature Minus 10 degrees. Management.. "Ok launch"
they had to get the teacher up - go fever
"Our engineers say don't launch".....NASA: "Ok don't listen to your engineers then."
@@CharlesVance The rubber doesn't work at low temperatures. And it is getting colder by the day. LETS LAUNCH!!
@@CharlesVance I am no engineer but i think the design of the SRB was shit to begin with. Lets contain all of this extremely high pressure gas with segmented sections that can flex and bend under the pressure
Why the heck did “management” hire capable engineers if they completely ignore their advice ? Idiots !!!
Thank you very much for all the effort you put into this. It is clear that they made a terrible mistake but what really makes it worse it was tha cover up and and the repercussions on the whistle blowers. A sad regrettable moment in the space program, paid with human lives, that we will never forget.
Yes…and they did the same exact thing with Columbia afterward. They knew for years about the foam impacting the orbiter. They looked the other way. They knew for years about the blowby. They liked the other way. Same result.
That's cool I love the video
For some strange reason I’ve been always touched deeply by this tragedy. I was 13 at the moment and being from Chile I could feel it as a “foreign accident”, but I felt it and still feel it like a “familiar tragedy”. First time I see this documentary. I’ve seen them all (or that’s what I thought) and it’s fantastic. Doesn’t go to the emotional side of the story, talking about crew’s families, but explain many of the dark sides of the (not) accident. Great!
sorry to tell you the financial settlement for the crew was miserly
I was working in a law firm on the 86th floor of Sears tower. When we heard about it, everyone from janitors to senior partners rushed into various conference rooms (killer views) to watch tv's. We couldn't believe it. God rest their souls.
Hella cool
Right on bruh
Human empathy doesn't have national borders, friend. Thank you for your comment.
I agree with the majority of comments,,, this is by far the best documentary of the challenger disaster that I've ever seen!! Very informative and interesting,,, rest in peace the crew of challenger!!!! Amen
Sounds like NASA has blood on their hands to me
What blood?
Yep... what's REALLY stupid is, they did the EXACT SAME THING AGAIN 17 years later with Columbia... gambled with astronaut's lives and LOST... The foam strike damage to the heat shield that doomed Columbia to break up and kill the crew on reentry wasn't a "bolt out of the blue" never seen before problem... they'd CHOSEN to fly with the risk for decades... and there had already been a number of "near misses" with shuttles returning with damage, even one with a hole burned through its belly, thankfully by dumb luck for that crew in an area which was "non critical" to the structural integrity of the vehicle... NASA *KNEW* it had a problem and chose to "work on it" while they continued flying-- after all, nothing bad HAD happened, so they assumed nothing bad WOULD happen, until it did and they had another 7 dead astronauts. All because of "the needs of the program" led management to take bad risks based on faulty assumptions.
BUT during the Columbia stand-down when they finally figured out that there really was NO real "fix" for the foam problem, that it was just a risk predicated by the very design of the shuttle that COULD NOT be designed out, only "worked around" it FINALLY laid bare the technological problems of the shuttle and the fact it was an aging 40 year old design that needed either billions in upgrades to continue flying indefinitely (at considerable risk of another loss of vehicle to an inevitable foam strike) or retirement and replacement by "something else". Hence they decided, rightfully so, to retire the shuttle and replace it with "something else". Later! OL J R :)
Obviously. Their complacency and negligence led to the deaths of 14 shuttle astronauts. Both accidents very avoidable if they were more determined to always put safety first. But too often money and timing took priority.
And additional blood on their hands for the astronauts of the Columbia disaster, whose lives were also lost a few years later.
They could have been saved , which had been proven by the present situation of present astronauts having to remain in the international space station for 8 months after being unable to return to earth in their original space module.
Thank you for uploading this, its very educational in many areas. Its the best doco ive seen on this!
One of the best documentaries ever!! This should have been shown to high school and college students back in the day. So many people who remember this tragedy don't know the real truth behind it all. How sad.
There are several people that are criminally negligent here. There should’ve been people doing some major prison time.
Yes,starting with Ronald Reagan.
The more I learn about this having seen it just in after it happened 37 years ago, I actually can’t believe some of these no good bast-ds didn’t get prosecuted. These guys were absolute scumbags all running and hiding like weasels.
Simply fantastic! This is how you tell a story!
This was a terrible tragedy and I remember it like it was yesterday. This disaster could have been avoided had Mr Boisjoly and Mr MacDonald’s warnings were taken seriously. When government bureaucracy gets to big for it’s britches we are left with failed accountability. Government bureaucrats very rarely are held accountable for anything they screw up.
when did this aire in 1994? March?
Whenever/wherever politics weighs heavily, we should ALWAYS proceed with caution. In the information age, most have come to realize that politicians(democrat, republican...whatever) are not to be trusted.
Wrong. There was only one man responsible for this: Larry Mulloy. And why did he push for the launch? To make Mr. Small Government himself Ronald Reagan happy.
The Challenger Disaster is a day I will never forget. Thanks for giving a detailed explanation. May they Rest In Peace. A horrible potentially avoidable catastrophe.
This should be a required watch for all engineers and engineering managers. Fantastic presentation. Thank you very much for posting this.
Very informative. Bad decisions can lead to bad outcomes. Very sad day.
Kool video what a nice video ❤❤😂
It all comes down to..."Oh wow, we screwed up and now let's circle the wagons and lie to cover our asses. Deny all and blame anyone but yourself."
Just like today's WH
Well done. Wow. Best 2.5 hours I have spent on the subject.
Best Challenger documentary ever made.
Once slight correction: The moon landings were more than just one of the supreme achievements of our time. They were one of the supreme achievements of human history, and always will be, no matter what comes after them.
A very good presentation. Thank you for it.
I'll never forget witnessing the Challenger disaster on that terrible terrible day.
That your report emphasizes moral integrity is important and I appreciate it.
The Space Shuttle program is a great example of sunk cost fallacy: A great idea to make space flight routine at low cost. A craft that remained experimental and therefore dangerous. Was not cost effective, nor routine. But carried forward for 30 years because they were too far in to turn back when they probably should have done. The program should have been cancelled after Challenger.
Exactly
Yes, it should have been canceled at several points. I'll admit I have the benefit of hindsight, but some people definitely knew it at the time.
Science at its best and human nature at its worst, while nature is at a constant.
Thanks for upload.
Wow, thats a great way to put it.
For real man
in South Florida they rarely have a hard freeze. A hard freeze morning was the day NASA forced the launch of Challenger, a very unwise decision that disregarded the engineer's warnings and safety protocols for the crew. The average temperature at Cape Canaveral FL in early January is 71F high/54F low. The very next morning the temp was much warmer, all they needed to do is wait one more day- they knew that.
The issue was the teacher was scheduled to do her lesson to ll American classrooms on Friday. If they waited another day it would be Saturday and the kids wouldn’t be at school.
@@larsonwells2656 a poor reason. unfortunately, she did not give her lesson
@@larsonwells2656 They got a different lesson that day, a lesson about death. How traumatic. Blame Reagan.
You all missed the true reason why the launch had to be done that day. Simply put, it was the last chance to get the teacher up there before President Reagan hit the podium to deliver the State of the Union address that very evening. This was a huge PR project by NASA. Would'nt surprise me if there was a planned live phone call to the teacher in space during the State of the Union address that evening. It was all about politics and funding for NASA. They needed her up there desperately.
@@nickv4073 Thanks Nick, I knew it, well not exactly that. If they didn't launch that day and launched the next day, Teacher Christa's teaching lesson would have been too late. She was scheduled to be giving her space lesson on Friday, televised in hundreds of schools. a day later wasn't going to work.
Every person who gave the go ahead for launch should've been fired and charged with criminal negligence. That launch should've never happend, and 7 good people paid with their lives.
Grace Corrigan, Christa McCauliffe's mother spoke with her daughter by phone in the early evening of the 27th. Christa told her mother that the crew had received word that they would be launching the next morning of the 28th "no matter what".
I’m sure that was just an expression. NASA has always been very careful, and this was something that was a one in a million occurrence
@@deoglemnaco7025 No, it wasn't a one in a million occurrence. Columbia was destroyed on reentry 17 years later for the very same reasons as Challenger was destroyed - a problem that NASA had known about for years, but failed to correct and which engineers had attempted to bring to upper management's attention without success. In both cases, the management structure at NASA deemphasized safety resulting in the needless loss of astronaut lives. The shuttle program ended as a direct result result of this second accident.
@@invernessity well maybe not one in a million but certainly rare. Since we started space flight it’s been 60 years! Which is like 22k days. And on only two of those has America ever lost people in flight. Very very low odds
that supposed mcCauliffe quote is made up and debunked.
@@deoglemnaco7025 That's bullsh!t... did you even watch the video??
I'd read that basically Dick Scobee, as commander, and Mike Smith, as pilot, since they were the two senior members of the crew with the most intimate knowledge of the shuttle and its systems and launch parameters, had an impromptu meeting with the other crew members that night and told them there was very little chance they would be launching the next morning (the 28th) because of the cold/weather, and they should expect another scrub. They were pretty well shocked and amazed when word came down in the predawn hours that they were going to suit up and board the vehicle for launch...
Of course they didn't know about the O-ring issue, but given the delicacy of the shuttle heat shield tiles and the necessity of the sound-suppression water flood at the pad to a safe liftoff without damaging the shuttle from the acoustics, they naturally presumed that the launch would be scrubbed. When even Rocco Petrone (an old Apollo veteran manager who was working for North American, the shuttle builder) said "don't launch" well there's your sign... NASA management had decided to "launch regardless" of what its contractor engineers most familiar with the system said, despite their opposition.
That's the whole point! OL J R :)
I feel so bad for the millions of Elementary School students who were no doubt traumatized by watching this horrific tragedy unfold Live.
I’m one of those kids. The above statement is 1000% true.
Crazy video
Also, the pressure transducers on the External Tank were not rates for the low temps, so a waiver was written for the flight.
This should be shown at all corporate conferences dealing with institutional culture and its effects on decision-making. In other words, how to set your priorities straight.
This is stupid. Delete it
Not when it gets in the way of record profits!!! LOL:) So goes the thinking anyway... OL J R :)
Wow! A documentary that does a splendid job of actually documenting something. How can those powers that were live with their actions?
Brilliant, fascinating-highly recommended
1:27:05 Sally Ride seems quite disgusted/angry. I bet she's thinking, "I put my life in the hands of these yo-yos?!"
I missed that first time around. The silent blinks and set jaw at 1:27:18 after she hears the answer…rage. Thanks for pointing that out.
This is what happens when management types see Billion dollar contracts on the line.
Holy shit that was pure anger
To proceed with an event when it is known that there Is the potential for catastrophic failure,is nothing short of murder.
As a mechanical engineer with many years North Sea oil and gas industry experience,specialising in Subsea pressure containment and flow control systems,elastomers(o rings) play a vital role in pressure containing/retainment areas,for example,blow out preventers,on such equipment the o rings used in their assembly are subjected to extensive testing and inspection,on average a B.O.P is designed to retain 50,000 psi ( operating pressure) and are subjected to hydrostatic pressure testing to 75,000 psi (test and design pressure),during such testing the equipment is subjected to 75,000 psi for 15 minutes(primary test pressure),the pressure is then relieved and taken back up to 75,000 psi for a further 15 - 30 minutes.If the equipment should demonstrate failure during either test phase,the first item examined is usually the elastomers in pressure containment areas,it is quite possible for an elastomer which has passed initial inspection,which includes shore hardness testing,verification of the date of manufacture and lifespan of the elastomer to fail during testing,in such instances,the elastomer will be regarded as being insufficient and new design ,chemical and mechanical composition/properties will generally be specified for future elastomers to be used in such an application,what should never happen is for engineering recommendations to be overruled by non engineering personnel regardless of any cost or specified completion date overruns.Of course this will happen on occasion unfortunately as in the case of the macondo well B.O.P failure.But in the majority of cases engineering recommendations are adopted.
Excellent assessment. I am a humble, domestic plumber and work with double O ring fittings rarely exceeding 2.5 bar / 36 psi and still find it incredible. You are working on kit rated 2000 times the pressure. Goodness knows the loads on those SRB seals.
Such complacency should have involved life sentences for those disregarding and overruling the engineers.
And then the NASA idiots turned around and smugly said... "Well PROVE it will fail..and you guys can't do that. nah nah na nah nah".
Every manned spacecraft, is fundamentally experimental, and risky. There were so many compromises in the final design of the shuttle. Combine that with very poor decision making, and there is the disaster.
Maybe, but a vehicle with no crew escape system is one hell of a lot more risky that one that has one.
Probably why SpaceX returned to a capsule, albeit a very advanced one. It's just a very robust shape. To come back from orbit with wings will always be a little ify and solid rockets are just bad on a manned flight.
Well, let’s see now. 135 flights vs 2 failures. That’s a 1,4% failure rate. Given the “risk”, I’d say those odds where great and the only significant factor in the loss of both orbiters is HUMAN failure, not technical ones.
Remember vividly watching this live in New Zealand. It was surreal and so sad.
1:33:51 Rockwell's caution against launching because of ice on the pad was relayed by a guy named Glaysher.
That's funny.
When the IRL username checks out.
Yup... which wasn't listened to anyway. Go figure...
The ice was a concern because of the extraordinary fragility of the shuttle heat shield tiles... they're not hard like bathroom tiles, they're basically about the same strength as styrofoam... I've handled them and you can easily dig a trench in one with a fingernail or crush your fingerprints into one with a firm squeeze... they're about the same strength and consistency as that freeze dried "astronaut ice cream" you can get at the NASA visitor centers... or a sheet of styrofoam. That's why the shuttle had such strong launch constraints-- even flying through a rainstorm would beat the heat shield all to h3ll, as raindrops impacting the tiles at speed would be like BB's from a BB gun hitting foam! The ET was covered in foam because, unlike the Apollo Saturn V launches where a virtual BLIZZARD of ice and frost was shaken loose and allowed to rain down at liftoff, the Shuttle would have its heat shield SHREDDED by all that frost and ice at liftoff, hence the tank was insulated with spray-on foam to minimize/prevent the formation of frost/ice before launch.
Course when you have an ICE STORM the night before and everything is coated in ice from frozen precipitation, well, the foam isn't going to stop that since it's already there!
When even North American, who build the orbiters and serviced the heat shields was telling them to not launch, well, that tells you something. They were d@mned and determined to launch that vehicle NO MATTER WHAT and they thought their luck would hold and they'd get away with it... after all they'd had plenty of warnings from prior missions, but NOTHING BAD HAD HAPPENED, so they ASSUMED *nothing bad COULD happen*. They were wrong.
The foam designed to protect the heat shield would go on to cause the destruction of Columbia 17 years later... a basically "unfixable" problem inherent in the design... Later! OL J R :)
You don't have to be a Rocket scientist to know that it was not a good idea to launch!!!!!
This reminds me of the Far Side comic strip. The one that said, with a bunch of NASA guys... "Bill? this IS ROCKET SCIENCE"
Best find of the year 2023 so far, what a great piece of history.
Two interesting space shuttle disaster facts. Their was no need to split the srb into sections this was done only to make transport from thiakol easier, because Thiakol were so far from Florida they could only transported by rail. Alternative contractor designs didn't need to split the srb creating the field joint problem. For Columbia NASA changed the type of foam used to cover the external tank to a CFC free type which was kinder to the environment but had a much higher tendency to break off. For every disaster their are always multiple causes.
That brings up another old engineering adage: "You can't do just one thing." There are always side effects and secondary consequences.
They all reflect the impunity and ignorance of non expert executives. It happened again with Boeing and the Max.
The problems with foam strikes from the main fuel tank on the Space Shuttle had been problematic for the entire history of the Shuttle programme and had very little to do with the replacement of CFC's in 1995. In fact even after 1995 up to the completion of the Space Shuttle programme in 2011, foam containing CFC's had been continuously used on critical areas of the main fuel tank on the Space Shuttle.
The very first Space Shuttle, Colombia's STS 1 mission the Crew, Pilot, Robert Crippen and Shuttle Commander, John Young, noticed white material streaming past the windows on the orbiter during the orbiter external tank flight, crew estimated sizes of between a quarter of an inch to first sized pieces.
Post - landing report describes probable foam loss of unknown location and over 300 tiles on the Space Shuttle needing outright replacement due to various causes. So foam impacts from the main fuel tank striking the Orbiter and damaging the heat shield had been happening from day 1 of the programme and were well known about by NASA's engineers.
The Shuttles solid rocket boosters were also problematic from day 1 . In fact NASA were warned about the dangers and unreliability of using solid rocket boosters on the Shuttle as far back as 1977, a full eight years before the Challenger disaster.
The Space Shuttle was the first manned space vehicle in the world to use solid rocket boosters as a means of providing primary thrust at liftoff.
The main reason they needed expansion joints in them in the first place is because the company who was awarded the contract to supply the SRB's to NASA was Morton Thiokol, of Brigham City Utah, which is 2,300 miles from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, and when fully assembled are just short of 150 feet long. which means they had to be manufactured in sections , 7 in total, in order to be transported to the Cape for assembly requiring expansion Joints and each joint represents a potential weakness.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_external_tank
www.tsgc.utexas.edu/archive/general/ethics/boosters.html
ruclips.net/video/Ja4ZlswGvpE/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/XLOCQw5s9Uw/видео.html
You could tell Neil Armstrong was truly uncomfortable with the commission and pretty upset too!
The real sad part here..Despite the internal engineering flaws..if they just waited a few more days (for the weather to warm up) the rocket would have worked. They could have just made a "weather" announcement and waited a few days. Of course then it would have been February and they would have missed the NASA goal.
Meaning "missed the "state of the union" speech
@@peterpan9988 C'mon man, don't try and deflect blame for NASA...they were fraught with budget over-runs, delays, losing public interest and support, and even being mocked by the media for these problems. NASA arrogance and disregard for expert opinions caused this tragedy. Read it in the Rogers report for yourself.
"...if they just waited a few more days (for the weather to warm up) the rocket would have worked."
And they would have "gotten away with it" again, and the fundamental problem would remain.
Well, they were on a course for disaster anyway. NASA had grown complacent about safety and were taking LONG chances well before Challenger... had it not blown up in January the odds were it or another shuttle would have blown up within a year or two anyway. The problem was still there, it was still on a 'slow burn' to getting fixed, and there were a LOT of other chances NASA and the Air Force were taking or planning to take with the shuttles. The next launch after Challenger was to be the first launch of a shuttle from the SLC-6 complex at Vandenberg AFB in California, into a polar orbit... this would have been firsts for the shuttle-- first launch from California and first polar orbital launch. Engineers had expressed serious doubts after the troubled over a billion dollar development program to build SLC-6, with some engineers convinced that the poor acoustic environment would fatally damage or even destroy a shuttle on liftoff. The shuttle program was also running full speed ahead on developing the "Shuttle Centaur" large liquid hydrogen upper stage for the shuttle, which would have been about like putting a bomb in the payload bay. Liquid hydrogen is notoriously difficult to handle and seal against leaks, and Centaur was a pressure-stabilized stage, meaning it relied on internal pressure to prevent it from collapsing and bursting open. Liquid hydrogen is SO cold air LIQUIFIES when it touches uninsulated surfaces touching the liquid hydrogen, creating LIQUID AIR which is 21% liquid oxygen, which is extremely volatile and can burst into flame if it contacts grease or oil or anything flammable, basically. Shuttle Centaur was SO heavy that the shuttle could NOT land with it fully fueled in an abort, which meant they had to install a complicated fuel dump system into the shuttles to dump the volatile fuels overboard in an emergency to allow the shuttle to land, adding MORE complexity to an already impossibly ambitious abort procedure which had to go PERFECTLY for the crew not to perish... SLC-6 would never have a shuttle flight post-Challenger and Shuttle Centaur would be scrapped after Challenger... and yet STILL sufficient problems existed with the shuttle to doom the Columbia and her crew 17 years later... OL J R :)
Dude,don't write a damn book.
I've been watching documentaries about this disaster for years, but only when I watched this documentary did I realize that they were lucky that the Challenger didn't simply blow up right there on the launch pad at the moment of ignition. No wonder the NASA launch team breathed a sigh of relief when the shuttle made it off the launch pad seemingly in one piece. They really thought they were in the clear from then on in. SMDH...RIP to the crew, who should still be alive and with us today (especially Christa McAuliffe).
One of the better videos of the accident.
Molloy should have gone to jail for 7counts of murder
@@ubirdmanmike2108 They are people who say all this was faked. All done in a studio at Area 51.
@@ryancool-pq5vu Yes, there are such people. They are usually referred to as "ignorant fools".
Accident?
In my book that is calculated manslaughter...
This is a great documentary. I learned new information here that I didn't know before. Larry Mulloy and the entire NASA and Morton Thiokol managements belong in prison charged with mass murder. They knowingly and willfully proceeded to launch the shuttle against expert opinion of the engineers who knew best whether it was safe or not. The NASA managers asked the engineers to prove that the O rings would fail. How do you prove something like that other than present them with known data, logic and reason? It's like asking someone to prove that you will be killed if you jump off of a tall building. I guess in retrospect the engineers did prove it, didn't they?
The engineers had an empriical data point demonstrating failure.
I couldnt believe the managers were sticking to their guns under questioning by the commision. They came across as morons.
I have clients who pull the old line, it has worked before. I simply tell them, it does not meet code and is therefore unsafe. You are free to use the part without my reccomendation but, it wont have my PE stamp on it.
Ronald Reagan,too.
Certainly the upper management warranted both civil and criminal liability as the evidence is clear that they are responsible. Knowing this they intimidated those who couldn’t afford to lose their jobs and fired those who did.
Its DISGUSTING failure of protocol and just about FKN egos and like always NO accountabilities.
This is how the gubmint works... remember that when you take their "perfectly safe" arm jab... OL J R :)
M M - Thanks for the upload. It contains many parts of the Board hearings that people need to see. One thing: Next time don't upload an older video into a 16:9 format. In the interviews it squishes everyone's head and is annoying. People can still deal with black bars on each side of the video feed.
Go fuck yourself
@@stephenlovering8866 damn! Lol. He was just trying to give the uploader some advice 😂
The backup o rings were never supposed to have any damage. They did. Right there was...........stop flying. But they did not. But, as a pilot myself, I would have flown on the Shuttle........happily. Especially after the fixes after the Columbia accident.
Essentially both NASA and Morton Thiokol knew 150 % that the O-rings would fails & the seal become leaky. However, even a reclassification of the O-rings into the highest risk category AND stating that their failure would cost the entire mission and the lives of the crew did not change a thing & work progresses as before. In my legal understanding this amounts to manslaughter, proved by the subsequent explosion and loss of the crew. Essentially the crew was cannon fodder, post-humously glorified into heroes.
The same applies to the later burn-up of another shuttle due to wing damage caused by a piece of foam during lift-off. The crew could have been saved by a. Close inspection of the damage in orbit, and b. By sensing up a rescue mission to retrieve the crew. Alas, hubris prevented both of this, the crew tried to land as normal, and disappeared in a fireball.
14 lives lost without any need - can anyone reasonably explain why this had to happen ?
There was no possibility of rescue for Columbia-- totally wrong orbit and it wasn't equipped to dock with ISS anyway; the Columbia as the oldest flying shuttle was too heavy and thus not modified to dock with ISS which is why it had basically been sidelined during the ISS phase, except for this one "non-ISS" mission to "clear the books" of a lot of unflown stuff that had piled up. It flew to a low-inclination orbit closer to the equator not the high-inclination orbit of ISS (28.5 degrees versus 51.6 degrees for ISS) so there was NO WAY for Columbia to get to ISS at ANY rate. Even *IF* they had photographed the Columbia with the Keck Telescope in Hawaii or with an NSA spy satellite as the engineers wanted, that only gave them less than 2 weeks to get a rescue shuttle up there, and that wasn't enough time. Even speeding up the flow of the next shuttle launch to basically ignoring ALL safety precautions to launch a rescue would have taken a minimum 3 weeks to a month. Columbia only had like 2 space suits aboard IIRC which couldn't have served 7 people. They had no Canadarm on the shuttle or means to perform a repair EVA or even an inspection of the vehicle. Some "ad-hoc" suggestions to perform an inspection would have required someone to suit up and go outside the shuttle, be essentially dropped in orbit floating free (they had no MMU either) and then the orbiter "fly around them" or up to them close enough for them to actually attempt to do anything, which without hand and foot holds would have beena fools errand. The odds of getting an untethered astronaut back when the shuttle would have to maneuver around them and scoop them up wasn't good either. About the only "fix" they could possibly have done was perhaps cram a tool bag filled with water frozen solid into the damaged wing leading edge and hope that it stayed put and actually help up and deflected the heat long enough to survive reentry.
IOW, Columbia was doomed the moment it entered orbit after launch. Linda Ham and the other shuttle managers, faced with the prospects of this, decided to "hope and pray' that the shuttle would come back fine, rather than have some huge protracted drama play out on TV like Apollo 13, as the astronauts huddled in the dark on a doomed shuttle in "survival mode" while NASA attempted some totally ineffectual means to recover them only to ultimately fail anyway... Can you imagine the bad press from heartfelt tearful families demanding something be done, risking blowing up another shuttle and a couple astronauts in some crazy half-baked launch attempt without the proper safety procedures, the tearful goodbyes between the families and crew broadcast all over the world, etc. over the 2 weeks between launch and the shuttle's expenditure of all its consumables FORCING it to return to Earth?? They *MIGHT* have could have held out for 3 weeks had they got into a "hunker down" mode the second day of flight, but to what end??
NASA decided NOT to go down that road... for the same reason that if a crew was hopelessly stranded on the Moon the radios would be turned off and the crew allowed to perish silently...
Later! OL J R:)
Good God bruh good night man
@@lukestrawwalker The official report lists rescue via Atlantis as doable. They wouldn't have had to skip many of the tests, and Atlantis would have brought enough suits for everyone. Presumably, they would have thrown ropes across and just pulled them. They could have lived. And that whole spiel of trying to save them being bad press is sociopathic.
Besides which, they shouldn't have been flying shuttles with all that foam shedding and no plan for rescue. This is entirely NASA's fuck-up.
Human stupidity and hubris.
The really sad thing is that they preemptively scrubbed on Sunday, with a forecast at launch time of rain, wind and storms. Unfortunately, a secondary low pressure center formed on the front and slowed its progress south.
Weather at launch time Sunday:
Sunny with temperature in the 70s.
Hmmm.. I get it.. but I believe eventually this would have taken down a subsequent shuttle launch with the same results. It just got moved up to 1986 from 1996 let's say.. and who knows what else. It led to a severe reshaping of the safety culture at Nasa.. at least for awhile...
@@silasmarner7586 Yes... it wouldn't have taken that long either... NASA was taking a lot of wild chances and were basically ignoring everything in a desperate attempt to "prove" the shuttle could fly 25 times a year... the most they ever accomplished in a 12 month period was 9 flights IIRC in 1985... and there had been "near misses" then and it was totally unsustainable, let alone surpassable to get to 25 flights a year.
Later! OL J R :)
All in all quite infuriating , to put these human lives at the peak of their carreer at risk and essentially signed their death warrant for allowing the shuttle to take flight knowing there was a major fault . I mean yes its is essensially strapping people to a fireworks rocket but the acceptable risk should always as low as possible.
Ms. Ride looked like she wanted to throttle that Mulloy guy. 'em 'r' daggers comin' outta her eyes. And rightfully so.... And I wouldn't have blamed Armstrong if he jumped over the tables and decked him. He has enough standing in the world stage where I suspect people would have understood.
Yeah I wonder if they knew they were basically there to do a "whitewash job" to protect NASA from political fallout from the investigation... It wouldn't be the first time astronauts went to bat for NASA and the program in the wake of a fatal disaster (as they did following the Apollo 1 fire). Thank goodness for Roger Boisjoly and the other whistleblowers that prevented it all from being swept under the rug and NASA's MISmanagement being lost in the fog of the "technical cause" of the disaster...
It SHOULD have made them furious as astronauts who'd put their trust in NASA and its managers and put their own @sses on the line believing that NASA management "had their back" and wouldn't put them at unnecessary risk, even if they weren't flying anymore and wouldn't be, but knowing other astronauts would be putting their @sses on the line for a bunch of desk jockeys playing politics to gamble with "for the good of the program" rather than "safety first" over "accomplish the mission".
The only ones that TRULY seemed PO'd about it was Robert Hotz and Richard Feynman... Oh you could tell that Ride and Armstrong weren't happy, but I have a feeling they'd "go along to get along" "for the good of the program" which is why they were chosen...
Rogers seemed more PO'd that whistleblowers were making his whitewash job harder than it had to be than about the shuttle blowing up and the blatant mismanagement... Once it was in the press though he couldn't just steamroll it, which was a good thing, for what good it ultimately did... certainly the facts coming out didn't save the Columbia crew from the same flawed decision making...
Later! OL J R :)
@@lukestrawwalker I think you may be doing Ride a disservice. I seem to remember Gen Kutyna confirmed that Dr Ride had been an essential inside source of info being hidden from the Commission or at least some of its members. He only confirmed it after she died in 2012, having promised her not to reveal the facts until after her death.
She apparently was VERY pissed with what the bureaucrats had done and then almost got away with. Supposedly quite a few astronauts were appalled.
Then you get Columbia, which revealed just how little NASA apparently learned from Challenger. She served on that investigation, too.
Cheers
@@steeltrap3800 maybe so, I hadn't read that.. thanks! You would think so, after all astronauts have to trust that the folks behind the scenes are fundamentally doing the right thing and looking out for their lives first and foremost... Because there's SO many things to go wrong and they can't be everywhere and know everything. We do know that the team failed them on three very visible occasions... Later! OL J R
@@lukestrawwalker I think you've understood and expressed very well exactly what I've seen written her attitude was about this and Columbia, and also why I posted it.
Have a great New Year..
Cheers
@@steeltrap3800 Thanks. I appreciate your additional insight into the situation including the stuff kept quiet until after Sally Ride's passing.
Historically when faced with disaster or extreme difficulties (like after the Apollo 1 fire, Challenger, and Columbia disasters) NASA tends to "go back to it's military roots" and responds as they would, "circling the wagons" against outside attacks, and presenting a "united front" against external threats/criticism. Everyone, astronauts included, are *expected* to be "good little soldiers" and go along with the "company line" and present this united front to those outside the agency, be the governmental, media, or the public at large. NASA, being a governmental agency, doesn't like to air its dirty laundry in public, and doesn't like to be made to look foolish or inept or by extension from foolishness or ineptness by its managers or contractors. NASA will do what's best for NASA, that can be counted upon. If it means covering for a contractor, it will, if it can; if it means exposing a contractor and reprimanding it, it will, if it must to keep NASA itself out of as much trouble as possible. It's basically how ALL governmental and even nongovernmental institutions tend to react, so basic human nature. The astronauts were NOT happy about the state of affairs within the Apollo program, the "go fever" and the fact safety was taking a back seat to timelines before the Apollo 1 fire, but they were basically "helpless" to stop it and the knew it. Even Gus Grissom didn't give his crew more than a 50% chance of surviving the mission, and he expressed that to other astronauts and said he'd quit the mission if he could, BUT if he did it would mean the END of his NASA career, and he'd be disgraced. SO he went ahead and paid the ultimate price. After the fire, NASA "circled the wagons" and the astronauts, despite being appalled at the situation, closed ranks and did as they were expected, and presented that united front against critics both in and out of government. Frank Borman, who was arguably the most appalled at the situation, presented the best face of all for NASA and the astronaut corps during the post Apollo 1 Congressional hearings, nobly arguing for the continuation of the program and "letting them get back to work" to fix the problem, correct the deficiencies, and get back on track. Whatever his criticisms (and the other astronauts) of the "go fever" and the timelines or way the program was being conducted, they were only presented within NASA and behind closed doors, safely out of the public, media, and overseeing government's view.
It was much the same with Challenger and Columbia as well, just different people at different times, but the response was much the same. NASA learned the lessons well after Apollo 1, took a deep introspective look at itself and how it was conducting the program, and made the appropriate changes in short order to get back on track. After Challenger the process seemed to have had less impact, at least long term... 21 years elapsed between Apollo 1 fire and Challenger, but only 17 between Challenger and Columbia. While the physical causes between Challenger and Columbia were different, many of the management failings and shortfalls were similar, just different people/organizations, etc. In a way Apollo 1 was quite similar as well... management desperate to stay on a schedule/budget despite mounting problems and a need to pause and reevaluate, solve problems and issues, then move forward again.
I wonder if the mindset has changed some... look at the problem-plagued Boeing Starliner spacecraft, and the fact that not one but TWO of the astronauts first in line to fly it have stepped down and moved on... for whatever "reasons" they presented. It's unprecedented... BUT being privy to all the inside knowledge of the spacecraft and the program overseeing it, is it possible that they have decided "nah, not worth the risk" and decided to bow out? It's interesting to be sure! Probably won't know the full story for another 20 years or so at least LOL:) Later! OL J R :)
How could the astronauts be left out these last minute decisions! Or the risks with the launch, then spend 3 minutes in what must have been total terror waiting for the capsule to hit the ocean and die. This is Incomprehensible!!
Experts swear that the crew were rendered unconscious almost immediately after the blast by the sudden drop from 20gs of force from the explosion down to 4gs as the cabin area fell back to earth.
Let’s just hope they were then they wouldn’t have known a thing about the plummet and the 200gs estimated force of smacking into the ocean. 😢
Had there been the technology to automatically deploy a chute from the cabin as it began to fall, they could’ve been alive today.
Unlike Columbia, when they recovered the remains of Challenger, the crew cabin was found to have survived the blast relatively unscathed and intact.
Further studies proved their bodies were also intact until they hit the water.
@@C21L01 Yet, we know that someone on the flight deck manually activated the emergency air packs. So someone on the flight deck was alive, and conscious, after the breakup.
1:54:03 "does your dog bite?" "no" "then what's your dog doing chomping on my leg?" "that's not my dog".
cool reference but i have no clue what it has to do with that timestamp
You've got Larry Mulloy chattering away about "launch commit criteria" like he is ordering a sandwich. Completely stoic and sociopathic in his delivery with the backdrop that his call to override Morton Thiokol's engineers resulted in the ultimate decision that directly caused the deaths of seven astronauts.
And then you have Jerry Mason who told Lund to "take off your engineering hat and put on your management hat". That was a threat. That threat was based on the underlying problem that Morton Thiokol had which was the cold reality that NASA was looking for another source for the SRB component. And I'm sorry that the loss of the Shuttle SRB contract would have resulted in layoffs in Utah. But all of the problems to date at the time were the result of bad engineering design. The engineers on staff finally discovered this with post launch analysis of the hardware mission after mission.
So we hear terms like "blow-by" and "inconclusive" regarding whether temperature was a factor. If temperature was NOT a factor then the blow-by problem was caused by some other unknown factor. The first instance of blow-by was STS-2 in 1982. The program should have been stopped immediately right there. The engineers at Thiokol at that point should have been ordered to correct the problem then.
To their credit, they were *finally* given not only the go-ahead but effectively were ordered to fix the problem. But it took the loss of seven lives to make this happen.
I was a rookie engineer just three weeks into my career working at Digital when the Challenger disaster happened. Thirty-six years later (I suppose to my good luck) I have *never* been asked to sign-off on an unsafe design by any manager. If I had and my concerns had been ignored, I would have resigned.
In the Netflix documentary on Challenger, both Mulloy and Lucas state without reservation that they are entirely comfortable with their conduct in connection with the launch. Lucas states that launching that day was the correct decision and claims he'd make the same decision today if he were put in the same situation again. The sociopathy is truly breathtaking. He argues that these seven deaths were simply the price we pay for human achievement and scientific progress - as if the astronauts are just commodities, no different than the rocket fuel that gets burned up on each shuttle launch. Did anyone let any of the seven Challenger astronauts in on that philosophy? I doubt it - not one of them would have gone anywhere near Cape Canaveral if they'd known.
I agree completely.
Thank you.
@@humanbeing2420 Mulloy and Lucas are the two guys who should have gone to jail.
So sad to see them so excited and proud only to die moments later. So disappointing what happened here...
I just can’t belive no one has been held accountable. Talk about one of americas biggest disappointments in the history of the United States
60 launches per year, to 2 launches per month, to 7 or 8 per year, at best.
The title of this says 1994, but when you watch the video, the credits at the end say it was made in 1992.
Q: How much warning did NASA need? A: None. They’d made up their minds well in advance of the disaster.
This is schocking through and through... knew from many documentaries that warnings were ignored but the amount of pushing, lying, downplaying and ignorance that can be seen here is on another level...
They would have used tablets in their ministry in those days - historical records show clearly that tablets were in use at that time. Although history does not say what OS they were using or what version.
That reception from the moon to Houston is better than my 4g mobile coverage..🤔
LOL they’re not even remotely close to being the same thing. It’s like comparing a tap in a faucet to the Niágara falls.
"A major malfunction" perfectly describes NASA.
Mission Control is located in Houston. When Challenger disintegrated...at the time they didn't know what happened until minutes later.
And the Government, of which NASA is part of.
And Boeing followed in their footsteps. A higher ranking, anamous of course, Boeing management official described their culture as 'run by monkeys and supervised by clowns'
@@BBT609 I knew what happened instantly and I was in 5th grade. They didn't have televisions in Houston?
Always remember Roger Boisjolly and Allan McDonald! They should've been given Gold Metals of Honour for their knowledge about the systems they were in charge of and to speak up when it mattered and for their integrity. These two men tried so hard to stop the launch of Challenger that day, knowing full well that it could end in disaster. But they were overruled by the idiots in charge at NASA and Morton Thiocol. The rest, a tragic history only to be repeated with the loss of Columbia due to the same incompetence of NASA.
The President was speaking that night and the space flight was going to be part of the speech ....... and things didn't go so well.
No it wasn't. That has been debunked time and time again.
Debunked. But thanks for that bullshit.
Whether or not Challenger was part of the State of the Union Speech by Reagan , there was a smoking gun in whitehouse i believe that put tremendous pressure to launch it on the fateful day otherwise i can not understand the rational why they could not delay the launch to happen few days later when the temperature is usually ok in Florido even in winter time.
@@Olican71 Because NASA was desperate... the shuttle was already embarrassingly behind schedule, support and funding were waning, and NASA was desperate to "prove" the shuttle was the "cheap, easy, frequent space airliner" that they'd sold Congress and the public... when it was anything BUT that. Every scrub, every delay, rippled down the pipeline of future launches, so NASA was desperate to cut out the scrubs and get the thing off "on time" despite it already having suffered several scrubs, which only increased the pressure to launch.
Later1 OL J R: )
He would have mentioned it had it been successful but there's no evidence he tried to overrule safety concerns or was aware of them
This is a great documentary on this event.
Fantastic documentary. I only wish it had more views.
The idea of saving money in this field is stupid, and almost criminal. If the cost is to high, just skip it. And if the budget is to low - say No! A side note: the Soviet Buran was an improved version of the shuttle with an escape pod!! That possibility seem to never have occured to NASA. Also, Buran didn't use foam and Soviet traditionally did more testing before using any rocket or shuttle before being used with Kosmonauts. Overconfidene and propaganda had it's cost after so many years with luck for NASA. (Not taking away anything from the great engineering).
Bro I had a pretty funny argument about whether or not the buran counted as a space shuttle. It was an Instagram post saying “comment your favorite shuttle” and this random guy said I couldn’t put that because it only flew once. We also went on about the boosters Energia and the Solid rocket boosters. He said Energia failed to put Polyus into orbit. I was like, Energia had nothing to with polyus after they separated. Polyus failed because Polyus had a glitch in its system.
@@1000roentgens
Buran was definitely a shuttle but I would argue not a reusable one.
It was launched one time with no one on it. Never used again. To say it was better than the American shuttle fleet based on one unmanned launch is kind of silly.
Buran had no "escape pod" it was quite similar in many ways to the US shuttle. What Buran DID have was LIQUID booster rockets that could be shut down in an emergency. Buran only flew once UNMANNED (and landed itself automatically to boot!) because the Soviets KNEW that the shuttle wasn't the "money saver" that NASA claimed when getting it built, and they were suspicious when the Air Force and NASA teamed up to build the shuttle. They directed their head of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Mystislav Keldysh, to determine WHY the US was building a shuttle. Upon analyzing the design, the Soviets figured out that the polar launches out of Vandenberg AFB in California could be used for a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union. A shuttle launching southwards from Vandenberg would jettison it's SRB's off the coast of Baja California, flying southwards and entering orbit over the south polar region, fly over the South Pole, and then northwards toward Soviet territory, it could then open its payload bay and launch a load of hydrogen bombs in reentry vehicles which would strike their western cities and leadership bunkers in mere minutes, and still have time to perform a deorbit burn, reenter over the north polar region and northern Canada, and fly down to a landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California 90 minutes after liftoff... this was a planned "mission mode" (the "once around" polar orbit flight the Air Force planned, to use the shuttle like some "super-SR-71 spy plane" or to capture or sabotage enemy spy sats using the shuttle. When the Soviet leadership heard that the shuttle could potentially be a nuclear first strike weapon, they determined that they had to build one of their own to maintain "strategic parity" with the US and thus build their own "Buran" orbiter using their existing "Energia HLV" launch vehicle. The Soviets had originally built the "Proton" launcher as a "super-heavy ICBM" in the 60's for the exact same role-- launcing a first strike on the US mainland by flying SOUTH over the pole instead of NORTH over the pole the way all our missile radars and launch detection satellites and sensors were pointed. They never deployed it as a missile but used it for a heavy space launcher instead...
Now you know... OL J R :)
🤍🤍🤍🤤
2:03:25 Essentially, Feynman was saying, "This isn't rocket science."
It’s important to note that Mr Cook’s opinion regarding Whitehouse involvement is widely discredited by and angers fellow whistleblower Boisjoly. Because there is ZERO corroboration for that theory on the part of fellow brave whistleblowers, my opinion is that Mr Cook’s assertions serve a personal agenda.
I was thinking that a lot of the time he was making assertions
Cook is a tool with a political agenda. He lied under questioning..
Challenger was an obvious example of political pressures overriding science, and I think it's naive to think there was no pressure from the White House on some level.
@@bonchbonch Then present your evidence of White House involvement. Like Adlai Stevenson, I'm prepared to wait until hell freezes over. The ins and outs of the decision to launch Challenger are well known, well documented, and well understood. Even the top level of NASA management was not involved, and the White House was not involved.
This is an Excellent documentary. Thank you for posting it.
Peace-out 🌎 💞 😌 Auradr California
Obviously, Boeing didn't learn from this lesson.
Ohhh good point!
Nope.
Mulloy has a reasonable point about the slippery slope of using on-the-fly criteria but it’s cowardly to not acknowledge what was known a long time before that. I appreciate that he was forthcoming in his flawed decision analysis. It’s good to understand how people rationalize their nonsense so you can see through it in time to do something about it.
Perfect video man dude
I was amazed that as I was watching it I was seeing the psychology of it more so then the actual ABCD actions that were being taken in both trying to stop the launch by the lower management and analysts, for most importantly safety sake I.e. the lives of those 7 astronauts as the same psychology of the upper management and government not only proceed with the launch but to then, although it was ultimately futile, attempt to cover it up subsequent to the disaster.
I couldn't agree more with Dr.Maier's closing.
Every company needs to watch this and learn from this and implement courses of this type in their business so that if there is a problem the person that has the guts to say something doesn't wind up with a noose around their neck. I have such admiration for both Mr.Cook (even though out of fear he lied to his bosses),and Mr. Boisjoly for their courage,and steadfastness in the eyes of those who were out to silence them, and destroy their careers if they spoke up. They are true men,and truly American in my opinion.
Excellent documentary
Taralees husband -Brian
Thanks for posting this documentary
Peace-out 🌎 💞 Auradr California
Being strangely drawn to this video, 2:20:50 begins words that I needed to hear. Nothing to do with the subject of the video, but the Professional advice the man had to say.
Amazing documentary.
Totally agree.
Exit, Voice, loyalty.
It's a systemic problem in any organization
I worked at Pratt and Whitney at the time , we made the space shuttle main engine. I watched the explosion from my office in Jupiter Florida.
How much is a main engine?
@@opiocorbin1419
I just finished reading "Challenger. A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space" by Adam Higginbotham. Here is a line from it,
"Yet at the Rocketdyne plant in California and on the test stands of NASA’s Rocket Propulsion Test Complex in the swamps of southern Mississippi, one after another of the experimental engines caught fire, melted down, or exploded after only seconds of operation. To save money, the agency had opted to conduct “all - up testing." which meant that instead of conducting trials of individual components, they all had to be tested together as part of a complete engine, by firing the entire system - with often catastrophic result. The rocket team destroyed one unit after another, and soon began to run short of engines to test. The process was not cheap; each one cost at least $40 million."
And from Wikipedia,
"After each flight the engines would be removed from the orbiter and transferred to the Space Shuttle Main Engine Processing Facility (SSMEPF), where they would be inspected and refurbished in preparation for reuse on a subsequent flight. A total of 46 reusable RS-25 engines, each costing around US$40 million, were flown during the Space Shuttle program, with each new or overhauled engine entering the flight inventory requiring flight qualification on one of the test stands at Stennis Space Center prior to flight."
I can't figure out if the $40 million is in today's dollars or yesteryear's dollars.
What is so crazy about this disaster is I worked for a company that tested gaskets/o-orings and there is such a clear difference between gaskets that work below freezing temperatures and "outdoor" freezing temperatures gaskets. All those engineers who didn't know this should be in jail. It is so well known among manufacturers who make both indoor and outdoor rated electrical enclosures. Outdoor rated o-rings and gaskets are so different than indoor (below freezing rated) gaskets.
So in effect, the Commission had NO INTENT of weeding out and getting to the bottom of what and why it happened. Their intent was to protect Reagan and NASA. Well, my respect for Chairman Rodgers has gone out the door. Were Armstrong and Ride in on it?
Maier had met Roger Boisjoly, a booster rocket engineer at Morton Thiokol, the company that supplied the rockets for the NASA shuttle program. Boisjoly had warned against launching the Challenger. The story Maier heard from Boisjoly prompted him to write and produce the video-based training module, “A Major Malfunction: The Story Behind the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster,” which has been used in more than 1,000 universities and organizations and in 23 countries since its release in 1992.
The intent of what Maier considers a pedagogical documentary was to teach about leadership ethics and organizational transformation. “The video was intended to impact viewers in a visceral way in order to change organizations."
Roger Boisjoly was a hero, no question. Pres. Reagan, William Rogers & Lawrence Mulloy should have been indicted.
what did reagan or rogers do??
@Brent Nuckolls it has nothing to do with being a liberal or communist dumbass..it's called negligence when you have the knowledge about it not being safe to fly and still flying anyway costing 7 people their lives..you must be one of these new generation idiots who think you're smart but really you're unintelligent and uneducated..go learn something
@@seancourt3492 Well he blaimed President Reagan for literally no reason.
@@seancourt3492 Reagan had no idea there was an issue with the orings that is on nasa
Rogers should have held NASA accountable. What a wuss.
This is the best documentary on Challenger that I've ever seen. One of the best documentaries I've seen, period. Is there a pdf or something that Dr. Maier has written that encapsulates lessons learned here? From an organizational and leadership perspective, this seems like a must study for anyone out there.
Dr. Maier?
Who are you referring to?
@@samdg1234 Read the credits.
For some reason William Graham is also in the movie First Strike about the MX missile.
Because Graham’s background is in military black ops before he went to NASA.
Best most chill narrator
Great documentary. I was 8 when it blew up. Watching it on tv, i knew it was too cold to launch. I live in Florida and it was horribly cold.
The Malfunction was the people letting the shuttle launch
One of the few good outcomes of this disaster - the news learned to keep their mouths shut about criticizing launch schedule delays with NASA. What a foot-in-mouth moment for mainstream news!!
wow what a brilliant documentary really one of the best i've ever seen.Kudos to the makers.
OK, who did it?
Not me! Not me! Not me! Not me!………