Q&A of the Day – Part 1 Challenger’s Tragedy - 40th Anniversary & NASA’s Technological Contributions
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Today’s entry: Hey Brian, love the show! What you said about Challenger and the space program was fascinating. I’d never heard the backstory to it. Also, I knew the space program brought about many technological advancements but didn’t realize the extent of it. Please do an analysis on this.
Bottom Line: You’re got it. So yes, Wednesday marked the 40th anniversary of the tragic Challenger flight which led to its explosion before our eyes. From those at the Cape, like President Reagan – to those of us who watched it on T.V., it was without a doubt one of those moments where you remember where you were when it happened.
The Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff from Kennedy Space Center, killing all seven crew members: Commander Francis Scobee, Pilot Michael J. Smith, Mission Specialists Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, and Ronald McNair, and Payload Specialists Gregory Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe – notably a schoolteacher. While it’s safe to say that just about all who were alive to witness the tragic event were aware that a schoolteacher trained with NASA’s astronauts for that mission, seemingly few were or are aware of the real “why” as to her being there.
Preceding the Challenger event in 1986, NASA had enjoyed two major catalysts that provided essentially all of the resources the scientists and engineers needed to accomplish the work they were seeking to achieve. The first was JFK’s outlined vision to “put a man on the moon”, in the space race with Russia – which gained an added boost from congress upon his assignation. The second massive catalyst was when NASA succeeded later that decade to “put a man on the moon”. The previously unthinkable success of the Apollo program following the moon landing opened the floodgates for congressional funding in the NASA program. The wave and momentum of that success extended from the late 60’s straight through the 70’s.
During that time NASA did have numerous operational successes that both furthered technical developments we all benefit from to this day, but nothing that came close to rising to the level of the moon landing. That began to become a problem for NASA because as a government agency, they were/are 100% reliant on funding allocated by Congress. Congressional Democrats, who controlled congress throughout the 70’s and 80’s, grew increasingly skeptical about continuing to fund NASA at the program’s desired levels. So, NASA needed something new to capture the American imagination once again.
By 1981, NASA thought they had their answer. The shuttle program. Reusable orbiters that would reduce costs and ramp up the speed and mission capabilities of NASA. And when they worked – it worked to once again capture the American imagination and helped to keep the funding flowing...for a time. While the initial shuttle launches were successful, what wasn’t, the expectation. When the shuttle program was launched, NASA said there would be up to 24 launches per year. The funding provided by Congress was what NASA had requested to achieve that capability.
However, while the launches that did take place were successful, what there weren’t, were many of them. Constant cost overruns and mechanical failures often delayed launches and significantly slowed the progress of the shuttle program. By the election year of 1984, only nine launches had taken place in total as opposed to the anticipated 60+ launches by that point.
Despite the setbacks President Reagan was a huge supporter of the space program and in conjunction with the NASA administrator had an idea to recapture the American imagination in a way that they felt would help ensure congressional funding for the shuttle program to continue.
An initiative was launched to send a non-astronaut into space to help illustrate the view of the possible, and specifically after a training program and competition took place, teacher Christa McAuliffe. At the same time the pressure was on NASA to increase productivity and to begin to deliver on expectations, and that did happen to a degree. While only 9 launches took place during the first three years of the shuttle program, 15 additional launches took place during the next two years (though it was still a number that trailed expectations considerably). The narrative grew that NASA had become unreliable and overly expensive. This only added pressure for the highly anticipated shuttle launch of Challenger in January of 1986 to go off as promised.
Notably, President Reagan was set to highlight the shuttle’s launch in his State of the Union Address scheduled for January 28th, believing he would be able to use the momentum of the high-profile launch to restore NASA’s image and to place maximum pressure on congress to continue funding the program.
For days nothing went according to plan. Between January 22nd and 27th three different launch attempts were scraped for unusually cold weather. The shuttle’s rocket booster O-rings had known vulnerabilities to temperatures below 53 degrees. The cold weather persisted at the Cape and on January 28th, the day Reagan was to deliver his State of the Union speech, the decision was made to move forward with the launch despite the temperature only checking in at 36 degrees. That decision proved to be fatal. It was later found though a congressional investigation (the Rogers Commission) that the “O” rings did indeed fail, and that NASA’s Challenger Manager Lawerence Mulloy ignored a warning from the “O” ring engineers asking to postpone the launch. The quote from Mulloy was “My God, Thiokol (manufacture), when do you want me to launch, next April”?
That day, instead of delivering his State of the Union speech, President Reagan postponed it, addressing the nation on the tragedy instead. So that’s the backstory.