Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster

Episode Date: February 21, 2023

On January 27, 1986, an event occurred that would be remembered by almost everyone alive at the time.  73 seconds into its flight, the Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed by a violent explosion, killing all seven astronauts on board.  In addition to being seared into the minds of those who witnessed the tragedy, the disaster forever changed how space flights were conducted.  Learn more about the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster, how it happened, and its aftermath on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/EverythingEverywhere Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On January 28, 1986, an event occurred that would be remembered by almost everyone alive at the time. 73 seconds into its flight, the Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed by a violent explosion, killing all seven astronauts on board. In addition to being seared into the minds of those who witnessed the tragedy, the event forever changed how space flights were conducted. Learn more about the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, how it happened, and its aftermath, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time

to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Space Shuttle Mission, STS 51L, was scheduled to be the 25th flight of a space shuttle, and the 10th flight of the Space Shuttle Challenger.

By 1986, space shuttle launches might not have been routine, but they also weren't special events anymore either. STS 51L was to be a special mission, however. It was scheduled to launch a satellite and make observations from space of Haley's Comet. Most importantly, the flight was to have the first teacher to be flown into space. On the behest of President Ronald Reagan in 1984,

NASA unveiled the Teacher in Space Project. The Teacher in Space Project was to be pretty straightforward. Find teachers who were not astronauts, but common civilians, send them to space, and when they return, they could then travel to classrooms to tell students about their experience. Over 11,000 teachers applied for the Teacher in Space Project. After several rounds of eliminations, the teachers selected to be the first in space was a high school social studies teacher from Concord, New Hampshire, by the name of Krista McAuliffe. McCullough was scheduled to teach two 15-minute lessons from space during the mission.

In addition to Krista McCullough, the other six astronauts were Commander Richard Scobie, pilot Michael Smith, mission specialist Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, and Judith Resnick, and payload specialist Gregory Jarvis. In the lead-up to the launch on January 28th, temperatures at Cape Canaveral were unusually low for Florida. The overnight temperatures before the launch dipped down to 18 degrees Fahrenheit or minus 8 degrees Celsius. The temperature at launch was 26 degrees Fahrenheit or minus 3 degrees Celsius.

It was going to be the coldest launch of a space shuttle flight in history. The shuttle took off at precisely 1138 a.m., with children watching at schools around the country because of the teacher and space project. Everything appeared to go fine for the first 73 seconds. However, at T-minus 73 seconds, a massive explosion was observed. A large fireball and cloud of smoke were apparent, as were the two trails of smoke left by the solid rocket boosters, which flew apart from each other in the shape of a Y. All telemetry and data streaming from the shuttle back to mission control instantly ceased. The spectators, including the family members of the crew, could do nothing but look on in horror as debris showered down from the sky. The space shuttle challenger disaster was a seminal event for everyone who can remember it.

I was a junior in high school at the time. I came out of history class when I heard people talking about the space shuttle in the hallway. A television was set up in one of the common areas for everyone to watch the news. Almost immediately, NASA sent out the two ships which were regularly used to recover the solid reusable rocket boosters which landed at sea. This time, however, they were sent out to recover debris. That evening, the president was scheduled to give his annual State of the Union address. For the first time in history, the speech was postponed. Instead, he gave a televised address to the nation.

The big question now was, what exactly happened? The first order of business was to recover as much of the spacecraft as possible. By the evening of the disaster, there were a dozen aircraft and eight ships searching for debris in the waters off the coast of Florida. Within a few days, the Navy was brought in to help with recovery efforts on the seafloor. The debris was scattered over an enormous area, and the debris which floated could be carried by currents over an even larger area. The recovery efforts took months. The priority for recovery were the solid rocket boosters and the crew compartment. The crew compartment was finally found on the seafloor on March 1st.

What they discovered is that the bodies of the crew were severely damaged when the crew compartment hit the water. During the recovery of the remains of the crew, the body of Gregory Jarvis actually floated away. It wasn't recovered until April 15th. Most of the remains of the crew were identified, but some were not, as this was in an era before genetic testing was available. Identifiable remains were transferred to the families, and unidentifiable remains were interred at the Space Shuttle Challenger Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery. The pieces of debris were stored in two abandoned Minuteman silos located at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, where the debris remains to this day. Currently, 118 tons of debris, representing 47% of the vehicle, have been recovered. The investigation into the disaster was conducted by a Blue Ribbon Presidential Commission, led by former United States Secretary of State and Attorney General William Rogers.

The Commission became known as the Rogers Commission. Other members of the commission included the likes of Neil Armstrong, Sally Ride, Chuck Yeager, and Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman. The commission was rather quickly able to determine exactly what happened. Photographic evidence, recovered debris, and historical documents all pointed to the exact same conclusion. The cause of the disaster had to do with the rubber seals inside the solid rocket boosters, which were known as O-rings.

The solid rocket boosters had segments that were stacked on top of each other vertically. The O-Ringes were gaskets that were placed between the sections to provide a gas-tight seal between them. When the solid rocket fuel inside the booster was ignited, it would produce extremely hot gases, which you wanted to go at the nozzle of the rocket, not out the sides. The problem had to do with the extremely cold temperatures the day of and the night before the launch. The rubber used to make the O-Ring became rigid and more brittle under cold temperatures. When the temperature dropped, the O-Ring ceased to provide an airtight seal. The most famous moment from the committee's hearings was when Richard Feynman took a portion of the O-ring material and dipped it in ice water.

Once it was put in cold water and deformed, it never went back to its original shape. As it turned out, there was black smoke emanating from the right solid rocket booster moments after it was ignited. And the problem with solid rocket fuel is, once it's lit, you can never turn it off. The hot gas coming out of the side of the rocket booster eventually turned into a flamethrower, pointed directly at the large external fuel tank, which contained liquid hydrogen, and the strut that connected the solid fuel rocket booster to the external fuel tank. In an almost simultaneous action, the solid fuel rocket booster broke away when the connecting strut was destroyed and then burned through the liquid hydrogen tank.

The liquid hydrogen tank was slammed into the liquid oxygen tank, causing a massive explosion. Believe it or not, the explosion was not responsible for the destruction of the shuttle itself. that was caused by the aerodynamic forces of traveling at close to Mach 2. The high speeds in the atmosphere tore the orbiter apart. If you go online, you can see very clear images of flame and smoke coming out of the solid rocket booster at various stages of the flight. The exact cause of death of the astronaut still remains unknown. It wasn't known if it was the initial destruction of the orbiter, the loss of oxygen, or the final impact with the water, which was responsible for their deaths.

It is known that at least some of the astronauts survived the initial breakup of the shuttle as the crew compartment was intact. The discovery of the failure of the O-Rang was only the tip of the iceberg, however. The truly shocking part of the committee's findings was that the problem was identified as early as 1977. The manufacturer of the solid rocket booster was Morton Thichol. NASA engineers had identified the problem as a potentially catastrophic one, but Morton Thichol never did anything to fix it, and NASA never made fix it.

the problem a priority. Just before the launch, several Morton Thichol engineers advised that the launch shouldn't take place with temperatures below 53 degrees Fahrenheit. However, Morton Thichol's management talked amongst themselves and officially advised NASA that it was okay to launch. It wasn't just this one issue with the solid rocket booster O-Rings, however. What was found was an entire culture that massively underestimated risks and safety at NASA, especially at the managerial level. Administrators at NASA had placed the estimate of a disaster of a space shuttle at one in 100,000, which is absurd, given the complexity of the space shuttle and the inherent dangers of spaceflight. There were many changes that came from the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. For starters, the president

supported the creation of a new space shuttle to replace Challenger, which was named Endeavor. It first flew in 1992. The U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology conducted its own investigation, which supported the conclusions of the Rogers Commission. The entire Space Shuttle program was grounded for two years and eight months, as changes were made to fix the problems with the solid rocket boosters and other critical problems that were found with the space shuttle. NASA created the Office of Safety, Reliability, and Quality Assurance. Its director was responsible directly to the NASA administrator and could act independently to ensure the safety of any future missions. However, after the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003, a commission that looked

into the disaster concluded that the changes made after the Challenger disaster were insufficient. The teacher in space project ended. However, Krista McCullough's backup for STS 51L was an elementary school teacher from Idaho named Barbara Morgan. Morgan continued to train as a mission specialist at NASA and eventually did fly into space on STS 118 in 2007, thus finally becoming the first teacher in space 21 years after the Challenger disaster. There have been numerous monuments and memorials to the Challenger astronauts, including the naming of asteroids and craters, as well as parks and schools. Today, there are still pieces of Challenger that are being discovered. Scoob divers recently discovered a 20-foot-long piece of the shuttle on the seafloor in November of 2022.

Newly discovered pieces are placed in the same silo as the pieces recovered in 1986. There is a section of the Challenger shuttle that is on permanent display at the Kennedy Space Center. Even though it would take another 25 years to unwind, the Challenger experienced. marked the beginning of the end of the space shuttle program. The disaster showed that the initial turnaround times, reusability, and cost savings of the space shuttle would never materialize. The added safety precautions and inspections involved in every flight after Challenger only made things worse. The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster was one of those few moments in history where everyone remembers where they were when they first heard about it. It was and will remain

one of the greatest tragedies in the history of human spaceflight. The executive producer To serve everything everywhere daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. I just want to thank everyone, including the show's producers, who support the show over on Patreon. If you'd like to support the show, just head over to patreon.com, which is currently the only place where you can get show merchandise. Also, if you want to talk to other listeners about the show, head over to our Facebook group or Discord server, both of which have links in the show notes. Challenger, go. This shuttle mission will launch, my God.

One minute 15. There's been an explosion. Plosity, 2,900 feet per second, altitude, 9 nautical miles, downrange distance, 7, nautical miles. This is not standard. This is not something that is planned, of course. I can see a solid rocket booster has broken away from Shuttle Challenger. That's what you're looking at in the middle of your screen. I cannot see the shuttle itself. I don't know if it's able to continue on one rocket booster.

If it's able to jettison that rocket booster, it will be able to return to the Kennedy Space Center. Perhaps the shuttle engines are not enough to power the shuttle back down. Like a controller, you're looking very carefully at the situation. Obviously a major malfunction. I hope they were able to survive. We have no downlink. We have absolutely no sign at all of the shuttle itself. All we saw was that one explosion, only about a minute into the flight.

And we saw the solid rocket booster. Now here's something coming down. I don't know what that is. I don't think that that's the shuttle. I believe that's a piece of debris that's coming back earthbound. I don't know. It's too small for the shuttle itself. Pieces falling out of the sky in the Florida morning.

It's about 20 till noon in Florida. There are contingency plans for the shuttle when something does go wrong, when something goes terribly wrong. We have a report from the flight dynamics officer that the vehicle has exploded. Forces to see what can be... 840 and we hear from launch control. The vehicle has exploded. That's the...

the orbiter itself, the shuttle challenger, has exploded. We must... Containcy procedures are in effect... Assume that the crew is not alive.