Should NASA have gone for a no go for Challengers launch

I know hindsight is a wonderful thing.

After researching the challenger disaster, it appears as though it was a rush job with all the focus on having Crista mccauliffe as the first civilian in space.

Also to launch the spartan halley satellite to gather info from Halley’s Comet.

Though the temperature on the morning of the launch was bitter, it launched at 11.38am which one would hope the temperature would have been more reasonable.

Though if the icicles didn’t melt by this time then there are issues.

Would it have been better to have delayed the flight.

It’s a sad loss of life.

NASA managers were reluctant to delay the launch again, especially after having already postponed it several times due to weather conditions. They were concerned that any further delays would damage public confidence in the Space Shuttle program. There were a lot of factors that led up to the disaster if you read up on it. Ultimately the final decision was based on PR for NASA rather than safety concerns.

But five years after the inaugural launch, the program averaged just five missions a year as the agency was forced to acknowledge that four orbiters weren’t enough for its original ambitious schedule.

There were some notable parts of the program: NASA had diversified its astronaut corps with scientists, women and people of color, but this wasn’t enough to sustain public interest. The missions were still esoteric and infrequent—which, coupled with NASA’s insistence that spaceflight was routine, gave people little reason to care.

When the world perked up at the news that a teacher would be flying in space, what NASA needed more than anything was a win. The mission had already been delayed from mid-1985 to early 1986, and that Tuesday was the only real option NASA had to launch. There were technical considerations: the satellites and science payloads on board had to be deployed at certain times.

The publicity goals, however, weighed heavier. According to the mission plan, Christa McAuliffe would broadcast a lesson live from orbit on her fourth day in space. A Tuesday launch meant a Friday broadcast, but a Wednesday launch meant a Saturday broadcast, when no students were in school. NASA needed the publicity of her broadcast.

Another factor was political. President Ronald Reagan was due to mention McAuliffe and the Teacher in Space in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night. If the launch was delayed, NASA would miss out on another big public mention. If the agency was going to justify continued spending on the program, Challenger had to launch on time.

www.history.com...

I suggest the documentary, Challenger: The Final Flight. It's still available on Netflix. It goes into great detail.

I simply think you have to be a real putz at this point to believe the challenger was anything but a rocket MEANT to explode, an unmanned one, and just a ploy to collect more black ops money and shut down having to put on a show for the world. They say that all the astronauts were, coincidentally, identical twins who took their dead siblings names to honor their passing!? Who changes a name to their dead brother or sister!? All alive and well and still working in their related fields.

a reply to: Cavemannick

My thoughts?

Reagan wanted a rocket launch for his State of the Union address so they pressured them to launch in absurd conditions.

No go. Like trying to take off a 737 in 45 kt winds because you need to get off the ground. Some even did everything in their power to stop it.

This is a really unpopular opinion though..

a reply to: Cavemannick

More significantly, I believe, is the fact that the Challenger disaster would not have occurred if Congress had approved funding for the original, Sinlge-Piece Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) design proposed by the engineers.

That design was dropped due to political pressure to "spread the pork" to Utah-based Morton-Thiokol(sp?) for the construction of the STS's SRB's. Shipping from Utah, via rail, required the "segmented" design; the segments were then assembled by NASA in Florida into the SRB "stacks" mounted to the Shuttle main tank.

The segmented units of the SRB had to be joined together to form the stack, and the infamous "O-rings" which "froze" in the cold of the morning launch, were needed to seal the joints between segments.


If, as originally intended, the SRB's had been cast as single pieces, by Aerojet (I believe) just down the Florida coast from the Kennedy Space Center, there would have been no need for "O-ring" seals....and no resulting failure.

originally posted by: AlexandrosOMegas
I simply think you have to be a real putz at this point to believe the challenger was anything but a rocket MEANT to explode, an unmanned one, and just a ploy to collect more black ops money and shut down having to put on a show for the world. They say that all the astronauts were, coincidentally, identical twins who took their dead siblings names to honor their passing!? Who changes a name to their dead brother or sister!? All alive and well and still working in their related fields.

Got a link for that info?

There was an engineer, Allan McDonald, an engineer who refused to approve rocket boosters that were used in the Challenger space shuttle.

Engineer Robert Ebeling also opposed the launch.

That second link says that there were no less than ...

five courageous engineers who warned NASA against launching the space shuttle due to cold weather conditions, risking failure of the O-rings on the Challenger's rocket boosters.

Here's a video that discusses the disaster:



So, yeah, it was massive, major and not unforseen fuster cluck.

ETA: Don't have time to watch this one myself, but it might add to the discussion. I don't kow if it actually addresses the failures, or if it's just some softball propagand b.s. It's titled as an Ethics Case Study.



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a reply to: Cavemannick

We have way better ways to get into space. I say no way should that shuttle have been launching!