Today marks the 20th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, which killed seven astronauts and shattered the idea that space travel would be as routine as air travel is today. The whole thing is made even more poignant by the loss of the Columbia crew three years ago.So, what happened? Basically, bad management in the name of good PR. The shuttle shouldn’t have launched that morning, and flight techs and ground crews told NASA this. Still, the launch was greenlighted, and 73 seconds later, the first teacher in space and six other astronauts were dead.
The specific cause was quite simple and avoidable. A rubber O-ring that held one of the SRBs in place had cracked from the cold, and it began to leak. When it gave, the main fuel tank blew up and fell away, while the boosters kept going. This can be seen on the archival footage as two separate plumes of fire–one climbing and the other hurtling groundward. Continued...