Challenger Disaster 40th Anniversary

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NMaude

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Today (January 28th, 2026) is the 40th anniversary of the destruction of the Challenger during its ascent phase post Max-Q. It was a shocking event to may including myself (I'd turned 13 the previous November in 1985 and I was on holiday with my family in Mt. Maunganui) in which the public hadn't expected the shocking public destruction of the second space-worthy Space Shuttle to fly and to learn in the following months it was a preventable disaster.​



Wednesday marks 40 years since the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded Jan. 28, 1986, killing all seven crew members. Former NASA astronaut and ISS commander Leroy Chiao joins "NewsNation Live" to discuss the tragedy.
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This coming Wednesday, Jan. 28, will mark the 40 year anniversary of the Challenger explosion, one of the biggest tragedies in NASA history, which killed seven crew members aboard the space shuttle.
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On this 40th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger tragedy, we remember the seven lives lost and honor the courage of all who explore beyond our world.
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In January, 1986, the Challenger space shuttle exploded shortly after liftoff, claiming the lives of seven astronauts. That evening, President Ronald Reagan spoke to a shocked nation and his inspiring words became one of his most memorable speeches.
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The whole thing is so infuriating. It goes beyond NASA, and their impossible flight schedule for the year 1986 and beyond. That "5" in STS-51L stood for a 1985 mission - the last one of that year, yet delayed to (almost) February 1986 !

And the next flight was fixed in time by comet Halley making its closest approach from Earth on March 6, 1986. It was to be observed by a SPARTAN Shuttle platform, because JPL had missed the Halley bus all those years before.

Unlike the Soviet, Japanese and ESA, "ballistic" flyby wasn't good enough for them. "We want electric propulsion or solar sail for a slow flyby". Sure dude, you'll get none of the two - oh, and now its 1981, too late to return to ballistic. Facepalm.

With perfect hindsight, looking at the wheather of March 6, 1986, the Shuttle commander who was to launch that night remarked "it could have been us". Temperatures were as bad as on January 28 but - unflexible schedule = launch fever. Halley won't wait. Sure, but O-ring stuck frozen just don't care about a comet (insert Richard Feynman quote about physics and nature here)

What a waste. With perfect hindsight, the Shuttle promises and resulting launch schedule was madness. NASA had promised 60 or 52 times a year, then cut that down to 24. Except the most the shuttle fleet ever flown in a year, post Challenger, was 8 in 1996. Before that date: 10 times in the year leading to Challenger.
 
Not something I will forget for one.

"Challenger, go with throttle up" is one of those moments I cannot forget.

I bet there are a fair few folk at nasa who rue those decisions but they seem to recur.
 
It strikes a cord with me because it was televised and for me, synched with the Apollo moon landing for which my school acquired a television for us kids to watch. Ten year old me was gasted with flabber but I cannot 'see' one without the other.

There are folk who poopoo the USA and I have to point out that the USA will do just what it needs to whenever it needs to. To the moon with that computer? Apollo13 through that event with less computing power than the average watch now?

The disasters stand out but perhaps we should acknowledge the risk assessments undertaken and the sheer guts required to go for it anyway.

Speech mode off, sorry if I went on and on.
 
Scott Kenny said:
I was a little kid for Challenger (first grade, I think). We sat in school and watched it happen.

It is honestly one of my earliest memories.
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Poor NASA certainly found the worst possible way of traumatizing an entire generation of children. Talk about a "perfect shitstorm".

I mean the shuttle that exploded HAD to be the one with the teacher on board. Fucking Murphy Law and colossal PR disaster. Hard to beat that.

I'm not american and was only 3.5 years old yet the "Y picture" and the colorfoul cloud traumatized me over the next few years. Same as Chernobyl red and white chimney over the dark nuclear volcano.
The pictures were all over magazines in the next decade so I grew up with that. This scared the living shit out of me.

@Scott Kenny are you born in 1982 ?
 
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Irrelevant now but, have there been any projects for ejection seats in the shuttle at least?
 
R.I.P.... I was a teenager when the Challenger disaster happened ........ never realised it was 40 years ago ....
 
Foo Fighter said:
Irrelevant now but, have there been any projects for ejection seats in the shuttle at least?
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Nope. The reason: 7 crew members on 2 or 3 levels. Only two can eject upwards, through the cockpit hatches. That was the plan from STS-1 through STS-4 with SR-71 ejector seats... and only two test pilots. Removed thereafters... because larger crews = trapped downward on middeck and lower decks. Which means : death note for them. Morally unacceptable to NASA - see also A3D ( all three dead !) Skywarrior and Vulcan same issue.
Instead : deployable flexible boom, everybody can parachute down... at subsonic velocity.
The real answer was : better safety, realistic flight rates.
Unfortunately on STS-107 another "Shuttle gremlin" killed another crew. Ice impacts on TPS during ascent...
 
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Archibald said:
Nope. The reason: 7 crew members on 2 or 3 levels. Only two can eject upwards, through the cockpit hatches. That was the plan from STS-1 through STS-4 with SR-71 ejector seats... and only two test pilots. Removed thereafters... because larger crews = trapped downward on middeck and lower decks. Which means : death note for them. Morally unacceptable to NASA - see also A3D ( all three dead !) Skywarrior and Vulcan same issue.
Instead : deployable flexible boom, everybody can parachute down... at subsonic velocity.
The real answer was : better safety, realistic flight rates.
Unfortunately on STS-107 another "Shuttle gremlin" killed another crew. Ice impacts on TPS during ascent...
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Targets and outside interests. Lots of folk sans parents in that lot. A corollary to the first rescue launch in "the Martian", where the load liquifacts under launch stress but as testing was not undertaken for launch interests it created a bigger problem.

I though it quite interesting as a trope.
 
Foo Fighter said:
Targets and outside interests. Lots of folk sans parents in that lot. A corollary to the first rescue launch in "the Martian", where the load liquifacts under launch stress but as testing was not undertaken for launch interests it created a bigger problem.

I though it quite interesting as a trope.
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Sorry I have some difficulties understanding the beginning of what I quoted (english not my native language)

Like I said even an ocean away and too young, the STS-51L scared the living shit out of me when I was first heard (grasped ?) of it in 1988 or 1989. I could point the youth magazine where I first saw the pictures of the explosion.

Which are utterly uncomprehensible for a kid that does not know what a launch tracking camera is. Ascent tracking cameras were the reasons the pictures of the cloud looked so weird. Go grasp that as a 7 years old without Internet.

The Y-shaped cloud seen from very different angles... with all the colors, brownish, yellow, red... and the caption that just said "the shuttle exploded, all the astronauts died." Boom, go process that. The horror. And, remember, I wasn't an american school kid. I can only imagine the trauma, @Scott Kenny

Like I said, it's like the fucking Chernobyl chimney. Why was that thing painted red and white like that ? so that planes don't slam into it. Except it is a universal code, so I couldn't saw a red and white chimney or pylon without thinking about Chernobyl. LMAO (well not so much at the time)

I think my answer to that (STS-51L) was going to the very root causes of it, which I did as soon as I got a regular internet connection, in the early 2000s. It is gut-wrenching and infuriating to learn about the chain of decisions that day, but also enlightening (equally applies to Chernobyl and Challenger. Dyatlov, how we hate you !)

Make no mistake, even with that mental process, the sentence "By God Thiokol, when do you want me to launch, in April ?" remains as infuriating as ever (yes, a NASA manager said that - or close - during the complex and atrocious decision-making process the 27-28 January night before the launch. That sucks so much.)
 
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The Challenger disaster horrified me when I watched it on live TV when I was still at primary school (primary five if I remember correctly) and it was the O-rings on the booster rockets that was to blame plus they never again launched a Shuttle on really cold days as it was on the pad that day.
 
Segmented solids began with Titan augmentation...due to Titan's inferiority over Saturn IB. Something MSFC bashers won't admit.
 
"Shuttle Kids" recount their experience 40 years on:


Wednesday marks 40 years since the NASA Challenger space shuttle exploded less than two minutes after takeoff.
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The famous physicist Richard Feynman was the one who demonstrated the cold risk to the O rings at hearing, using a very simple physical demonstration.

I was at university at the time, considering being an astronaut, and this broke my heart. I still wanted to be an astronaut after the hearing showed the solutions were simple, too old now.
 
Here's a brief interview with Ron McAir's widow 40 years on:


Forty years ago, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff, killing all seven crew members, including Houston astronaut Ron McNair.
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Here's a recent article concerning the company that made the SRB O-rings:


The American space program needed big rubber rings. The subcontractor that won the job was called HydraPak – a Salt Lake City company that made seals for industrial equipment.
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60 Minutes has an article from their video-archives, this article was on the 10th anniversary of the Challenger Disaster:


On January 28, 1986, NASA's Space Shuttle Challenger exploded and all seven astronauts on board were killed, including teacher Christa McAuliffe. Ten years later, Lesley Stahl spoke with engineers who told 60 Minutes they tried to stop the launc
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And then there was STS-61E.
https://www.americaspace.com/2013/0...hallenger-the-lost-mission-of-sts-61e-part-1/
Short story: with perfect hindsight, the weather than night at The Cape (March 6, 1986) was as cold as Challenger's. Same causes produce similar effects... it could have been them instead. Their launch date was rather unflexible, because they had to observe the Halley comet with a SPARTAN UV astronomy platform. Had Challenger SRB less been shaken by high altitude winds and hold through, disaster would just have been postponed. Of course there were many other failure modes lurking around the Shuttle insane flight rate, ready to kill a crew. STS-61A for example dodged two scary bullets.

https://www.collectspace.com/ubb/Forum30/HTML/000107.html
Space Shuttle Payload Flight Assignments - as of 20 November 1985:
  • 61E - Columbia (Halley comet observation - March 6, 1986)
  • 61F - Challenger (Jupiter launch window 1 - Shuttle-Centaur, Ulysses - May 15, 1986)
  • 61G - Atlantis (Jupiter launch window 2 - Shuttle-Centaur, Galileo - May 20, 1986 )
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